“How do I make this program work on a cut?”
Honestly – if I never got asked that again, I’d be okay…..but alas, it’s probably the one of the top questions I get on a weekly basis.
And it’s not that the question is invalid, senseless, or stupid – it’s entirely legit. It’s just a difficult task to accomplish for any lifter for a number of reasons. And there are about a million details that matter in this process, and frankly I find millions of details annoying.
The process of dieting a trainee down in body weight can be frustrating for both client and coach if the variables aren’t manipulated carefully, the client does not exercise strict compliance to the protocols, and maybe most importantly – both client and coach need to have a firm understanding of what is likely to happen during the process, so we don’t have mental and emotional breakdowns a few weeks into the cut….this is usually accompanied by the trainee finding a new compelling reason to “bulk” as he panics about disappearing strength gains.
Stay out of the Bulking – Cutting Purgatory. Pick a goal and get there. Bulking usually erases your abs and cutting usually erases your PRs…..just deal with it.
Clients and coaches often have unreasonable expectations about what can be accomplished while a trainee is in a prolonged phase of weight loss.
Most of the time, people lose some strength on a weight cut. The heavier you are when you start, the less of a factor this is. If you are 280 lbs at 30% body fat, you probably aren’t going to lose much strength when you start cutting weight.
If you are 190 lbs at 18% body fat you are probably going to lose some strength when you starting cutting weight.
The rate at which you lose also matters – a lot.
Something that averages around 1 pound per week is a good protocol. More than that and you risk dieting off too much muscle tissue as you shed water and fat. Less than that (on average) and you are just dicking around and dragging the process out longer than it needs to last. If you are starting off very heavy then it might be more than that for the first several weeks or even months of dieting and that is okay.
All that being said, again most people lose some of their top end strength on a weight cut at some point.
Lack of adequate resources for recovery and lack of adequate resources for training are the two driving factors behind this. Tissue remodeling is a calorically expensive process, as is hard training. Often times (i.e. most times) existing in a caloric deficit that is sufficient to lose weight is insufficient to train and recover in a way that promotes new muscle growth or even maintains existing muscle mass.
However….I do think that maintenance of muscle mass and maintenance of absolute strength are NOT the same thing. At all.
It isn’t a forgone conclusion that you are going to lose your muscle mass, even if your numbers dip a little bit. You can and need to do everything possible to hang onto your muscle mass. The idea here is fat loss, not just weight loss.
But the expression of strength is a different story. And especially your top end strength. 1-3 rep maxes can suffer. Dieting trainees are often a bit “flat” as muscles aren’t generally topped off with glycogen and water. Leverages change around the joints and this makes expressions of top end strength difficult.
It also makes injury more likely. When in the midst of a diet, I really don’t like to see trainees constantly pushing in the 1-4 rep range. The risk isn’t worth the reward. Look, here is the reality – you aren’t gonna make much progress training that heavy anyways. If you lose some top end strength temporarily – it comes back. You won’t be weak forever. Once you level out and stop losing, your strength can and will return. There is a big difference between being lighter and the process it takes to get lighter. The latter is worse than the former.
Maybe more importantly – dieting itself sucks. Trainees battle with motivation and discipline when the process drags out forever, when they hit weight loss plateaus, or when they simple get irritable from the whole process.
Getting a big fat injury is a fucking Nuclear Bomb to your motivation. I’ve seen it 1,000 times.
Something about a lower back strain or pec tear that makes you want to down a tub of ice cream and a couple of Big Macs.
Power lifters and Bodybuilders are strange people, what can I say. But I digress…..
Here are a few basic principles that I have employed with myself and with my clients during a fat loss phase that have proven to be helpful:
#1: Don’t get carried away with training volume
Training with lots of volume requires a lot of energy/calories. Recovery from lots of volume requires a lot of energy/calories. You are eating low calories. Do the math.
In other words you need to save as much of the little calories you are eating for recovery/maintenance of muscle, rather than burning them up with tons of useless submaximal set volume. You can maintain muscle mass with less volume than what it took to build your muscle mass. Either way, something will have to give. If you maintain your high volume protocol, be prepared to strip quite a bit of weight off the bar.
I’m of the opinion that muscle is better maintained with slightly less set volume, but keeping intensity a little bit higher.
Wait?? But didn’t I just say to avoid high intensity? Yes – absolute intensity…heavy work in the 1-4 rep range or generally work that’s 90%-100% of 1RM.
Relative intensity is a bit different – pushing hard and close to failure on a handful of sets in the 6-12 range is not only useful but critical to maintaining muscle mass. I firmly believe that if you can maintain as much strength as possible in these slightly higher rep ranges (oddly easier to do than 1-4 rep range) you have a pretty good shot at keeping your muscle.
Also…it slightly nudges the volume up while keeping set volume lower. It seems that the recovery is a bit easier with this approach.
If you use this approach I suggest using an approach that rotates 2-3 exercise variants across 2-3 sessions vs trying to do the same exercise at every session. (i.e. rotate each session between high bar squat, front squat, hack squat for quads vs just high bar squatting every session).
Opinions vary so feel free to experiment yourself.
(If you want to see my own 46 pound weight loss this past year using a low volume training program you can check out my Instagram @bakerbarbell).
#2: Coordinate Your Diet with Your Training Split
One variable about diets that I didn’t really “get” for a long time was the difference between weekly caloric intake and daily caloric intake. Most diets tell you to eat a certain amount of calories per day. So basically each day of the week is slightly below maintenance and cumulative effect of this is fat lost at the end of the week. This works.
But there is another (better) strategy that involves manipulating your calories along with your training in a way that better mitigates losses in strength and therefore less risk of losing muscle.
If you train 4 days per week (for instance upper lower split) then arrange things so that you have two harder workouts and two easier workouts each week. This is done mainly via exercise selection.
The night before your hardest workout(s)….have a higher calorie cheat meal. The rest of the week stay stay in a deeper deficit than normal so that the net caloric consumption is about the same as if you just held calories steady 7 days per week.
The higher calorie / carb cheat meal will fuel your body up for the harder training session the next day. After several days of being in a steep deficit you’ll feel amazing in the gym after your all jacked up on a high fat, high carb, high sodium meal. You’ll hit bigger weights and perhaps higher volumes than if you were depleted and these types of sessions do wonders for maintenance of muscle mass.
Depending on your individual metabolism and results you can do this 1 maybe 2 times per week. Your body weight will spike after the cheat meal, but as long as you are down a net 1 pound by the end of the week it’s okay.
Here is what it might look like:
Tuesday
- 1800 cals per day diet (big deficit)
- Lighter Upper body session
Wednesday
- 1800 cals per day diet
- Lighter Lower body session
Thursday
- Rest Day
- 1800 cals per day diet
Friday
- Weigh In Today…..if no weight lost, then no cheat meals.
- Rest Day
- 1800 cals per day diet
- + 1000~ calorie cheat meal (ex: Big Mac + fries + coke)
Saturday:
- Heavy Upper Body Session
- 1800 cals per day diet
- + 1000~ calorie cheat meal
Sunday:
- Heavy Lower Body Session
- 1800 cals per day diet
Monday:
- Rest Day
- 1800 cals per day diet
This example diet yields a weekly caloric intake of about 14,600 calories per week. 7 days per week of the 1800 calorie per day deficit diet + two 1,000 calorie cheat meals on the nights prior to the heaviest training days.
This would be the equivalent of eating a steady diet of 2,085 calories per day 7 days per week.
And we’re assuming that a 2,085 calorie per day diet is a deficit for our hypothetical lifter aiming to lose about 1 pound per week.
The benefit of the former approach is that you get two workouts per week training with full glycogen stores and a slightly bloat that comes from a big high carb / high sodium meal that you aren’t used to having. Plus you get to satisfy some cravings. In exchange you have to run a deeper deficit than what you’d normally run on the other days of the week.
It’s important to remember that carbs and fats can be stored. You don’t have to eat a consistent amount of carbs and fats on a daily basis. Leveraging more of your energy around your hardest workouts makes some sense. Protein feedings should be more even during the day and during the week as protein is not stored in the way that glycogen and fat is stored.
#3: Mid-Range Rep Ranges
A 5-12 rep range works really well on a deficit for maintaining muscle mass. A few hard sets per muscle group in this rep range is a good safe balance of load and work to be stimulative to muscle mass. Going really high in reps is not the best idea when glycogen depleted. Again – the goal is to stimulate the muscle fibers, not exhaust the muscle fibers and see how depleted we can get. Stimulate the muscle in the most efficient way possible. The goal is not muscle exhaustion / glycogen depletion. Hit the muscles HARD with a few productive sets and go home.
An excellent way to train when on a deficit is with a simple “top set, back off set” approach. Hit a top set in the 5-8 rep range, then back the weight off 10-20% or so and knockout a back off set in the 10-12 range. Hit the sets HARD and you won’t need to do much more. You can of course adjust the rep ranges a bit to suit the exercise you are performing.
#4: Short Focused Workouts
Upper-Lower splits are good on a cut. Body Part splits can be good on a cut if you don’t get carried away with per session volume. It’s hard to muster the energy to get through long drawn out full body workouts when calories are low.
You don’t wanna cut things down so much though where you don’t give you muscles reason to respond and stick around.
Legs are pretty easy…..Squat or Squat Variant 2 times per week paired with a Deadlift or Deadlift variation to follow. Calves if that is your thing. If you do sufficient work there you may not need much else than 2-3 exercises. 1-2 other exercises for quad/hams if you have time an energy but make sure you gear up for the first two.
For upper body…..something like this as an example:
- Bench Press / T-Bar Rows / Overhead Press / Pulldowns (Day 1)
- Incline Bench Press / Chins / Dips / Cable Rows (Day 2)
You hit those big 4 each training day and if time and energy allow follow with specific bicep/tricep/delt/trap/etc movements to your preference.
A more detailed program that is very similar to the example laid out above is in my 4-Day Upper / Lower Training Program. There are 3 volume tiers in that program….I recommend the low volume tier in a cut.
