Guys love to over-complicate stuff, so I will clearly mention who this piece is for and who this isn’t for before we start with the meat of the article.
Who this piece is NOT meant for
- Beginners (people in their newbie gains phase)
- Overweight guys on a modest cut (say about 10-15% of maintenance calories, which usually means around 300 calorie deficit or less)
- Obese guys on a moderate cut (say about 20% of maintenance calories, which usually means around 500 calorie deficit or less)
We define overweight to be from “stomach not flat” all the way to 30% body fat by DEXA (25% by older measures like calipers) and obese as 30%+ body fat by DEXA (25%+ by older measures)
All 3 of these groups can gain quite a bit of muscle despite being on a cut and there’s no need to worry about running into problems just yet.
Just follow my programs and if you start running into recovery related issues, pick a longer split that gives you more recovery time.
As long as the program you follow is not badly designed (too many sets and lots of overlap), you do not need to worry about adjusting many things just yet.
I’ve already discussed what you guys need to do here.
Who Needs to Adjust Their Training When Cutting
The people who need to modify their training when cutting are:
- People who are already quite lean and trying to get leaner (say someone at 15% body fat trying to get to the single digits)
- An overweight guy doing a moderate or higher cut (say more than 20% of maintenance calories, which usually means around 500 calorie deficit a day or more)
- An obese person doing a major cut (say more than 30% of maintenance calories, which usually means around 750 calorie deficit a day or more)
Note that with all 3 groups we assume prior training experience (out of their newbie gains phase).
Why Training Needs to be Modified
You are not going to gain muscle on a deep cut
You are simply not going to gain muscle on a deep cut. It’s just too hard for the body to do that outside of the newbie gains phase.
Your body does not have the fat mobilization ability to provide enough energy to build muscle when you are very lean or just cutting quite a lot of calories.
In fact, you’re probably going to lose some muscle. Your training needs to be aimed to keep muscle loss as low as possible.
The training goal now is to preserve muscle mass. NOT gain muscle (because that’s wishful thinking).
Your recovery abilities are lower (you can easily overreach and land yourself into trouble)
The deeper the cut, the lower your ability to recover from training. You have to modify your program to reflect your lower recovery abilities or you will run into problems.
What do I mean by running into problems?
I mean things like getting so fatigued that you’re unable to lift weights you could lift earlier AND have zero motivation to go to the gym AND become super hungry because your body is begging for extra energy.
It also means things like getting injured and straining or tearing something (something you really don’t want).
How to modify your program when cutting
There are a few variables to any training program:
- Exercise selection
- Intensity (how much weight you are lifting)
- Rep range
- Volume (combination of number of sets and frequency – for simplicity let’s go with sets per muscle group per week)
(There are more variables like velocity (bar speed), tempo, rest times, etc. but that’s not relevant to this discussion)
Modifications to Intensity
Intensity means how much weight you are lifting.
DO NOT REDUCE INTENSITY ON A CUT.
KEEP THE WEIGHT YOU ARE LIFTING THE SAME.
IF YOU REDUCE THE WEIGHT YOU ARE LIFTING, YOU WILL LOSE MUSCLE.
You have to remember that the weight lifted is the cause of mechanical tension forces being applied on the muscle.
Mechanical tension applied to the muscle makes the muscle grow.
The mechanical tension that made the muscle grow will also help preserve the muscle. It gives the body a reason to keep the muscle.
To put it in simple words, if you could bench press 100kg for 10 reps when you started cutting, and by the end of the cut you can bench 100kg for 5-6 reps, you have preserved far more muscle than if you were benching 90kg for 10 reps by the end of the cut.
For a natural trainee, the weights you are lifting (mechanical tension) is the most important factor in determining changes to muscle mass.
The whole idea that you need to do light weights for high reps while cutting is pure nonsense that people taking tons of gear came up with. It does not work without the gear.
Modifications to rep range
In general, try to get the same number of reps you did before you started cutting.
Over time the reps will reduce as you lose more and more weight to the cut. That’s fine. Try your best to keep them from falling.
Problems can arise if you were already doing low rep training (something I never recommend).
You can go from benching 2 reps of 100kg to 0 reps of 100kg in a week of cutting. Now what?
Well you did this to yourself. You have to reduce the weight and accept that you will lose some muscle.
Fun fact: This is why many natural bodybuilders train higher reps (10-20 reps) when they are bulking and lower reps (5-8 reps) when they are cutting. Training higher rep ranges when bulking gives them room to cut.
Modifications to Volume
Volume means the number of sets per muscle group you’re doing in some time period (usually per week for simplicity and because it matches with most people’s schedules).
Since we can’t change the weights being lifted (or we lose muscle), the main way we reduce our training to meet our lower recovery abilities is by cutting volume.
There are various recommendations.
Lyle McDonald recommends cutting volume by 2/3rds.
If you were doing 6 sets for a muscle group in a workout, make it 2. If you were doing 9, make it 3.
John Meadows recommends cutting volume by adding more rest days.
If you’re doing a body part every 3 days, then do it every 4 or 5 days.
Whichever approach you take, the volume goes down.
My recommendation is to start by cutting volume by 1/3rd. As the cut progresses and your recovery gets worse, cut a bit more, and then a bit more.
I’d say Lyle’s “cut by 2/3rd” should be viewed as the upper limit and not something you should do right off the bat.
If you were doing 9 sets for a muscle group per week for example, I’d make it 6 right off the bat as the cut starts. When that becomes too much I’d make it 5. When that becomes too much, I’d make it 4. Then 3. But I wouldn’t go below 3 as I’ve already cut by a total of 2/3rd.
Modifications to Exercise Selection
When you cut volume, you will have a choice for which exercises you cut them from.
For example, let’s say you do 9 sets per week for chest. (I’m not recommending this workout plan. This is just for the sake of example).
You’re doing:
- 3 sets of bench press
- 3 sets of incline chest press machine
- 3 sets of pec dec fly
Now when you cut by 1/3rd, you could cut 1 set off each exercise or you could remove an exercise altogether. As you cut volume even more, you have to choose which exercise sees the reduced sets.
In my experience, the largest reductions in the number of reps you can do will come from leverage dependent exercises (like free weight presses).
You lose some fat around your shoulders, forearms, and biceps and suddenly your barbell shoulder press range has increased, the bounce factor has reduced, and your reps are crashing.
You lose fat in your chest, back, and arms and your bench range and leverages have changed. Your reps will come down.
My recommendation is to start with reducing volume in leverage dependent exercises (free weight exercises).
I would still keep at least 1 set of the exercise to maintain skill and technique with it.
So when you cut 3 sets from the pedagogical chest workout above, I’d cut 2 sets of the bench press first.
If you keep bench press at 3 sets, you will find that in the 2nd and 3rd set, your number of reps will crash. They can go from 10 reps to 3 reps in two weeks.
This is not your strength coming down, but the leverages and range of the exercise changing.
These problems do not occur with machines so as long as you maintain your strength on the machines (the incline chest press machine in this example) you will preserve maximum muscle mass.
Cut sets from the squat before you cut sets from the leg press. Cut sets from the barbell shoulder press before you cut sets from a machine overhead press. Cut sets from barbell rows before you cut sets from the cable row.
Keep 1 set around otherwise you will have to “re-learn” the exercise neurologically when you resume doing it later.
Increasing weights on a cut
Sometimes it can become possible to increase the weight being lifted despite being on a cut.
This can come from still being far from your genetic potential (eg. an early intermediate trainee) or it can come from reducing sets in a previous exercise and thus being less tired.
If you can do it, then do it.
It will help you preserve more muscle mass and maybe even build some muscle.
That’s all for this piece.
This should give you a good idea on what to do to your training program on a cut.
– Harsh Strongman
