Advice cut or bulk

What are your goals?

Do you want to lift heavy or have minimal body fat?

alexsusanu wrote: »

Mikee469 wrote: »

What are your goals?

Do you want to lift heavy or have minimal body fat?

Ideally both of course but since that's not doable I would say minimal body fat. And for two reasons:
1. I never had a low body fat and would like to achieve that this year. but eating now at a deficit Im feeling kinda low energy and the gym sessions are the best.
2. from what I read, having a low body fat helps you adding more/quicker muscles after.

I think you're on the right track. It's often stated the optimal range for being able to gain muscle with less accompanying fat occurs at the 8-15% body fat range. Keep lifting and cutting until that range and then you should be able to lean bulk for a good bit to really add good size. If you're feeling worn down/low energy perhaps your deficit is a little too high for your TDEE. If I may, what's your current calorie deficit & macro targets?

For what it's worth, I'm not a big fan of 5x5. The wiki on r/fitness (linked below) has a good repository of full body linear progression programs that crew recommends over 5x5. That is, if you're even still in a place where your progression can support an LP program. Your lifting numbers are solid; you might do better with an intermediate split routine like 531, PPL, PHAT or PHUL (which also can be found on the r/fitness wiki).

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/recommended_routines

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10177803/recomposition-maintaining-weight-while-losing-fat#latest

alexsusanu wrote: »

steveko89 wrote: »

alexsusanu wrote: »

Mikee469 wrote: »

What are your goals?

Do you want to lift heavy or have minimal body fat?

Ideally both of course but since that's not doable I would say minimal body fat. And for two reasons:
1. I never had a low body fat and would like to achieve that this year. but eating now at a deficit Im feeling kinda low energy and the gym sessions are the best.
2. from what I read, having a low body fat helps you adding more/quicker muscles after.

I think you're on the right track. It's often stated the optimal range for being able to gain muscle with less accompanying fat occurs at the 8-15% body fat range. Keep lifting and cutting until that range and then you should be able to lean bulk for a good bit to really add good size. If you're feeling worn down/low energy perhaps your deficit is a little too high for your TDEE. If I may, what's your current calorie deficit & macro targets?

For what it's worth, I'm not a big fan of 5x5. The wiki on r/fitness (linked below) has a good repository of full body linear progression programs that crew recommends over 5x5. That is, if you're even still in a place where your progression can support an LP program. Your lifting numbers are solid; you might do better with an intermediate split routine like 531, PPL, PHAT or PHUL (which also can be found on the r/fitness wiki).

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/recommended_routines

Calories wise Im at 1700 + 200/400 (from all the walking that I do) so I end up with about 2000 calories daily.
Macros wise, thb I didnt pay too much attention at macros up till a month ago. Last month or so I started doing this, meaning I added more vegetables, salads, proteins and cut on carbs.

On a side note I added 2-3 HIIT sessions a week for the past 3-4 weeks. M-W-F gym, T-T-S HIIT sessions.

I will have a look at the r/fitness.

Regarding the 531 PPL PHAT PHUL routines; Everyone has a bit of a different opinion what an intermediate level is, so wasnt sure if I was ready for that number wise or maybe recovery time wise.

Thanks so much for the reply

You got it, man. I've found r/fitness to be a really good resource. There's also a TDEE back-calculator spreadsheet there that was a game-changer for me. I had been spinning my wheels eating too much based on my heart rate monitor, turns out it was overestimating/calculating my "burn" by at least double. Started using that and really tightened up my logging last summer and quickly dropped 10lbs I had been trying to lose for months. SymmetricStrength.com is a cool free site to use as well, helps track your 1RMs, identify your weak lifts and gives you a category (novice, intermediate, proficient, etc.) for each.

alexsusanu wrote: »

steveko89 wrote: »

alexsusanu wrote: »

steveko89 wrote: »

alexsusanu wrote: »

Mikee469 wrote: »

What are your goals?

Do you want to lift heavy or have minimal body fat?

Ideally both of course but since that's not doable I would say minimal body fat. And for two reasons:
1. I never had a low body fat and would like to achieve that this year. but eating now at a deficit Im feeling kinda low energy and the gym sessions are the best.
2. from what I read, having a low body fat helps you adding more/quicker muscles after.

I think you're on the right track. It's often stated the optimal range for being able to gain muscle with less accompanying fat occurs at the 8-15% body fat range. Keep lifting and cutting until that range and then you should be able to lean bulk for a good bit to really add good size. If you're feeling worn down/low energy perhaps your deficit is a little too high for your TDEE. If I may, what's your current calorie deficit & macro targets?

For what it's worth, I'm not a big fan of 5x5. The wiki on r/fitness (linked below) has a good repository of full body linear progression programs that crew recommends over 5x5. That is, if you're even still in a place where your progression can support an LP program. Your lifting numbers are solid; you might do better with an intermediate split routine like 531, PPL, PHAT or PHUL (which also can be found on the r/fitness wiki).

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/recommended_routines

Calories wise Im at 1700 + 200/400 (from all the walking that I do) so I end up with about 2000 calories daily.
Macros wise, thb I didnt pay too much attention at macros up till a month ago. Last month or so I started doing this, meaning I added more vegetables, salads, proteins and cut on carbs.

On a side note I added 2-3 HIIT sessions a week for the past 3-4 weeks. M-W-F gym, T-T-S HIIT sessions.

I will have a look at the r/fitness.

Regarding the 531 PPL PHAT PHUL routines; Everyone has a bit of a different opinion what an intermediate level is, so wasnt sure if I was ready for that number wise or maybe recovery time wise.

Thanks so much for the reply

You got it, man. I've found r/fitness to be a really good resource. There's also a TDEE back-calculator spreadsheet there that was a game-changer for me. I had been spinning my wheels eating too much based on my heart rate monitor, turns out it was overestimating/calculating my "burn" by at least double. Started using that and really tightened up my logging last summer and quickly dropped 10lbs I had been trying to lose for months. SymmetricStrength.com is a cool free site to use as well, helps track your 1RMs, identify your weak lifts and gives you a category (novice, intermediate, proficient, etc.) for each.

I see, awesome will def have a look at that website. And on the tdee, curious if it will show different than mfp.

On a side note. I know its a personal opinion regarding the routines, what would you choose ?
531, phat, ppl, phul. Had a look at the nsuns 5/3/1 4 days and it seems good. Also simple app its a big plus.

ON TDEE: It's a little hard to say given the way MFP calculates (NEAT + Exercise) vs. TDEE. My average TDEE since last July is 2440 (29 y/o, 6', ~175lbs, <15% body fat for context) and my MFP maintenance at sedentary is 2250, which matches what other online TDEE calculators spit out for my stats but YMMV. Assuming that 2250 number is accurate, and that I've worked out 3-4 times/week since I started using the sheet, you get a lifting day calories of 2680 to average out to that 2440. A delta of 380 cals for workouts stands up to reason given that's right about half of what I would get from my HRM for an hour workout and that's what's typically cited as how much one should eat back. The sheet works really well IMO, just have to weigh yourself daily and track calories. Some might find it tedious but I'm a huge data nerd.

Regarding which program, it really depends on a bunch of factors and I honestly think you can progress well on any of them provided your eating requisite to your goals. Time per workout and how many days you can fit into your schedule play a huge part; the best routine is the one you'll do most consistently.

Personally, I haven't messed with anything 5/3/1 as the rep/weight changes seem tedious and time-consuming but you'll find a ton of redditors that swear by the nsuns programs, which has it's own subreddit, btw. Both PHAT and PHUL are written to have a lot of lower accessory/hypertrophy work which I'm not big on, my legs carry a little more of my weight be default so I don't need to worry about looking like I skip leg days, nor do I ever see myself as a competitive body builder so I don't really care what my calf circumference is. Same scouting report on PPL; I don't need, nor want a whole leg day, so I modify and fit Squats and Deads into other days just fine, though your needs and preferences may be different. I also exclusively workout at home so trying to do some of the accessory leg exercises best suited for machine work just isn't that feasible.

For a long time I was just doing a barebones full-body routine 3x/week where I'd hit Squats, Deadlift, Bench, Row, Press, and pull ups all in one go. This worked well for a while but when I wanted to add some more accessories I found my workout stretching too long for my time constraints so I started splitting it into two days. I have been doing a push/pull split, where I'd ideally repeat each day three times but I'm finding it tougher to manage six full days around spring/summer schedule of golfing, mowing the grass, going to weddings, and family functions. I've decided to vary my rep ranges a little so I've been working on modifying some hybrid of PHAT and PHUL where I can pick to do 4, 5, or 6 days depending on what's going on each week.