Anyone cutting after a bulk?

Your back looks amazing @pinggolfer96!

@Alexson50 - I am running the same program. I am supposed to do sets of 8. I am not making it through to 8 on some of my lifts - but no big deal.

I wanted to maintain 108-110 pounds and was hoping to get to 109 and start reversing to maintenance. About a week and a half ago I was around 111. I have been sitting at 112 for a week and very bloated. I usually see a scale increase twice a month and then drop a little bit lower once the bloating subsides. I am at the point where I need a diet break. I kinda want to wait a few more days to see what the scale drop will be - so I have an idea of how many calories to eat.

Last year I plowed through and dropped my weight down to 106 and things started getting wonky. I thought I was perimenopausal but everything returned to normal after eating more. Thoughts on the diet break - is a month long enough to normalize those hormones?

bioklutz wrote: »

Your back looks amazing @pinggolfer96!

@Alexson50 - I am running the same program. I am supposed to do sets of 8. I am not making it through to 8 on some of my lifts - but no big deal.

I wanted to maintain 108-110 pounds and was hoping to get to 109 and start reversing to maintenance. About a week and a half ago I was around 111. I have been sitting at 112 for a week and very bloated. I usually see a scale increase twice a month and then drop a little bit lower once the bloating subsides. I am at the point where I need a diet break. I kinda want to wait a few more days to see what the scale drop will be - so I have an idea of how many calories to eat.

Last year I plowed through and dropped my weight down to 106 and things started getting wonky. I thought I was perimenopausal but everything returned to normal after eating more. Thoughts on the diet break - is a month long enough to normalize those hormones?

A diet break can be a couple of days or it can be a week. It can be as long as you like. You would likely eat at maintenance during your diet break.

If I might ask, do you include "re-feed days" in your current set up? My guess would be that you do not.

Essentially, and I am sure that everyone has a slightly different understanding, a re-feed is eating at maintenance (so, you up your caloric intake to maintenance for those two days) and your protein and fat macros stay the same....you essentially up your carbs). Recent studies show that there are great benefits to having two consecutive re-feed days but you can do it however best suits you. Naturally, a re-feed is GREAT for you mentally. Lots of people will tell you that they live for those re-feed days....that they know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel....that they can push through the diet because the re-feed is getting closer and closer.

Hope this helps.

I am definitely not low carb. Most of my cutting calories come from fat. I am averaging 210-240 carbs. This is actually pretty close to what i normally eat. If I was cutting more aggressively my carbs would take a hit.

I have have been having 1-2 higher calorie days a week. Of course the majority of the increase has been from fat - as it is usually a tasty dessert.

Looking at my calendar - if I take a maintenance break now I won't get back to cutting until June 18th when I return from vacation.

edickson76 wrote: »

You can retain muscle while cutting if you keep the intensity (=weight on the bar) at the same amount, even if you reduce volume (=total # of reps) and frequency (=# of times you do that lift per week).

This has been the accepted advice for a long time now but the science backed community has started to change it's opinion.

The recent studies on volume as the primary driver for hypertrophy means that keeping volume high during a cut is more important that the intensity.

Mike talks about it here, with Eric backing up Mike's argument.

https://youtu.be/V5iwggPO-S0?t=48m44s

The video starts at the moment Mike and Eric discuss volume and intensity during a cut.

It's only a couple of minutes, you don't have to watch the whole vid.

Speaking of Steve and Eric Helms......love this conversation (but I say that about all of their conversations):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxt5rRLZMIM

Sorry, folks. Quick digression from the topic at hand....let's get back on track here.... :-)

edickson76 wrote: »

... but I haven't seen any research on volume as the primary driver of muscle retention during a cut. Is there such research, or is this a hypothesis based on the known hypertrophy research?

I haven't seen any research. It does make sense when you think about it.

This is the first time I've came across it being proposed.

pbryd wrote: »

edickson76 wrote: »

... but I haven't seen any research on volume as the primary driver of muscle retention during a cut. Is there such research, or is this a hypothesis based on the known hypertrophy research?

I haven't seen any research. It does make sense when you think about it.

This is the first time I've came across it being proposed.

It makes sense, if one takes Menno's approach, which is to keep building muscle while in a deficit. Then, of course, volume would be the main driver of building that muscle. I don't know enough physiology to know if sending signals to the body to build more muscle is the same or different than signals to retain muscle. But, per Lyle, we have studies showing that intensity maintains the muscle, even if we drop volume and frequency.

I have been looking around for other commentary about this topic. I've found a post by Israetel (https://renaissanceperiodization.com/minicuts-dr-mike-israetel/) from last October on mini-cuts which says the following in his tip#5:

Cardio is just fine to do and is recommended during mini cuts, but the training volume should be pretty low, right around MEV and usually not much higher. Why? Because this will keep all the muscle we built (not hard on a minicut) but save our volume sensitivity for massing, cause that’s when we’ll really want to push things to gain the most muscle.

That seems at odds with what he said in the video you posted...

I also looked on Revive Stronger's website and found a discussion on cutting workouts (http://revivestronger.com/2015/11/04/the-get-shredded-series-part-4-weight-training/):

However, when trying to get shredded we do not have the fuel for adding mass, so rather we need to find a training volume that maintains our muscle.

In a study of 70 untrained adults it was found muscle size was maintained with as low as one third of the volume that was required to initially give the adaption. Of course many of us are trained, so this might not be directly useful, however we can predict that we can maintain mass with frequent periods of lower volume training. This will help us recover during a time when our ability to recoup is severely reduced. This can be done through deloads, where volume is reduced heavily, and whereas when you might deload every 5th week normally, maybe when dieting you deload every 3rd or 4th week. Alternatively you could taper your volume for say 2 weeks or so and slowly increase it, in a wave like fashion, the key is we can allow for lower training volumes that will maintain mass and allow us to recover.

The article is from 2015, but it is linked in a 2017 article.

Kicked up everything but dropped protein to around 200-220 average. Hitting a bit above 3k calories this last week for maintenance and gained 4 pounds of water weight post cut. Feel much better and joints finally healing. Will bump up calories next week. I’ll miss my abs but tired of feeling so scrawny.

Ate an entire small pizza for lunch today. It was glorious.

pbryd wrote: »

@edickson76

Regarding Mike's not dropping volume in favour of intensity.

I'm assuming it depends on how much volume you were doing prior to the cut.

His MRV guidelines are higher than 20 sets per week in some cases, so yeah you'll have to drop some volume.

But if you're just plodding along at MEV trying to get in shape for the summer, then you'd want to try and keep the volume the same.

Apologies to everyone other than @sardelsa who might be sick of this discussion. For anyone who is still following along but wondering what MRV and MEV are...MRV is maximum recoverable volume and MEV is minimum effective volume. There is a good discussion of these concepts in "The Volume Roundtable" episode on Jeff Nippard's channel. Mike argues for MRV, Eric argues for a version of MEV. Layne Norton and Greg Nuckols are also on there.

Fully agree that volume must drop if one is pursuing MRV. During a cut, recovery diminishes; so recoverable volume would necessarily drop.

Not sure on MEV. That's minimum volume to grow muscles. If I'm not trying to grow muscles in a cut, do I necessarily need the same volume? Or do I just need the same intensity?

I found Lyle's articles on this topic (Part 1: https://bodyrecomposition.com/training/weight-training-for-fat-loss-part-1.html/ ; Part 2: https://bodyrecomposition.com/training/weight-training-for-fat-loss-part-2.html/ ). Interestingly, his argument is

I’ll simply say here that the high tension stimulus that builds muscle is the exact same high tension stimulus that will maintain muscle mass when you’re dieting.

That is the same argument I see now on the "maintain volume" argument. The difference I see; however, is that the intensity argument, when in a cut, has some studies backing it up. Those same studies counsel against a volume approach when in a cut.

This is leading me to think that volume is the primary driver of hypertrophy, but for maintaining muscle intensity is the primary driver. I confess to not being fully confident. When Eric, Mike, and Menno all align against you, it gives one pause. Thanks again, @pbyrd for posting that and discussing.

bioklutz wrote: »

@jseams1234 I agree. I worked really hard to get my lift numbers up! My current workout has me doing 3 sets of 8. I always try to get a small increase in weight on the bar and do all 8 reps but I often don't make it on some of my lifts. For example, it took me 4 weeks to add a pound to overhead press and to get all 8 reps (very victorious morning!). I cringe to think of what some of my lifts would be if I favoured volume.

Yeah, it's definitely a balancing act. I usually do 4 sets of 8-10 on most lifts during hypertrophy phase and 5 reps x 5 sets for the power days. After a month or so on my cut there was no way in heck I was getting that number of sets without killing myself for the next workout. I just dropped a complete set. Then a bit later I got rid of the hypertrophy days and just did power days with 4 sets.... then dropped it to 3 sets. Final stages of the cut I dropped a complete day out of rotation and all isolation/accessory. I never dropped the weight....

The only downside, I think I may have mentioned before, is my joints got really really "crunchy" and painful. Healing up now and almost back to normal.

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Yesterday kicked off week 4 of rfl cut and progress has slowed a bit:
Starting Weight - 216lbs
End of week 1 - 208lbs
End of week 2 - 206
End of week 3 - 203
This passed weekend was a bit rough and I fell off the program Friday by having a few drinks. Was able to mostly keep my eating under control but the booze calories were heavier than I wanted. Also, during my refeed at a family party on Sunday, I ate too many desserts with high fat and sugar. But, all my free time was filled with heavy yard work so I'm not stressing it much. Back to the routine as of yesterday and will end the run this coming Sunday. After that, I'll spend a week building up to maintenance followed by two weeks vacation at maintenance (as much as possible) then I'll reassess whether to run a few more weeks of rfl or a more traditional cut.