Progressive overload when cutting?

During a cut the goal is to at least maintain lifts. It's simply much harder for the body to maintain-let alone grow-in a deficit. If you can't maintain you're losing too fast. If you can progress than that's awesome, however as long as you're maintaining you're good.

Lifting on a progressive overload program is the right start. What program are you running? Some are quite aggressive with progression (Strong Lifts) while others have a similar overall progression but smother curve (All Pros).

You should establish your baseline lifts; I'd suggest 10RM. During a cut if you fall below 9 you need to reevaluate as you've lost strength.

This is exactly what I plan on doing soon; planning on ending my recomp and doing a cut while maintaining my lifts. I'm interested in seeing what others have to say here as well. 😊

My programming doesn’t change between a cut and a bulk. I’m not that advanced though. I just follow the programme as written.

Are you doing yr own programming?

Your goal should be to try to maintain lifts thru the cut but eventually they’ll drop a bit if we are talking about getting to very lean levels. Eventually you’ll have to drop volume. Eventually everything feels heavy and tiring. Again it comes down to what kinda cut we are talking about. Your lean-ish now so going from 15-8 % is the above. A newbie going from 30-18% is a lot different

I'm doing this now. I'm only cutting ~300 kcal/day to minimize muscle loss. I am able to progress, but it's gotten much slower. I was killing it at the gym every week while I was maintaining. I've incorporated running to increase calorie burn which has added a layer of difficult to recovery, but so far it's working. I'm sure it will get harder once I'm leaner.

Best of luck to you in your cut!

What level of body fat are you looking to cut to? As a male, from my understanding of the literature, until you get very low, sub 10% at least, you can still build strength and perhaps some muscle while cutting. Yes, your progression will likely slow due to the calorie defecit, but as long as you maintain your protein intake and stay on a well structured lifting program you may see some gains, or at worst no losses. You'll also want to keep the calorie deficit reasonable.

I will say the literature isn't too extensive in this arena. Most of the literature either deals with untrained individuals or competitive body builders looking to get to very low levels of body fat, not in betweeners like myself. But, in the end, does it really matter? If you keep your protein intake up and stay on a well programmed progressive lifting plan that's the best you can do. From there your body is going to do what your body is going to do.