How to get cut without losing muscle
Posted by Marius
I am a male.
I have done primarily PPL but I sometime have had full body workouts every other day. I found out PPL worked better for me as I am sure a lot of you have as well. We are talking 6 days PPL. One month ago I switched to PPL on 5 day per week and then just add legs to the first day of the next week and swap how I feel. It is nice to get the extra rest day. My workouts are usually 50/50 strength and hypertrophy. For strength I usually stay in the 4 to 8 rep range with about 85% or more in, and in hypertrophy I do a rep range of 10 to 16 (sometimes a little less or more depending on whatever) The set for strength is usually 3 sets and hypertrophy 3 to 4. I do 18inch deadlifts more than full floor ones, I do not squat I do hack squat and I bench like any other normal person I guess. I do a lot of isolation work and I love back exercises.
All in all my strength days are:
6 to 8 exercises
And my Hypertrophy days are:
14 to 20 exercises.
I like to hit muscle groups several times.
Here is the issue:
I am now in my cut and despite hitting my macro goals of enough protein and carbs I feel myself tire out. Therefor after and extended search period I found this write up:
https://bodyrecomposition.com/training/weight-training-while-dieting
Basically they call for cutting things in half and volume.
"In practical terms this means that someone who had been performing 6-8 heavy sets per muscle group twice per week could reduce their volume to roughly 2-3 sets (a 2/3rd reduction) done once/week. Quite in fact, this is one of the very few times I think training a muscle group once per week is optimal: when the goal is maintenance."
and
"As you can imagine, for a trainee doing a moderate to high volume of training at a high frequency before their diet, this represents an extremely large reduction in volume. A lower body workout that was 20-24 sets across multiple muscle groups and took 1.5 hours to complete will be done in a fraction of that time. Six to eight total work sets might take 30-40 minutes depending on how many warmups are done and how long you dawdle between sets."
and
"More to the point, whatever you were doing prior to your diet, just reduce it to maintenance. So if you were doing 8 heavy sets per bodypart twice/weekly before the diet cut that back to 2-4 sets as little as once/week. Hit a couple of heavy compound sets in the 6-8 rep range and then a couple of lighter isolation sets in the 10-12 range. Boom, your maintenance work is done."
Now... This article is about 8 years old. And here is my big question:
Does this mean, I as a natural; quite muscular, able to retain muscle fairly easy, I have my macros in good check and I love to workout; Is that all it takes? I do not need to CRACK it out every time? I know intensity is important and I have no issue with that, but they are saying that for bigger compound movements that you might do like Squats, Chest, OHP, Deadlifts, Incline chest etc. for strength days would be half of what I do? As in instead of 6 to 8 hard exercises I do about 4 or 5 hard exercises with half the sets as usual and volume? What about hypertrophy days: Where I would go 12 to 20 exercises with 4 sets. Do I do same weight but HALF the exercises and half the sets?
I would love someone to further guide me with this as I cannot fully understand its that easy to maintain?
Some people on reddit says do not freaking change anything or volume until you tire.
So I should just bang it out and if I hit the wall 15 min before I usually finish then that's it and I go inside?
During this cut I will not do cardio, but I will lift heavy weights and hopefully do some volume if recommended?
I have not done this serious of a cut before and I am excited.
I do not want to over do it. I do not want to lose muscle. I do not want to be a snowman.
