What’s up, guys?
Sean Nalewanyj, www.SeanNal.com and a lot of people have asked for a video about mini
cutting and so that’s what I’ll be covering today.
I’m just going to break this down into three quick sections by going over what a mini cut
is, when to do it, and how to do it in terms of the actual steps.
So let’s get right into it.
First off, what is a mini cut?
Most of you who are watching this right now probably already know but a mini cut, just
like the name says, is just a brief fat loss phase that’s done at some point during a
bulk in order to drop some of the excess fat that you’ve accumulated.
Anytime you eat in a calorie surplus where the goal is to fully maximize muscle growth,
you will gain some body fat along the way.
So if you’ve been doing a prolong bulk and your body fat has climbed up a bit too high
but you haven’t reached your muscle building goal yet and you want to continue adding more
size, a mini cut is a good way to burn off some of that excess fat so that you can go
back to gaining muscle while keeping your overall body fat percentage under control.
The second question is when is mini cut appropriate?
Again, the mini cut would make sense when you’re body fat levels have gotten too high
during a bulk or the other reason might be if you want to lean down and lose a few pounds
of fat for an upcoming event.
So maybe you’re already reasonably lean at twelve or thirteen percent body fat but
you want to lose a small amount of fat for, maybe a photo shoots or a vacation or something
along those lines, and it’s only a few weeks away.
That’s another situation where a mini cut could be used.
Now, going back to the first and the most common reason, which is to lean down during
a bulk, what body fat level would be considered too high to where a mini cut would make sense.
Keep in mind that this is partly an issue of personal preference because as long as
you are still within a healthy body fat range, then it really depends on what your goals
are what sort of look you’re shooting for.
So I’m going to answer this assuming that you’re after the standard aesthetic physique.
Meaning that you want to be both decently lean and muscular and you want to look good
all year round without letting your body fat level gets too high.
I did a video a few weeks ago outlining what I would considered to be the ideal body fat
percentage for males who want that type of physique.
And the figure that I gave was anywhere between about ten to fifteen percent body fat.
So if you’re bulking and you get to that very upper end of the range, or a bit beyond,
so fifteen percent or sixteen percent, maybe seventeen percent depending on the person.
Assuming that you want to stay decently lean year round that’s going to be a good time
a good for a mini cut.
Now again, like I said this is partly personal preference though.
Keep in mind that even all the way up to around nineteen to twenty percent body fat is still
considered to be a healthy percentage for a male.
So if you’re going for that bigger, bulkier look, or you’re just genuinely okay with
carrying a bit more fat while you focus on gaining muscle then going a bit higher is
ultimately okay because as long as you’re in healthy range then no one can really tell
you what exact percentage you should be, it’s really your call.
But if you’re at a point where you’re genuinely not happy with how much fat you’re
carrying and it’s affecting your motivation and it’s affecting your desire to bulk further,
that’s definitely going to be a good time for a mini cut to help you lean down and reset
things so that you can just comfortably go back to focusing on gaining more muscle.
And also keep in mind that if your ultimate goal is to be in that leaner body fat range
then the higher your body fat percentage gets while bulking the longer you’re going to
need to spend cutting later on.
So rather than having to do a long drawn out diet in order to lose the excess fat, the
use of mini cutting is going to help to keep your body fat levels permanently under control,
so that you never have to go through a long tedious dieting phase later on.
So with that out of the way, here’s how to actually do a mini cut and it’s actually
pretty straight forward.
First off, you don’t need to bother with a typical bulking to cutting transition phase
in this case, because your goal here is just to be as efficient as possible, drop some
fat fairly quickly and then get back to your muscle building phase.
So instead of gradually dropping you calories from week to week you’re usually just going
to be best off to go straight from a surplus right into a deficit so that you can start
losing fat right away.
If you really want to minimize hunger and you’re okay with a process taking a couple
extra weeks, and you’re not in a rush then you can use a transition phase like I talked
about last week.
I’ll link that video in the description box.
But in the case of a mini cut, I generally recommend just going right into a normal deficit
in order to save time.
Now, a standard calorie deficit for fat loss would be about five hundred calories below
maintenance.
So that would be my default recommendation.
But because of mini cut is fairly short you can use a more aggressive deficit and just
tough it out depending on how much fat you want to lose and how long you want your mini
cut to last.
So I would say that up to about seven hundred and fifty calories below maintenance would
be fine.
Some people can go even more aggressive than that if it’s for a short period and it it’s
done properly.
But for most people and most situations somewhere between five hundred to seven hundred and
fifty calories below maintenance is going to be a good safe guidelines and as long as
you’re continuing to weight train and you’re consuming enough protein, so somewhere around
0.8 to one gram per pound of body weight daily, then muscle loss and strength loss is not
going to be an issue here.
And if you’ve lost track during your bulk and you don’t really know what your current
calorie maintenance level is, I’ll outline a few equations that you can use in the description
box below in order to estimate it.
But I’m not going to go over all of those in this video otherwise this is going to drag
on for too long, so check the description box for that.
Now, how long your mini cut last really just depends on how much fat you’re wanting to
lose as well as the size of your deficit, but anywhere from a shortest two weeks up
to a maximum of six weeks that would be pretty standard because if you go beyond six weeks
then at that point it’s just really a regular cutting phase as opposed to mini cut.
And keep in mind that the point of a mini cut is not to get shredded abs and shredded
delts, the point is just to drop a bit of excess fat so that you can get back to an
acceptable level, so that you can keep on bulking.
And so the idea here is to keep it brief.
So depending on your overall activity level throughout the week a calorie deficit of five
hundred to seven hundred and fifty below maintenance, that’s going to produce somewhere between
one to two pounds of fat loss per week.
So you can just gauge the length of your mini cut off of that depending on how much fat
you want to lose.
Also keep in mind that your actual body weight will usually drop by a higher amount than
that especially in the first week, but that’s mostly due to just having less actual food
in your system and also you’ll be storing a bit less glycogen and retaining a bit less
water from the lower calorie.
So if you do drop three or four pounds really quickly don’t be alarmed because that’s
normal and once you go back to bulking at the higher calories that glycogen weight and
that water weight is going to come back.
And then lastly in terms of transitioning back to bulking after your mini cut is over,
you don’t need any sort of long drawn out phase here either.
But you also don’t want to just jump right back into a big surplus and start eating based
purely on hunger.
Otherwise you’ll probably over eat and you could very easily end up erasing a good portion
of the fat loss that achieved during the mini cutting period.
Even though a mini cut is short, you’re still going to have food cravings once it’s
over especially if you were using a larger deficit, so make sure to go back to your surplus
in a controlled manner.
And I think that a good method for that is to just go back to eating at your calorie
maintenance level for about one week.
Let your weight stabilize and then move right into your regular calorie surplus from there.
So that pretty much covers the topic of mini cutting.
Again, there’s not a lot to it, but before I close the video out I just want to outline
one more thing that I think is important here.
And that is to make sure that you don’t use the fact that mini cuts exist to justify
overly aggressive bulking.
Remember that muscle growth is a slow and gradual process and that it only takes a relatively
small calorie surplus in order to maximize muscle growth over any given period.
And any excess beyond that is just going to be stored as fat.
So slow, lean bulking is pretty much always going to be the best approach in my opinion
and you don’t want to get into this mindset of basically binge-ing during your bulk and
gaining a bunch of fat, then doing mini cut to lose the fat and then going back to bulking
and doing the same thing all over again.
Because when you add that up over the long term you’re going to end up wasting a lot
of time and making very little progress in either direction.
Because you’ll be gaining way more fat than muscle during those bulking cycles and then
wasting time to drop the fat, and then just yoyo-ing back and forth, never really gaining
much muscle and never really getting that lean.
And that’s a very common thing that I see all the time.
So make sure to focus on gradual lean gains when you’re bulking and only insert a mini
cut into the mix if it’s truly necessary.
And if you’re bulking properly, starting from a lean body fat percentage like you should
be and you’re being patient, then you really shouldn’t need to do mini cuts very often,
if at all.
So I hope this was helpful.
If you do want to grab a complete step-by-step plan that shows you how to lay out a proper
bulking or cutting phase from A to Z.
The workouts, the meal plans, supplement guides and one-on-one coaching then you can check
out my Body Transformation Blueprint by clicking here or by visiting www.BodyTransformationTruth.com
the link is in the description box.
Make sure to follow me on social media here, the link for that are also in the description.
The official website is www.SeanNal.com and if you did enjoy the video make sure to hit
the like button, leave a comment and subscribe to stay up to date.
Thanks for watching, guys.
And I’ll see you in the next video.