What’s going on, guys?
Sean Nalewanyj, www.SeanNal.com and today I’m going to be outlining five main tips
you should follow if you are losing strength while cutting.
Unless you’re going through a prolong cutting phase and you’re dropping a large amount
of overall bodyweight or you’re cutting down temporarily to a very lean bodyfat percentage
for a certain event then you really shouldn’t be losing much strength if your fatloss plan
is properly structured.
You should be able to at least maintain your strength throughout the beginning phases and
if you are going to lose strength it should only be happening as you get deeper into the
cut, and even then it should be modest.
You know, maybe losing a couple reps on smaller isolation lifts and maybe a very modest reduction
in weight on those larger compound lifts.
It does depend on how much total bodyweight you’re losing and how lean you’re trying
to get, of course.
If you’re a two hundred and thirty pound power lifter who decides to lean down to a
hundred and ninety pounds then obviously you can expect to lose a more significant amount
of strength just from a decrease in your overall leverages.
Or let’s say you’re cutting down to seven percent bodyfat for a contest then obviously
you’re going to be more depleted overall and that’s going to affect your strength
more so.
But for most average lifters doing a standard moderate cutting phase, strength loss should
be minor if anything.
Some people can fully maintain their strength while cutting and others can even gain some
strength, especially if they’re still a relative beginner.
So if you are feeling considerably weaker and your weights are decreasing rapidly it
definitely should be a cause for concern and it’s a pretty clear sign that there is something
wrong with the structure of your program and that you’re putting yourself at risk for
excessive muscle loss.
So, five aspects of your program to take a look at if this is the case for you.
So, the first is the most basic and the most obvious one, and that is that your daily calorie
intake is simply too low.
So if you drop your calories too low then your ability to recover in between workouts
is going to be compromised and you’ll also have less resources available to fuel your
actual training performance.
More aggressive deficits are usually okay in the short term for some people if it’s
only being done for a few weeks but eventually it will catch up to you.
So if you’re losing strength on a cut then take a look at your daily calorie intake and
take a look at how quickly you are losing body weight from week to week.
For most people a standard five hundred calorie deficit is going to be a good balance between
losing fat at a decent pace but also maintaining muscle size and strength.
And if you’re losing any more than about one to two pounds per week on an ongoing basis
then you’ll probably want to up your calories a bit until you’re falling somewhere within
that range.
Those who are more overweight and were carrying more fat can usually get away with losing
weight a bit quicker, whereas if you’re already within a healthy bodyfat range and
you’re just trying to cut down leaner while maintaining as much size and strength as possible
closer to about one pound per week is going to be more appropriate for you.
The second thing to look at is your macro nutrient breakdown.
So you don’t need to obsess over every single gram of protein, carbs and fats that you’re
eating everyday but if there is a glaring imbalance in there it definitely can have
a negative effect on your strength levels.
For example, if protein is too low then you won’t properly recover in between workouts.
And if it’s too high then your carbohydrate intake is probably going to end up too low
in which case your workout performance is going to suffer.
If fat is too high then either protein or carbs could be too low, and if fat is too
low then your hormone levels are going to fall out of balance and you’re going to
feel a lot worse physically and mentally and that could impact your workouts as well.
So again, this doesn’t need to be perfect but during a focused cutting phase your macro
nutrient breakdown does become a bit more important because you have fewer total calories
to work with and there’s a better chance that one of the three will end up too low.
So to make sure that you’re getting enough protein for adequate recovery, enough carbs
to fuel your workouts and enough fat to keep your brain function an your motivation in
check a good basic breakdown is to go with 0.8 to one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight
daily, you don’t need more protein than this even if you are cutting.
Get twenty-five percent of your total calories from fat and then fill in the remaining calories
with carbs and if you’re not sure how to calculate this then I’ll put it in the description
box below for you to check out.
Just try to land somewhere around those numbers and your chance of losing strength while cutting
or losing muscle is going to be much lower.
Tip number three to maintain strength while cutting is don’t go overboard on cardio.
So I always recommend that people include some cardio during the week not just as a
way of burning additional calories and preventing your calorie intake from having to drop too
low but also just for overall physical and mental health.
But a lot of people do tend to get a bit excessive with it during the fatloss phase.
You don’t need to be running on the treadmill five or six days a week in order to lose fat
and if you do perform too much cardio you’re going to be interfering with your recovery
weight training.
Remember that since you’re in a calorie deficit, your recovery ability is already
lower than normal.
And that’s going to make it much more likely that you will lose strength, especially if
you perform your cardio pre-workout, which I don’t recommend doing.
So a bit of cardio is fine but I wouldn’t recommend exceeding three weekly session as
a starting point and try to do it separately from weight training if you can or at the
very least do it post workout.
And only increase your cardio frequency from there if it becomes necessary later on in
your cut.
Tip number four is to keep your basic weight training approach the same as it was when
you were bulking.
A lot of lifters fall into the trap of thinking that heavier weight compound exercises for
lower reps builds muscle and lighter weight isolation exercises for higher reps burns
fat and shapes the muscle, which is totally false because you can’t spot reduce fat
from specific areas of your body and the only thing you can actually do with weight training
is to make a particular muscle as a whole bigger or smaller.
Muscle definition is just a product of your overall bodyfat percentage in combination
with how much total muscle mass you’re carrying and it has nothing to do with which specific
exercises you perform or how many reps you’re doing per set.
So if you do switch to a light weight high rep plan, all you’re really doing is weakening
the overall training stimulus which is going to cause you to lose strength and lose muscle
mass much more quickly.
And tip number five, if the previous four points are taken care of, so you’re eating
in only a moderate calorie deficit with a reasonably balance macro nutrient breakdown,
you’re not performing too much cardio and you’re continuing to train in the gym with
basic moderate to heavyweight sets as the foundation of your workouts.
If you’re doing all of that and you’re still losing strength quickly you can try
cutting back on your overall training volume.
It’s not always necessary to reduce your training volume during a cut because it does
depend on how much you were doing in the first place as well as other factors but if your
strength is continuing to drop try cutting your total workload by about twenty-five percent
to start and then see if that helps.
Remember that your primary goal during a cut is to provide enough training stimulus to
maintain your existing muscle and so you don’t need to be in the gym six days a week with
high volume workouts in order to do that since your recovery resource is going to be limited
in the calorie deficit and performing too much work can actually start to work against
you if you aren’t careful.
So those are the five main tips I’d give if you find that you are losing strength on
a cut.
And as long as those are taken care of it should correct things for you.
If you really want to fully optimize thing though I’ll give you three more smaller
quick tips here that you can employ as well before I close out the video.
The first is that if you are currently training in the morning you can try moving your workouts
into the later afternoon or the evening if it does suit your schedule.
And the reason for that is because strength levels do technically peak later on in the
day and that could help to give you a small extra boost.
The second is to start incorporating a weekly re-feed day into your plan.
I’ll link a post that I did on that in the description box but this is basically where
you just eat at your calorie maintenance level once a week with the increase coming from
carbs.
And then take that re-feed day and position it the day before your most challenging workout
of the week.
Or you could even do this twice a week depending on how deep you are into your cut and how
lean you’re trying to get.
And then lastly if you currently don’t use anything other than regular food as your pre
workout fuel you can try incorporating a basic pre workout supplement stack into your program
as well in order to up your performance a bit.
Caffeine being the most effective but I will link a video in the description box that I
did a while back that outlines my recommended homemade pre workout stack.
So I hope these tips were helpful.
If you’re not quite sure how to lay out a fully structured cutting plan in order to
maximize fatloss while fully minimizing muscle-loss and strength-loss then you can download my
Body Transformation Blueprint by clicking here or by heading over to www.BodyTransformationTruth.com,
the link is in the description that includes all of my recommended workouts, meal plans
and supplement guides for doing that along with information for bulking phases as well.
Make sure to like, comment and subscribe if you found the video useful.
My official blog is over at www.SeanNal.com and you can follow me here as well if you
aren’t already, the links for that are also in the description box.
Thanks for watching, guys.
And I will see you in the next video.