At the moment I am cutting for 3.5 months. I use my 5/3/1 BBB training schedule + 20 min cardio at the end of the training. K have made good progession and lost 6 kilos and my fat percentage is now 11% myy goal is 8%.
Strength has remained almost the same, only with bench presses I lost 5 kilos. The rest of the exercises about 2.5 kilo.
My body has now reached the point that it needs rest. My joints hurt and feel weak and tired.
Is it an idea to have a deload and refeed for 2 weeks? In the 2 weeks I will eat 100 kcal above maintenance and reduce the weight of the compound exercises by 10% and the assistance exercises from 5 sets to 3 sets. The assistance exercises will be at full weight.
What are your thought on this? And will I lose weight/power or regain what I lost?
I am in a 300kcal deficit. I have heavy work, so 300 is more then enough for me.
The goal of the cut is to look better and preparing for my next bulk. I was 16-17% and that is too much for me to feel good. Eventually I want to end at 8% then bulk to 12-13 and then back to 8.
I understand. I also think that there is a diffrence between week and tired and sometimes broken. Iāve been cutting for 8 weeks in a row now and it is getting pretty hard and i am losing strenght.
Yes there are. But i am afraid to implement a deload in a cut. Afraid to lose mass and strenght. That is why i started this topic. To hear what you guys think of a cut/deload week(s)
To borrow a question, slightly paraphrased perhaps, from @T3hPwnisher, if whatever you use to track your fat percentage told you tomorrow you were at 8% would you be done?
This is so true
But this implies there isnāt really much of a rush either. So, if your joints are feeling shoddy, take two weeks off from your deficit and eat at maintenance. Or however many weeks it takes for your body to feel up to snuff. Donāt refeed though. Just, eat at maintenance for your new weight.
That way you wonāt risk injury and can resume your deficit later.
If you run a program with deloads built-in to the program you should do the deloads as the success of the rest of the programming is partly predicated on getting that deload.
That is a good idea. 2 weeks on maintenance. The only risk is that i dont know exactly how much calories i burn at work. So the risk is always that i burn more and still in a bigger deficit. Maybe eat 100kcal more then maintenance.
Yes i know, but i thought i lose my strenght and mass in a deload, because i dont lift heavy then. Maybe i should eat at maintenance and then deload. And then after deload back to deficit.
I am aware. The problem was that i followed the 531 program for almost 9 months. I gained good muscle, but also fat. Iāve read that you should use the same program for cutting as you used with bulking. That is why i use the 531 for cutting too.
Probably not. But I thought if I keep the deload week and then eat in a deficit. That it would then be much more likely that it would happen.
Also, Iāve never done a cut up to 8%. So I donāt know what to expect when it comes to keeping mass etcā¦
If that is the case, again, seek immediate medical attention. I cannot express this enough. This happened to a buddy of mine and it turned out he had leukemia.
Ok. Got it. It will not be the case. What i am gonna do is eating 100kcal surplus. Cut back 531 sets to 40/50/60 and assistance to 3x10. This for 2 weeks and then go back to deficit.
Then I suggest checking under different states of hydration (eventually, an ā8ā will appear). Or get a careless/slacker trainer to caliper you. Or post a pic of yourself holding a shoe, and weāll all unanimously agree youāre at 8%, at which time you can stop cutting. Because if all you need for validation is an 8, there are easier and faster ways to get it.
I kid, I kid. But what I am saying is, you have missed the point of @Voxelās question, which is that when it comes to determining how you look (and how you feel about how you look), a number on a machine is a poor stand-in for a mirror and a moment of self-reflection.
Indeed, perhaps what you should do is cut until you are happy with your appearance, and only then check your Magic Meter to see what it says. In other words, let your appearance determine the BF% you attain, rather than your BF% determine the appearance you attain. (The same holds true for body weight, BTW.)
Speaking of validationā¦@T3hPwnisher , in your capacity as current occupant of the ee cummings Chair in Wordplay here at TNU, Iām anxiously awaiting your acknowledgement of my twee cleverness several posts back.
I think it looks overall better. Veins and the strings for sure. That looks amazing.a big reason too is that in can bulk up to 12% and then cut back again to 8. Then i stay pretty lean all the time.
On YOU, personally, what does 8% look like that 10% does not? Why are you aiming for a particular number vs a particular look? If your goal is ācut until I see ab veinsā, then the bodyfat% is entirely inconsequential. In proof of concept, I have recently lost bodyfat until I could see quad veins, ab veins, lines in my shoulders, etc etc. I have NO idea what my bodyfat percentage is. I didnāt need to know it. Hell, I didnāt even know what my bodyWEIGHT was until I was done.
@Eyedentist You have such a strong signal to noise ratio as it is that I would end up polluting it if I acknowledged every time you made a post that brought me delight, haha.
