I agree, looks like he may possibly have the genetics for aesthetics.
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Yeah, if it wasn’t for that annoying belly/lower back fat I keep accumulating… 
I love my carbs, I have the same struggle brother.
So today I started my cut and had a TERRIBLE workout.
Squat 112 kg x 4, 4, 3
Smith-Machine PBN alternating with Rack chins
PBN @ 42 kg x 7, 9, 9
Rack chins @ bw x 14, 11, 8
I was planning to do that and then an Incline db press alternating with cable rows, however after those three exercises I was TOASTED. I wasn’t feeling anything in my lats during chins and the press behind the neck was vaguely hurting my shoulders (I wasn’t used to either movement but I wanted to change things around and felt like going Paul Carter style).
I’m ashamed of this workout, I just felt tired coming back from my deload week and every second of the workout I was hoping that’d end soon. I was just not feeling good all around.
@danteism I’m curious: do you have days where you just feel like shit during your workout? If so, how do you handle them? I always feel bad when I don’t get to the end of my planned session, but at the same time I hardly ever manage to push through when that happens.
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As I said, I’m one day into my 28-day cut.
I was looking at these two pics from my last cut
And at some pics from now, and I realized I gained too much fat. I screwed up badly after finishing the diet, eating too many calories and cheating too often. I now want better results and stay lean for longer after finishing this cut.
I’ll be putting it all this time into the cut so again @danteism if you want to chime in with tips and thoughts you’re very welcome.
I have a decent hill near my house and tomorrow I’ll start to do some sprints to begin and get accustomed to cardio.
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Very rarely if ever at all. Usually if I feel a bit bad at the beginning I just shift my mental game to a bit higher level and roll with it. If I do, however have a bad session in terms of feeling horrible I drop the weight a bit and do what I can.
Having your peri-workout nutrition on point really helps with having good, consistent sessions day after day.
My number one thing would be to restrict calories hard while keeping protein high. How hard? As hard as you can truly manage physically and mentally. That means you should not see too much if all performance drop and you should not have an irresistible urge to cheat during or after your diet.
Think a deficit of 800 or so calories, set your protein at about 2.5g/kg, fat and carbs as you need and like.
Is this an eloquent way of saying that you just suck it up? Lol
I think that’s really what I’m bad at. As soon as I don’t like the feedback I’m getting from the first one or two exercises I’m very easy to lose motivation and give up mentally.
As I said earlier, I was eating 3,900-4,000 cals a day and I estimated a tdee of roughly 3,300 calories. I’m now eating 2,500 kcal a day with 240 g of protein, 80 g of fat and 180 g of carbs but I’m thinking of cutting the latter in half on non training days.
I’m very diligent with diet and I could eat even less than that, but I’m afraid of losing muscle. So there’s that… And I need to stop having bad training sessions.
Pretty much yeah
The way you act in a situation like this is definitely a part of one’s personality, but I’d think you can get better at sucking it up
I think you could manage with less calories as it is only four weeks, at the moment I’m eating (on my ~3 week mini cut) about 250g Protein 100g Carbs (on rest days 50g) and 45g Fat for a total of 1805 Calories (1605 on rest days) training 3 on/1 off with the average volume of 35ish sets per session, give or take.
Energy need is a highly individual thing though. If your body works like a blast furnace that may be what you need to function.
As per bad sessions…
It’s a mindset 
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Thank you for the tips!
So trying to implement the alternating sets like you suggested in your log, I designed this program for my cut and would like to know if you like it.
Monday
A. Squat 3x5
B1. Zercher squat 3x6
B2. Barbell rdl 3x10
C1. Db ohp 3x6-10
C2. Chin up 3x6-10
Wednesday
A. Rack pulls 3x5
B1. Cable row 3x8
B2. Chest Press Machine 3x10
C1. Rack chins 3x6-10
C2. Lateral raises 3x8-10
Friday
A. Incline db press 3x6-8
B1. Smith machine close grip bench press 3x6-8
B2. Dumbbell curl 3x8-12
C1. Neutral grip Incline fly 3x6-10
C2. Incline rear delt raise 3x8-12
(no need to say that the exercises with the same letter will be done in an alternating fashion.)
So the idea is to keep a full body template with a built-in focus on certain body parts pile I’ve done with my recent workouts. Monday is more of a leg day, whereas wednwday would be a pull day and Friday a push day.
I tried not to go too crazy with the volume but I will try and make all sets as challenging as possible.
Does it sound good?
Also if @EyeDentist and @flipcollar want to chime in on it that’d be nice.
Looks a bit light on the legs I’d say.
Adding in, say three rounds of quad blasts on Wednesday and some hill sprints on Friday will help with making it a bit more balanced program
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Catch me up–what are your short-term goals?
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this is the program i’m planning to use for my 4-week mini-cut.
How drastically do you intend to cut cals?
yeah i’m not doing a whole ton of leg work; but then again, i don’t work my legs a lot when gaining muscle either, because they are my strongest point and i am not particularly interested in making them grow more until i balance my upper body.
anyway, i am planning on doing both of the things you mentioned for conditioning purposes.
in fact, today i had my very first hiit workout. i have a small hill near my house and i ran sprints.
HIIT WORKOUT:
15 minutes
10 sprints (avg rest time 50 seconds between sprints)
after the fifth sprint i realized i was doing something very stupid. near the end, i almost passed out and felt like puking. this lasted almost 2 hours after finishing the workout too. for the first time in life i realized what EPOC feels like in reality.
this made me realize how poor my conditioning is as well. i’ll have to work on that.
i was eating 4,000 kcal prior to that (i’m estimating a tdee of 3,300 kcal a day), i now cut them to 2,500.
i’m having 240 g of protein a day, 80 g of fat, and 180 g of carbs. on non-training day, i actually cut the carbs to about 100 g.
OK, that’s a steep drop, but not crazily so. Given your fairly sig caloric restriction, I wouldn’t rec doing much more work than you have outlined here, and would advise refraining from going overboard with the HIIT.
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How much do you weigh? You have a good physique and I bet you can have good results with this cut, but 240g of protein is very steep. @Eyedentist I’m genuinely curious on your thoughts regarding protein intake, this is probably about 1.5g/lb of protein. Couldn’t he keep carbs a bit higher and adjust them week by week to assist in the cut? Or since it’s a mini cut lowering them right off the bat is best.
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I weigh 80 kg (176 lbs) and the 240 g of protein were in accordance with @danteism’s suggestion of 3 g/kg of protein.
IMO for a 4-week cut, carbs should be cut as much as tolerable
My thoughts on protein intake are…unsettled. Back in my hyooge days–when I was in my early/mid 20s, roughly 100 years ago–I probably got less than 200 g/d. This was because we (=me and every bro I talked to) all ‘knew’ that the human body couldn’t digest more than 25-30 g of protein every 3 hrs. (How did we know? Because Joe Weider told us, that’s how.) Of late (=past 10 years or so) I’ve always gone by the ‘~1g/d/lb BW’ rule. But when I did a training cycle with John Meadows (#NameDrop), he told me he sets protein at 240 g/d for all males, regardless of BW. And when I did a training cycle with one of Meadows’ former associates (now off on his own), he had me eating ~300 g/d at one point! (I balked.)
The point being, I have no idea what protein intake should be.
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Which is ~1.4 g/lb here in 'murica. Not unreasonable.
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Thanks for the explanation! Not that it was conclusive, but that’s how this whole fitness and nutrition thing is, I suppose. Best case you get great results, worst case you get good results and decide what changes to make next time. With your current appearance, a significant cut for a short period of time is gonna work regardless. Best of luck, I’ll be checking in to see how it goes.
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