Hello everyone, I’m currently deciding if I should cut after my meet next month.
I have gone from 108 (238 lbs) to 118 kg (260 lbs)
my lifts have gone from 185/135/250 to 200/145/265
or from 407/297/551 to 440/319/584.
I’m 18 and 5"11’ or 6"0’ and am training specifically for powerlifting
Measurements from the start of this bulk to now
Waist from 100 cm to 106 cm so from just under 40" to about 42"
Arms from 17" to 18"
Legs from 29" to 31".
My bodyfat is around 23-25%. I was thinking of cutting from around may and I would like to reach around 238 lbs. so I can cut to 231 lbs. for meets. I’m not sure how I should go about doing this as I have never cut before. I would like to maintain strength and am fine with cutting for several months, as I need to drop almost 30 lbs.
My questions are; How long would this take if I would like to maintain as much strength as possible? Can I expect to not lose a ton of strength since my BF is so high?
Go slow a pound a week. Much more is going to cause some strength lose. Also strength lose is going to be expected but mostly because of leverage changes from the weight loss. Id expect bench to take a hit, Squat is 50/50 and the deadlift many often see increases due to a easier time getting set up.
I’ve only done 2 cuts for a meet before, from low 250s to 242. Alot of it depends on if you have a day before weigh in or not. But basically what I did was just slowly started restricting carbs until I adjusted to it, some people don’t have a problem cutting them out at first but I always had zero energy. I never did cardio either, maybe once a week out of boredom I would. But like Reed said my deadlift actually felt stronger when I cut due to the leverage changes but my other two lifts stayed the same at best.
My idea is to stay within spitting range of 231 lbs. for meets, would 6-8 months be a good amount of time to use to go from 260 to 238 with a focus on maintaining strength/muscle? Could I expect my numbers to be around the same? I tend to keep muscle well (I did a small but very low carb cut once and my strength was fine)
Take it slow and think long term. Ideally, you’ll maintain strength on a cut, but I would go into it expecting to lose a little strength, so you’re not discouraged when it starts happening.
Make sure you follow through with your cut, If you get disappointed with your strength loss, you’ll revert back quickly and start going into a vicious dieting cycle that a lot of people fall into “I’m too fat, I need to loose some lbs. (start losing pounds) now I’m too weak, I need to gain some lbs (start gaining pounds), I’m too fat…etc” It seem silly, but a lot of people fall into this trap and don’t make significant progress for years.
[quote]conspicuousd wrote:
Take it slow and think long term. Ideally, you’ll maintain strength on a cut, but I would go into it expecting to lose a little strength, so you’re not discouraged when it starts happening.
Make sure you follow through with your cut, If you get disappointed with your strength loss, you’ll revert back quickly and start going into a vicious dieting cycle that a lot of people fall into “I’m too fat, I need to loose some lbs. (start losing pounds) now I’m too weak, I need to gain some lbs (start gaining pounds), I’m too fat…etc” It seem silly, but a lot of people fall into this trap and don’t make significant progress for years.
Whatever you do, go hard and do it right.[/quote]
Yes, I’m thinking that if I gain some pounds on my deadlift and pull 600 lbs. at 231 lbs. then I’ll have a better chance of pulling 700 one day. I’ll be thinking long-term, since I’ll start my cut in early April, could I be under 240 lbs. with little strength loss by the end of 2015?
Losing 1-2 lbs a week is a good number to shoot for. When I cut in the past I was able to maintain strength for about 2 months and felt my strength decline afterward. It would have been useful to gain 1-2 lbs over a couple weeks to reset after the week I felt weak and then start cutting again. Just remember that you don’t have to cut all 30 lbs straight. Taking a couple weeks off the diet will help recovery come back to normal but that also isn’t an excuse to blow up and undo all the hard work. This micro-bulk could be planned during the hardest part of your programming.
[quote]lift206 wrote:
Losing 1-2 lbs a week is a good number to shoot for. When I cut in the past I was able to maintain strength for about 2 months and felt my strength decline afterward. It would have been useful to gain 1-2 lbs over a couple weeks to reset after the week I felt weak and then start cutting again. Just remember that you don’t have to cut all 30 lbs straight. Taking a couple weeks off the diet will help recovery come back to normal but that also isn’t an excuse to blow up and undo all the hard work. This micro-bulk could be planned during the hardest part of your programming.[/quote]
So I could load up on nutrients after maybe 8 weeks and resume cutting after two weeks of this “bulking”? Did the weight loss hurt your deadlift? What about the other two?
[quote]DaneMuscle wrote:
So I could load up on nutrients after maybe 8 weeks and resume cutting after two weeks of this “bulking”? Did the weight loss hurt your deadlift? What about the other two?[/quote]
It’ll depend on how fast your strength declines, which shouldn’t be that fast if you do a slow cut. You’ll have to go by feel since it may be sooner or later for you. You may not even need to do this mini bulk if you still recover fine. The time to be cautious about cutting is during the most intense part of your program, e.g., a really high volume or intensity week where you know recovery should be dialed in.
My bench hurt the most but it was partly due to pushing harder than normal in addition to cutting. In hindsight I should have just tried to maintain my bench. My squat and deadlift were fine.
I cut from 210~ to 187 for appearance reasons (also was trying to cut down to 181 for a potential meet, but those last 6lbs never happened).
My front squat went up dramatically somehow while cutting, deadlift and backsquat went up slightly. Bench Press remained the same, but paused did improve since I was specifically training paused.
Now about 7-8 of the lbs I dropped were probably from water weight and glycogen stores since I was on a relatively low carb diet, I think I averaged 120 a day per 10 weeks. So I only really dropped about 16lbs in 10~ weeks.
My advice would be to restrict carbs to a tolerable level, reduce conditioning if you’re doing it, and possibly reduce volume work. I primarily did heavy work and next to no volume for lower body, but I did maintain volume for upperbody since I felt like I could recover from it just fine. I don’t have a before pic, but I went from probably 16-17% BF to about 11-12%. Just a guesstimate based on vascularity and abdominal definition.