Keep Cutting, Recomp or Bulk?

Googling where to post queries on physique and this place came up. Been several years since I’ve ventured here! Sorry if this is no longer than place to ask. Anyway - [grid]






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All photos taken today. Stats and brief history: 6’4”, 42m, ~95kg / 209lbs. Started back at gym after a 3+ year hiatus a month ago at ~98.5kg on a deficit, with macros geared towards high protein. Running a basic full body workout 3x a week, with cardio 4-5 times a week. Have been getting progressively stronger in spite of deficit (newbie magic!).

Original goal was to cut down to 90kg and from there, increase calories and switch focus to training with a lot more volume.

I was once overweight at 120kg so carry a little bit of excess skin, as well as having a high waist (see hips sticking out).

I’m now considering moving to maintenance calories now and switching focus to weight training. My intermediate goals – on the leaner side with some muscularity. Longer term (years) I want to continue adding muscle and see how far I can take my physique.

Main concern is what I am cutting down to? Would it be better to move to maintenance (or even retain a slight deficit) but boost the resistance training while still utilizing cardio for conditioning, and some of the excess weight around hips, chest and stomach will take care of themselves?

Anyway, would like some objective viewpoints. Cheers.

We get these questions a lot.

The answer is: would you rather look skinnier and leaner, or fatter with more muscle?

Pick and choose. There is no third option.

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I would forget the terms cutting, bulk or recomp. Focus on eating good food (you should know what that it is by now), make sure you are getting at least 1 gram of protien per lbs of lean body weight, eat enough to fuel and recover from your workouts.
Train hard, with discipline and consistency and aim to progress the weight of number of reps every week. If you are always sore and not progressing you are probably not eating enough, if you clothes are getting tight in all the wrong places you have probably eaten too much. Use your progress in the gym and the mirror as your guide to progress . Just focus on the training and remember this takes time and by that I mean years not months.

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What does 4-5 days of cardio a week look like for you?

What does a daily diet look like for you?

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This is the approach that I would recommend. You need more muscle. I would recommend doing this by weight training with adding strength in all your major lifts. BUT try keeping your body weight where it is. Just work on getting stronger for about 3 months. And take some pics to see if you progressed some.

And you don’t need any additional fat in an effort to add muscle size, IMO.

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To me, I think you are in a great spot to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. Clean the diet up, something along the lines of the Mediterranean diet is agood idea and lift hard. Balls to the wall. Make sleep a priority. And increase your step count. Incline walk on a treadmill for 15 minutes never hurts. All of this creates an anabolic lifestyle. You need more muscle, more muscle helps you burn more fat. Just cleaning up the diet and increasing your protein intake is such a massive step, along with intense lifting sessions, you’ll be making big strides just based off of that! You can refine things over time and get more granular about the numbers you’re consuming, but these steps need to be taken first.

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Cheers all.

Past week I feel my body has dehydrated. Just seeing some curves and etches again in the framework, lol.

@davemccright Fairly sorted on the diet front. As I said I’m only (now) 6 weeks back. I agree. I’m at 95.5kg; will re-eval at 92kg. It makes sense to continue to take advantage of my ‘new’ newbie gains; if I’m consistently adding weight / reps while the scales go down …

I mean, given my longer-term aspirations; I could just go for broke now. I’m already encroaching on weights of younger guys clearly bulking (what the hell happened to gym culture where every high school kid MUST pose in the changing room mirror - I know we all do that, but do it at home FFS!) and I’m starved on a deficit.

BTW, the best I looked was 10 weeks on Layne Norton’s PHAT Training, followed verbatim. About 11 years ago. I burnt out (young, dumb, skip the de-load).

Still pondering Phase #2 once I hit my benchmark. I’ve gone over Clay Hyght’s principles / template a dozen times over the years. The principles he presented align with Norton’s PHAT. I loved the Heavy Upper / Lower days (I loved one more than the other - guess which!) and the three hypertrophy days. I can’t guarantee to that schedule unfortunately (not a good idea to run it five days in a row).

Once a week has its allures, I’ve never truly felt I needed an entire week to improve / recover (not yet at least).

The Yate’s Torso / Limbs split is attractive. Ran variations of it several times and going by progress photos I found, it was a winner. You can run it one on / one off, or two on / one off. Quality volume ~1.5x frequency.

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