Starting Strength to Losing Weight

[Namo4184]

Hello guys, I've been doing practical programing novice program for a while now. I'v reached my squatting goals, and now I want to get rid of all this fat I've accumulated. I'm spending time figuring out the best way to go about that. Reading the forums, and other resources, here is what I've pieced together for my training.

WeekA

Wed
295x5x2 Low-Bar-Squat
160x5x2 Bench-Press
BWtxFx3 Chin-Up

HIIT Rowing: 1k warm up; 6-12 intervals, 250m:1min30s rest; 1k cool down.


Fri
115x5x2 Overhead-Press
355x5x1 Deadlift
8 Tabata Interval: Front-Squat

Sun
295x3x3 Low-Bar-Squat
160x3x3 Bench press
BWtxFx3 Pull-Up

HIIT Rowing: 1k warm up; 6-12 intervals, 250m:1min30s rest; 1k cool down.


WeekB

Wed
295x5x2 Low-Bar-Squat
115x5x2 Overhead-Press
BWtxFx3 Chin-Up

HIIT Rowing: 1k warm up; 6-12 intervals, 250m:1min30s rest; 1k cool down.


Fri
160x5x2 Bench-Press
355x5x1 Deadlift

8 Tabata Interval: Front-Squat


Sun
295x3x3 Low-Bar-Squat
115x3x3 Overhead-Press
BWtxFx3 Pull-Up

HIIT Rowing: 1k warm up; 6-12 intervals, 250m:1min30s rest; 1k cool down.


As for diet, I'm still trying to figure it out. Right now I live in a coop. That basically means I don't decide what I eat for dinner. I'm looking at portion control strategies and also intermittent fasting for fat loss.

[August West]

Good luck broheim - always interested to see what works for this kind of consolidation period. Can't suggest anything personally there, but the kind of rowing your plan has is something I may try too when the time comes. Got to have those settling plateaus in the training period sometime. Have a quick and clean one and get that squat into the threes [Edit: and above] for good.

[damiona]

I take it you were at a calorie surplus while reaching your squat goals so why don't you just eat regular for a while and see how that goes? Looks like you're still doing a lot with the extra metcon work so you could see weight loss just with that.

[Nauticus]

Depending on the severity of your caloric deficit, the amount of volume you've listed will be extremely difficult. I say this from experience doing a PSMF cut a while ago: after one work set of squats, you'll feel like you're gonna pass out. You might want to keep it to one set per exercise, cause you're not gonna have nearly as much energy as you think

[gzt]

Are you sure you hit your strength goals?

Anyway. Losing fat is mostly diet. Keeping muscle and strength means you need to have high intensity (ie, %age of 1RM in your lifts). Sacrifice volume if recovery is too low. Keep in mind that caloric deficit = less recovery ability. Cardio results in losing weight, not necessarily fat. The thing about tabatas and HIIT is that, while they're trendy, they're very stressful, and you need to recover from stress, and caloric deficits mean it's harder to recover from stress. But, well, try it and see what works.

[coreJack]

As others have said, if you go into a big deficit, you'll have to cut way back on either volume or intensity. Cut the volume so you can keep the hard earned muscle.

Or you could just go to maintenance and keep the volume and intensity (but probably can't increase either) and let the training and conditioning work take care of a good chunk of the fat. Once that stalls out, then you can move into a deficit.

[Namo4184]

Thank you for the support guys.

My current theory of fat loss is that it's better to burn off the fat, than starve the fat. Seeing as I'm lifting weights, maybe this changes things. If its really the case that cardio is worthless, I'll stop and just do portion control and intermittent fasting to cut calories. I've done intermittent fasting in the past and saw permanent fat loss.

What is a way to reduce my volume with out reducing intensity? 2x5 vs 3x3. I figure that they can't be much different. Since I'm going to go back to 3x5 after I reach my fat loss goals, I figure I might as well do 2x5.

I have my reservations about HIIT and Tabata. I mean it's in all the major magazines so it must be effective right? :-p But I do want to focus more on building my anaerobic capacity over my aerobic capacity so HIIT and Tabata make sense.

Thanks again.

[gzt]

Thank you for the support guys.

My current theory of fat loss is that it's better to burn off the fat, than starve the fat. Seeing as I'm lifting weights, maybe this changes things. If its really the case that cardio is worthless, I'll stop and just do portion control and intermittent fasting to cut calories. I've done intermittent fasting in the past and saw permanent fat loss.

What is a way to reduce my volume with out reducing intensity? 2x5 vs 3x3. I figure that they can't be much different. Since I'm going to go back to 3x5 after I reach my fat loss goals, I figure I might as well do 2x5.

I have my reservations about HIIT and Tabata. I mean it's in all the major magazines so it must be effective right? :-p But I do want to focus more on building my anaerobic capacity over my aerobic capacity so HIIT and Tabata make sense.

Thanks again.

Cardio isn't worthless. It makes you lose weight. But it seems to be weight, not just fat. I recommend browsing around Lyle McDonald's site if you're interested in losing fat, there's some good free stuff. Also, this site has some information about losing fat and building muscle you may find interesting if you poke around and such: http://www.ampedtraining.com/article...turals-part-1/

Reducing volume without reducing intensity means working at a high percentage of your 1RM, but not doing too much work with it. So instead of grinding out a maximal 3x5, doing 5 with that weight or a little more.

[msingh]

This is very close to something I came up with too, very interesting. Basically something like:

Mon
Squat
Bench/Press
Pullups/Chins

Wed
Press/Bench
Powercleans
Deadlift
Front squat tabata

Fri
Squat
Bench/press
Chins/Pullups

The reason I have 4 exercises set for wed is because tabatas are pretty short (< 5 mins). I replace the backsquat with powercleans because squatting heavy 3 times is too hard on deficit. They're also good for conditioning and also they're so cool. Powercleans before deadlifts server as a deadlift warmup. Being fresher for overhead lifts works well on wed too, and, bigger jumps on the powerclean can be taken if you havent been tasked with heavy squats. Lets see how it works out in practice, i'm beginning this next week and will document it on my training log.

[Kincain]

Are you sure you hit your strength goals?

Anyway. Losing fat is mostly diet. Keeping muscle and strength means you need to have high intensity (ie, %age of 1RM in your lifts). Sacrifice volume if recovery is too low. Keep in mind that caloric deficit = less recovery ability. Cardio results in losing weight, not necessarily fat. The thing about tabatas and HIIT is that, while they're trendy, they're very stressful, and you need to recover from stress, and caloric deficits mean it's harder to recover from stress. But, well, try it and see what works.

I agree, I'm not a big pro of the high intensity rowing after strength training. I'd suggest, If you have the time, to separate the two. Either on different days, or on the day it self.

I was a competitive rower so this is more of a personal opinion, make it more an endurance effort than high intensity. Aim for 3 times 20 minutes, 2 times 30 minutes, but most importantly get coaching. As we all know from the books of rip, technique is important, this will surely help making mistakes that will lead to injury. But this is ofcourse completely dependant of your personal situation and schedule.