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Thread: Looking for advice on programming during a cut

  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by balikati View Post
    My current financial situation is the main hinderance I face. I've always been able to make time to train one way or the other so far. And access to equipment isn't even a problem at all. My gym membership ended last week, so I went to the management and told them that I wasn't going to be able renew it at this time. But they told me they'll give me a 3 month membership free of charge. It's a small neighbourhood gym and everyone there was always telling me they were very impressed with my progress. Probably because all everyone else does is play around with machines so they're not really used to seeing people get stronger and lift heavier weights in a short span of time. I felt like they didn't want to see me go. I told them I'll pay what I owe them for these 3 months as soon as I can.


    I actually got my squat up by 7.5kgs since I started the cut. Although, I switched from 3x5 to 1x5 and 2 backoff sets with 90%. I feel like it can go up a bit more too. But my upper body lifts came to a halt almost immediately.


    Worst thing my body has ever had to endure.


    This is the biggest problem of them all. Even when I'm not training everything is more tiring now.
    I guess I don't understand. Why are you telling us about not doing the program? Any question you have is answered by "Do The Program."

  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    And "cutting" always -- ALWAYS, WITHOUT EXCEPTION -- means losing lean body mass at the same time.
    And weight on the bar. You can try to optimize your diet and lifting to skew the percentages, but the best advice for programming on a cut is expect your lifts to go down. Unless you're really fat, or a totally fresh novice, or both.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    I guess I don't understand. Why are you telling us about not doing the program? Any question you have is answered by "Do The Program."
    It seems that the OP can't afford to buy enough food to do the program. That's a pretty unfortunate situation. The overwhelming majority of people in this world would have used that as an excuse to not train at all. I find that impressive enough that I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is and buy the op $100 of Costco chicken if that means they will be able to do the program.

  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by GioFerrante View Post
    The coaches on this forum are strength coaches and will almost never reccomend a man to go on a cut when below 30% body fat prior to competing the LP
    Except in "A clarification" Mark says, in the male, 18-35 (I think) demographic, which the OP falls into, that if you're over 20%, you're getting too fat. Please correct me if I'm not realizing something I should be or if I misinterpreted what was written.

    Trying to judge off height, weight and poundage on the bar, as well as his own comments about his belly, I think it's a safe bet the OP is well above 20% now.

  5. #25
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    Well I was a 190 lbs guy with a big belly, 6 months later I'm a 220lbs guy with a slightly bigger belly but much bigger arms, shoulders, chest, back and legs.
    I had never held a barbell in my life then; now I squat 315x5, deadlift 345x5, press 135x5, bench press 200x5 and power clean 170x2.
    Clearly the program works as it's described and as I had done it for the first 5 months after I started. Now I'm in a different situation; but I guess there's enough fat for my body to feed itself with for a while since my squat, deadlift and pc increased since I started eating less and presses stayed the same.
    What I've gathered from this thread is that I should try to increase or keep same the weights as much as possible during this period, and hope they don't go down too much once they inevitably start decreasing. Try not to lower intensity, sacrifice volume instead. Once I'm in the clear in my life, start eating a lot again as I had done before, keep getting stronger.
    Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment, feels like not much is left to be said at this point.

  6. #26
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    What you want is a 255 bench press for three sets of five and an 185 press for five sets of three or three sets of five. Keep those as guidelines and work around your constraints as best as you can. I also expect you to do 12 chin ups in a row by the time your cut is done.

  7. #27
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    Keep in mind too, if you're able to maintain as much strength as possible as you shed some fat, that's a win in this situation. You'll be able to increase bodyweight again after and drive numbers up again on your lifts, rinse and repeat and hopefully blow past where you were before. Obviously with a few programming tweaks as needed along the way.

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