How frequently to do excersices while cutting?

[chico1st]

I am cutting right now. Somewhat by accident somewhat not (im fixing my form, waiting for shoes, and my wife says im fat).

In order to not lose strength how frequently do I need to lift my weights (for example my press)? once a week? Twice? 3 times a week?
Should I squat as many times a week to not lose that strength or is that somehow different?

I suppose the assumption would be that im not drastically undereating (which im not)

[Notrhwoods]

I am no expert, but here is what has worked for me.

Backstory: I am naturally kind of fat. Pre-SS I was 225# and fat. After several months of SS and then 5/3/1 I was up to 240# and much stronger but still fat. I am now about 220# and am gaining strength and slowly surpassing where I was at 240# strenghtwise.

What has allowed me to progress while eating clean is a reduction in training tonnage. The biggest thing I found to help reduce tonnage was doing ramping sets instead of sets across. I do 5 ramping sets of 5 up to one top set of squats and bench/press. I do 5 ramping sets of 3 up to one top set of DL/power clean. The first set of 5 is generally 50% of the top set and I work up in even increments from there.

The next thing that helped was reducing training sessions to 2 days a week and arranging the workload in a Heavy, Medium set up. See Andy Baker's explanation at bakerstrengthcoaching.com for heavy, light, medium training.

Day 1 (Heavy): Squat 5x5, Bench 5x5, DL 5x3 - All sets ramping to one top set
Day 2 (Med.): Squat (90-95% of Heavy) 5x5, Press 5x5, Clean 5x3 - All sets ramping to one top set

Increase top set of Squat/DL every week by 5#, increase other lifts by 2.5#. With this program you can do conditioning pretty much any day expect for the day before your Heavy training.

I know the post was long winded, it took me several months of f-ing around before I found something that worked. Hopefully this will give you some ideas to save you some time.

[Notrhwoods]

Usually TM with 5x5 is too much for people, but a similar HLM setup can be good.

I agree with this 100%. Rippetoe recommends multiple sets across to get people big and strong efficiently. This seems to be too much work if you are not eating a lot. Besides HLM you can also look into 5/3/1 and the more aggressive 5/1 variation used by several people on this site.

[konkoba98]

I wouldn't preemptively change programming. You didn't mention what your lifts were or what your bw is. If you are 300lb 5'10" male novice, don't change the program. If you are 200lb male with 1500 total, cutting to 180's will likely need programming changes.

A good approach is just to continue programming for strength increase and if you NEED to cut back due to reduced recovery, go ahead... but prove to yourself that you need to first. Don't waste time and gains if you don't need to.. my 2 cents.

[Immortal_k]

I'm currently trying to lower my weight gradually while doing a variant of the TX method. I'm 6'1" and I started at 112kg, I'm currently 110kg. My previous intake was 3800 and it's currently 3500.

Program is:
Monday (volume)
Squats across 5x4
Bench Press/Press (alternate) across 5x5

Wednesday (light)
Squats (70-75% of Monday) across 5x2
Press/Bench Press (alternate) across 5x2
Chins BW -as many sets/reps possible before I burn out-

Friday (intensity)
Squat 3x1 -> 2x2 -> 1x3 -> 1x1 -> 3x1 (as you can tell, I don't like fives on intensity day)
Bench Press/Press (alternate) 3x1 -> 2x2 -> 1x3 -> 1x1 -> 3x1
Deadlift 3x1 -> 2x2 -> 1x3 -> 1x1 -> 3x1 alternated per week with 5x2 for volume at ~85%

I've haven't spent long on 3500 and I may need to go lower than that, maybe 3200 or 3000 gradually. To tell the truth I'm worried about stalling.

[Nick Klemetson]

I wouldn't preemptively change programming. You didn't mention what your lifts were or what your bw is. If you are 300lb 5'10" male novice, don't change the program. If you are 200lb male with 1500 total, cutting to 180's will likely need programming changes.

A good approach is just to continue programming for strength increase and if you NEED to cut back due to reduced recovery, go ahead... but prove to yourself that you need to first. Don't waste time and gains if you don't need to.. my 2 cents.

Good points being made here.

OP: I don't know what programming you're doing right now. If you're doing a linear progression, I would try hard to stick with it. Even better, don't cut until you've exhausted your LP. But if you insist and you start failing lifts, try doing 2x5 instead of 3x5.

[chico1st]

Im in my LP. I dont really want to be cutting but I cant really seem to work on my squat form while increasing my weight so I at least have to hold off squat progression until I fix that (hoping my newly ordered shoes will help).
Cutting for me seems to be 4000 down from 4500, i havent figured out if im actually losing weight there or just maintaining. I think im losing but its not clear yet.
To be honest eating this little food is quite nice

[chico1st]

I think I'm losing about .5lbs per week on this intake. I'm certainly not gaining. when I was bulking I had to go up to 5500 calories to keep gaining about 1,lb per week. It was horrible. My callipers, which I recently lost, tell me I'm around 16% bf although I assume I'm not super accurate.

I sat at 5000 calories for a month convinced I was wrong... it was a mistake so I lost a month.

[Leah Lutz]

Chico, I'm a little confused by the dilemma here. Are you missing reps? Is there a reason you think you shouldn't just keep pushing LP?

[chico1st]

not a big dilema really.
I am cutting, worried about losing strength and some days i miss an excersice due to time constraints (fairly rare).
I didnt know if missing that 1 excersise while cutting would result in lost strength or not. Typically I cut squats since I do them 3x a week and they take the longest for me (i need a long mobility routine for squats).
I havent dropped any reps yet though.