How to program/progress while losing weight?

[confuzzl3don3]

I'm sure a lot of you have had periods where they lost weight either to get into a weight class for a competition sport or lifting, or for aesthetic purposes, or for health purposes, etc. How do you guys program your lifting during these periods as you would need to be on a caloric deficit leading to poorer recovery. Do you still try to make gains?

I've tried to maintain some sort of linear progression while on my temporary 'cutting' to drop some fat but i've found that in the first month or so, i managed to continue on SS albeit with slightly less gains although my gains had already slowed considerably prior to going on this cut. But now i find that especially the last workout of the week (friday) i am most affected by recovery issues, making it difficult to hit all the prescribed reps. For example today for squats at my planned 121kg i only got 1/4/4 which i felt was my inability to hold my back angle (legs felt they could push it fine). And my bench has grinded to a halt at 74kg. Past 2 workouts was 4/3/0, 4/4/3 and today 4/4/4. What should i be doing, considering i may need to drop calories even more as i have not been losing weight this past wk and a bit?

[ColoWayno]

I think the standard advice is to keep the intensity up but decrease volume.

It's frustrating though. I went with 5-3-1 just to maintain weight and lifts. In less than 2 cycles I had dropped off significantly on my squat. Granted, I lost a little bit of weight when I got sick but I've put that back on gradually.
I think I'm slowly starting to build the squat back up, I'm also going to add a second squat session every week. You'll have to find that balance for yourself. In my minuscule experience the squat drops off fast when you lower the volume and that's compounded when you are restricting calories (or sick).

Good luck.

[confuzzl3don3]

Thanks for the advice. So you still try to progress in your lifts rather than shooting for maintaining it. Also other than the squat how about your other lifts. Were they similarly affected?

[ColoWayno]

At some point making strength gains while cutting will be next to impossible, you probably know that.
For me, squats were affected the most. My volume on dead lifts didn't really change that much since I was only DL'ing once a week anyway. I think I've maintained ok on those. Presses didn't seem affected nearly as much, just a slight drop off. I think I'm making slow gains on presses again.

[Grbrs]

Hi Confuzzl3d

I know your on Linear progression and may not want to leave that just yet, but here is what i'm doing, it follows the Starresque Heavy/Medium/Light template. For the squat i am hitting 3 heavy singles on heavy day, 2 sets of 5 on medium at about 90% of the weight used for the singles, on light days i use about 80% of the Heavy day weight for 3x5. Sorry, i know that this sounds confusing! i Deadlift and clean once a week and fit the pressing in in a similar manner but maybe a max set of 5 on heavy day instead of singles.

So yeah basically as colowayno said, keep the intensity high and drop some volume

[confuzzl3don3]

Colo, yeah i get what you mean.

Grbrs i can see that you're describing a more intermediate style of programming which had been suggested to me when i brought up my plans of cutting in the recovery section a while back. And i'll think about doing that.

Just another additional question, if i have stalled on my bench should i deload like on normal LP? Because i understand as both of you have pointed out that intensity should remain high, but i have no idea how to continue progressing on my bench then and i believe i am nowhere near finishing LP on it regardless of whether im on a calorie deficit.

[MortalWombat]

I think the standard advice is to keep the intensity up but decrease volume.

This is what I did during my "biggest loser" contest at work. I decreased the number of strength workout days per week to two (then to one during the last couple of weeks), and decreased the reps to 3 reps per set. I did this by trial and error though, because my previous 3 day per week workouts with sets of 5 were just too hard to recover from. My only goal was to stave off muscle loss as much as possible while losing weight. I wasn't even thinking about gaining strength.

[Grbrs]

Yeah my bench really is the first thing to suffer for me, i'd maybe deload it maybe to 65-70kg and try and work up again using 5 reps maybe drop the number of sets, when you can only get 3 reps then try and work up in 3's. it may be wise to add a back-off set at this point, nothing crazy, just for some volume. I think the important thing is keeping some sort of high end work.

Just an idea.

[METAL VIPER]

Just to throw my 2 cents in, in my experience with cutting, you will lose strength on a deficit unless you find a miraculous balance where you're able to gain strength and lose weight, which is next to impossible to maintain. However, your strength levels will come back quickly after you come back to a caloric surplus.

Someone else feel free to chime in with their personal experiences, as they might have taken a different route or have some other advice

[confuzzl3don3]

Hmm so noone continued on with their program but rather switched to an entirely different program. I was under the impression that relatively speaking SS itself already had a fairly low volume and high intensity and since i haven't actually done any other program other than SS i decided to just stick with it and reduce the weight increases and only go on a slight calorie deficit (dropping about 0.5kg each week).

And Metal, i was under the impression that it was possible to conserve strength when cutting - not getting down to like 6% BF or whatever that BBers want to get to, but just a modest drop from high teens to low teens. Not quite sure about that though.