Ok so this bulk has gone a little over a year and I’ve gained good Str and muscle. Like 15kg + to my body weight.

At the moment my workouts are peaking and they’ve been grinders for some time now. I’ve just had to reset my OHP for that day and will soon have to reset Squats too. (By reset I mean drop 10% and continue).

Thing is, I always lose strength when cutting. I know some people gain strength but that’s definitely not me. At best I can hold onto Strength for a little while.

How do I effectively switch to cutting without losing a lot of strength? I doubt I could keep this volume and intensity up in a deficit.

This post was edited by uGhost on Feb 25 2018 03:21am

If this is serious focus more on intensity rather than volume during the cut. Go heavy.

1. Cut slow
2. Adjust your macros weekly based on BF mesurements and not just scale weight.
3. Focus on strength and not hypertrophy
4. Make sure you cut on high calories by raising your maintenance over time with a reverse diet.

What do you mean?

Someone who maintain weight on 3100 kcals will have an easier cut than someone with a damaged metabolism with a 1800 kcals maintenance.

Reverse dieting = repairing the metabolism by slowly increasing kcals. (often 35-50 kcals per weeks). Some people even lose weight while doing it.

So I drop like 300-500 kcal, and then add 35-50 kcal each week for a couple weeks then drop again and repeat?


Gonna focus on keeping my #s the same, for as long as I can. Iirc Lightman said not to do >7 reps, particularly once I’m truly in a deficit and losing weight.

How people actually gain strength while cutting is crazy to me. Never been able to do it.

No not like that. What is your maintenance?

About 3500 kcal

If your weight is stable at 3500 forget the reverse diet...your metabolism seems fine.

cut 200-400 kcal for the first week and see how your body response. Also up you protein intake a little to preserve muscle mass.

Well I’m very, very slowly gaining weight @ 3600 kcal/day.
And I mean at this rate it’s like .5 lbs every 2 weeks.

So I estimate my base rate would be like 3300-3500.


Will do. Any other insight is also appreciated!