CUT
The PERPETUAL Step-by-step to build muscle.
LEVEL 1 : Basic Knowledge
LEVEL 2 : Good Knowledge
LEVEL 3 : Expert Knowledge
PHASE 1 : DEFICIT
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Being in a cut, and losing fat is dependent solely on one thing, a calorie deficit. Your body has to be burning more calories than you’re eating, simple. This is done essentially by eating less and moving more.
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To calculate your deficit, input your data into a calorie calculator. (Take this with a pinch of salt). Now depending on how quickly you want to lose it, the deficit will change. Keep the protein high at 1g/lbs of bodyweight minimum to make sure you can preserve muscle and even build it in some cases, and use the rest of your calories to fuel workouts or to however you like it. Make sure you hit atleast 60g of fat per day to support your metabolic and hormone health, and use the rest on carbs to fuel.
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Now if you’re looking to preserve muscle you have, this deficit needs to be small and slow over the span of multiple months, depending on your start and end point.
Go for around a 200-300 calorie deficit and see how the scale changes over a couple week, if it moves, good stay with that for now, if not, drop it another 100 or so.
The important thing to remember about cutting is you body adapts to it. Not only do you become lighter so need less food, but your body can actually slow down your metabolic rate to make up for the deficit, so overtime you will need to steadily drop the calories.
If you’re just looking to lose fat, this is much more simple. You can go for a harsher deficit which will lose the fat faster. You can really just go for a deficit which you are able to handle the hunger and energy demands.
It’s important to remember here that you’re deficit needs to be constant.
If you want to continue losing weight, you need to stay in a deficit. This however doesn’t mean your deficit needs to be the same on every day of the week.
Something I like to do, is take a harsher deficit on rest days where I’m not burning as many calories, I don’t need to fuel a workout and don’t get as hungry because I’m not burning much.
Which then also means on days where I maybe have 2 workouts, I can eat close to maintenance to have be better fuelled, recover better, and satiate the extra hunger I have.
As long as your weekly deficit is the same, you can mix and match on the days. This is extra helpful for when you know you have a meal out or know you are going to be over consuming, you can prepare the days in advance.
PHASE 2 : PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD
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Every sessions focus has to be on progressively overloading. Your main aim is to add reps or weight WITH THE SAME FORM.
Your reps from week to week should be consistent, all that should change is weight or reps. The increase in either of these is what allows your muscles to grow, they undergo new stimuli, they adapt to be able to do that stimuli by becoming stronger and this repeats.
So just remember, never go into a session aiming to do the same weight or reps you did last week.
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As you may know, it’s fairly common to lose strength and size whilst on a cut and it can be difficult to keep up progressive overload.
However, if you’re a beginner this does not matter as much as you will still be able to build strength and muscle fairly easily.
If you’re already training and are looking to keep up progressive overload during a cut so you maintain muscle or even build it, whilst getting leaner, read on.
The first step is to treat session like you’re not in a deficit, by that I mean still go into sessions aiming to progress, you’d be surprised how many people lose muscle because they believe they’re going to, so they end up selling themselves short during reps & sets.
Don’t give yourself a problem when there doesn’t need to be one.
Make sure you are prioritising protein. As already stated in PHASE 1, keeping this high will allow your muscles to recover and adapt from the training so you can continue to build muscle.
1g/lbs of body weight at bare minimum. It’s also important to time your carbs. During a deficit the first thing that takes a hit is your carbs, so when your carbs are limited, it can be useful to time them right.
The best practice, have carbs before workouts to provide muscles with extra glycogen stores and post workouts to replenish and allow for better protein synthesis.
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Let’s take your knowledge to the next level.
One thing I’ve personally done, is changing a few exercises.
When you have less energy to use, sometimes the big movements can be too taxing. It can be worth cutting down to one compound movement per session, so that on your isolation movements you aren’t too fatigued to progress.
I often find as well that if you’re plateauing on certain movements, to switch it out for something you haven’t done.
The change of movement pattern often provides a new opportunity for new stimulation and new growth. A change of exercises once every 6 weeks or so keeps things fresh and allows you to cycle through movements.
If you cannot progressively overload in weight or reps then you can still progressively overload using volume and intensity.
Changing rep tempos, where you control the eccentric much more, or include a pause stretch or even a pause squeeze.
Including intensifiers such as drop sets, rest pauses or something to vary the intensity/volume are also effective.
The main point is, progressive overload is still possible if you eat right, train hard and rest well. It may be less progressive, but none the less still possible.
PHASE 3 : CARDIO
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Cardio is pretty simple.
Obviously when it comes to a calorie deficit you will be thinking about cardio.
You can cut without doing cardio but you should be doing cardio for your health anyway.
Whether your cutting or not, just to stay healthy, a staple should be 10,000 steps per day.
Cardio really isn’t a complicated step, you do some sort of movement that’s going to allow you to burn calories, if there’s something you enjoy, that’s even better, it takes the sting out of it.
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Some of the most effective example:
incline walking :
Burns good calories
No hunger spikes
Takes a very low toll on the body
Stair master :
Objectively a harder type of cardio
Lower barrier to burn a good amount of calories
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Let’s take your knowledge to the next level.
Lets look at cardio and Its Relationship to Strength Training
Strength training should remain the primary focus to preserve muscle. If possible, separate cardio and lifting by several hours or on different days.
If combined, prioritise weightlifting before cardio.
Also, excessive cardio can impair recovery from resistance training.
If cutting aggressively, prioritise LISS [Lower Intensity Steady State] over HIIT [High Intensity Intervals Training] to avoid overtraining.
Cardio is a tool, not the primary driver of fat loss—a caloric deficit (burning more calories than you consume) is key. Use it to complement your diet, not to "outwork" a bad diet. A mix of cardio and diet control works best, rather than relying solely on one or the other.
PHASE 4 : TRAINING FREQUENCY
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Frequency is how many times per week you train each muscle group.
There isn’t much to learn about frequency but it’s worth going over none the less.
You will experience more gains training each muscle groups 2 times per week as oppose to just once.
The most common and simplest way to do that is by having an upper-lower split, or push-pull-legs and repeating that twice.
If you are short on time during your week, at a minimum train 3 x.
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However, as you get more advanced, a bro-split style, where you only train each muscle group once per week can still get you good results as long as you keep the intensity high and you’re still progressively overloading.
This can be done if you don’t have too much time to train but still want to make some good progress.
As you get more experienced and in our case addicted to training, you’ll want to be in the gym as much as possible.
The issue is, the body can’t really take the stress of training the large muscle groups more than twice a week.
So, training one muscle group per day is a viable option if you’re in the gym 5+ days a week.
However, the PPL or UPPER / LOWER splits are still very effective when repeated twice in a week.
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What we’ve both done, is extend that week window.
So instead of push-pull-legs rest repeat, which can be a lot to recover from and often too much.
It can be changed into push-pull-rest-legs-shoulders and arms-rest-repeat. So you hit every muscle group twice every 10 days or so.
This can be a good blend, especially if you want to add in an extra day, like arms.
Why would you do this ? Well, if you want to focus something more and bring them up, like I said earlier, smaller muscle groups recover quicker so you can get away with more frequency.
As you get more experienced, your training style and frequency will become more individual and suited to you.
PHASE 5 : THE C-WORD
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Be Consistent.
I can’t stress the importance of this enough, stop thinking so much, you know everything now.
So just go do it.
Take action.
Imagine where you can be in a couple months if you start right now.
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Be consistent.
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Be Consistent
BONUS : TRICKS
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Re-feeds I would say is a slightly more advanced trick.
The problem with cutting is the caloric deficit, especially if over a long time period, can cause your metabolic rate (how many calories you’re burning) to slow down slightly to compensate for the lack of calories going in.
Not only this, it can also cause your hormones to take a toll too, a calorie deficit over a long period of time can reduce your testosterone.
So to compensate, you can have re-feeds. Purposeful periods of time spend out of a caloric deficit, to let your metabolic rate remain the same, and to help keep your testosterone.
You eat in a maintenance or a small surplus, typically high carb to restore your glycogen stores - so that your muscles can output more force and at a higher intensity during workouts.
They also provide that mental relief from a deficit, even satiating that built up hunger.
They last typically 1 or 2 days and should be carried out every couple of weeks.
Now if you’re really serious about maintaining your hormones and metabolism, I’d suggest every 2 weeks.
If you’re just looking to keep pulling fat off, you can use these every 4-6 weeks.
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As you know, you must be in a caloric deficit to lose fat, however, that deficit doesn’t have to be a consistent day to day thing.
As long as at the end of every week your deficit is the same, your results will be the exact same, even better. Let me expand.
There will be days where you burn more calories than others, day where you are more hungry than others, and instead of trying to use all your willpower, you can plan your days to your own life.
Some days your deficit is more harsh than others, some days might not be a deficit at all.
This also means you can incorporate your re-feeds into your regular deficit meaning you can keep your metabolism from adapting, maintain hormones, fuel around when you need it most all whilst staying in a deficit.
Me personally, this is what I do. On days where I train twice, or long run days or any days where I know I’m burning a lot of calories, I choose to have a more harsh deficit, sometimes up to 1000kcals.
Then on the days before long runs, I carb up, eat at maintenance and I’ll pick another day in the week which I only lift, and eat at maintenance then, that way I cover my re-feeds, but also keep my weekly deficit the same.
Obviously if you would rather eat more on days you burn more then on days you burn less you eat very little, then do that.
The point is you can eat along with your hunger cues, and takes a bit of stress off the whole having to eat the same deficit everyday, knowing you have room to play, or can compensate.