Trying to keep your strength while cutting and trying to lose weight can be challenging. One of the best signs that you are keeping muscle on your body is still being able to maintain your strength while cutting.
Whether it is to add more muscle or you just like to get healthy while on a cut, we need to keep our strength. While we don’t want to lose our strength it is okay to lose some reps or extra sets during your workout. It’s best to leave a couple of reps in the tank and not to train to exhaustion for most muscle groups.
While the main goal on a cut for us is to lose weight, we also want to make sure that we keep the muscle that we’ve worked hard for as well. This means making sure that our strength stays the same or progresses so we can hit a goal of 10 to 12% body fat.
5 Reasons you might be losing Strength while Cutting
- In too big of a calorie cut
- Not doing compound exercises with heavyweight
- Doing too much cardio
- Not eating enough protein
- Overtraining and too much stress
Not Eating Enough Calories
While we do want to cut calories, we shouldn’t go too low. It’s ideal to try to find your maintenance calories and subtract 250-500 calories for weight loss. Everyone is different so this is not a hard-and-fast rule but if you stay within those numbers you shouldn’t lose much strength.
Eating too low of calories is one of the biggest reasons you could lose Strength and muscle. Secondly, if you are not eating enough food and still training hard this means you will not recover correctly. And this is a bad thing because our bodies grow outside of the gym not while we’re working out. this is another reason why I believe in nutrition and not crash diets.
Also, if you are eating in too big of a calorie deficit you will not have the energy needed for a good workout. Carbohydrates are also not the devil, if you are working out hard you will need them to fuel yourself. This also means you should not be overeating carbohydrates.
If you are not eating enough calories this will also decrease your MPS muscle protein synthesis. This can cause your body to be in a catabolic state which affects your muscle protein synthesis.You will start losing your muscle if your MPS is too low.
The Wrong Exercises and Intensity
One big misconception is that if you are on a diet while cutting is that you should aim for higher reps with lighter weights. It’s almost always guaranteed that in order to build muscle you should be getting stronger or doing more volume.
While doing high reps have their place for certain muscle groups , not all do. Just because you’re cutting doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t be trying to train the same for muscle adaptation to occur.
If you are doing High Reps and lightweight it is essentially just a warm-up for your body. The training stimulus on your body will be significantly decreased but this is what you base your workouts around.
Your body does not naturally want to grow, it’s natural stages to keep some fat on you for survival. Your minimum effective volume for training will help keep you at your muscle maintenance.
Basically don’t jump to high Reps and low weight because you are cutting. This is also a mistake that I are learned and did for a while which kept me on the yo-yo effect while working out. Your goal should be to train at your minimum effective volume sets or increase the weight as much as tolerated while cutting. This article has good info on how much each muscle group should be trained.
Too Cardio or not too Cardio
Yes, we should still be doing cardio about the right type of cardio. I spoke with my functional medicine doctor and he was telling me that some of the most unhealthy people in his practice are marathon runners or long distance runners. Here is a study and there are many more out there to back up this claim.
If you’re going to jog a couple of miles that should be fine but I like to do HIIT type of training. It could be done in many ways and as simple as a walk for a minute all out Sprint for 30 seconds to 1 minute. You would do this anywhere for up to 10-20 minutes continuously.
While we should be doing some form of cardio we need to make sure we are not overdoing it while we are also cutting calories when lifting weights. If we are doing too much cardio it can be very stressful on the body. I try to do mostly 2-3 days a week of HIIT training.
A good rule of thumb is the 80/20 method. You should try to focus on nutrition for 80% of the fat loss while factoring in 20% for cardio weight loss. This is also a good way to keep from overtraining, you will never out-exercise bad nutrition.
It’s possible that too much cardio along with weight training and being in a calorie deficit can put too much stress on your body not allowing you to recover.
Are You Eating Enough Protein
The recommendations for protein seems like it changes daily, but on average you should try to aim for .7-1 gram per pound of protein. If you are not eating enough protein you can have muscle and strength loss. You could also have a host of other symptoms if you are deficient in protein.
10 Reasons Backed by Science why you Should be Eating Enough Protein
- Reduces Appetite
- Increases Muscle and Strength
- Good for Bone Health
- Curbs Late Night Snacking
- Boosts Metabolism and Increases Fat
- Lowers Blood Pressure
- Maintains Weight Loss
- Doesn’t Harm Healthy Kidneys
- Helps Repair Injuries
- Helps you Stay Fit as You Age
Why Overtraining is Bad
You can train so much to the point where you lose strength. If you already are in a low-calorie deficit and you’re lifting weights while doing cardio this can wreak havoc on your body.
Especially as we get older we should really be managing our workout volume and make sure we are recovering. Here are some of the negative effects of overtraining, which can cause you to lose strength.
Here are some solutions to help with Overtraining
- Muscle Soreness and inability to recover
- Resting heart rate is elevated
- Unable to Heal from Infections
- Increased Injuries
- Mood Changes
- Weight loss
- Having Trouble Sleeping
Take a break from your workouts
By skipping your workouts this allows more time for your body to heal and recover. A good rule of thumb is to take a week off or do two sets that day of each exercise at 60-70% intensity. This should help to give your body the break you need and sometimes just a break from working out can help get you refocused and feeling fresh again.
Doing less volume
By either lowering The intensity or volume, your workouts can help you recover while still maintaining muscle. Something as simple as just lowering the weight you are lifting or just doing 1-2 fewer sets.
Eating enough calories
While we may want to cut calories to lose weight being in too big of a calorie deficit or for too long Can cause overtraining symptoms. To help with recovery it’s optimal to make sure we are eating enough protein, carbohydrates, and fats.
By doing this it will help your body recover even if it’s for a short amount of time you need to eat at caloric maintenance and then bring calories back down by 250-500 calories.
How to Keep Energy While Cutting
Setting Realistic Short Term Goals
It’s pretty common to get motivated and you want to take on the world all at once because your motivated. You also don’t want to do any extreme calorie deficits either. This will just set you up for failure and you will eventually burn out.
It’s best to work with your doctor and a health coach to make sure you are building new habits and behaviors that are able to be sustained over the long term. And the goal is to safelfy push yourself depending on your health level.
Find the Number of Calories Needed to Lose Weight
The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that women eat no fewer than 1,200 calories per day, and men no fewer than 1,700 calories per day for safe and effective weight loss.
To find your daily calorie count there is no exact science but it’s also not that hard. Ideally, we want to be in a 250-500 calorie deficit when trying to lose weight.
When I tried to drop my calories by 500 calories and was training hard I was quickly burning out because my calories were dropped by too much and quickly.
In my experience, it was best to start with cutting my calories by 250-300 and working up to a deficit of 500 calories. Here is a good link to help you get started, it may take some modifying at first but stick with it and you will figure it out.
The idea is not to count calories forever because that’s just not realistic for us in everyday life but to educate you by being able to eyeball your plate and portion sizes. This is a good article about how to get ripped without counting calories.
Can you Gain Strength while Cutting
It seems like it would be counterintuitive to gain strength while cutting and trying to lose weight. Some may even say that it doesn’t make sense and impossible to do.
When you are trying to cut and lose fat it may be ingrained in your head that your goal is to lose fat and to stick to high rep exercises in lower weight.
The idea is thought to gain strength while you’re trying to add muscle and size, which would mean doing fewer reps and heavier weight. Can you lose strength while cutting, absolutely. On the other hand, can you still gain strength while cutting, absolutely.
There are some components that factor into helping you gain strength while cutting. firstly, being an increased skill in the exercise you are doing which in turn trains your nervous system and its ability to recruit muscle fibers. This leads to a gain in lean muscle mass that will help keep your strength when cutting.
An example of this would be a smaller person who can lift a lot of weight. As much as a bigger person but a big weight difference in pounds between the two.
This is a smaller person who can lift the same amount of weight recruits the maximum amount of muscle fibers and this is all caused by the the training they’re the nervous system.
To wrap it all up
If you are losing strength while cutting here are 5 reasons while this can be happening.
- In too big of a calorie cut
- Not doing compound exercises with heavyweight
- Doing too much cardio
- Not eating enough protein
- Overtraining and too much stress