December 17, 2025 • 41 mins
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How do you train for fat loss? Most people screw this up by making disastrous training adjustments like switching to high reps, dropping intensity, or adding excessive cardio. Then they wonder why their muscle and strength drop.
Discover how to preserve every bit of hard-earned muscle while losing fat by keeping load/intensity high, reducing volume (strategically and if necessary), and using auto-regulation to manage recovery when it's your most limited resource.
Learn why lighter weights and high-rep "fat burning" workouts destroy body recomp results, how to time carbs for better performance during a deficit, and why HIIT could be sabotaging your strength training and muscle preservation.
This evidence-based approach to strength training during fat loss will help you lose fat without sacrificing muscle, maintain lifting performance in a calorie deficit, and come out of your cut looking lean, strong, and ready to build muscle again.
Episode Resources:
- Fitness Lab AI Coaching App - 20% off December 17-January 2, available on iPhone (with Apple Health integration!) and now on Android too!
Timestamps:
0:00 - Training for fat loss (not fat burning workouts)
2:52 - The myth of high reps for fat loss
5:20 - Understanding strength vs. muscle during a deficit
9:32 - Intensity (weight/load, % of 1RM) and volume
13:12 - Auto-regulation strategies that work during cuts
20:24 - Recovery is your limiting factor
24:10 - How Fitness Lab helps adjust training for fat loss
26:43 - Carb timing strategies for better performance
30:00 - Too much cardio?
33:12 - Simplifying assistance (accessory) work
36:00 - Exercise selection and joint care during cuts
39:20 - Realistic expectations and mindset during fat loss
📱 Get Fitness Lab - Philip’s science-based AI app for fat loss, muscle building, and strength training for people over 40. It adapts to your nutrition, recovery, and training to improve body composition without guesswork.
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👋 Ask a question or find Philip Pape on Instagram
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Philip Pape (00:01):
Most people make one critical mistake when they
cut calories to lose fat.
They adjust their trainingincorrectly.
They switch to high reps toburn fat.
They drop the weight on thebar.
They add a bunch of cardio, andthey wonder why their strength
tanks, their muscle disappears,and they end up looking like a
smaller, weaker version ofthemselves.
(00:21):
Today I'm showing you exactlywhat needs to change in your
strength training during a fatloss phase and what absolutely
can stay the same.
You'll learn why droppingintensity could destroy your
results, how to adjust trainingvolume while keeping load heavy,
and why most fat loss trainingand advice costs you some of
that muscle.
This is a topic I see peoplemessing up all the time.
(01:15):
They will dial in theirnutrition pretty well, they'll
create the calorie deficit,they'll start losing that weight
on the scale, but then theymake some often disastrous
adjustments to their trainingthat don't make any sense.
They drop the weight on thebar, they switch to high-rep
fat-burning workouts that theysee on YouTube, they add tons of
cardio thinking, well, I'mstuck and that's what I need to
(01:37):
do, and then wonder why theirlifts crash, why they're
exhausted, why, despite workingso hard, they're still not
getting the lean muscular lookthey were going for.
Then they're done with the fatloss phase and they're like,
hey, it's not revealing what Ithought, or I can't even get
through it the way I intended.
The problem is not the caloriedeficit itself.
The problem is they'readjusting their training in the
(02:00):
wrong way.
Thinking that fat loss requireslighter weights and higher
volume, for example, whenoftentimes it requires the
opposite.
It's very contextual, it's verypersonalized, but there are
principles behind all of thisthat I'm going to walk you
through today.
What are the adjustments youhave to make to training during
fat loss?
What happens to your bodyduring a cut that affects your
(02:21):
training?
How do you maintain intensitywhile reducing volume if needed?
Why auto-regulation is soimportant and what the heck I'm
even talking about, and how tomanage recovery when that is
your most limited resourceduring fat loss.
I will also, as always, bustsome of those often heard so
much on social media commonmyths about training during fat
(02:43):
loss, including why certainforms of cardio could be holding
you back and why you shouldnever be afraid to lift heavy.
All right, let's get into it.
Sometimes on episodes, I dolike to throw in a little
testimonial or feedback thatI've gotten from a listener, or
in this case from a Fitness Labuser.
Real quick, Beth writes in,I've been using Fitness Lab for
(03:04):
18 days now.
The AI in the app is alwaysthere to answer questions and
work through any struggles youhave.
Oh, by the way, she started bysaying, I just want to mention
how much I love the app.
It's crazy how it feels.
Like you are chatting withPhilip.
Looks at the data with a veryhuman-feeling connection, not
generic advice, but advice usingmy data for the advice.
P.S.
I was not paid for thisendorsement.
(03:25):
LOL.
Okay.
I hope she doesn't mind mesharing.
I didn't give her last nameaway.
But that is the kind offeedback we're getting on
Fitness Lab.
And that's all I'll say aboutthat now.
I'll probably mention it atsome point in the episode, like
I always tend to do.
Let's talk about training forfat loss and start with what
most people get wrong when theystart a fat loss phase, because
if you understand this, it'sgoing to set everything else up
(03:46):
for a much better time.
You've probably heard lots ofadvice, right?
Part of our mission here on theshow is to cut through that and
try to clarify what makes senseversus what doesn't, what's
nonsense, what's silly, that'snot going to work.
And when you're trying to losefat, the biggest advice that I
always see that is flat outwrong and can be
counterproductive is that youneed to lift lighter weights for
(04:08):
higher reps to tone up to burnfat.
Maybe you've been told to domore cardio, especially HIT,
high-intensity cardio, andthat's gonna accelerate fat loss
and fasted training and useintermittent fasting.
There's so many things about,you know, we burn more fat doing
this.
Maybe it's cut carbs to nothingat all and you're gonna burn
more fat.
All of that stuff.
(04:28):
Maybe even things like cut yourrest periods shorter because
that keeps your heart rateelevated, burns more calories,
right?
All of this is everywhere.
It's in fitness magazines, ifyou even know what that is.
We'll say YouTube, Instagram,all of that.
It's what the trainer at thegym who doesn't know what he's
talking about might tell you.
And that's what we're here tocorrect.
So when people start a cut,when you start a cut, you're in
a calorie deficit.
(04:49):
And I would say, look, if youdo nothing else, doing what
you're already doing when you'renot in a deficit, if it's
effective, might be just fine.
And that's it.
And that's the end of theepisode.
You don't even have to listen.
Okay.
But for a lot of us, especiallyas we're over 40 and we have
other recovery issues at play,there are things you have to
think about.
So what a lot of people do isthey drop the weight on the bar,
(05:10):
the dumbbells, whatever.
I say the bar colloquially, butthey drop the weight because
they think lighter weights withhigher reps is gonna help them
burn more fat.
So where they were doing a fiverep program or, you know, even
like five to eight or eight toten, now they start doing higher
rep programs.
Maybe they cut the rest periodsdown, they do more circuit
training, add more HIT, all ofthat kind of stuff.
And and many times it's amindset of, okay, now I'm in fat
(05:32):
loss.
I've got to go harder oneverything, right?
I've cut the calories, now Ineed to move more.
It's that old mindset thatdoesn't work, although the logic
seems at the surface level tomake sense.
But what happens instead isyou're going to lose your
strength because the mainstimulus for strength is that
intensity, that weight, that onthe bar, right?
That high level of percentageof your max.
(05:53):
And then you're going to losesome of that muscle without the
stimulus and you're going to getmore exhausted, more depleted
because your mode of training isgoing to be more like cardio.
And now you're maybe addingmore cardio on top of that.
And so the irony is that tryingto burn fat this way is going
to just backfire in all the wayswe don't want to backfire.
You're going to look worse whenyou're done.
(06:13):
You're going to maybe evenplateau with your weight loss
because of all the stress that'snow causing your metabolism to
adapt even further.
You lose muscle, right?
Our goal during fat loss whenwe're in a calorie deficit is we
want to lose weight, sure, butwe want to do it all from fat.
We don't want to lose muscle.
And so ironically, you end uplosing muscle and getting more
(06:34):
skinny fat and less definitionand smaller, weaker, all of that
stuff because you're doingsomething counterproductive.
You're effectively throwing outwhat works about training.
So you don't lose fat bychanging how you train during
fat loss.
You do it by being in a caloriedeficit and continuing to get
that stimulus.
Your nutrition creates the fatloss.
(06:55):
Period.
Your training's job during acut is to send a signal to your
body that says, keep the muscle,because we still need it, so
that that weight loss comes fromfat and it does become fat
loss.
Okay, we the extreme case ofthis today is weight loss
medications when people are notlifting weights.
They're gonna lose a bunch ofmuscle.
Now you're saying, well, I amlifting, I'm just doing it a
(07:17):
different way.
Well, the problem is if youdon't do it the right way,
keeping the intensity at areasonable level, at least
enough to maintain your muscle,then you're gonna have a
problem.
So that's the first one.
The the second one is thisuncomfortable reality about what
happens to strength and whathappens to muscle.
Let's clarify this right now.
(07:38):
If you're gonna be successfulduring a fat loss phase, you are
not going to linearly gainstrength while losing body fat.
And the only exception, thelittle asterisk on that
footnote, is if you're brand newand you're just starting this
for the very first time, but ifyou're doing that, why the heck
are you in a calorie deficitright off the bat?
You're not, you haven'tlistened to the show, obviously.
(07:58):
I can point you to an episodelike your very first cut, which
we did, I think earlier in 2025.
Maybe that was last year.
But you should not be in adeficit right off the bat.
Anyway, you should be workingto build strength and build a
foundation, not gain weight, notlose weight, and then go into
fat loss phase.
Anyway, enough of that rent.
My point is you're not gonna,your goal isn't to gain PRs and
(08:19):
gain strength in absolute termswhile losing body weight.
And I know that's not what youwant to hear because you want
body recomp, don't you?
But being in a big deficit tolose fat, that's not the goal.
And if you understand thatreality, it separates you the
people who do this successfully,lose fat, build muscle from
those who don't.
So when you're in a caloriedeficit, several things are
(08:41):
happening that affect yourtraining performance.
Your energy availability is, ofcourse, lower because, well,
you're eating less.
Your recovery is compromisedbecause your body has fewer
resources to repair tissue.
Your glycogen stores aredepleted because you're not
eating as much and you'reprobably not eating nearly as
many carbs.
And that affects your abilityto produce the force on those,
(09:01):
you know, in those liftingsessions.
And if you're losing bodyweight, your leverages literally
change, which can make the sameweights feel heavier.
And you're just lighter.
You're lighter.
You can't, you don't have asmuch cross-sectional area to
produce the force that you didbefore.
And of course, we're trying toget lighter, so that's okay.
That's a trade-off that wemake.
Now, my coach, Andy Baker,fantastic strength coach, has
(09:23):
been on the show at least, what,three times?
He talks about this all thetime that lighter lifters lose
more strength when cutting thanheavier lifters.
That's that's uh kind of a sidetangent on this that's
important to understand.
And if you think about thephysics of it, it makes sense.
A 150-pound person who loses 10pounds is losing a bigger
percentage of their body weightthan a 220-pound person who
(09:45):
loses the same 10 pounds.
And oftentimes the amounts ofweight loss are kind of similar,
even when the person's baselineweight is quite different
between two different people,and that's where we get these
discrepancies.
So, what's the goal during fatloss?
It is not to PR your strength.
Your goal is to preserve yourmuscle.
That's a different thing, it'sa different goal.
(10:07):
So when we accept that, we canthen accept that absolute
strength will probably dipduring a cut, and that's normal.
But relative strength mayactually increase.
What do I mean by that?
If you're squatting 225 forreps at 180 pounds body weight,
and then you cut to 165 whilemaintaining 225, well, what is
(10:31):
just happened?
What just happened?
Your strength relative to yourbody weight went up, even though
the absolute number didn'tchange.
And this could be a mentalchallenge to grasp because it
feels like we're we'reregressing or we're only
holding.
When in fact we're gettingrelatively stronger, but it's
because we're losing bodyweight.
So the real win during a cut ismaintaining your muscle mass.
(10:53):
You're going to lookdramatically better when you do
that.
That's the goal.
That's the body comp goal.
You'll be leaner, you'll bemore defined, you'll have kept
the hard-earned muscle you builtduring your building phases.
Exactly what bodybuilders aretrying to do all the time.
They're trying to spend an offseason training super hard,
eating a ton of food, building,building, building, building,
improving.
And then they want toefficiently cut that off.
Efficiently and quickly, butnot so quickly, that they lose
(11:15):
muscle and reveal thathard-earned muscle.
And that's why I tell people tothink of a fat loss phase as a
maintenance phase for muscle.
You're not trying to grow,you're trying to hold on to what
you have while your nutritionhandles the fat loss.
And that changes how you train.
We're going to get into thatnow.
And one of the ways it changeshow you train is that it takes a
lot less volume to maintainmuscle.
(11:37):
So you don't have to worry asmuch about the volume if you
don't have the recovery for it.
All right.
So let's let's, if you takenothing else from this episode,
remember this.
During fat loss, try to keepyour intensity high while
reducing your volume.
That is, I'll say, almost auniversal principle that works
for almost everybody.
And that's the way I'm going toput it because nothing is
(11:58):
absolute, right?
If we're going to be nuancedabout things.
This is the opposite of whatmost people do.
A lot of people keep volume thesame or they increase it
thinking more training, more fatloss, and then they're
exhausted, their lifts crash,they lose muscle.
No, we don't want to do that.
The research is clear on this.
Training intensity of about 75to 85% of your one rep max
maintains muscle beautifullyduring a deficit, right?
(12:22):
You don't need high volume tomaintain muscle.
High volumes have diminishingreturns because your recovery
capacity is limited.
What why is that?
Well, volume is total number ofhard sets per muscle group per
week.
And during a building phase,you might do upwards of 15 to
even 20.
I mean, that's really the highend, but I'll say 10 to 15 hard
(12:42):
sets per muscle group to perweek.
During a cut, I would just dropthat to about 10 to 12, maybe
even below 10 for some musclegroups.
Because again, we're thinkingin terms of maintaining here and
balancing the stimulus tofatigue, given we have limited
recovery.
So the key is keeping theweight on the bar heavy.
Again, when I say weight on thebar, I just mean whatever
(13:02):
weight you're pushing forwhatever reps for whatever
machine or implement you'reusing.
Okay.
I love barbells, I'm using thatpredominantly, but there's
obviously a bunch of otherthings.
And it also means trainingclose to failure.
That does, that never changes.
That's a principle.
And there, therefore, you'resending the signal to your body
that it needs this muscle.
High intensity, and intensitymeans percentage of your one rep
(13:23):
max, means weight on the bar.
It doesn't mean sweating andvolume.
And we say intensity, we meanload here.
It tells your body this muscleis still necessary.
Lower volume then reduces yoursystemic fatigue, which is a big
factor on how well you recoverand reduces soreness, gives you
more energy, allows you to makebest use of your nutrition and
(13:45):
your sleep.
So for something like your mainlifts, you're still gonna stick
to, say, your three to six orthree to eight rep range.
For your accessories, you'restill probably gonna be around
six to twelve.
But maybe you're doing fewersets.
Maybe, not always.
Interestingly, there are somereally effective fat loss
programs that I've run that usea set-based progression where
(14:06):
you're increasing sets, butyou're not increasing the load
and you're just keeping the loadreasonably high the whole time.
You know, anywhere from roughly70 to 90% of your max ish,
maybe as low as 65%, but you'restill in that regime.
So a lot of people strugglementally when it comes to this
because more, more, more feelsproductive.
But during a cut, more is oftencounterproductive.
(14:28):
And in fact, more is oftencounterproductive no matter
what.
One of the biggest, I guess,counterintuitive things about
this about fitness.
So your margin of error foroverreach, overtraining,
overreaching shrinks in adeficit.
Now, I'm not worried about anyof you really overtraining in
(14:48):
the classic sense, because mostof you are just not training
hard enough, but you might beovertraining in the quantity and
fatigue sense, if that makessense.
Right.
And then it just smashes youand then it's counterproductive.
So during a building phase, forexample, you might be hitting a
lift twice or three times aweek, say four, five, six
working sets per session.
(15:09):
If we're doing like accessoriesin there plus the main lift,
let's say, and it comes out to12 sets a week.
During a cut, you might dropsets or you might drop
frequency, or you might not andjust maintain, but you don't get
you don't get more volume thanthat.
If anything, you might drop it.
And so your overall volume forall your lifts across all
(15:32):
sessions might be the same orless, generally.
You're you're generally notgonna increase it, is my point.
And you're always trainingwithin one to three repshi of
failure.
Classic mechanical tensionprinciple that we care about for
progressive overload.
Understanding you're not gonnakeep increasing your strength
linearly here.
That's what gets confusing topeople.
So that brings us to the nexttopic.
(15:53):
See, I'm segueing naturallyfrom one to the next.
The next topic isauto-regulation.
Auto-regulation.
During a building phase, sowhen you're not into deficit,
you can get away with pushingthrough when you're tired and
hitting the reps you're tryingto hit because you have other
reserves usually from your food,for example, or even just the
(16:14):
fact that you've been eatingmeans you can slack off in other
areas and still have enoughrecovery capacity.
Maybe, hopefully.
But during a cut, youdefinitely do not for the most
part.
If you're in a reasonable cut,if you're in a very, very, very
light cut or you're aiming forbody recomp, you know, that
changes the game a little bit.
But let's just assume a normalcut where you're cutting, say,
500 calories a day, and this iswhere auto-regulation becomes
(16:35):
really helpful.
Auto regulation means you'regonna adjust your training,
you're gonna regulate yourtraining based on how you feel
and perform on any given day.
That's the auto part.
Auto, not meaning automatic,but auto as in it happens based
on you on that day, right?
I'm not very good at explainingthe word itself, but it's
(16:56):
adjusting your training based onhow you feel perform rather
than sticking to the exact,we'll say, loads and volumes.
And this is where having yourprogram set up in a way that
just naturally usesauto-regulation so you don't
have to think about it ishelpful.
Now, a lot of people will say,okay, that means RPE or RIR,
rate of perceived exertion orreps in reserve.
(17:17):
I actually prefer just usingrep ranges for this.
Like for me, auto-regulationcomes from rep ranges.
It can also, though, come from,let's say, testing a 1RM and
using a back-off from that, forexample, where the one RM, the
one rep max, is that day's onerep max, not an all-time one rep
(17:38):
max.
And this is the way to tell onthat day where am I?
Another way to do this is usingAMRAP, as many reps as possible
on a final set, so that thenext session you know what
you're capable of.
That is a little trickier andmore advanced.
So I'm not going to get into ittoo much.
But for the most part, ifyou're using a rep range instead
of sets across, so instead ofthree sets of five, it might be
(17:58):
three sets of four to six.
And that way you have a littlebit of flexibility in there.
And I would also say on yoursecond and third sets, if you
need to drop the weight to stayin the rep range, go ahead and
do it.
That because of theauto-regulation, right?
Because you feel you need to dothat.
And you'll become more and moreexperienced with this over
time.
This is not an excuse to backoff and not train heavy and
(18:19):
hard.
You still want to get withinone to three rep shy failure.
It's just getting there mayrequire a little bit of a
trade-off versus just linearlypushing it like you would in the
past.
Right.
So on a good day, oh, you'refeeling great.
Maybe you're doing one of theseweekend diet approaches I
recommend where you're refuelingon the weekend and then going
back into the deficit on theweekday.
Well, Monday, you may feelreally good and get everything
(18:42):
that you planned andeverything's like a two R R I R,
right?
Two reps shy from failure.
Perfect, great.
But other days, in fact, mostdays in fat loss, you're
probably going to be morefatigued.
And if you hit the same weight,it might feel like one rep shy
of failure.
So you either do that, or ifit's a grind, because you don't
really want it to grind, youknow, you drop off the weight
(19:04):
for your back off sets, right?
So you kind of have to feel itout a little bit.
But if it's built in with repranges and with back offs and
things like that, you can youcan do it really well.
Speaking of back offs, I dolove back off sets and fat loss,
where you might do two sets ofyour lifts.
The first set is at a lower reprange, the second set is a
little bit higher, but you dropthe weight.
Boom.
It's a great way to deal withthis.
(19:25):
So the key here is beingflexible, but not using excuses.
It's kind of a fine line basedon your load selection and based
on the percentages and the repranges, right?
You're not married to hittingexact specific numbers.
It's auto regulation.
So with the top set back offset approach, by the way, it
doesn't have to be two sets.
You could still do three sets.
(19:46):
You could do two or three backoff sets.
Or you can do what we do inlike the Westside style
conjugate program, which AndyBaker introduced me to, where
you test a 1RM and then you backoff from that.
You do, let's say, 90% for twoto four or 80% for.
Or three to six or somethinglike that.
And this approach thennaturally adjusts to your
readiness and fatigue level onthat day, where the goal is to
(20:09):
keep training hard enough tomaintain your muscle, but not so
hard that you dig yourself intoa hole that you can't recover
from.
Because remember, again, whatis your most limited resource
during a cut?
It is your recovery.
So now let's talk about that.
Again, another amazing segue.
I'm proud of myself, guys.
It doesn't usually happen thisway.
Recovery.
This is where most people failduring fat loss.
(20:29):
When you're in a caloriedeficit, recovery capacity is
far lower than it was when youweren't.
And even lower than you mightthink.
And guys, ladies and gentlemen,for those of you who've been
dieting for a long time and needto just spend some time out of
a diet, this doesn't apply toyou.
I don't want you to take thisadvice from that position.
I would rather you recover, getto maintenance, fuel up, spend
(20:52):
there, developing yourfoundational habits and your
behaviors, then do a fat lossphase from a good place.
Okay, that was a side tangent.
So recovery drops, which meansyou accumulate fatigue faster
and it takes longer to dissipatethat fatigue.
And some of that is veryever-present, literal fatigue,
like your low back is justfeeling achy from your Romanian
(21:13):
deadlifts or your squats orsomething, and it's just not
going away.
And you got to listen to thatbecause that's like bending
before it breaks, right?
I don't mean break like you'regonna break your spine.
I just mean from an ability tohold on to things and progress
and really train the way youwant.
So the first lever is reducingvolume, which we already
covered.
The second lever, if you needto do it, is to reduce
(21:34):
frequency, where instead ofdoing four days a week, you do
three days a week.
I love this move.
It gives you an extra day ofsleep as well.
It gives you a little lesspressure, and then you can kind
of focus on some really good,efficient quality sessions.
Now that doesn't mean you can'tgo the opposite direction, and
three or four days a weekbecomes five or six, but very
(21:56):
tiny sessions, because that'sanother way to switch things
around without necessarilychanging the frequency or just
splitting things up across theweek.
Anyway, you have to figure outwhat's what works for you.
And you also have to optimizethe other things that support
recovery.
So, what would that be?
Well, sleep.
Come on, guys, sleep.
If you weren't getting goodsleep out of a deficit, oh damn,
(22:18):
you really have to get goodsleep during a deficit, right?
If you're getting six hours,you probably need seven or
eight, right?
That's gonna affect yourrecovery and your hunger and
your performance.
Do the things, get your roomdark and cool, stick to a
consistent schedule, all thethings.
Stress management matters moreduring a cut as well.
Chronic stress elevatescortisol, it promotes muscle
(22:39):
breakdown, promotes fat storage,right?
We're not trying to do that.
We're trying to lose fat.
We're trying to call on ourresources the right way.
We want to manage our stressthrough walking, through
breathing, whatever works foryou.
Protein intake, people don'trealize this.
Oftentimes it needs to go upduring a cut.
If you're already hitting 0.7or 0.8 grams per pound at least,
(23:00):
stay at least there, but tryjacking it up to up to one gram
per pound and see if that makesa difference to your hunger, for
example.
Okay, and for your ability tostick to this.
Not everybody needs to do that,but it's you definitely need to
have that minimum, if not more,during fat loss.
And then I want to I want youto consider adding light
movement for recovery.
This is gonna live you give youa little boost to your neat,
(23:23):
non-exercise activitythermogenesis, and might
actually help with the calorieburning side of the equation
anyway.
This is your, I'll call it,optimal form of cardio if we're
gonna add cardio, and that iswalking, easy biking, some
mobility stuff that you enjoy.
Maybe it's yoga, right?
Nothing that's interfering withyour lifting or adding more
stress, things that increaseblood flow without adding
fatigue.
(23:43):
Okay.
Recovery is not just about therest, it's supporting your
body's ability to adapt thewhole time during fat loss
because you have fewerresources.
Now, speaking of managing allthese variables, because I know
it sounds a little overwhelmingwhen you're during a cut.
And that's why, that's whypeople struggle with this
sometimes.
But if you're ready to do this,then do it the right way.
(24:05):
So I want to tell you aboutsomething that can make this
entire process dramaticallyeasier.
Some of you know, and if youdon't, I'm telling you now, I've
been working on an AI-poweredcoaching app called Fitness Lab,
designed specifically to helpwith situations like this.
If you're in a fat loss phase,you've got to adjust these
things properly.
Your training, your nutrition,you're not sure if you're doing
(24:27):
too much or too little.
Fitness lab is gonna figurethat out with you and for you.
It's a coaching intelligencelayer.
You tell it what you're tryingto do as you go because it
prompts you, it hasconversations with you.
There's a chat feature and itknows what phase you're in and
it will help you make thosesmart decisions to pivot and to
adjust to your training.
(24:48):
Not make excuses, not back off.
It still does a great job ofprodding you in a good way to
keep you accountable, but itlooks at your biofeedback and
your sleep and your stress.
And by the time this episodecomes out, we should have the
Apple Health integration turnedon, which levels it up even
further.
And by the way, we're comingout on Android as well.
So again, depends on when thisepisode comes out, when this
(25:09):
stuff is available.
But the app is already out andit's incredible.
The feedback we're gettingabout how helpful it's been,
it's like having a coach in yourpocket.
Some people say it's likehaving Philip in your pocket.
I hope that's not a terriblething.
Uh, if you like the podcast, itsounds weird to me, but it is
what it is, right?
If you log that you're feelingfatigued, if your biofeedback
(25:29):
scores are low, if your lastworkout was logged as feeling
harder, because it's gonna askyou that did this feel harder
than last time?
And you're like, yeah, actuallyit did.
Fitness Lab's gonna take thatand suggest something to change.
It might pull back on thevolume and adjust your load for
the session based on thatfeedback.
So you can still hit it hard,but not feel like past the point
(25:50):
of no return with your fatigue.
If you're being consistent,hitting targets, feeling good,
it might push the progression alittle bit, even during fat
loss, because you can handle it.
So, in addition to it beingable to pull in your data,
sleep, your steps, your heartrate variability, your rest,
resting heart rate, all of thatstuff with Apple Health, all of
that, plus everything you tellit is going to give you
(26:11):
extremely personalized coaching.
Really like nothing you've everbeen able to have before
because of technology.
So the app is now available.
And from December 17 to January2nd, you can get 20% off.
Go to witsandweights.com slashapp, check it out.
There's a two-minute quiz thatwill give you a plan before you
even decide whether you want theapp.
(26:31):
So that'll tell you, hey, yeah,this thing's for me or not.
All right, no pressure.
Witsandweights.com slash app.
All right, let's get back toother adjustments you make to
your training during fat loss.
Let's talk about carbs and fuelbecause an underrated aspect of
training during a cut is carbsin general, as well as the
(26:52):
timing of the carbs.
Carbs, carbohydrates, one ofthe three macros, of course,
along with fats and protein,fuel your glycolytic lifting.
They support your centralnervous system.
They do help protect and sparemuscle, they reduce your
perception of effort, theyimprove recovery.
You guys know how much I lovecarbs.
And if you didn't know that,and you know that now, and
(27:13):
you're wondering, really?
I thought carbs are bad, stickaround.
We love carbs on widths andweights because they are
magical.
And they're magical.
During a cut, carb timing isalso important.
And the strategy here, becausethe carbs are lower.
So here's the thing.
Here's the thing, guys.
In a cut, your calories arelower, but your protein's the
same or higher.
Ergo, or as they say in Latin,QED, or the three little dots,
(27:37):
if you ever did geometry proofs,uh talking to my nerds out
there.
Ergo, the carbs have to be alot lower.
If protein's the same andcalories are lower, the carbs
have to be a lot lower.
So in that case, you're down to150, 100, maybe 70 grams of
carbs, depending on where youare.
Where do you put the carbs?
Well, put them around yourworkout.
(27:57):
If you train in the morning,load your carbs pre-workout,
post-workout in the morning.
So that's like maybe that'sbreakfast and your midday meal
or lunch.
Depend depends on when thetiming, right?
If you train in the evening,your carbs at lunch and dinner,
meals further from training canbe lower carb.
They can have protein and fat,vegetables, low to almost no
(28:19):
carbs potentially, right?
We we still like some balance,but you can do that.
And vegetables are a carb, andthey're because they're fibrous,
they will help balance out thedigestion of blood sugars and
all of that.
But I would have your carbsaround your workout because
that's when it's most beneficialfor your performance, for your
recovery.
So that's a strategic way to doit.
And if you don't do it thatway, if carbs are low, if
(28:41):
they're poorly timed, if youtrain fasted during fat loss,
your training might feel awful.
Or if you're like, mytraining's okay, and now you try
having a banana before you workout, tell me the difference.
If you don't feel great, thenthat's you.
The vast majority of people arelike, whoa, that is fuel.
That is like nitrous oxide.
Nitrous oxide?
Yeah, yeah.
(29:01):
What is the stuff that whenyou're driving a non-street
legal sports car and you want togo faster, right?
Nitrous.
So if you don't do that, you'regonna feel more flat, you're
not gonna have a good pump,you're not gonna push as hard,
all of that.
You're gonna have a betterperformance, most likely, if you
time your carbs around yourtraining.
And you know, I do I neversuggest extremely low carb, even
(29:24):
during a cut.
If you can get at least 100grams of carbs, that would be
ideal.
I know many of you can'tbecause your calories are down
to like 14, 13, 12, maybe 1100if you're really petite, even
lower than that.
So it really is trading off onemacro for the other.
And oftentimes that's trying tokeep fats reasonably low so you
can do that.
Not super low, just reasonable,like 20% instead of 30% of
(29:46):
calories.
All right.
So one more mistake, I guess, Iwant to address is cardio
itself.
All right, a lot of people addcardio, just the big umbrella
term cardio, to quote unquoteaccelerate fat loss.
And it sounds appealing, right?
Cardio can be intense, it canfeel productive, it's exercise.
Sometimes it doesn't take thatlong.
(30:07):
Many of you hate cardio, butsome of you don't.
Some of you like it.
Not many.
Maybe that's my own biasputting on the on the population
listening to the show.
But during a deficit, whenyou're also strength training,
cardio has to be very, verystrategic because too much
high-intensity cardio can be toostressful.
And I mean like a lot ofrunning, even a lot of
(30:29):
high-intensity other cardio,like biking or something like
that, like too much of it caninterfere with your glycogen
stores because you just don'thave that many carbs.
If you lift, if you do itbefore lifting, you're really
gonna screw up your training.
If you do it after lifting orin between your training
sessions, you've got to thinkabout when so it doesn't impact
your recovery too much.
And this is where the frequencyand when you train and all of
(30:52):
that can make a difference.
So, cardio, especially at highintensity or lots of volume, can
increase your systemic fatiguebecause it does tax your central
nervous system.
It can also do a little bit ofmuscle damage.
And I don't mean that as a likescary thing, it's just
preventing the muscles fromadapting or recovering as fast
if you do something likerunning, for example.
(31:12):
And then it's gonna increaseyour overall stress.
Now, again, exercise andtraining always increase stress
a little bit.
That's okay.
It's a hormetic stress, but ifyou're doing a lot of it, it
could increase more your chronicstress.
And then that does the oppositeof what we want.
It promotes, it promotes acatabolic environment, which
means breakdown of muscle,especially when you're in a
(31:34):
calorie deficit.
So, what do I recommendinstead?
Well, anything lower intensity,like walking, easy cycling,
rowing at a conversational pace,and also the occasional
sprinting can be fit in there.
But I mean the anabolicsprinting, like we talk about on
the show, that's very, veryshort, very high percentage of
your capability for a shortperiod, because those are highly
(31:55):
that's still highly recoverableand will support your
metabolism, not going tointerfere with appetite.
They're gonna increase yourneed a little bit still, they'll
burn some more calories andthey won't interfere with your
strength training and yourrecovery.
I would also do it after youlift, at least several hours,
maybe on your off day.
You know, you got to be smartabout it, keep it low intensity.
It's a tool.
(32:16):
And I have talked to manylifters on the show who are big
fans of a decent amount ofcardio, but it's all relative.
It's relative to your recoverycapacity.
So, really, that's all it is.
Remember your deficit, yourcalorie deficit is what is
driving fat loss, period.
Right now, your cardio may upyour expenditure a bit so that
you can eat more and still be inthe deficit, and that's okay.
(32:37):
So, in that case, cardio shouldalways support your goals.
That's it.
It should support your goals.
It's contextual.
All right, a couple more thingsto cover because this is
becoming somewhat of adefinitive episode.
I want to talk about assistancework briefly.
Assistance work meaning thenon, you know, you've got your
main lifts and then yourassistance work, which is the
higher volume accessory work.
(32:59):
Now, when you're in a buildingphase, you're gonna have a ton
of that, probably, right?
Like you might have five or sixdifferent exercises every
training session, and you'reaccumulating all this volume and
you're creating all thismetabolic stress because you're
trying to grow your muscles andyour strength.
During a cut, think about thefact that you are not trying to
add to your muscularity or toyour strength.
It'd be nice if we could, butit competes with the goal of
(33:22):
trying to lose fat, sometimes toa big degree, where it's not
even possible.
Now you're doing neither.
So the guideline for assistancework is probably something like
one to two hard sets each,maybe five to eight reps.
Make sure you're rotatingmovements over time.
I don't mean every session, butyou know, you're going through
training blocks, let's say, soyou don't have repetitive
(33:44):
stress, depending on howstressful the lift is.
And that's it.
You know, it's probably not thetime to be experimenting with
lots of drop sets and supersetsand pump work and finishers and
all that, because it's just notgonna have the payoff.
It's just not gonna have thepayoff.
Now, some people might disagreewith me.
There's some really greatlifters out there who might say,
no, you know, it's okay to doall this stuff.
I'm not saying it's not okay.
I'm saying you have to pick andchoose based on what your goal
(34:08):
is.
It's less important than yourmain lifts, in my opinion.
During a cut, recovery islimited.
Dedicate your resources to thelifts that matter most.
Keep those, the squat patterns,the deadlifts, the pressing,
the pulling in place.
Keep those patterns in place.
Maintain all those big muscleswith efficient movements that
take less time, and then use theisolation work to just fill in
(34:28):
the gaps.
You also have to think aboutjoint health, avoiding injury.
You know, when you're fatigued,you might not be lifting as
carefully or with as much focus.
All that comes into play aswell when it comes to these
things.
And that leads to the nextthing, which is exercise
selection.
I would stick with what youknow during fat loss.
I would say fat loss is not thetime to introduce a whole bunch
(34:49):
of new exercises and learn awhole bunch of new movement
patterns because you may notremember I mentioned before your
leverages are different, yourbody's changing.
Like it may not actually payoff to even learn certain things
in this time because it's notgoing to feel the same when
you're eating more again.
So I would stick with thingsyou're proficient at where you
have good form and know how toload.
That doesn't mean you can'tswitch them around, right?
(35:10):
Over over over cycles, even ifyou haven't, it's not that it
doesn't have to be the samething you were just doing, but
it's something that you alreadyhave some neuromuscular
knowledge of.
And of course, that shouldinclude all the basic movement
patterns we've been talkingabout, squats and deads and
presses and pulls and all that,and then some simple
accessories.
You know, don't start learningOlympic lifts during a cut, for
(35:31):
example, if you've never donethat before.
That's all I'm talking about.
Okay.
It's stressful to do that.
It's mentally and physicallystressful, requires more focus,
requires more practice sets,more warm-up, more volume.
And then that could increaseyour injury risk.
Maybe I'm being too cautioushere.
Let me know.
You experienced trainers andcoaches out there, if I'm full
of it, let me know.
But this is my observation.
(35:51):
I think a fat loss phase shouldbe very targeted at what you're
trying to accomplish.
And in my opinion, when you dothat, it doesn't have to be as
long because you're doing itefficiently and then you get
through it in say eight weeksinstead of 12 or 16.
Now, I mentioned joint stressbriefly.
I do want to mention thisbecause if certain movements
start bothering your jointsduring a cut, which can happen
(36:12):
because recovery is compromised,it's okay to modify the
movement.
You know, switch to a high baror safety bar instead of a low
bar.
Use different grips, differentwidths, different potentially
ranges of motion, depends onwhat we're talking about.
I would say fat loss phasesshould be kind of boring from an
exercise selection standpoint,where you're not trying to be
(36:32):
creative.
And if you're chasing programsthat are like fat loss programs,
that's a red flag for me, to behonest.
All right, let's quickly talkabout the psychological side of
training during a cut.
Just be realistic here, justlike with the diet side of
things, it's not gonna feel asgood as during a building
building phase.
You're just gonna feel kind offlatter.
You're not gonna feel the pump,most likely, because you don't
(36:53):
have the calories and the carbsand all that.
Your strength is gonna dip, aswe mentioned.
Your sleep is probably gonna beharder to come by, you're gonna
have more hunger.
All of this is normal.
It's the cost of being in adeficit, and I don't want to
sugarcoat it for you.
So the mindset shift here isyou are not chasing performance
during a cut, you're maintainingyour performance.
If even though I do want you tothink of, you know, I'm I'm
(37:16):
see, this is tough.
Depends on how your mind works.
If it helps you to have astretch goal and say, look, I'm
gonna try to get stronger andbuild muscle, even though I
might not, great.
That actually does kind of workfor me.
For some people, it's verydiscouraging because then when
they see the numbers staying thesame, they feel like they're
failing.
So it's kind of setting thoserealistic expectations.
If your strength is the same,but you lose 15 pounds, that's a
(37:38):
massive win, right?
Don't compare your current cutalso to a previous building
phase or someone who's not in adeficit.
Stay in the lane and trust theprocess for you and compare
yourself to yourself, right?
And not to yourself when youwere building.
It's it's temporary discomfort,and it's just that it's
temporary, but it is gonnahappen.
You are gonna have discomfort.
(37:59):
And then when you get back tomaintenance or surplus, your
strength is gonna shoot back up.
You're gonna look incrediblebecause you preserved everything
during the cup.
And of course, you're gonnatrack a lot more than just a few
things.
You're not gonna just trackweight on the bar, you're gonna
track your body weight trend,your body composition, your
clothes, your sleep, yourhunger, your energy, your mood.
Because if your strength dipsslightly, but all the other
things are pre good, you'relosing fat, you're sleeping
(38:22):
okay, you're not miserable,you're not that hungry.
You're doing great, you'redoing great, it's okay.
All right, so let's recap thekey adjustments.
Accept that strength will dipslightly.
Your goal is to maintainmuscle, not gain strength.
Keep intensity high, at least75% of your max, but probably
reduce the total volume.
Maybe as much as 30 to 50%, butthat really depends on your
(38:43):
response and how aggressive thedeficit is.
Use auto-regulation, whateverthat means for you.
Rep ranges, top set, back offsets.
Manage recovery aggressively.
Now that that's soundscounterintuitive, right?
Be aggressive with yourrecovery.
Sleep, stress management,protein, the low intensity
movement, all of that.
Time your carbs aroundtraining, avoid too much
(39:05):
high-intensity cardio, keepassistance work minimal relative
to your main heavy lifts, stickwith familiar exercises and set
realistic expectations.
And if you follow these guys,you will preserve muscle, lose
fat, and come out of your cutlooking lean, strong, and ready
to build again.
So before we wrap it up, I wantto mention Fitness Lab one more
(39:26):
time because this is exactlythe kind of situation where
having an AI coaching layer thatI've spent blood, sweat, and
tears developing for you guyswith all of these philosophies
and principles can make a hugedifference.
When you are managing a fatloss phase, things are
stressful.
You're juggling a deficit, yourtraining, your biofeedback,
your recovery, your macros, allthat stuff, and it can feel
(39:47):
overwhelming.
And sometimes it's hard to knowif you're on track.
That is why I developed FitnessLab.
It helps you make thosedecisions with confidence.
It kind of takes the stress offof you.
It does a lot of that thinkingfor you, it takes some of the
emotional stress.
I know it's a machine, butuntil you try it, don't knock
it.
Try it.
And you've got to give it alittle bit of time.
You've got to give it at least,you know, a few weeks just so
(40:07):
that it starts to learn fromyou.
Because it's going to take yourdata and your progress and how
you're feeling and tell you whatto do next.
It's going to suggest it andyou can chat with it.
It's now available on iPhoneand Android, integrates with
Apple Health, and you get 20%off from December 17th through
January 2nd.
Go to witsandweights.com slashapp just to learn about it.
Take a two-minute quiz so youcan see if it's right for you.
(40:29):
You don't even have to buy theapp until you decide it's right
for you.
Witsandweights.com slash app.
All right, that is it fortoday's episode.
I hope this gave you a clearframework for how to adjust your
strength training during fatloss so you can preserve every
bit of muscle built.
Until next time, keep usingyour wits, lifting those
(40:50):
weights, and remember to alwaystrain with intention.
I'll talk to you next time hereon the Wits and Weights
podcast.
Most people make one critical mistake when they
cut calories to lose fat.
They adjust their trainingincorrectly.
They switch to high reps toburn fat.
They drop the weight on thebar.
They add a bunch of cardio, andthey wonder why their strength
tanks, their muscle disappears,and they end up looking like a
smaller, weaker version ofthemselves.
(00:21):
Today I'm showing you exactlywhat needs to change in your
strength training during a fatloss phase and what absolutely
can stay the same.
You'll learn why droppingintensity could destroy your
results, how to adjust trainingvolume while keeping load heavy,
and why most fat loss trainingand advice costs you some of
that muscle.
This is a topic I see peoplemessing up all the time.
(01:15):
They will dial in theirnutrition pretty well, they'll
create the calorie deficit,they'll start losing that weight
on the scale, but then theymake some often disastrous
adjustments to their trainingthat don't make any sense.
They drop the weight on thebar, they switch to high-rep
fat-burning workouts that theysee on YouTube, they add tons of
cardio thinking, well, I'mstuck and that's what I need to
(01:37):
do, and then wonder why theirlifts crash, why they're
exhausted, why, despite workingso hard, they're still not
getting the lean muscular lookthey were going for.
Then they're done with the fatloss phase and they're like,
hey, it's not revealing what Ithought, or I can't even get
through it the way I intended.
The problem is not the caloriedeficit itself.
The problem is they'readjusting their training in the
(02:00):
wrong way.
Thinking that fat loss requireslighter weights and higher
volume, for example, whenoftentimes it requires the
opposite.
It's very contextual, it's verypersonalized, but there are
principles behind all of thisthat I'm going to walk you
through today.
What are the adjustments youhave to make to training during
fat loss?
What happens to your bodyduring a cut that affects your
(02:21):
training?
How do you maintain intensitywhile reducing volume if needed?
Why auto-regulation is soimportant and what the heck I'm
even talking about, and how tomanage recovery when that is
your most limited resourceduring fat loss.
I will also, as always, bustsome of those often heard so
much on social media commonmyths about training during fat
(02:43):
loss, including why certainforms of cardio could be holding
you back and why you shouldnever be afraid to lift heavy.
All right, let's get into it.
Sometimes on episodes, I dolike to throw in a little
testimonial or feedback thatI've gotten from a listener, or
in this case from a Fitness Labuser.
Real quick, Beth writes in,I've been using Fitness Lab for
(03:04):
18 days now.
The AI in the app is alwaysthere to answer questions and
work through any struggles youhave.
Oh, by the way, she started bysaying, I just want to mention
how much I love the app.
It's crazy how it feels.
Like you are chatting withPhilip.
Looks at the data with a veryhuman-feeling connection, not
generic advice, but advice usingmy data for the advice.
P.S.
I was not paid for thisendorsement.
(03:25):
LOL.
Okay.
I hope she doesn't mind mesharing.
I didn't give her last nameaway.
But that is the kind offeedback we're getting on
Fitness Lab.
And that's all I'll say aboutthat now.
I'll probably mention it atsome point in the episode, like
I always tend to do.
Let's talk about training forfat loss and start with what
most people get wrong when theystart a fat loss phase, because
if you understand this, it'sgoing to set everything else up
(03:46):
for a much better time.
You've probably heard lots ofadvice, right?
Part of our mission here on theshow is to cut through that and
try to clarify what makes senseversus what doesn't, what's
nonsense, what's silly, that'snot going to work.
And when you're trying to losefat, the biggest advice that I
always see that is flat outwrong and can be
counterproductive is that youneed to lift lighter weights for
(04:08):
higher reps to tone up to burnfat.
Maybe you've been told to domore cardio, especially HIT,
high-intensity cardio, andthat's gonna accelerate fat loss
and fasted training and useintermittent fasting.
There's so many things about,you know, we burn more fat doing
this.
Maybe it's cut carbs to nothingat all and you're gonna burn
more fat.
All of that stuff.
(04:28):
Maybe even things like cut yourrest periods shorter because
that keeps your heart rateelevated, burns more calories,
right?
All of this is everywhere.
It's in fitness magazines, ifyou even know what that is.
We'll say YouTube, Instagram,all of that.
It's what the trainer at thegym who doesn't know what he's
talking about might tell you.
And that's what we're here tocorrect.
So when people start a cut,when you start a cut, you're in
a calorie deficit.
(04:49):
And I would say, look, if youdo nothing else, doing what
you're already doing when you'renot in a deficit, if it's
effective, might be just fine.
And that's it.
And that's the end of theepisode.
You don't even have to listen.
Okay.
But for a lot of us, especiallyas we're over 40 and we have
other recovery issues at play,there are things you have to
think about.
So what a lot of people do isthey drop the weight on the bar,
(05:10):
the dumbbells, whatever.
I say the bar colloquially, butthey drop the weight because
they think lighter weights withhigher reps is gonna help them
burn more fat.
So where they were doing a fiverep program or, you know, even
like five to eight or eight toten, now they start doing higher
rep programs.
Maybe they cut the rest periodsdown, they do more circuit
training, add more HIT, all ofthat kind of stuff.
And and many times it's amindset of, okay, now I'm in fat
(05:32):
loss.
I've got to go harder oneverything, right?
I've cut the calories, now Ineed to move more.
It's that old mindset thatdoesn't work, although the logic
seems at the surface level tomake sense.
But what happens instead isyou're going to lose your
strength because the mainstimulus for strength is that
intensity, that weight, that onthe bar, right?
That high level of percentageof your max.
(05:53):
And then you're going to losesome of that muscle without the
stimulus and you're going to getmore exhausted, more depleted
because your mode of training isgoing to be more like cardio.
And now you're maybe addingmore cardio on top of that.
And so the irony is that tryingto burn fat this way is going
to just backfire in all the wayswe don't want to backfire.
You're going to look worse whenyou're done.
(06:13):
You're going to maybe evenplateau with your weight loss
because of all the stress that'snow causing your metabolism to
adapt even further.
You lose muscle, right?
Our goal during fat loss whenwe're in a calorie deficit is we
want to lose weight, sure, butwe want to do it all from fat.
We don't want to lose muscle.
And so ironically, you end uplosing muscle and getting more
(06:34):
skinny fat and less definitionand smaller, weaker, all of that
stuff because you're doingsomething counterproductive.
You're effectively throwing outwhat works about training.
So you don't lose fat bychanging how you train during
fat loss.
You do it by being in a caloriedeficit and continuing to get
that stimulus.
Your nutrition creates the fatloss.
(06:55):
Period.
Your training's job during acut is to send a signal to your
body that says, keep the muscle,because we still need it, so
that that weight loss comes fromfat and it does become fat
loss.
Okay, we the extreme case ofthis today is weight loss
medications when people are notlifting weights.
They're gonna lose a bunch ofmuscle.
Now you're saying, well, I amlifting, I'm just doing it a
(07:17):
different way.
Well, the problem is if youdon't do it the right way,
keeping the intensity at areasonable level, at least
enough to maintain your muscle,then you're gonna have a
problem.
So that's the first one.
The the second one is thisuncomfortable reality about what
happens to strength and whathappens to muscle.
Let's clarify this right now.
(07:38):
If you're gonna be successfulduring a fat loss phase, you are
not going to linearly gainstrength while losing body fat.
And the only exception, thelittle asterisk on that
footnote, is if you're brand newand you're just starting this
for the very first time, but ifyou're doing that, why the heck
are you in a calorie deficitright off the bat?
You're not, you haven'tlistened to the show, obviously.
(07:58):
I can point you to an episodelike your very first cut, which
we did, I think earlier in 2025.
Maybe that was last year.
But you should not be in adeficit right off the bat.
Anyway, you should be workingto build strength and build a
foundation, not gain weight, notlose weight, and then go into
fat loss phase.
Anyway, enough of that rent.
My point is you're not gonna,your goal isn't to gain PRs and
(08:19):
gain strength in absolute termswhile losing body weight.
And I know that's not what youwant to hear because you want
body recomp, don't you?
But being in a big deficit tolose fat, that's not the goal.
And if you understand thatreality, it separates you the
people who do this successfully,lose fat, build muscle from
those who don't.
So when you're in a caloriedeficit, several things are
(08:41):
happening that affect yourtraining performance.
Your energy availability is, ofcourse, lower because, well,
you're eating less.
Your recovery is compromisedbecause your body has fewer
resources to repair tissue.
Your glycogen stores aredepleted because you're not
eating as much and you'reprobably not eating nearly as
many carbs.
And that affects your abilityto produce the force on those,
(09:01):
you know, in those liftingsessions.
And if you're losing bodyweight, your leverages literally
change, which can make the sameweights feel heavier.
And you're just lighter.
You're lighter.
You can't, you don't have asmuch cross-sectional area to
produce the force that you didbefore.
And of course, we're trying toget lighter, so that's okay.
That's a trade-off that wemake.
Now, my coach, Andy Baker,fantastic strength coach, has
(09:23):
been on the show at least, what,three times?
He talks about this all thetime that lighter lifters lose
more strength when cutting thanheavier lifters.
That's that's uh kind of a sidetangent on this that's
important to understand.
And if you think about thephysics of it, it makes sense.
A 150-pound person who loses 10pounds is losing a bigger
percentage of their body weightthan a 220-pound person who
(09:45):
loses the same 10 pounds.
And oftentimes the amounts ofweight loss are kind of similar,
even when the person's baselineweight is quite different
between two different people,and that's where we get these
discrepancies.
So, what's the goal during fatloss?
It is not to PR your strength.
Your goal is to preserve yourmuscle.
That's a different thing, it'sa different goal.
(10:07):
So when we accept that, we canthen accept that absolute
strength will probably dipduring a cut, and that's normal.
But relative strength mayactually increase.
What do I mean by that?
If you're squatting 225 forreps at 180 pounds body weight,
and then you cut to 165 whilemaintaining 225, well, what is
(10:31):
just happened?
What just happened?
Your strength relative to yourbody weight went up, even though
the absolute number didn'tchange.
And this could be a mentalchallenge to grasp because it
feels like we're we'reregressing or we're only
holding.
When in fact we're gettingrelatively stronger, but it's
because we're losing bodyweight.
So the real win during a cut ismaintaining your muscle mass.
(10:53):
You're going to lookdramatically better when you do
that.
That's the goal.
That's the body comp goal.
You'll be leaner, you'll bemore defined, you'll have kept
the hard-earned muscle you builtduring your building phases.
Exactly what bodybuilders aretrying to do all the time.
They're trying to spend an offseason training super hard,
eating a ton of food, building,building, building, building,
improving.
And then they want toefficiently cut that off.
Efficiently and quickly, butnot so quickly, that they lose
(11:15):
muscle and reveal thathard-earned muscle.
And that's why I tell people tothink of a fat loss phase as a
maintenance phase for muscle.
You're not trying to grow,you're trying to hold on to what
you have while your nutritionhandles the fat loss.
And that changes how you train.
We're going to get into thatnow.
And one of the ways it changeshow you train is that it takes a
lot less volume to maintainmuscle.
(11:37):
So you don't have to worry asmuch about the volume if you
don't have the recovery for it.
All right.
So let's let's, if you takenothing else from this episode,
remember this.
During fat loss, try to keepyour intensity high while
reducing your volume.
That is, I'll say, almost auniversal principle that works
for almost everybody.
And that's the way I'm going toput it because nothing is
(11:58):
absolute, right?
If we're going to be nuancedabout things.
This is the opposite of whatmost people do.
A lot of people keep volume thesame or they increase it
thinking more training, more fatloss, and then they're
exhausted, their lifts crash,they lose muscle.
No, we don't want to do that.
The research is clear on this.
Training intensity of about 75to 85% of your one rep max
maintains muscle beautifullyduring a deficit, right?
(12:22):
You don't need high volume tomaintain muscle.
High volumes have diminishingreturns because your recovery
capacity is limited.
What why is that?
Well, volume is total number ofhard sets per muscle group per
week.
And during a building phase,you might do upwards of 15 to
even 20.
I mean, that's really the highend, but I'll say 10 to 15 hard
(12:42):
sets per muscle group to perweek.
During a cut, I would just dropthat to about 10 to 12, maybe
even below 10 for some musclegroups.
Because again, we're thinkingin terms of maintaining here and
balancing the stimulus tofatigue, given we have limited
recovery.
So the key is keeping theweight on the bar heavy.
Again, when I say weight on thebar, I just mean whatever
(13:02):
weight you're pushing forwhatever reps for whatever
machine or implement you'reusing.
Okay.
I love barbells, I'm using thatpredominantly, but there's
obviously a bunch of otherthings.
And it also means trainingclose to failure.
That does, that never changes.
That's a principle.
And there, therefore, you'resending the signal to your body
that it needs this muscle.
High intensity, and intensitymeans percentage of your one rep
(13:23):
max, means weight on the bar.
It doesn't mean sweating andvolume.
And we say intensity, we meanload here.
It tells your body this muscleis still necessary.
Lower volume then reduces yoursystemic fatigue, which is a big
factor on how well you recoverand reduces soreness, gives you
more energy, allows you to makebest use of your nutrition and
(13:45):
your sleep.
So for something like your mainlifts, you're still gonna stick
to, say, your three to six orthree to eight rep range.
For your accessories, you'restill probably gonna be around
six to twelve.
But maybe you're doing fewersets.
Maybe, not always.
Interestingly, there are somereally effective fat loss
programs that I've run that usea set-based progression where
(14:06):
you're increasing sets, butyou're not increasing the load
and you're just keeping the loadreasonably high the whole time.
You know, anywhere from roughly70 to 90% of your max ish,
maybe as low as 65%, but you'restill in that regime.
So a lot of people strugglementally when it comes to this
because more, more, more feelsproductive.
But during a cut, more is oftencounterproductive.
(14:28):
And in fact, more is oftencounterproductive no matter
what.
One of the biggest, I guess,counterintuitive things about
this about fitness.
So your margin of error foroverreach, overtraining,
overreaching shrinks in adeficit.
Now, I'm not worried about anyof you really overtraining in
(14:48):
the classic sense, because mostof you are just not training
hard enough, but you might beovertraining in the quantity and
fatigue sense, if that makessense.
Right.
And then it just smashes youand then it's counterproductive.
So during a building phase, forexample, you might be hitting a
lift twice or three times aweek, say four, five, six
working sets per session.
(15:09):
If we're doing like accessoriesin there plus the main lift,
let's say, and it comes out to12 sets a week.
During a cut, you might dropsets or you might drop
frequency, or you might not andjust maintain, but you don't get
you don't get more volume thanthat.
If anything, you might drop it.
And so your overall volume forall your lifts across all
(15:32):
sessions might be the same orless, generally.
You're you're generally notgonna increase it, is my point.
And you're always trainingwithin one to three repshi of
failure.
Classic mechanical tensionprinciple that we care about for
progressive overload.
Understanding you're not gonnakeep increasing your strength
linearly here.
That's what gets confusing topeople.
So that brings us to the nexttopic.
(15:53):
See, I'm segueing naturallyfrom one to the next.
The next topic isauto-regulation.
Auto-regulation.
During a building phase, sowhen you're not into deficit,
you can get away with pushingthrough when you're tired and
hitting the reps you're tryingto hit because you have other
reserves usually from your food,for example, or even just the
(16:14):
fact that you've been eatingmeans you can slack off in other
areas and still have enoughrecovery capacity.
Maybe, hopefully.
But during a cut, youdefinitely do not for the most
part.
If you're in a reasonable cut,if you're in a very, very, very
light cut or you're aiming forbody recomp, you know, that
changes the game a little bit.
But let's just assume a normalcut where you're cutting, say,
500 calories a day, and this iswhere auto-regulation becomes
(16:35):
really helpful.
Auto regulation means you'regonna adjust your training,
you're gonna regulate yourtraining based on how you feel
and perform on any given day.
That's the auto part.
Auto, not meaning automatic,but auto as in it happens based
on you on that day, right?
I'm not very good at explainingthe word itself, but it's
(16:56):
adjusting your training based onhow you feel perform rather
than sticking to the exact,we'll say, loads and volumes.
And this is where having yourprogram set up in a way that
just naturally usesauto-regulation so you don't
have to think about it ishelpful.
Now, a lot of people will say,okay, that means RPE or RIR,
rate of perceived exertion orreps in reserve.
(17:17):
I actually prefer just usingrep ranges for this.
Like for me, auto-regulationcomes from rep ranges.
It can also, though, come from,let's say, testing a 1RM and
using a back-off from that, forexample, where the one RM, the
one rep max, is that day's onerep max, not an all-time one rep
(17:38):
max.
And this is the way to tell onthat day where am I?
Another way to do this is usingAMRAP, as many reps as possible
on a final set, so that thenext session you know what
you're capable of.
That is a little trickier andmore advanced.
So I'm not going to get into ittoo much.
But for the most part, ifyou're using a rep range instead
of sets across, so instead ofthree sets of five, it might be
(17:58):
three sets of four to six.
And that way you have a littlebit of flexibility in there.
And I would also say on yoursecond and third sets, if you
need to drop the weight to stayin the rep range, go ahead and
do it.
That because of theauto-regulation, right?
Because you feel you need to dothat.
And you'll become more and moreexperienced with this over
time.
This is not an excuse to backoff and not train heavy and
(18:19):
hard.
You still want to get withinone to three rep shy failure.
It's just getting there mayrequire a little bit of a
trade-off versus just linearlypushing it like you would in the
past.
Right.
So on a good day, oh, you'refeeling great.
Maybe you're doing one of theseweekend diet approaches I
recommend where you're refuelingon the weekend and then going
back into the deficit on theweekday.
Well, Monday, you may feelreally good and get everything
(18:42):
that you planned andeverything's like a two R R I R,
right?
Two reps shy from failure.
Perfect, great.
But other days, in fact, mostdays in fat loss, you're
probably going to be morefatigued.
And if you hit the same weight,it might feel like one rep shy
of failure.
So you either do that, or ifit's a grind, because you don't
really want it to grind, youknow, you drop off the weight
(19:04):
for your back off sets, right?
So you kind of have to feel itout a little bit.
But if it's built in with repranges and with back offs and
things like that, you can youcan do it really well.
Speaking of back offs, I dolove back off sets and fat loss,
where you might do two sets ofyour lifts.
The first set is at a lower reprange, the second set is a
little bit higher, but you dropthe weight.
Boom.
It's a great way to deal withthis.
(19:25):
So the key here is beingflexible, but not using excuses.
It's kind of a fine line basedon your load selection and based
on the percentages and the repranges, right?
You're not married to hittingexact specific numbers.
It's auto regulation.
So with the top set back offset approach, by the way, it
doesn't have to be two sets.
You could still do three sets.
(19:46):
You could do two or three backoff sets.
Or you can do what we do inlike the Westside style
conjugate program, which AndyBaker introduced me to, where
you test a 1RM and then you backoff from that.
You do, let's say, 90% for twoto four or 80% for.
Or three to six or somethinglike that.
And this approach thennaturally adjusts to your
readiness and fatigue level onthat day, where the goal is to
(20:09):
keep training hard enough tomaintain your muscle, but not so
hard that you dig yourself intoa hole that you can't recover
from.
Because remember, again, whatis your most limited resource
during a cut?
It is your recovery.
So now let's talk about that.
Again, another amazing segue.
I'm proud of myself, guys.
It doesn't usually happen thisway.
Recovery.
This is where most people failduring fat loss.
(20:29):
When you're in a caloriedeficit, recovery capacity is
far lower than it was when youweren't.
And even lower than you mightthink.
And guys, ladies and gentlemen,for those of you who've been
dieting for a long time and needto just spend some time out of
a diet, this doesn't apply toyou.
I don't want you to take thisadvice from that position.
I would rather you recover, getto maintenance, fuel up, spend
(20:52):
there, developing yourfoundational habits and your
behaviors, then do a fat lossphase from a good place.
Okay, that was a side tangent.
So recovery drops, which meansyou accumulate fatigue faster
and it takes longer to dissipatethat fatigue.
And some of that is veryever-present, literal fatigue,
like your low back is justfeeling achy from your Romanian
(21:13):
deadlifts or your squats orsomething, and it's just not
going away.
And you got to listen to thatbecause that's like bending
before it breaks, right?
I don't mean break like you'regonna break your spine.
I just mean from an ability tohold on to things and progress
and really train the way youwant.
So the first lever is reducingvolume, which we already
covered.
The second lever, if you needto do it, is to reduce
(21:34):
frequency, where instead ofdoing four days a week, you do
three days a week.
I love this move.
It gives you an extra day ofsleep as well.
It gives you a little lesspressure, and then you can kind
of focus on some really good,efficient quality sessions.
Now that doesn't mean you can'tgo the opposite direction, and
three or four days a weekbecomes five or six, but very
(21:56):
tiny sessions, because that'sanother way to switch things
around without necessarilychanging the frequency or just
splitting things up across theweek.
Anyway, you have to figure outwhat's what works for you.
And you also have to optimizethe other things that support
recovery.
So, what would that be?
Well, sleep.
Come on, guys, sleep.
If you weren't getting goodsleep out of a deficit, oh damn,
(22:18):
you really have to get goodsleep during a deficit, right?
If you're getting six hours,you probably need seven or
eight, right?
That's gonna affect yourrecovery and your hunger and
your performance.
Do the things, get your roomdark and cool, stick to a
consistent schedule, all thethings.
Stress management matters moreduring a cut as well.
Chronic stress elevatescortisol, it promotes muscle
(22:39):
breakdown, promotes fat storage,right?
We're not trying to do that.
We're trying to lose fat.
We're trying to call on ourresources the right way.
We want to manage our stressthrough walking, through
breathing, whatever works foryou.
Protein intake, people don'trealize this.
Oftentimes it needs to go upduring a cut.
If you're already hitting 0.7or 0.8 grams per pound at least,
(23:00):
stay at least there, but tryjacking it up to up to one gram
per pound and see if that makesa difference to your hunger, for
example.
Okay, and for your ability tostick to this.
Not everybody needs to do that,but it's you definitely need to
have that minimum, if not more,during fat loss.
And then I want to I want youto consider adding light
movement for recovery.
This is gonna live you give youa little boost to your neat,
(23:23):
non-exercise activitythermogenesis, and might
actually help with the calorieburning side of the equation
anyway.
This is your, I'll call it,optimal form of cardio if we're
gonna add cardio, and that iswalking, easy biking, some
mobility stuff that you enjoy.
Maybe it's yoga, right?
Nothing that's interfering withyour lifting or adding more
stress, things that increaseblood flow without adding
fatigue.
(23:43):
Okay.
Recovery is not just about therest, it's supporting your
body's ability to adapt thewhole time during fat loss
because you have fewerresources.
Now, speaking of managing allthese variables, because I know
it sounds a little overwhelmingwhen you're during a cut.
And that's why, that's whypeople struggle with this
sometimes.
But if you're ready to do this,then do it the right way.
(24:05):
So I want to tell you aboutsomething that can make this
entire process dramaticallyeasier.
Some of you know, and if youdon't, I'm telling you now, I've
been working on an AI-poweredcoaching app called Fitness Lab,
designed specifically to helpwith situations like this.
If you're in a fat loss phase,you've got to adjust these
things properly.
Your training, your nutrition,you're not sure if you're doing
(24:27):
too much or too little.
Fitness lab is gonna figurethat out with you and for you.
It's a coaching intelligencelayer.
You tell it what you're tryingto do as you go because it
prompts you, it hasconversations with you.
There's a chat feature and itknows what phase you're in and
it will help you make thosesmart decisions to pivot and to
adjust to your training.
(24:48):
Not make excuses, not back off.
It still does a great job ofprodding you in a good way to
keep you accountable, but itlooks at your biofeedback and
your sleep and your stress.
And by the time this episodecomes out, we should have the
Apple Health integration turnedon, which levels it up even
further.
And by the way, we're comingout on Android as well.
So again, depends on when thisepisode comes out, when this
(25:09):
stuff is available.
But the app is already out andit's incredible.
The feedback we're gettingabout how helpful it's been,
it's like having a coach in yourpocket.
Some people say it's likehaving Philip in your pocket.
I hope that's not a terriblething.
Uh, if you like the podcast, itsounds weird to me, but it is
what it is, right?
If you log that you're feelingfatigued, if your biofeedback
(25:29):
scores are low, if your lastworkout was logged as feeling
harder, because it's gonna askyou that did this feel harder
than last time?
And you're like, yeah, actuallyit did.
Fitness Lab's gonna take thatand suggest something to change.
It might pull back on thevolume and adjust your load for
the session based on thatfeedback.
So you can still hit it hard,but not feel like past the point
(25:50):
of no return with your fatigue.
If you're being consistent,hitting targets, feeling good,
it might push the progression alittle bit, even during fat
loss, because you can handle it.
So, in addition to it beingable to pull in your data,
sleep, your steps, your heartrate variability, your rest,
resting heart rate, all of thatstuff with Apple Health, all of
that, plus everything you tellit is going to give you
(26:11):
extremely personalized coaching.
Really like nothing you've everbeen able to have before
because of technology.
So the app is now available.
And from December 17 to January2nd, you can get 20% off.
Go to witsandweights.com slashapp, check it out.
There's a two-minute quiz thatwill give you a plan before you
even decide whether you want theapp.
(26:31):
So that'll tell you, hey, yeah,this thing's for me or not.
All right, no pressure.
Witsandweights.com slash app.
All right, let's get back toother adjustments you make to
your training during fat loss.
Let's talk about carbs and fuelbecause an underrated aspect of
training during a cut is carbsin general, as well as the
(26:52):
timing of the carbs.
Carbs, carbohydrates, one ofthe three macros, of course,
along with fats and protein,fuel your glycolytic lifting.
They support your centralnervous system.
They do help protect and sparemuscle, they reduce your
perception of effort, theyimprove recovery.
You guys know how much I lovecarbs.
And if you didn't know that,and you know that now, and
(27:13):
you're wondering, really?
I thought carbs are bad, stickaround.
We love carbs on widths andweights because they are
magical.
And they're magical.
During a cut, carb timing isalso important.
And the strategy here, becausethe carbs are lower.
So here's the thing.
Here's the thing, guys.
In a cut, your calories arelower, but your protein's the
same or higher.
Ergo, or as they say in Latin,QED, or the three little dots,
(27:37):
if you ever did geometry proofs,uh talking to my nerds out
there.
Ergo, the carbs have to be alot lower.
If protein's the same andcalories are lower, the carbs
have to be a lot lower.
So in that case, you're down to150, 100, maybe 70 grams of
carbs, depending on where youare.
Where do you put the carbs?
Well, put them around yourworkout.
(27:57):
If you train in the morning,load your carbs pre-workout,
post-workout in the morning.
So that's like maybe that'sbreakfast and your midday meal
or lunch.
Depend depends on when thetiming, right?
If you train in the evening,your carbs at lunch and dinner,
meals further from training canbe lower carb.
They can have protein and fat,vegetables, low to almost no
(28:19):
carbs potentially, right?
We we still like some balance,but you can do that.
And vegetables are a carb, andthey're because they're fibrous,
they will help balance out thedigestion of blood sugars and
all of that.
But I would have your carbsaround your workout because
that's when it's most beneficialfor your performance, for your
recovery.
So that's a strategic way to doit.
And if you don't do it thatway, if carbs are low, if
(28:41):
they're poorly timed, if youtrain fasted during fat loss,
your training might feel awful.
Or if you're like, mytraining's okay, and now you try
having a banana before you workout, tell me the difference.
If you don't feel great, thenthat's you.
The vast majority of people arelike, whoa, that is fuel.
That is like nitrous oxide.
Nitrous oxide?
Yeah, yeah.
(29:01):
What is the stuff that whenyou're driving a non-street
legal sports car and you want togo faster, right?
Nitrous.
So if you don't do that, you'regonna feel more flat, you're
not gonna have a good pump,you're not gonna push as hard,
all of that.
You're gonna have a betterperformance, most likely, if you
time your carbs around yourtraining.
And you know, I do I neversuggest extremely low carb, even
(29:24):
during a cut.
If you can get at least 100grams of carbs, that would be
ideal.
I know many of you can'tbecause your calories are down
to like 14, 13, 12, maybe 1100if you're really petite, even
lower than that.
So it really is trading off onemacro for the other.
And oftentimes that's trying tokeep fats reasonably low so you
can do that.
Not super low, just reasonable,like 20% instead of 30% of
(29:46):
calories.
All right.
So one more mistake, I guess, Iwant to address is cardio
itself.
All right, a lot of people addcardio, just the big umbrella
term cardio, to quote unquoteaccelerate fat loss.
And it sounds appealing, right?
Cardio can be intense, it canfeel productive, it's exercise.
Sometimes it doesn't take thatlong.
(30:07):
Many of you hate cardio, butsome of you don't.
Some of you like it.
Not many.
Maybe that's my own biasputting on the on the population
listening to the show.
But during a deficit, whenyou're also strength training,
cardio has to be very, verystrategic because too much
high-intensity cardio can be toostressful.
And I mean like a lot ofrunning, even a lot of
(30:29):
high-intensity other cardio,like biking or something like
that, like too much of it caninterfere with your glycogen
stores because you just don'thave that many carbs.
If you lift, if you do itbefore lifting, you're really
gonna screw up your training.
If you do it after lifting orin between your training
sessions, you've got to thinkabout when so it doesn't impact
your recovery too much.
And this is where the frequencyand when you train and all of
(30:52):
that can make a difference.
So, cardio, especially at highintensity or lots of volume, can
increase your systemic fatiguebecause it does tax your central
nervous system.
It can also do a little bit ofmuscle damage.
And I don't mean that as a likescary thing, it's just
preventing the muscles fromadapting or recovering as fast
if you do something likerunning, for example.
(31:12):
And then it's gonna increaseyour overall stress.
Now, again, exercise andtraining always increase stress
a little bit.
That's okay.
It's a hormetic stress, but ifyou're doing a lot of it, it
could increase more your chronicstress.
And then that does the oppositeof what we want.
It promotes, it promotes acatabolic environment, which
means breakdown of muscle,especially when you're in a
(31:34):
calorie deficit.
So, what do I recommendinstead?
Well, anything lower intensity,like walking, easy cycling,
rowing at a conversational pace,and also the occasional
sprinting can be fit in there.
But I mean the anabolicsprinting, like we talk about on
the show, that's very, veryshort, very high percentage of
your capability for a shortperiod, because those are highly
(31:55):
that's still highly recoverableand will support your
metabolism, not going tointerfere with appetite.
They're gonna increase yourneed a little bit still, they'll
burn some more calories andthey won't interfere with your
strength training and yourrecovery.
I would also do it after youlift, at least several hours,
maybe on your off day.
You know, you got to be smartabout it, keep it low intensity.
It's a tool.
(32:16):
And I have talked to manylifters on the show who are big
fans of a decent amount ofcardio, but it's all relative.
It's relative to your recoverycapacity.
So, really, that's all it is.
Remember your deficit, yourcalorie deficit is what is
driving fat loss, period.
Right now, your cardio may upyour expenditure a bit so that
you can eat more and still be inthe deficit, and that's okay.
(32:37):
So, in that case, cardio shouldalways support your goals.
That's it.
It should support your goals.
It's contextual.
All right, a couple more thingsto cover because this is
becoming somewhat of adefinitive episode.
I want to talk about assistancework briefly.
Assistance work meaning thenon, you know, you've got your
main lifts and then yourassistance work, which is the
higher volume accessory work.
(32:59):
Now, when you're in a buildingphase, you're gonna have a ton
of that, probably, right?
Like you might have five or sixdifferent exercises every
training session, and you'reaccumulating all this volume and
you're creating all thismetabolic stress because you're
trying to grow your muscles andyour strength.
During a cut, think about thefact that you are not trying to
add to your muscularity or toyour strength.
It'd be nice if we could, butit competes with the goal of
(33:22):
trying to lose fat, sometimes toa big degree, where it's not
even possible.
Now you're doing neither.
So the guideline for assistancework is probably something like
one to two hard sets each,maybe five to eight reps.
Make sure you're rotatingmovements over time.
I don't mean every session, butyou know, you're going through
training blocks, let's say, soyou don't have repetitive
(33:44):
stress, depending on howstressful the lift is.
And that's it.
You know, it's probably not thetime to be experimenting with
lots of drop sets and supersetsand pump work and finishers and
all that, because it's just notgonna have the payoff.
It's just not gonna have thepayoff.
Now, some people might disagreewith me.
There's some really greatlifters out there who might say,
no, you know, it's okay to doall this stuff.
I'm not saying it's not okay.
I'm saying you have to pick andchoose based on what your goal
(34:08):
is.
It's less important than yourmain lifts, in my opinion.
During a cut, recovery islimited.
Dedicate your resources to thelifts that matter most.
Keep those, the squat patterns,the deadlifts, the pressing,
the pulling in place.
Keep those patterns in place.
Maintain all those big muscleswith efficient movements that
take less time, and then use theisolation work to just fill in
(34:28):
the gaps.
You also have to think aboutjoint health, avoiding injury.
You know, when you're fatigued,you might not be lifting as
carefully or with as much focus.
All that comes into play aswell when it comes to these
things.
And that leads to the nextthing, which is exercise
selection.
I would stick with what youknow during fat loss.
I would say fat loss is not thetime to introduce a whole bunch
(34:49):
of new exercises and learn awhole bunch of new movement
patterns because you may notremember I mentioned before your
leverages are different, yourbody's changing.
Like it may not actually payoff to even learn certain things
in this time because it's notgoing to feel the same when
you're eating more again.
So I would stick with thingsyou're proficient at where you
have good form and know how toload.
That doesn't mean you can'tswitch them around, right?
(35:10):
Over over over cycles, even ifyou haven't, it's not that it
doesn't have to be the samething you were just doing, but
it's something that you alreadyhave some neuromuscular
knowledge of.
And of course, that shouldinclude all the basic movement
patterns we've been talkingabout, squats and deads and
presses and pulls and all that,and then some simple
accessories.
You know, don't start learningOlympic lifts during a cut, for
(35:31):
example, if you've never donethat before.
That's all I'm talking about.
Okay.
It's stressful to do that.
It's mentally and physicallystressful, requires more focus,
requires more practice sets,more warm-up, more volume.
And then that could increaseyour injury risk.
Maybe I'm being too cautioushere.
Let me know.
You experienced trainers andcoaches out there, if I'm full
of it, let me know.
But this is my observation.
(35:51):
I think a fat loss phase shouldbe very targeted at what you're
trying to accomplish.
And in my opinion, when you dothat, it doesn't have to be as
long because you're doing itefficiently and then you get
through it in say eight weeksinstead of 12 or 16.
Now, I mentioned joint stressbriefly.
I do want to mention thisbecause if certain movements
start bothering your jointsduring a cut, which can happen
(36:12):
because recovery is compromised,it's okay to modify the
movement.
You know, switch to a high baror safety bar instead of a low
bar.
Use different grips, differentwidths, different potentially
ranges of motion, depends onwhat we're talking about.
I would say fat loss phasesshould be kind of boring from an
exercise selection standpoint,where you're not trying to be
(36:32):
creative.
And if you're chasing programsthat are like fat loss programs,
that's a red flag for me, to behonest.
All right, let's quickly talkabout the psychological side of
training during a cut.
Just be realistic here, justlike with the diet side of
things, it's not gonna feel asgood as during a building
building phase.
You're just gonna feel kind offlatter.
You're not gonna feel the pump,most likely, because you don't
(36:53):
have the calories and the carbsand all that.
Your strength is gonna dip, aswe mentioned.
Your sleep is probably gonna beharder to come by, you're gonna
have more hunger.
All of this is normal.
It's the cost of being in adeficit, and I don't want to
sugarcoat it for you.
So the mindset shift here isyou are not chasing performance
during a cut, you're maintainingyour performance.
If even though I do want you tothink of, you know, I'm I'm
(37:16):
see, this is tough.
Depends on how your mind works.
If it helps you to have astretch goal and say, look, I'm
gonna try to get stronger andbuild muscle, even though I
might not, great.
That actually does kind of workfor me.
For some people, it's verydiscouraging because then when
they see the numbers staying thesame, they feel like they're
failing.
So it's kind of setting thoserealistic expectations.
If your strength is the same,but you lose 15 pounds, that's a
(37:38):
massive win, right?
Don't compare your current cutalso to a previous building
phase or someone who's not in adeficit.
Stay in the lane and trust theprocess for you and compare
yourself to yourself, right?
And not to yourself when youwere building.
It's it's temporary discomfort,and it's just that it's
temporary, but it is gonnahappen.
You are gonna have discomfort.
(37:59):
And then when you get back tomaintenance or surplus, your
strength is gonna shoot back up.
You're gonna look incrediblebecause you preserved everything
during the cup.
And of course, you're gonnatrack a lot more than just a few
things.
You're not gonna just trackweight on the bar, you're gonna
track your body weight trend,your body composition, your
clothes, your sleep, yourhunger, your energy, your mood.
Because if your strength dipsslightly, but all the other
things are pre good, you'relosing fat, you're sleeping
(38:22):
okay, you're not miserable,you're not that hungry.
You're doing great, you'redoing great, it's okay.
All right, so let's recap thekey adjustments.
Accept that strength will dipslightly.
Your goal is to maintainmuscle, not gain strength.
Keep intensity high, at least75% of your max, but probably
reduce the total volume.
Maybe as much as 30 to 50%, butthat really depends on your
(38:43):
response and how aggressive thedeficit is.
Use auto-regulation, whateverthat means for you.
Rep ranges, top set, back offsets.
Manage recovery aggressively.
Now that that's soundscounterintuitive, right?
Be aggressive with yourrecovery.
Sleep, stress management,protein, the low intensity
movement, all of that.
Time your carbs aroundtraining, avoid too much
(39:05):
high-intensity cardio, keepassistance work minimal relative
to your main heavy lifts, stickwith familiar exercises and set
realistic expectations.
And if you follow these guys,you will preserve muscle, lose
fat, and come out of your cutlooking lean, strong, and ready
to build again.
So before we wrap it up, I wantto mention Fitness Lab one more
(39:26):
time because this is exactlythe kind of situation where
having an AI coaching layer thatI've spent blood, sweat, and
tears developing for you guyswith all of these philosophies
and principles can make a hugedifference.
When you are managing a fatloss phase, things are
stressful.
You're juggling a deficit, yourtraining, your biofeedback,
your recovery, your macros, allthat stuff, and it can feel
(39:47):
overwhelming.
And sometimes it's hard to knowif you're on track.
That is why I developed FitnessLab.
It helps you make thosedecisions with confidence.
It kind of takes the stress offof you.
It does a lot of that thinkingfor you, it takes some of the
emotional stress.
I know it's a machine, butuntil you try it, don't knock
it.
Try it.
And you've got to give it alittle bit of time.
You've got to give it at least,you know, a few weeks just so
(40:07):
that it starts to learn fromyou.
Because it's going to take yourdata and your progress and how
you're feeling and tell you whatto do next.
It's going to suggest it andyou can chat with it.
It's now available on iPhoneand Android, integrates with
Apple Health, and you get 20%off from December 17th through
January 2nd.
Go to witsandweights.com slashapp just to learn about it.
Take a two-minute quiz so youcan see if it's right for you.
(40:29):
You don't even have to buy theapp until you decide it's right
for you.
Witsandweights.com slash app.
All right, that is it fortoday's episode.
I hope this gave you a clearframework for how to adjust your
strength training during fatloss so you can preserve every
bit of muscle built.
Until next time, keep usingyour wits, lifting those
(40:50):
weights, and remember to alwaystrain with intention.
I'll talk to you next time hereon the Wits and Weights
podcast.
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