Principled approaches to adjust training between bulking and cutting

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

Hi all,

as alternating between bulking and cutting is a part of the game of lifting weights, I was asking myself the following question: does there exist a principled approach to adjust training when switching from bulking to cutting (and vice versa) ?

The general idea is that cutting limits recovery, so adjusting volume is in order. In the past I've mostly been playing by ear and removing sets here and there when going from a bulk to a cut, or sometimes taking a rest day when fatigued but I thought a principled approach could be helpful, that is given the programming currently used for bulking and knowing the planned caloric deficit, propose a reasonable starting point for the cutting phase (of course, this recommendation would just be a starting point and training should then be adjusted based on actual response, you know the drill).

So I came up with the following reasoning: if one assumes that the amount of work that one can recover from scales linearly with the caloric input (this is a big assumption, but probably reasonable if using reasonable deficits and surpluses), first compute the ratio between cutting calories and bulking calories, and subsequently adjust sets and reps to make sure that the amount of work performed is reduced by the same amount. In order to measure work, pick a metric such as HNFM, INOL, Exertion Load or Stress Index.

To illustrate computations, I typically bulk with 3000 kcal and cut with 2300 kcal, so that I need to reduce the amount of work by a factor of 2300/3000 = 77%. I believe that this ratio is quite typical for lifters with some experience under their belt, unless you are doing something ridiculous like a PSMF or a GOMAD-fueled Maxi-Bulk. For instance if I'm currently doing 5@6 5@7 5@8 5@7 5@7 for squats during my bulk which represents an HNFM of 554, then I should switch to 5@6 5@7 5@8 5@6 during my cut which represents an HNFM of 440 which is approximately 77% of 554. I ran those computations with a spreadsheet (see results at the end of message) for sets of 3, sets of 5 and sets of 8, and the outcome is always the same, irrespective of the rep range (3,5 and 8) and the metric (HNFM, INOL, Exertion Load, Stress Index):

Remove the fifth set, and reduce the RPE of the fourth set by 1 point.

For instance:

3@6 3@7 3@8 3@7 3@7 -> 3@6 3@7 3@8 3@6
5@6 5@7 5@8 5@7 5@7 -> 5@6 5@7 5@8 5@6
8@6 8@7 8@8 8@7 8@7 -> 8@6 8@7 8@8 8@6

If the RPE of the fourth set is not brought down by 1 point, one almost always overshoots the target metric. Not only is this super simple, but it somehow tends to align with my own training experience.

I'd be interested in hearing everyone's thoughts on this (nerdy calculations are below).

3@6 3@7 3@8 3@7 3@7

HNFM = 554
INOL = 0,91
EXERTION LOAD = 6,51
STRESS INDEX = 3,28

3@6 3@7 3@8 3@6

HNFM = 422 (target 425)
INOL = 0,71 (target 0,7)
EXERTION LOAD = 4,97 (target 4,99)
STRESS INDEX = 2,46 (target 2,51)

5@6 5@7 5@8 5@7 5@7

HNFM = 572
INOL = 1,19
EXERTION LOAD = 9,01
STRESS INDEX = 3,28

5@6 5@7 5@8 5@6

HNFM = 440 (target 438)
INOL = 0,94 (target 0,91)
EXERTION LOAD = 6,88 (target 6,91)
STRESS INDEX = 2,46 (target 2,51)

8@6 8@7 8@8 8@7 8@7

HNFM = 559
INOL = 1,49
EXERTION LOAD = 11,24
STRESS INDEX = 3,28

8@6 8@7 8@8 8@6

HNFM = 435 (target 428)
INOL = 1,18 (target 1,15)
EXERTION LOAD = 8,58 (target 8,61)
STRESS INDEX = 2,46 (target 2,51)

[mbasic]

whye dont you just add fahive pounds?

[OverheadDeadlifts]

if one assumes that the amount of work that one can recover from scales linearly with the caloric input (this is a big assumption, but probably reasonable if using reasonable deficits and surpluses)

I have a very strong feeling that this isn’t the case. It’s just difficult to accurately scale the intensity as bodyweight drops (somewhat due to ego) and as a result the actual intensity relative to 1rm creeps up. Like I don’t think 5x5 @80% of 1rm is more or less fatiguing if you’re in a modest deficit or surplus as long as it’s ACTUALLY 80% and your cutting isn’t making it 81% this week then 82% the week after until you’re barely squeaking out 5x5 with 85%. Your work capacity didn’t decrease, you’re just doing a totally different program in terms of intensity.

I also think the ‘high intensity, low volume’ thing was a result of people cutting with Keto or low carbs. The drop off in performance after the first set with low carbs is very steep compared to with adequate carbs. Keep carbs as high as possible when cutting and you can absolutely keep volume the same.

I used to change my programming based on cuts and it just made me small and weak. Now I keep programming the same. Went from 103kg bw to 83kg bw last year. Lost less than 5% off my bench.

TL;DR I think a good program is a good program whether you’re cutting, maintaining or bulking as long as you autoregulate.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

@mbasic

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

@OverheadDeadlifts yeah that's a good point, my calculations apply if you're actually hitting the RPE's that were prescribed (or if you are regularly testing 1RMs using an AMRAP or whatever). I would expect the actual working weights to stay static or drop if you are cutting.

Also I'm curious on how you changed your programming, by how much did you scale back the volume ? And how big was your deficit ? In my anectodal experience I never really got "small and weak" by just dropping 1 set and eating a 500 kcal deficit so i'm curious.

[OverheadDeadlifts]

@CheekiBreekiFitness

But the question is should you be dropping that set?

I actually increased the volume since I’d been trying to PR my bench prior to cutting. It makes most sense to me to keep volume as high as possible during a cut. It’s not like I’m going to setting any new PRs on a cut so I may as well keep volume high and try to make the hypertrophy signal as big as I can rather than trying to hold on to top end strength.

I just removed 1000ish calories, kept fat very low and added a couple days of LISS. I had a lot of fluff to lose so starting with an aggressive deficit worked fine. I didn’t even have to adjust the calories after that, I kept dropping weight for like 6 months as the deficit went from high > medium > low > maintenance by itself.

[MarkKO]

if one assumes that the amount of work that one can recover from scales linearly with the caloric input (this is a big assumption, but probably reasonable if using reasonable deficits and surpluses)

I have a very strong feeling that this isn’t the case. It’s just difficult to accurately scale the intensity as bodyweight drops (somewhat due to ego) and as a result the actual intensity relative to 1rm creeps up. Like I don’t think 5x5 @80% of 1rm is more or less fatiguing if you’re in a modest deficit or surplus as long as it’s ACTUALLY 80% and your cutting isn’t making it 81% this week then 82% the week after until you’re barely squeaking out 5x5 with 85%. Your work capacity didn’t decrease, you’re just doing a totally different program in terms of intensity.

I also think the ‘high intensity, low volume’ thing was a result of people cutting with Keto or low carbs. The drop off in performance after the first set with low carbs is very steep compared to with adequate carbs. Keep carbs as high as possible when cutting and you can absolutely keep volume the same.

I used to change my programming based on cuts and it just made me small and weak. Now I keep programming the same. Went from 103kg bw to 83kg bw last year. Lost less than 5% off my bench.

TL;DR I think a good program is a good program whether you’re cutting, maintaining or bulking as long as you autoregulate.

This has been my experience as well.

The only caveat I would add is that you might not want to start a cut in the middle of a mesocycle, assuming your loads do increase somewhat as it progresses.

[AlanMackey]

whye dont you just add fahive pounds?

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

if one assumes that the amount of work that one can recover from scales linearly with the caloric input (this is a big assumption, but probably reasonable if using reasonable deficits and surpluses)

I have a very strong feeling that this isn’t the case. It’s just difficult to accurately scale the intensity as bodyweight drops (somewhat due to ego) and as a result the actual intensity relative to 1rm creeps up. Like I don’t think 5x5 @80% of 1rm is more or less fatiguing if you’re in a modest deficit or surplus as long as it’s ACTUALLY 80% and your cutting isn’t making it 81% this week then 82% the week after until you’re barely squeaking out 5x5 with 85%. Your work capacity didn’t decrease, you’re just doing a totally different program in terms of intensity.

I also think the ‘high intensity, low volume’ thing was a result of people cutting with Keto or low carbs. The drop off in performance after the first set with low carbs is very steep compared to with adequate carbs. Keep carbs as high as possible when cutting and you can absolutely keep volume the same.

I used to change my programming based on cuts and it just made me small and weak. Now I keep programming the same. Went from 103kg bw to 83kg bw last year. Lost less than 5% off my bench.

TL;DR I think a good program is a good program whether you’re cutting, maintaining or bulking as long as you autoregulate.

I think it somehow depends what you mean by "autoregulate", do you mean autoregulate the load with set/rep/rpe targets (with a protocol like 5@6 5@7 5@8 5@7 5@7 or whatever) , or do you mean autoregulate the volume ? After experimenting a bit, I find that generally if I try to train with the same volume on reduced calories it just destroys me. Might be a nocebo I don't know.

Also, how much volume do you do typically ? What's a typical value of HNFM / INOL / Stress Index ? I'm assuming if you train with low volume during a bulk then indeed dropping volume for a cut might not be a great idea.

[OverheadDeadlifts]

I think it somehow depends what you mean by "autoregulate", do you mean autoregulate the load with set/rep/rpe targets (with a protocol like 5@6 5@7 5@8 5@7 5@7 or whatever) , or do you mean autoregulate the volume ? After experimenting a bit, I find that generally if I try to train with the same volume on reduced calories it just destroys me. Might be a nocebo I don't know.

Also, how much volume do you do typically ? What's a typical value of HNFM / INOL / Stress Index ? I'm assuming if you train with low volume during a bulk then indeed dropping volume for a cut might not be a great idea.

Might not be nocebo, maybe some people just react differently to being in a deficit/surplus. There seems to be genetic variation in response to a whole bunch of different shit when it comes to lifting so it wouldn’t surprise me.

Just autoregulating the load based on a weekly heavyish set. A set of between 1 to 5 reps @7-9 RPE tells me what’s happening to my e1rm and whether I need to bump it down or not. The percentages/sets/reps don’t change. You can adjust on the fly as well, for example if you do a set of 5 at 80% and you only had 1 rep left in the tank, that’s probably not 80% anymore and you need to knock some weight off the bar today.

I looked up INOL and it’s giving me 2.0 and above for my bench sessions which are 3x per week. I can tolerate a shitload of pressing though. Nah I just trained lower volume at the tail end of the bulk to try and peak my bench, it was much higher volume earlier on too.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

Yeah I think that people react differently, and probably how fluffy you are has an influence. I'd assume that the fluffier you are the less you're going to be impacted by a deficit, since your fluff is readily available for energy.

The fact that you were peaking is an important difference with my situation (which inspired my calculations), where I never peak and I just alternate between high(with respect to my current work capacity) volume dev blocks and pivots, and repeat ad infinitum, because I'm not a powerlifter. By definition peaking makes you small and weak (but you get to realize the strength gains made before, and it's necessary if you actually care about powerlifting performance), so if you end your bulk with a peaking phase you probably don't want to drop volume at the start of the cut. Actually you might even want to increase it.

Now as for the calculations, an INOL of 2 is 60 reps at 70%, or 40 reps at 80% or 20 reps at 90%. That's a lot of work ! (especially if you did that 3 times a week). I'm assuming you did mostly singles at very high intensity though, I don't see how one would survive 40 reps at 80% 3 times a week.

[DCR]

By definition peaking makes you small and weak

Why? That’s never been my experience (say with spending three or four weeks peaking any particular movement).

[OverheadDeadlifts]

Yeah I think that people react differently, and probably how fluffy you are has an influence. I'd assume that the fluffier you are the less you're going to be impacted by a deficit, since your fluff is readily available for energy.

The fact that you were peaking is an important difference with my situation (which inspired my calculations), where I never peak and I just alternate between high(with respect to my current work capacity) volume dev blocks and pivots, and repeat ad infinitum, because I'm not a powerlifter. By definition peaking makes you small and weak (but you get to realize the strength gains made before, and it's necessary if you actually care about powerlifting performance), so if you end your bulk with a peaking phase you probably don't want to drop volume at the start of the cut. Actually you might even want to increase it.

Now as for the calculations, an INOL of 2 is 60 reps at 70%, or 40 reps at 80% or 20 reps at 90%. That's a lot of work ! (especially if you did that 3 times a week). I'm assuming you did mostly singles at very high intensity though, I don't see how one would survive 40 reps at 80% 3 times a week.

But after the peak I went back to using the same kind of high volume programming I was using during the entire rest of the bulk.

There was a period a few years ago where I was doing 75 reps with 70% on Monday, 50 reps with 70% followed by 20 reps at 75% on Wednesday and 50 reps at 70% followed by 15 reps at 80% on Friday. I was also doing triceps work and overhead pressing. It wasn’t very productive but it was survivable and I only changed because of stagnation. I could probably survive 40 reps at 80% 3x per week at the moment if I dropped all my other pressing and accessories.

Whilst we’re on the subject of diet and recovery, I think it’s common for people to try and eat their way out of a recovery hole and in my experience it’s a spectacularly bad idea that highlights why programming should be viewed independently of calories. For me it just causes this weird delayed bulk effect where I gain a disproportionate amount of weight before my lifts start moving again.

My guess is that I didn’t get any better at recovering from the program that was too stressful, I just gained enough weight that whatever lean mass was gained alongside the much greater ratio of fat gave me enough contractile tissue to push my 1rm high enough to decrease the intensity of the program at the weights I was using. So rather than scale the program to fit what I could recover from, I was scaling my fat ass until the pitiful amount of muscle my body tossed me (cause I was barely recovering) fit me into the program.

Then of course you start adding weight to the bar and you end up in the same situation all over again. Under recovered, a little bit stronger, a fair bit fatter. Probably a very familiar story for most people who tried to ‘eat through the sticking points’. Basically if your programming crushes you when you stop throwing calories at it then it was likely never good to begin with.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

By definition peaking makes you small and weak

Why? That’s never been my experience (say with spending three or four weeks peaking any particular movement).

I might be wrong but my understanding of peaking is essentially accepting some detraining in exchange for being practicing the test and realizing the strength that's already been built (here the test would be performing a 1RM).

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

Yeah I think that people react differently, and probably how fluffy you are has an influence. I'd assume that the fluffier you are the less you're going to be impacted by a deficit, since your fluff is readily available for energy.

The fact that you were peaking is an important difference with my situation (which inspired my calculations), where I never peak and I just alternate between high(with respect to my current work capacity) volume dev blocks and pivots, and repeat ad infinitum, because I'm not a powerlifter. By definition peaking makes you small and weak (but you get to realize the strength gains made before, and it's necessary if you actually care about powerlifting performance), so if you end your bulk with a peaking phase you probably don't want to drop volume at the start of the cut. Actually you might even want to increase it.

Now as for the calculations, an INOL of 2 is 60 reps at 70%, or 40 reps at 80% or 20 reps at 90%. That's a lot of work ! (especially if you did that 3 times a week). I'm assuming you did mostly singles at very high intensity though, I don't see how one would survive 40 reps at 80% 3 times a week.

But after the peak I went back to using the same kind of high volume programming I was using during the entire rest of the bulk.

There was a period a few years ago where I was doing 75 reps with 70% on Monday, 50 reps with 70% followed by 20 reps at 75% on Wednesday and 50 reps at 70% followed by 15 reps at 80% on Friday. I was also doing triceps work and overhead pressing. It wasn’t very productive but it was survivable and I only changed because of stagnation. I could probably survive 40 reps at 80% 3x per week at the moment if I dropped all my other pressing and accessories.

Whilst we’re on the subject of diet and recovery, I think it’s common for people to try and eat their way out of a recovery hole and in my experience it’s a spectacularly bad idea that highlights why programming should be viewed independently of calories. For me it just causes this weird delayed bulk effect where I gain a disproportionate amount of weight before my lifts start moving again.

My guess is that I didn’t get any better at recovering from the program that was too stressful, I just gained enough weight that whatever lean mass was gained alongside the much greater ratio of fat gave me enough contractile tissue to push my 1rm high enough to decrease the intensity of the program at the weights I was using. So rather than scale the program to fit what I could recover from, I was scaling my fat ass until the pitiful amount of muscle my body tossed me (cause I was barely recovering) fit me into the program.

Then of course you start adding weight to the bar and you end up in the same situation all over again. Under recovered, a little bit stronger, a fair bit fatter. Probably a very familiar story for most people who tried to ‘eat through the sticking points’. Basically if your programming crushes you when you stop throwing calories at it then it was likely never good to begin with.

You have insane work capacity, I'm impressed.

And yeah I also agree with the fact that you probably in most situations can't eat your way out of a recovery hole. I believe that food helps recovery somehow, but with quickly diminishing returns, hence the inefficiency of the turbo-bulks.

[janoycresva]

Heavy low rep work just feels fucking awful on cuts for me, higher rep bodybuilding shit is much more manageable and performance on that does not drop off nearly as much for me.