Saint’s BodyBlog

Greetings everyone,

As some of you probably already know,  I have completed a very long mass cycle and going to be doing a cut/fat loss cycle starting beginning of next week.  This week is a rest week and intended to allow things to heal up and fully recover.  One of the big issues I faced in past cut cycles has been injuries.  I know that during a cut cycle, the body is much more prone to injuries.  So going into it fully healed up and ready to go, I figure I’d be starting off on a good step.  But anyways, this cycle will go to end of either November or December, with a bf% goal of 8-10%.  I would prefer 8% as it will set me up well for the next mass cycle starting in January.  I figure 8% would be good in finally revealing the abs, muscles I’ve built over the years and veins.  Although this being said, I’ll be perfectly happy with 10%.  I will be shooting for a bodyweight between 190 to 195lbs, which if all goes well should bring my bf% goal.

Far as overall approach, it will be essentially a competition prep diet, but will be stopped well before I hit competition quality.  The goal of a comp diet is to remove as much fat as possible, but maintain the muscle.  In my mind, this is the essence of any fat loss cycle regardless of whether prepping for a competition.  I will be using a caloric deficit approach to the diet, rather than the popular low carb diet.  I have done a lower carb diet and it really did a number on my body.  My head felt clouded, my strength just wasn’t there and my muscles were going flat.  I may use a carb supercompensation at some point, maybe towards the end of the cycle, but my overall approach will be to achieve a caloric deficit.  Far as nutrient splits, I will be lowering the carbs a bit to about 45-50% of calories and upping the protein to at least 40% or 1.25g/lb of bodyweight.  For September, I will be easing myself into the cut diet rather than making a quick change.  Through my readings, the point was made that a cut cycle should not be too much of a shock to the system.  I can see this was another point in previous cut cycles that made me ending the cycle to early.  So each day, I plan to make small changes to the diet one by one until I’m fully in the cut diet.  Once fully in, my caloric intake will be slowly stepped down.  My goal is to lose about 1lbs to 1.5lbs per week, but no more than 1.5lbs.  When I will be stepping down the caloric intake is still somewhat of an unknown to me.  But that is another goal of mine in doing this cut cycle.  I will be in a much better position to know what works for me far as fat loss and what the progression rate should be.  On an additional note, I am doing calorie, carb, protein, fat count for the whole of this week.  I may do it again next week.  I am trying to better associate calorie/nutrient intakes with portion sizes better.  This way I will have a much better idea how much I’m actually taking in.  This will also help give me a baseline of what my current intake is and what effect it is having.

On training, I will not be making to many changes far as weights.  One of the key things I’ve noted across the board in all my readings is to give your body a reason to keep the muscle on.  Weight training is the perfect reason for the body to do so.  So, my overall workout design will not be changed to terribly much.  I will be dialing down the volume a little and being very strict in following NASM volume guidelines.  I will be shooting for 3-4 exercises per bodypart with no more than 4 sets per exercise.  The total of each workout will not exceed 36 total sets.  Far as reps, I will try to maintain a standard hypertrophic range of 8-12.  Another change is I will working out 4 days per week with exercising each bodypart once per week, except abs and forearms.   I will be splitting the exercise selection of half the workout being compound mass building and the other half shaping/isolation moves.  I will also not be trying to increase my lift amounts, but trying to maintain my current lift amounts.  If my lift amounts do happen to go up, then it will be great.  I hope by using this approach to training to provide the stimulus necessary for keeping all the hard fought muscle and minimize any injuries.  As this is a cut cycle, I will be doing more cardio.  While I do work on a farm and get a lower intensity cardio during the entire work day, I will be shooting initially for 3 days per week of 20-30min low-med intensity cardio.  As with the diet, I will also be easing myself into it.  Depending on how things go and progress, I may increase my cardio amount.

Anyways, this is my overall plan in finally bringing down my fat levels to a more acceptable level.  None of my previous cut cycle were really all that successful.  So I want this one to be successful.  Please give me your input into this plan and help as you can during the cycle.  Even though I know I’m going to lose some size, I’m very much looking forward to seeing the cuts, definition, veins and washboard abs.  It is time to reveal the beast within.

Regards,

Saint

This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.