This is a questions I hear quite a lot especially around this time of year.
In my opinion, through my own experiences in my own training and with people who I have trained It doesn’t have to too not to the extent that people believe, you can keep a lot of your strength whilst leaning out and in some cases you can continue getting stronger!
The main reason I find why most people will lose a significant amount of strength while cutting is unfortunately they will drop their calories far to low to quickly and to early! (There are other reasons but today we will talk about nutrition)
Which will lead to your body feeling significantly weaker to how it was when you were having more food, Think about it this way if you are a steam train driver and your chucking logs on the fire of the train to get it shifting then all of a sudden you stop or you significantly decrease the amount of logs you throw on the fire what do you think is going to happen to the horsepower of that train? It’s going to decrease pretty quickly and in turn the Train will slow down fast!
Think about your body as the train and your food as the logs now that your body has nowhere near the amount of fuel source it had before it will begin to lose the amount of horse power and size of your engine (muscle) it once had in turn your strength will drop off quickly.
One of the key points to keeping as much strength as possible is down to keeping on top of your nutrition and controlling your deficit depth also continually shifting heavy weight these are essential to maintaining your strength & muscle size, you have to be smart with your deficit and time it correctly while dropping down body fat!
Now I’m not saying that everyone will be able to keep all of their strength or muscle and unfortunately you may lose some it can be a byproduct of cutting down excess body fat so don’t get discouraged if your not lifting the same weight as you once were believe me I’ve been there I know how it feels and it can feel frustrated but understand is it the primary goal of this phase?
I do firmly believe though that one of your primary goals while losing body fat should be to maintain as much strength and muscle as possible so once you have lost the body fat you wanted to lose you don’t have a big uphill battle to get yourself back up to where you once where!
One of the best ways which you can try and control this is by starting with a slight calorie deficit rather than a significant one, so plan your cut in advance by leaving yourself enough time to lose the body fat you want without having to dramatically drop your calories in turn you will keep as much muscle and strength as possible!
I like to start myself and my clients at around a 15% calorie deficit and keep protein high and in some cases increasing protein as I increase the deficit depth, this way its not as big of a shock to your body’s system and it is still getting adequate amounts of fuel to shift some good weight also you can keep that hard earned muscle that you've worked hard for and you are still in a deficit so you will lose body fat you want to shift!
I hope this has been helpful and as always don’t hesitate to book in for your FREE coaching call and let’s optimise your training and nutrition so you can achieve your goal the most efficient way click on the link to Book in for you FREE coaching call
https://calendly.com/tspt/free-session
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