4-6 week deficit - Strength III or Hyper II

I am going to start a relatively aggressive deficit as a mini cut for 4-6 weeks. I am just finishing Strength III (next week is week 13).

i was thinking I would run the first 5 weeks of Hyper II while trying to trim 8-9 lbs (now 5’8”, 195ish, 37”). Would like to get waist around 35” (for me is about 185). My calories will be in the 1800-2000 range, depending on how things progress.

My question - since the first 6 weeks of Strength 3 has a lot of volume, would that be significantly different than Hyper 2? I will add some additional steady state to the recommended GPP to add a bit to the deficit.

Thanks as always. Hoping for my first 500 lbs pull next week.

I think if you’re motivated to train the big 3 for strength, you can do so on a calorie deficit and get stronger. If you’re wanting a break from the big 3 however, hypertrophy would be the better choice.

Crush that pull, dude!

Thanks. This 500 has been a long time comin’… I hope I get it!

If I stick with running Strength III again (3rd time, 2nd with bench focus), would you recommend any adjustments other than a bit more LISS or MISS for enhancing the deficit? Also, should I add in a pivot week between week 13 and week 1?

Thanks again!

If you’ve been losing weight just fine, I wouldn’t add more conditioning in a strength phase.

I think the first week of the program is a low stress/pivot week so, no need to add another one IMO.

Yeah, that was the thrust of my initial post. I plan to start an aggressive mini-cut. The hope is to trim off a couple of inches (10-ish pounds) in a relatively short time period. Thus, while I always want to get stronger, the focus for this 4-6 weeks is aggressive cutting.

Would I be better served running Strength III and adding more cardio if the weight is not coming off as I hope? Or run Hyper II for this 4-6 weeks and add conditioning as needed to reach the weight/waist goals?

I will be at 1900 calories/day out of the gate - really don’t want to go a ton lower than that if it can be avoided.

Thanks again.

As mentioned above, I don’t think adding a lot of conditioning during a strength block is my preferred approach. So, if you were going to add more conditioning…it’d be on the hypertrophy plan.

I wouldn’t worry about your calorie intake being too low. If it was, you’d be hemorrhaging weight.

Thanks. I am not worried that I will melt away. I worry that I will not stay adherent if the calories are too low (may be easier to take a few more weighted walks, etc.). We’ll see how it goes. Thank you for your insight.

Ok, you got me thinking… when does “activity” (striving to meet the recommended activity guidelines) become “conditioning” that could detract from building strength as we have been discussing? If I take a 30-60 minute walk per day at a moderately brisk pace (3-4 METs), is that conditioning or activity?

i ask because I want to stay active in order to be healthy and promote weight loss along with my deficit. At the same time, I don’t want to inadvertently negatively affect building strength.