Best template for a cut

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

After a return to office 5 days a week my diet and workout was massively disrupted. For the last 8 weeks I been losing a little but didn’t comply well with the diet. I have been running a short of power building Frankenstein program I put together from several sources. I have only dropped to 235 from 240 largely because despite more walking being in the office and training again I have been off diet.

I can clean up the diet but wanted to go back to a template so I didn’t have to think about programming. :slight_smile: The question is what template is recommended to be best for a CUT? I have been going back and forth over doing more hypertrophy to maintain muscle versus being probably over 30% bodyfat knowing I can cut and increase strength. So I am going back and forth between hypertrophy, power building, or a strength template. The latter concerns me because the volume will drop meaning less calorie burn.

Age 53 training on and off since 1985 when I was 13 more off during grad school and early career :), 5’6” 235 lbs. Estimates on 1 RPM Bench 216, Squat 308, DL 350, OHP 136 nothing impressive but I lost a lot in the workout disruption and losing BF% is top priority. At my BF I am getting in the higher risk zones.

Really even before returning to office for about a year training was inconsistent not completing a program. With the stress of returning to office and cuts to headcount that fortunately never materialized from about January through June I wasn’t working out much and started back consistently about 8 weeks ago.

2

Realistically, any template would be viable for you, with the ultimate decision coming down to a combination of your goals, current training, and preferences. This quiz may be helpful at sorting you out.

From my perspective, I’d probably pick Hypertrophy I for the added conditioning that I think would be very helpful for all goals mentioned here, e.g. health, weight management, and getting your training tolerance up.

3

Thanks for the reply. I have the old hypertrophy I so I will look at version 2.0. I have the hypertrophy 2 2.0 and have run it before. After about 10 weeks of power building I think I am going with strength 2 and will pay attention to increasing my steps to make up any needed calorie burn. It is just more that I haven’t concentrated on that for a long while. My bands have been unused for some time. :slight_smile:

4

Sounds good. Let me know how it goes!