Cutting and the presses

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

Dr Feigenbaum,

I’m on a cut and I steadily whittled my weight down from about 90kg to 83kg with the target of 80kg near in sight (I’m about 5ft9).

I feel better than before and also look better. My squat and DL both seem to keep increasing in strength however it seems harder and harder to press at my old numbers (I lost about 10kg on both presses). This slightly alarms me as I feel I lost more muscle than I should have. I keep protein intake of about 220g per day.

Am I overreacting here or does this seem normal? And do you think increasing protein intake will help?

Thanks,
​​​​​​​Sheak

2

Nice job on the weight loss :slight_smile:

I think your strength reduction is likely due to programming. What have you been doing recently?

I do not think there’s any indication to change your protein intake.

-Jordan

3

Thanks Doc :smile:​!​​​​ I’ll keep my protein the same then.

I currently do a self-customised version of the legacy hypertrophy program, so lifting within the 6 rep range (whilst still testing a 1@8 in the later weeks). Do you think I should lower the reps?

4

I think if you’re interested in expressing your 1-3RM strength you’ll need regular exposure to those rep ranges. Alternatively, if you can rationalize that you probably haven’t lost much strength by training exclusively in the 6+ rep range, but rather haven’t specifically trained to transfer that over to a 1RM, then you’re fine.

5

Thanks Doc you’re a legend and that seems sound to me. I guess I will stop panicking and see what occurs when I return to a more strength based program later this year!