Fat Loss after prolonged detraining

Hi All,

35 yr old male
6’4
220lbs
waist 40" unflexed, 39" flexed (not sucking in).

I completed my novice LP in early June, where I hit singles of 200lb press, 300 bench, 405 squat, 510 deadlift. I was benching 275+ for 3x5, squatting 365-370 for 5s, and pulling 465 for triples. At the time I weighed in at 237lbs with a 40" waist, and decided it was time to cut weight. Then around mid-June I got sick, fought that off, developed a sinus infection which then led to another cold and another sinus infection (deviated septum) before finally getting better around the end of July. I tried to keep training but eventually that just fell off. I had trouble pushing through the fatigue and nasty chest congestion while training in a hot gym with no AC.

So here I am, end of August. I haven’t trained seriously in 8 weeks. I lost 17lbs over that time period, but my waistline has stayed right at 40", nutrition over that time was obviously garbage. I lost an inch off my arms, legs, chest. I’ve started training again but I’m dealing with crazy DOMS and a ton of strength loss. Yesterday, I went very easy and squatted 200 for 3x5, benched 205 for 3x5, and pulled 308lbs for a set of 5. Today I am shockingly sore.

I’m tired of this waistline thing hanging around and I just want to get super lean before I put weight on again. I want to get my waist down under 36" at least.

So, here are some questions:

  1. Should I try squatting daily for a couple of weeks to LP through this initial soreness?
  2. Does it make sense to do the bridge here rather than an LP back up? If I tried to squat 3 sets at RPE 8 right now, I’d be basically crippled for a week after.
  3. Since my strength is already crazy low, does it make sense to just pile on a bunch of low intensity cardio here to try and lean out as fast as possible? It seems to me I’ve already lost the strength, so there’s no point in worrying about strength that is already lost.

I never want to be this out of shape ever again.

Thanks

Hey Chew,

Glad to hear you’re feeling better and are back to training. For your questions:

  1. I wouldn’t squat daily, no. If you wanted to squat 3x/wk on an LP type setup where relative efforts were controlled, e.g. all work sets RPE 7-8, that’d be fine.

  2. I think the expectation that you’d be crippled for a week after squatting 3 sets has more to to do with what you experience after the workout rather than the workout itself. Further, I’d expect that using a qualitative metric during training may ensure that overall stress is appropriate compared to just “using a number” to determine the weight (e.g. always adding 5lbs).

  3. Again, your strength isn’t crazy low from an ability to produce force standpoint, you just have had some skill decay from not practicing the movements under load, your work capacity is low from not training (and doing a novice program that doesn’t build it very well beforehand), and your expectation is that you’re going to be weak, sore, etc. During periods of inactivity, but not bed rest, most folks will lose some non contractile protein in their muscles and subsequently muscle cross-sectional area goes down. When you expose that person to training after the period of inactivity, this comes back readily (and quickly). I don’t think it’s a good idea to introduce a ton of conditioning when trying to re introduce training either unless previously well conditioned. That said, if your work capacity wasn’t very developed I think doing some conditioning can be useful. Again, the mental expectation that is generated by “I’ve already lost the strength so there’s no point in worrying about it” is not helpful to how the next few months of your training goes in my opinion.

If I were you, I’d do LP (since you seemed to do well with it before) for the next month. This week I’d do one work set on all exercises, next week I’d do 2, and the third week I’d d 3. Then I’d keep that format (3 work sets per exercise- even deadlift) for the next 1-3 weeks (as long as it’s working). Then I’d move to The Bridge.

I’d do 1 day of steady state cardio at 30 minutes for the first month, then bump that to 2x/wk after 1 month.

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