I’m not a super advanced lifter. I’m finishing a strength block at 6’2 255-260 and I plan to test my new maxes next week. I’m planning to hit a 340 bench, 240 Press, 545 deadlift and 420 squat. I obviously have goals of getting stronger. I’d like to bench 405, deadlift 600, squat 500 and Press 275. However, I’ve put on some fat. I kind of ate whatever I wanted because I kept getting stronger but now I look a little chunky. I have a bit of a gut now, 37-38in waist, face looks swollen now, etc. I’m wondering, I’m not planning to compete right now, so I can cut slowly. Is it possible for me to continue to slowly gain strength while doing a slight cut or running a recomp at this point? I don’t think I look super healthy and I’m probably 22% body fat. My numbers would also be much more impressive if I was say 220 haha. The ultimate goal is to be as jacked as Jordan in future years, which I’m not sure will happen but I’m gonna give it my next shot! Say I ran something like the gpp hypertrophy program, is it expected that one lose or maintain strength? Does one ever gain strength and lose some fat? What is there to expect
It depends. There’s no hard set rules. Like everything in life it is varying shades of gray, not black and white. And of course, there are tradeoffs. To get a little here, you have to give a little there. The slower your weight loss the greater your odds of maintaining or even gaining strength in the process, but of course the longer it takes. You never know until you try. If this is your first experience cutting accept now that you’re going to make some mistakes and it’s not going to go perfectly. But it doesn’t have to, and you should learn from those mistakes so that each time you cut you get better at it. Also, keep in mind it’s just one small isolated phase in a lifetime of lifting. So even if you screw everything up and lose a ton of strength, it’s all temporary. You can’t do something in your diet phase that can’t be undone.
Jordan answers this a lot, and his answer usually comes down to, “Yes with appropriate programing you can still get stronger while losing weight, but it will take more effort for smaller results than if you weren’t losing weight.”
Like in many other situations, you usually find what you start out looking for. So if you begin with the assumption you are going to lose strength while cutting, then you definitely will.
It’s certainly possible to maintain or even make gains while cutting, provided you don’t put yourself in a stupid high calorie deficit and your programming is squared away.