Hey,
I am currently cutting at a weight of 78.9kg (173.9 lbs) , i have a 34-35inch waist, and i am 172cm or 5 feet 7.
Currently i really want to gain some muscle, especially my arms. I am currently doing the home template but the gyms are opening up next week.
I don’t know what to do, what template should i run? I wont be able to build muscle while cutting so i don’t think doing the hypertrophy template is the best choice.
Should i purchase the strength template and use that, then use the hypertrophy or possibly the soon to come bodybuilding template?
If your goals are primarily physique focused, then I would think the hypertrophy template is more appropriate than the strength template. I don’t think a calorie surplus is necessary for muscle building focused training to make sense. Providing a greater hypertrophy stimulus via exercise may allow you to reduce the amount of muscle atrophy from cutting.
For the most part I actually don’t think that being in a cut or bulk actually has a large impact on training strategy. It may change your standards for evaluating the effectiveness of a program (for example: over 3 months I lost 8lbs of BW and my total stayed the same=:) vs over 3 months I gained 6lbs of BW and my total stayed the same=:(). Also some people like including BW exercises while they cut because they are more likely to make progress on those exercises. But IMO it doesn’t make a ton of sense to change what goal you’re training for just because you’re in a cut.
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Interesting question. Two of their templates are stipulated to be “not for people trying to lean out more than 5 lbs”. Neither is a hypertrophy template.
I’m not sure how knowledgeable you are about “aesthetics” as they say but it may be that if you just maintain your existing muscle mass through strength training while reducing your bf% you will find the result satisfactory. Bf% is really the heart of the matter.
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I agree with both 413x and HansandFranz.
I’ll also point out its not a foregone conclusion you cannot add muscle with losing 5 pounds. I don’t know your situation and you may be correct in that assessment (you have been training for 5 years and already really strong and have a fairly low body fat percentage), but its not necessarily true. Since you are hoping to losing body fat that may be mean your body fat percentage is not really low for example. I wouldn’t assume you cannot add muscle while losing weight–it will never be optimal, but its possible for a decent percentage of gym goers (I don’t know what that percentage is, but I do know gyms have a lot overweight people who are not particularly well trained)
Echoing 413x point, I would do a hypertrophy routine given your goals. I don’t think a small cut (5 pounds) should alter your training goals. The extra volume of a hypertrophy routine should serve as some extra exercise to help you burn calories if nothing else. A strength routine will training muscle fibers to fire all at once, but unless you want to test your 1 rep max, you will just lose a lot of the benefit of that training when you go back to a hypertrophy routine as it sounds like that is your ultimate goal.
By strength I mean being effective in how your get your muscle fibers to contract. Strength peaks a quicker than hypertrophy, but you also lose it a lot faster. Your one rep max to muscle mass ratio will go up and down during your lifting career. By contrast hypertrophy is something that you can improve on for years, even decades, and hopefully for the most part it only goes up during your lifting days and not down.
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Thank you all for your inputs 
I think i exaggerated the importance of gaining muscle mass here. Strength is important for me too but at this moment i want to build mass. I have been training with barbells for 4-6 months (but then corona) and i have a 12-15 months of total training history (most of them non productive). I have a waist of around 34.5 inches and i need it to go down to 32. So that’s about going to 70 kg so loosing 9 kg (20 lbs)… Does your advice still stand even tho i need to cut a bigger amount of weight?