Maintain vs cut

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hope y’all will be willing to give some direction. Been doing linear progression after a several months break from training bc of injury and a newborn in the house.

I am about ready to go to intermediate, but I’m 45 years old, male, 5’11”, 231 lbs, waist of 42”. When I restarted training, I was 225. I’ve been eating in line with the TBAB recomp guidelines, but haven’t been doing any conditioning.

Current lifts:

SQ 3x5 at 330
DL 1x5 at 345
BP 3x5 at 212.5
OHP 3x5 at 152.5
PC 5x3 at 125

So reading some recent posts and listening to podcast episodes 17 and 18, seems I need to get the waistline under control. To the extent it means anything, my best estimate on BF is 27%. Should I start intermediate with a diet aimed to maintain weight and hopefully lose inches or actually train and eat to cut some weight first and then start intermediate from there?

Thanks very much and Happy Thanksgiving

2

EppyG,

Well, you’re no longer a novice as far as I can tell unless you still are adding weight each session. If that’s the case, I would keep doing your LP. If not, then you have no choice but to move on to intermediate programming.

For your diet, yes, I would advise weight loss and I think you can do this by starting with a small calorie deficit and 1x/wk of conditioning. I would favor LISS over HIIT for you right now.

3

Thanks for the advice. Out of curiosity, why LISS vs HIIT? Trying not to overdo the conditioning out of the gate?

In your experience, is there an effect when people move to intermediate that “anything works at first” as is often observed when novices begin training, even if their training is poorly set up? Just curious. The idea came to me as I read some of your stuff on intermediate programs.

Thanks for all the information you contribute. Been reading your sub forum on the starting strength website for a while, but I’m finding the stuff on this site really helpful. Thanks again.

4

  1. I think in an anaerobically dominant program, it is highly likely that the person who needs to introduce conditioning for any reason would be best served by first including aerobic conditioning. Later, when more conditioning is needed- HIIT can be included too.

  2. I don’t think that “anything works at first” on an intermediate program unless certain criteria are met- notice that some of these things may produce a falsely positive result, yet ultimately compromise training development:

  • Training volume increases
  • Training intensity increases and Volume is decreased (we call this peaking)
  • Someone is still a novice