Programming questions

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hi!

I have some questions about programming.

I have trained with barbells for several years with varying results. In these years I have always been training regularly (3-4 times a week) with the Press, Bench, Squat and Deadlift.

First day of august (this year) i decided to lose weight because I had gained to much fat and to big of a waist circumference. The cut is going well and i have lost weigth steadily with a minimum of 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight.

Before the cut

78kg at 170cm
Squat: 180kg
Press: 75kg
Deadlift: 210kg

Now 2 months into the cut i am 74kg

Squat: 170kg
Press: 70kg
Deadlift: 205kg

In addidtion to starting this cut i decided to switch to one of your training templates, more specifically your strength lifting 2. But honestly, the training lately have been a dread. I feel weaker and I just hate not seeing any progress. I never expected to gain much strength in a calorie deficit, but 10kg down in the squat when I only have lost 4 kg of bw?

So this made me question the programming. Not that i think it is bad, but after listening to all of your programming podcasts i thought to myself, maybe it is the volume? I never followed a specific program up until now, but I am confident that my past training before I switched to your strength template contained more volume on all of the lifts. From the information given, do you think that this may be one of the reaons? Or hell, it perhaps is normal to lose this amount of strength during a cut?

Say if i were to add more volume, would it be dumb to add these as sets of 8’s or 10’s? If I am not incorrect this may count as adding volume, but it is also shifting the goal post as stated in some previous posts? The reasons for me suggesting this is because it is a bit of a hassle to add more sets of 4 and 5’s, it increases the training duration, and it may seem more effective to get more reps in fewer sets.

The goal for these questions is to help me understand programming better and what tweaks to incorporate in order to see progress in strength. (I have listened to all of your programming podcasts mulitple times, however i am a slow learner…) Any wise words would be appreciated.

And as always, thank you for all the information you provide, and the effort put into these forums posts.

  • Lindberg (English is not my native language, sorry for typos)
2

Lindberg,

Thanks for the post. A few thoughts:

  1. Sounds like there’s been a dip in your strength of ~ 10%. I’m not really concerned about that, as you can’t really maintain maximal strength 100% of the time. I’m more concerned about you reporting the training being a dread, as that’s likely to compromise performance even more. Do you happen to have a video of 180 btw?

  2. I think it is unlikely that you were doing more volume on the lifts at similar intensities prior to this template, though it’s possible. To answer your question though, I would expect an acute bump in strength if this were the case from the peaking effect. Using sets of 8’s and 10’s are less specific to maximal strength than 4’s and 5’s, and may be conflating the relationship between volume and strength.

  3. I wouldn’t predict someone to lose strength during a cut, no.

I would plan on running the template as written and trying to find things you enjoy about training. You’re likely to see better results that way.

-Jordan