Questions before starting the beginner template

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hello, everyone.

Now that the gyms are slowly letting people return in my neck of the woods, I’m eager to finally start my beginner template, but I have two questions I was hoping someone could shed some light on before I dive in.

I’ve been training pretty consistently for about two years now, but in November of last year I had a small injury that put me out for awhile, and then this whole COVID-19 thing happened, so I’ve done exactly zero weight training for almost eight months now. In this time, I’ve also let my diet slip and have essentially become skinny fat. Most people still think I’m athletic looking and hitting the gym, but if they could only see what’s under my shirt! So that’s my first question. I still have a lot of my lean body mass (somehow) but I’ve definitely got a jelly belly showing (not even close to visible abs, even in the morning when I’m at my flattest), so even though my goal with the beginner program is to slowly start rebuilding my strength, would it be best to run the program on a slight deficit to try and lose some weight while building back my strength?

My second question is about the GPP. It says Cardio for X amount of minutes once or twice a week, but I commute by bicycle 15km a day to work (7.5ish there, and back again). The ride usually takes me about 30-35 minutes. I’m not sure if that really counts toward the GPP, but I’m just concerned about overdoing the cardio and burning myself out, or even there being a possibility of an interference effect occurring. What do you think is the best approach?

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide! Love BBM, and really excited to get back to training again.

2

Joop,

Thanks for the post.

  1. I think you should probably do it in a deficit, yes. You can get stronger on a deficit.

  2. I think this is fine for your GPP.

Glad you’re back!

-Jordan

3

Thanks you so much for the reply, Jordan! I really appreciate it.

I’m glad to hear that. I always struggle with the idea of running a weight loss phase on a strength cycle because I’m worried I’ll gas out, or hit some really low numbers and lose motivation.

I have Powerbuilding as well, and to be honest I’m kind of excited to jump into that asap. What’s your opinion on running Beginners for 6 weeks on the deficit and then switching to Powerbuilding?

Or should I diet much longer and run beginners to the end? My program before the shut down was a really high volume hypertrophy program, do you think starting with beginner again is playing it a bit too safe?

4

You can continue the calorie deficit for as long as you want to in order to achieve your goals. I wouldn’t make programming decisions secondary to this necessarily.

If it were me, I would continue any program that was working for me until it stopped working. I don’t think starting with the Beginner template is “too safe”, no.

5

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