Which block to cut weight in?

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hello y’all! Longtime fan, follower on Instagram, along with my girlfriend, who also does powerlifting.

She even slipped into Jordan’s DMs (in a strictly platonic way) to let him know he and Barbell Medicine are so awesome, after he liked one of her lifting vids. LOL

Anyway, I’d like some help in understanding how to go about cutting. I know that one can gain strength on a cut, though hypertrophy is a bit more iffy/dependent on a lot more factors.

I bring this up because I’ve done a cut prior, years ago on the NLP, but lost a TON of strength (and also size) because I strictly, strictly followed this not-so-good strength template I found online, and not adjusting it to the added fatigue that comes with a caloric deficit. Weight loss was substantial, but it came with a lot of failure. All sets were grindy-ass RPE 10’s with lots of them going to failure, at which point, I had to lower the weight. And on and on until I lost a ton of strength, by the time I hit my goal weight.

I don’t know whether the proper response would’ve been to:

  1. Add more volume, since I’d maxed out the NLP, and thus need more stimulus since my regular 3x5’s weren’t working anymore. OR
  2. Not do that, because extra volume on a deficit would overload me with fatigue, make things worse, and should’ve instead brought the sets DOWN so that I could keep the intensity up.

Doing what I did, keeping everything the exact same, clearly didn’t work. lol

I’m running a powerlifting program, and I’m wanting to lose weight (about 36" waist, I believe, ~200 lbs.) again, but avoid my previous mistakes.

I’ve heard from y’all it doesn’t really matter when/how one decides to lose weight, provided they can adhere and that how they go about it is mainly preference. But I want to maintain as much strength as possible and avoid previous mistakes.

Still don’t know which produces more fatigue, strength or volume. Depending on this, I would assume I’d wanna break-up my cutting phases to a block in my training where it’s less fatiguing.

So should I cut on a strength block? Volume block? Or does it matter at all?

Cheers, hope y’all are doing well.

2

Hey Cani,

Thanks for the post and funny story. I’ll start off by saying that I don’t think there are extra fatigue costs from training while in a modest deficit. I think the programming is the main driver of training progress/path compared to the diet.

To your stated scenario, I think that when it stops working, the training stress of NLP becomes too low to drive progress despite incurring lots of fatigue. In short, it feels really hard…but it’s not enough manageable fatigue.

I don’t know that “strength or volume” is actually a viable comparison, as one (strength) is a performance and one (volume) is a programming variable. I’m not sure I’d make the distinction between a volume block and strength block. In brief, intensity determines the type of adaptations you’re likely to get and volume determines how large those adaptations are going to be. All strength blocks require enough volume to work and all “volume” blocks require the appropriate intensity to improve strength.

If you want to be leaner and stronger, you should be on a modest deficit following a good program. There are many available for free and otherwise on our website.

-Jordan