Should You Lift Heavy Or Light Weights When Cutting?

One of the most common questions people have when it’s time to lose body fat, is whether they should focus on heavy weights and low reps or heavy weights and high reps when they start cutting.

Contents hide

1 Should you lift heavy or light when cutting?

2 There are three reasons why maintaining muscle or cutting is important:

3 But when and how can you use simple exercises to protect your muscles?

4 So, here is an example of good practice for beginners:

5 And here are the exercise notes for this event:

6 And here’s how to progress and get stronger over time with this activity:

The reason why this question is common is probably because they have heard the strength of the “gurus” who say that you should train with heavy weights to maintain your muscle mass, while others say that you should train with lighter weights if you want to gain success. cut off.

Should you lift heavy or light when cutting?

In order to maintain (or build) muscle while cutting, the most important thing you should focus on is maintaining (or increasing) your strength, and this is best done by increasing the amount of moderate to heavy weights.

In this post I will cover in detail why training with moderate to heavy weights is an important thing to do when cutting, and also if lighter weights can help.

Reduces excess fat

Fasting, the whole body burns fat

Maintains muscles

Increases muscle size

Why It’s Important to Maintain Your Strength When Cutting Why Weight Lifting Is Better When Cutting When Light Weights Can Help Two Types of Muscle Growth Example Program Novice to Intermediate Routine Conclusion What’s Next?

Why It’s Important to Maintain Your Strength When Cutting

If your goal is to get a ripped and toned body when you’re done with your cuts, then your top priority should be muscle retention.

There are three reasons why maintaining muscle or cutting is important:

Muscles are metabolically responsible for most of the fat you lose when you cut.

You look great after your cut is done!

To be successful with maintaining, or even building muscle while cutting, your main goal should be to maintain your strength throughout your cutting phase.

And this is best done by training with heavy weights for a few reps.

Why Lifting Weights is Better for Cutting

Lifting weights forces your body to conserve muscle as your body thinks that energy is needed for survival.

Think about it, if you reduce the amount of weight you are lifting your body will think it doesn’t need as much energy anymore and will start using your muscles as fuel.

This is true because your muscles use up so many calories every day, that when your body thinks it doesn’t need more muscle, it sees it as used up.

Also, lifting heavy weights is less stressful at all for the body, which will lead to better recovery when cutting.

Finally, it’s easier to keep track of your strength progress when lifting weights like 4-6 rep bench presses or squats, than doing 12-15 rep flyes or leg extensions.

Where Light Fixtures Can Help

So, we’ve concluded that using heavy weights is the most effective and easiest way to keep muscle while cutting.

But when and how can you use simple exercises to protect your muscles?

Using weights can be a great way to add some volume that can help you burn more calories, as long as you’re not doing too much.

Most people use a ton of light weight training just to burn more calories, but if your body is in a calorie deficit (as it should be when cutting) your body is already “handicapped” when it comes to recovery.

Doing too much volume can cause you to indirectly lose muscle mass.

In other words, your calorie deficit should come mostly from diet, not from your training.

Two Types of Muscle Growth

The reps, sets, rest periods and amount of weight we use determine which muscle growth we stimulate the most.

When you do heavy lifting between 4-10 reps you mainly promote Myofibrillar hypertrophy, because after you have done your muscle repair and your exercise method works, the only way to gain strength is to get large muscle fibers.

And when you lift light weight you mainly stimulate Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, This type of training consumes a large amount of muscle glycogen which forces the body to charge your glycogen stores to handle better the future training of the same training.

So, the main thing here is that a small part of your muscle growth comes from Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, because your muscles quickly increase the amount of glycogen they can hold.

After that, the only thing that makes your muscles grow is strength.

Probably around 70-80% of your muscle growth comes from increasing the size of your muscles, and not from pump training.

People who are new to training often think that you can “cut” muscle.

Basically what they believe is that you can make a certain muscle more visible by burning the fat around it.

Another example would be when someone does a ton of bicep curls every day in the hope that this will lead to fat loss only around the biceps.

But in order to lose body fat, regardless of where you want this fat to be lost, you must be in a calorie deficit.

There is no more “secret” way to lose body fat around a particular body part than just being in a calorie deficit.

Your genes will determine where on the body you start losing fat, and when you’re really thin enough, everything looks cut.

Use Both Weights and Heavy Weights!

In general, I would say that you can train with both heavy and light weights, as long as you try to maintain/increase strength on your key-lifts, such as Soldier press, Bench press, Squats and Deadlifts by lifting weights.

As long as you have that developed in your program you can train with different isolation exercises with light weight on them without much difficulty.

As long as you maintain or increase strength you have nothing to worry about, but if you keep dipping into strength, you may be losing muscle again, especially if you are in a calorie deficit.

So, here is an example of good practice for beginners:

Workout A – Upper Body

Dips – 3 sets of 6-8 reps

Bicep Curls – 3 sets of 12-15 reps

Workout B – Lower Body

Hanging Knee Raises – 3 sets of 12-15 reps

And here are the exercise notes for this event:

Train three times a week on non-consecutive days.

Rest three minutes between sets.

For example, change the weight of pull-ups for pull-ups if you can’t handle a full set of pull-downs etc.

Monday – Upper Body – Chest Emphasis

Continue Bench Press – 4 sets of 4-6 reps

Cable Rows – 4 sets of 4-6 reps

Flat Dumbbell Bench Press – 3 sets of 6-8 reps

Seated Shoulder Press – 3 sets of 6-8 reps

Rear Delt Dumbbell Flyes – 3 sets of 12-15 reps

Skullcrushers – 5 sets of 12-15 reps

Barbell Squats – 5 sets of 4-6 reps

Romanian Deadlift – 3 sets of 4-6 reps

Leg Press – 5 sets of 6-8 reps

Seated Calf Raises – 5 sets of 12-15 reps

Hanging Knees / Leg Raises – 5 sets max

Friday – Upper Body – Back & Shoulder Strengthening

Weighted Pull Ups – 4 sets of 4-6 reps

Standing Barbell Shoulder Press – 4 sets of 4-6 reps

Barbell Rows – 4 sets of 6-8 reps

Continue Dumbbell Bench Press – 3 sets of 6-8 reps

Lateral Raises – 4 sets of 12-15 reps

Spider Curls – 5 sets of 12-15 reps

And here’s how to progress and get stronger over time with this activity:

When you hit the required reps for all sets, increase the weight by 2.5 kg (5 lbs) for all sets of the next workout.

If you miss a few reps on an upcoming workout, don’t worry.

Your goal for this next workout is to increase the reps in the last set in order to increase the weight again.

Use a tracking app or chart to track your progress.

This design has a lot of volume (amount of work) that is often needed when adding.

At this point, most of your strength gains will lead to muscle growth as well.

* In both methods mentioned above you are using straight sets, for example 5 x 4-6 reps.

This is where you use the same weight for all your sets.

Another very powerful training method to use when cutting is Reverse Pyramid Training where you start with your first heavy set and then follow that with the ladder set after.

This is a very effective way of teaching.

Always focus on getting stronger / or maintaining your strength while cutting, as this will ensure that you are not losing muscle.

The easiest way to get stronger and maintain strength will be to do heavy weight training.

You can use weight training as well, but this would be to increase the volume and help increase the calorie burn a little.

Since 70-80% of your muscle growth comes from the increased growth of your muscle mass, which is caused by weight lifting and not from pump training, I recommend that you focus more on strength than focusing on “chasing the pump”.

There are other factors that can affect how you maintain strength and muscle mass during your cut, not just how you train.

On this list, the most important things and the ones you can easily control are your calories and macro intake.