Running a Successful Cutting Phase Part 2 49/84

Hopefully you enjoyed yesterday's post on how to adjust your nutrition when you're trying to cut some weight. I want to reiterate  that that will be much more important to success than changing your workouts and what you do for your workout probably won't make as much if a difference as you thought. Although there are a few things you can do to help speed the process up a bit.

One of the most important things to think about when cutting is that we really need to focus on maintaining muscle mass. Although people often say "lose weight" what they really should mean is "lose fat". The goals shouldn't just be the number on the scale but to have your body fat percentage go down. If you don't do this right and end up losing muscle, you will weigh less but you'll still look soft and just be a smaller version of your previous self. In reality, THIS should be the main focus on your resistance training workouts. Still being strong, still lifting heavy even though you're eating less. Yes, you can and often should, include include fat loss circuits or conditioning but maintaining muscle should be priority #1. Here's a few tips to help with that

- Try full body workouts. Using your whole body each workout can help burn more calories and allows you to utilize killer exercises like Burpees and thrusters. Try 3-4 full body workouts per week
- Still use compound movements. They burn the most calories because they use the most muscles. They will also do the best job of maintaining muscle mass.

- Lift heavy and often. Just because you're cutting that doesn't mean you can get weak. Again, the main goal is muscle mass and you should try to keep as much strength as possible too.

- Shorten rest periods. This is an easy way to increase the intensity of your workout. Stick to 30-45 seconds for smaller movements and go as high as 60 seconds for bigger lifts.

- Turn your accessory work into a circuit. You can take the last point one step further and eliminate some rest periods all together. Take your last 4 accessory exercises and do then back to back with no rest the break about 45 seconds between rounds. This will also help you get out of the gym faster.

- Higher reps don't mean "toning" but can help increase intensity. You don't need to do high reps but they do a decent job of getting your heart rate up. Then again, so does lifting really heavy.

- Avoid long, slow cardio. People still seem to believe that this is super important in weight loss. Going for that long run may be doing more harm than good for your fat loss efforts.  Replace it with something higher intensity and save yourself some time.

- Do HIIT or SIT to save time. See above point. Although, when equalized for total calories, High Intensity Interval Training, Sprint Interval Training, and traditional cardio all burn about the same amount of fat, HIIT and SIT take significantly less for a similar result. They also help maintain more muscle.

- Go for a walk. This is an often underrated form of exercises. Although it somewhat contradicts my HIIT recommendation, walking can burn easy calories while still maintaining muscle better than traditional cardio.

- Get 10,000 steps every day. This should be a minimum for everyone. Daily activity is the most important exercise factor in weight loss. Sure, you could get a great 45 minute workout in but it won't make a difference if your sitting on your butt the other 23 hours and 15 minutes.

So one more time, you don't need to make massive changes in workout from a bulking phase or maintenance phase to a cutting phase but there are a few things you can do. If you take the above points and combine then with the nutrition information from yesterday the  you'll be better off saving your muscle and making sure of those pounds lost are fat!