Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / How to Adjust Strength Training for Fat Loss After 40 (Build Muscle While Losing Weight) | Ep 414

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How to Adjust Strength Training for Fat Loss After 40 (Build Muscle While Losing Weight) | Ep 414 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: Most people make one critical mistake when they cut calories to lose fat.
• 0:05
  Philip Pape: They adjust their training incorrectly.
• 0:08
  Philip Pape: They switch to high reps to burn fat.
• 0:11
  Philip Pape: They drop the weight on the bar.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: They add a bunch of cardio, and they wonder why their strength tanks, their muscle disappears, and they end up looking like a smaller, weaker version of themselves.
• 0:21
  Philip Pape: Today I'm showing you exactly what needs to change in your strength training during a fat loss phase and what absolutely can stay the same.
• 0:29
  Philip Pape: You'll learn why dropping intensity could destroy your results, how to adjust training volume while keeping load heavy, and why most fat loss training and advice costs you some of that muscle.
• 0:41
  Philip Pape: This is a topic I see people messing up all the time.
• 1:15
  Philip Pape: They will dial in their nutrition pretty well, they'll create the calorie deficit, they'll start losing that weight on the scale, but then they make some often disastrous adjustments to their training that don't make any sense.
• 1:28
  Philip Pape: They drop the weight on the bar, they switch to high-rep fat-burning workouts that they see on YouTube, they add tons of cardio thinking, well, I'm stuck and that's what I need to do, and then wonder why their lifts crash, why they're exhausted, why, despite working so hard, they're still not getting the lean muscular look they were going for.
• 1:46
  Philip Pape: Then they're done with the fat loss phase and they're like, hey, it's not revealing what I thought, or I can't even get through it the way I intended.
• 1:54
  Philip Pape: The problem is not the calorie deficit itself.
• 1:57
  Philip Pape: The problem is they're adjusting their training in the wrong way.
• 2:01
  Philip Pape: Thinking that fat loss requires lighter weights and higher volume, for example, when oftentimes it requires the opposite.
• 2:07
  Philip Pape: It's very contextual, it's very personalized, but there are principles behind all of this that I'm going to walk you through today.
• 2:14
  Philip Pape: What are the adjustments you have to make to training during fat loss?
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: What happens to your body during a cut that affects your training?
• 2:21
  Philip Pape: How do you maintain intensity while reducing volume if needed?
• 2:25
  Philip Pape: Why auto-regulation is so important and what the heck I'm even talking about, and how to manage recovery when that is your most limited resource during fat loss.
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: I will also, as always, bust some of those often heard so much on social media common myths about training during fat loss, including why certain forms of cardio could be holding you back and why you should never be afraid to lift heavy.
• 2:50
  Philip Pape: All right, let's get into it.
• 2:52
  Philip Pape: Sometimes on episodes, I do like to throw in a little testimonial or feedback that I've gotten from a listener, or in this case from a Fitness Lab user.
• 3:00
  Philip Pape: Real quick, Beth writes in, I've been using Fitness Lab for 18 days now.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: The AI in the app is always there to answer questions and work through any struggles you have.
• 3:10
  Philip Pape: Oh, by the way, she started by saying, I just want to mention how much I love the app.
• 3:13
  Philip Pape: It's crazy how it feels.
• 3:15
  Philip Pape: Like you are chatting with Philip.
• 3:16
  Philip Pape: Looks at the data with a very human-feeling connection, not generic advice, but advice using my data for the advice.
• 3:23
  Philip Pape: P.S.
• 3:24
  Philip Pape: I was not paid for this endorsement.
• 3:25
  Philip Pape: LOL.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: I hope she doesn't mind me sharing.
• 3:28
  Philip Pape: I didn't give her last name away.
• 3:30
  Philip Pape: But that is the kind of feedback we're getting on Fitness Lab.
• 3:32
  Philip Pape: And that's all I'll say about that now.
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: I'll probably mention it at some point in the episode, like I always tend to do.
• 3:37
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about training for fat loss and start with what most people get wrong when they start a fat loss phase, because if you understand this, it's going to set everything else up for a much better time.
• 3:48
  Philip Pape: You've probably heard lots of advice, right?
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: Part of our mission here on the show is to cut through that and try to clarify what makes sense versus what doesn't, what's nonsense, what's silly, that's not going to work.
• 3:58
  Philip Pape: And when you're trying to lose fat, the biggest advice that I always see that is flat out wrong and can be counterproductive is that you need to lift lighter weights for higher reps to tone up to burn fat.
• 4:11
  Philip Pape: Maybe you've been told to do more cardio, especially HIT, high-intensity cardio, and that's gonna accelerate fat loss and fasted training and use intermittent fasting.
• 4:21
  Philip Pape: There's so many things about, you know, we burn more fat doing this.
• 4:24
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's cut carbs to nothing at all and you're gonna burn more fat.
• 4:27
  Philip Pape: All of that stuff.
• 4:28
  Philip Pape: Maybe even things like cut your rest periods shorter because that keeps your heart rate elevated, burns more calories, right?
• 4:34
  Philip Pape: All of this is everywhere.
• 4:35
  Philip Pape: It's in fitness magazines, if you even know what that is.
• 4:37
  Philip Pape: We'll say YouTube, Instagram, all of that.
• 4:40
  Philip Pape: It's what the trainer at the gym who doesn't know what he's talking about might tell you.
• 4:43
  Philip Pape: And that's what we're here to correct.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: So when people start a cut, when you start a cut, you're in a calorie deficit.
• 4:49
  Philip Pape: And I would say, look, if you do nothing else, doing what you're already doing when you're not in a deficit, if it's effective, might be just fine.
• 4:57
  Philip Pape: And that's it.
• 4:57
  Philip Pape: And that's the end of the episode.
• 4:58
  Philip Pape: You don't even have to listen.
• 5:00
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 5:00
  Philip Pape: But for a lot of us, especially as we're over 40 and we have other recovery issues at play, there are things you have to think about.
• 5:06
  Philip Pape: So what a lot of people do is they drop the weight on the bar, the dumbbells, whatever.
• 5:11
  Philip Pape: I say the bar colloquially, but they drop the weight because they think lighter weights with higher reps is gonna help them burn more fat.
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: So where they were doing a five rep program or, you know, even like five to eight or eight to ten, now they start doing higher rep programs.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: Maybe they cut the rest periods down, they do more circuit training, add more HIT, all of that kind of stuff.
• 5:29
  Philip Pape: And and many times it's a mindset of, okay, now I'm in fat loss.
• 5:32
  Philip Pape: I've got to go harder on everything, right?
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: I've cut the calories, now I need to move more.
• 5:36
  Philip Pape: It's that old mindset that doesn't work, although the logic seems at the surface level to make sense.
• 5:43
  Philip Pape: But what happens instead is you're going to lose your strength because the main stimulus for strength is that intensity, that weight, that on the bar, right?
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: That high level of percentage of your max.
• 5:53
  Philip Pape: And then you're going to lose some of that muscle without the stimulus and you're going to get more exhausted, more depleted because your mode of training is going to be more like cardio.
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: And now you're maybe adding more cardio on top of that.
• 6:05
  Philip Pape: And so the irony is that trying to burn fat this way is going to just backfire in all the ways we don't want to backfire.
• 6:11
  Philip Pape: You're going to look worse when you're done.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: You're going to maybe even plateau with your weight loss because of all the stress that's now causing your metabolism to adapt even further.
• 6:21
  Philip Pape: You lose muscle, right?
• 6:23
  Philip Pape: Our goal during fat loss when we're in a calorie deficit is we want to lose weight, sure, but we want to do it all from fat.
• 6:29
  Philip Pape: We don't want to lose muscle.
• 6:31
  Philip Pape: And so ironically, you end up losing muscle and getting more skinny fat and less definition and smaller, weaker, all of that stuff because you're doing something counterproductive.
• 6:39
  Philip Pape: You're effectively throwing out what works about training.
• 6:44
  Philip Pape: So you don't lose fat by changing how you train during fat loss.
• 6:49
  Philip Pape: You do it by being in a calorie deficit and continuing to get that stimulus.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: Your nutrition creates the fat loss.
• 6:55
  Philip Pape: Period.
• 6:56
  Philip Pape: Your training's job during a cut is to send a signal to your body that says, keep the muscle, because we still need it, so that that weight loss comes from fat and it does become fat loss.
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: Okay, we the extreme case of this today is weight loss medications when people are not lifting weights.
• 7:14
  Philip Pape: They're gonna lose a bunch of muscle.
• 7:15
  Philip Pape: Now you're saying, well, I am lifting, I'm just doing it a different way.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: Well, the problem is if you don't do it the right way, keeping the intensity at a reasonable level, at least enough to maintain your muscle, then you're gonna have a problem.
• 7:27
  Philip Pape: So that's the first one.
• 7:29
  Philip Pape: The the second one is this uncomfortable reality about what happens to strength and what happens to muscle.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: Let's clarify this right now.
• 7:38
  Philip Pape: If you're gonna be successful during a fat loss phase, you are not going to linearly gain strength while losing body fat.
• 7:46
  Philip Pape: And the only exception, the little asterisk on that footnote, is if you're brand new and you're just starting this for the very first time, but if you're doing that, why the heck are you in a calorie deficit right off the bat?
• 7:56
  Philip Pape: You're not, you haven't listened to the show, obviously.
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: I can point you to an episode like your very first cut, which we did, I think earlier in 2025.
• 8:04
  Philip Pape: Maybe that was last year.
• 8:05
  Philip Pape: But you should not be in a deficit right off the bat.
• 8:07
  Philip Pape: Anyway, you should be working to build strength and build a foundation, not gain weight, not lose weight, and then go into fat loss phase.
• 8:13
  Philip Pape: Anyway, enough of that rent.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: My point is you're not gonna, your goal isn't to gain PRs and gain strength in absolute terms while losing body weight.
• 8:23
  Philip Pape: And I know that's not what you want to hear because you want body recomp, don't you?
• 8:27
  Philip Pape: But being in a big deficit to lose fat, that's not the goal.
• 8:30
  Philip Pape: And if you understand that reality, it separates you the people who do this successfully, lose fat, build muscle from those who don't.
• 8:37
  Philip Pape: So when you're in a calorie deficit, several things are happening that affect your training performance.
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: Your energy availability is, of course, lower because, well, you're eating less.
• 8:47
  Philip Pape: Your recovery is compromised because your body has fewer resources to repair tissue.
• 8:52
  Philip Pape: Your glycogen stores are depleted because you're not eating as much and you're probably not eating nearly as many carbs.
• 8:57
  Philip Pape: And that affects your ability to produce the force on those, you know, in those lifting sessions.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: And if you're losing body weight, your leverages literally change, which can make the same weights feel heavier.
• 9:10
  Philip Pape: And you're just lighter.
• 9:11
  Philip Pape: You're lighter.
• 9:12
  Philip Pape: You can't, you don't have as much cross-sectional area to produce the force that you did before.
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: And of course, we're trying to get lighter, so that's okay.
• 9:19
  Philip Pape: That's a trade-off that we make.
• 9:20
  Philip Pape: Now, my coach, Andy Baker, fantastic strength coach, has been on the show at least, what, three times?
• 9:25
  Philip Pape: He talks about this all the time that lighter lifters lose more strength when cutting than heavier lifters.
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: That's that's uh kind of a side tangent on this that's important to understand.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: And if you think about the physics of it, it makes sense.
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: A 150-pound person who loses 10 pounds is losing a bigger percentage of their body weight than a 220-pound person who loses the same 10 pounds.
• 9:47
  Philip Pape: And oftentimes the amounts of weight loss are kind of similar, even when the person's baseline weight is quite different between two different people, and that's where we get these discrepancies.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: So, what's the goal during fat loss?
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: It is not to PR your strength.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: Your goal is to preserve your muscle.
• 10:04
  Philip Pape: That's a different thing, it's a different goal.
• 10:07
  Philip Pape: So when we accept that, we can then accept that absolute strength will probably dip during a cut, and that's normal.
• 10:15
  Philip Pape: But relative strength may actually increase.
• 10:19
  Philip Pape: What do I mean by that?
• 10:21
  Philip Pape: If you're squatting 225 for reps at 180 pounds body weight, and then you cut to 165 while maintaining 225, well, what is just happened?
• 10:32
  Philip Pape: What just happened?
• 10:32
  Philip Pape: Your strength relative to your body weight went up, even though the absolute number didn't change.
• 10:37
  Philip Pape: And this could be a mental challenge to grasp because it feels like we're we're regressing or we're only holding.
• 10:45
  Philip Pape: When in fact we're getting relatively stronger, but it's because we're losing body weight.
• 10:50
  Philip Pape: So the real win during a cut is maintaining your muscle mass.
• 10:53
  Philip Pape: You're going to look dramatically better when you do that.
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: That's the goal.
• 10:57
  Philip Pape: That's the body comp goal.
• 10:58
  Philip Pape: You'll be leaner, you'll be more defined, you'll have kept the hard-earned muscle you built during your building phases.
• 11:02
  Philip Pape: Exactly what bodybuilders are trying to do all the time.
• 11:04
  Philip Pape: They're trying to spend an off season training super hard, eating a ton of food, building, building, building, building, improving.
• 11:11
  Philip Pape: And then they want to efficiently cut that off.
• 11:13
  Philip Pape: Efficiently and quickly, but not so quickly, that they lose muscle and reveal that hard-earned muscle.
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: And that's why I tell people to think of a fat loss phase as a maintenance phase for muscle.
• 11:24
  Philip Pape: You're not trying to grow, you're trying to hold on to what you have while your nutrition handles the fat loss.
• 11:28
  Philip Pape: And that changes how you train.
• 11:30
  Philip Pape: We're going to get into that now.
• 11:31
  Philip Pape: And one of the ways it changes how you train is that it takes a lot less volume to maintain muscle.
• 11:37
  Philip Pape: So you don't have to worry as much about the volume if you don't have the recovery for it.
• 11:41
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 11:41
  Philip Pape: So let's let's, if you take nothing else from this episode, remember this.
• 11:46
  Philip Pape: During fat loss, try to keep your intensity high while reducing your volume.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: That is, I'll say, almost a universal principle that works for almost everybody.
• 11:56
  Philip Pape: And that's the way I'm going to put it because nothing is absolute, right?
• 11:59
  Philip Pape: If we're going to be nuanced about things.
• 12:01
  Philip Pape: This is the opposite of what most people do.
• 12:03
  Philip Pape: A lot of people keep volume the same or they increase it thinking more training, more fat loss, and then they're exhausted, their lifts crash, they lose muscle.
• 12:10
  Philip Pape: No, we don't want to do that.
• 12:11
  Philip Pape: The research is clear on this.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: Training intensity of about 75 to 85% of your one rep max maintains muscle beautifully during a deficit, right?
• 12:22
  Philip Pape: You don't need high volume to maintain muscle.
• 12:25
  Philip Pape: High volumes have diminishing returns because your recovery capacity is limited.
• 12:31
  Philip Pape: What why is that?
• 12:32
  Philip Pape: Well, volume is total number of hard sets per muscle group per week.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: And during a building phase, you might do upwards of 15 to even 20.
• 12:39
  Philip Pape: I mean, that's really the high end, but I'll say 10 to 15 hard sets per muscle group to per week.
• 12:44
  Philip Pape: During a cut, I would just drop that to about 10 to 12, maybe even below 10 for some muscle groups.
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: Because again, we're thinking in terms of maintaining here and balancing the stimulus to fatigue, given we have limited recovery.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: So the key is keeping the weight on the bar heavy.
• 13:00
  Philip Pape: Again, when I say weight on the bar, I just mean whatever weight you're pushing for whatever reps for whatever machine or implement you're using.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: I love barbells, I'm using that predominantly, but there's obviously a bunch of other things.
• 13:11
  Philip Pape: And it also means training close to failure.
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: That does, that never changes.
• 13:15
  Philip Pape: That's a principle.
• 13:16
  Philip Pape: And there, therefore, you're sending the signal to your body that it needs this muscle.
• 13:20
  Philip Pape: High intensity, and intensity means percentage of your one rep max, means weight on the bar.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: It doesn't mean sweating and volume.
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: And we say intensity, we mean load here.
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: It tells your body this muscle is still necessary.
• 13:33
  Philip Pape: Lower volume then reduces your systemic fatigue, which is a big factor on how well you recover and reduces soreness, gives you more energy, allows you to make best use of your nutrition and your sleep.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: So for something like your main lifts, you're still gonna stick to, say, your three to six or three to eight rep range.
• 13:53
  Philip Pape: For your accessories, you're still probably gonna be around six to twelve.
• 13:56
  Philip Pape: But maybe you're doing fewer sets.
• 13:58
  Philip Pape: Maybe, not always.
• 13:59
  Philip Pape: Interestingly, there are some really effective fat loss programs that I've run that use a set-based progression where you're increasing sets, but you're not increasing the load and you're just keeping the load reasonably high the whole time.
• 14:12
  Philip Pape: You know, anywhere from roughly 70 to 90% of your max ish, maybe as low as 65%, but you're still in that regime.
• 14:18
  Philip Pape: So a lot of people struggle mentally when it comes to this because more, more, more feels productive.
• 14:24
  Philip Pape: But during a cut, more is often counterproductive.
• 14:28
  Philip Pape: And in fact, more is often counterproductive no matter what.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: One of the biggest, I guess, counterintuitive things about this about fitness.
• 14:38
  Philip Pape: So your margin of error for overreach, overtraining, overreaching shrinks in a deficit.
• 14:45
  Philip Pape: Now, I'm not worried about any of you really overtraining in the classic sense, because most of you are just not training hard enough, but you might be overtraining in the quantity and fatigue sense, if that makes sense.
• 14:57
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 14:57
  Philip Pape: And then it just smashes you and then it's counterproductive.
• 15:00
  Philip Pape: So during a building phase, for example, you might be hitting a lift twice or three times a week, say four, five, six working sets per session.
• 15:09
  Philip Pape: If we're doing like accessories in there plus the main lift, let's say, and it comes out to 12 sets a week.
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: During a cut, you might drop sets or you might drop frequency, or you might not and just maintain, but you don't get you don't get more volume than that.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: If anything, you might drop it.
• 15:27
  Philip Pape: And so your overall volume for all your lifts across all sessions might be the same or less, generally.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: You're you're generally not gonna increase it, is my point.
• 15:37
  Philip Pape: And you're always training within one to three repshi of failure.
• 15:40
  Philip Pape: Classic mechanical tension principle that we care about for progressive overload.
• 15:45
  Philip Pape: Understanding you're not gonna keep increasing your strength linearly here.
• 15:48
  Philip Pape: That's what gets confusing to people.
• 15:50
  Philip Pape: So that brings us to the next topic.
• 15:53
  Philip Pape: See, I'm segueing naturally from one to the next.
• 15:55
  Philip Pape: The next topic is auto-regulation.
• 15:58
  Philip Pape: Auto-regulation.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: During a building phase, so when you're not into deficit, you can get away with pushing through when you're tired and hitting the reps you're trying to hit because you have other reserves usually from your food, for example, or even just the fact that you've been eating means you can slack off in other areas and still have enough recovery capacity.
• 16:18
  Philip Pape: Maybe, hopefully.
• 16:19
  Philip Pape: But during a cut, you definitely do not for the most part.
• 16:23
  Philip Pape: If you're in a reasonable cut, if you're in a very, very, very light cut or you're aiming for body recomp, you know, that changes the game a little bit.
• 16:29
  Philip Pape: But let's just assume a normal cut where you're cutting, say, 500 calories a day, and this is where auto-regulation becomes really helpful.
• 16:36
  Philip Pape: Auto regulation means you're gonna adjust your training, you're gonna regulate your training based on how you feel and perform on any given day.
• 16:43
  Philip Pape: That's the auto part.
• 16:44
  Philip Pape: Auto, not meaning automatic, but auto as in it happens based on you on that day, right?
• 16:53
  Philip Pape: I'm not very good at explaining the word itself, but it's adjusting your training based on how you feel perform rather than sticking to the exact, we'll say, loads and volumes.
• 17:03
  Philip Pape: And this is where having your program set up in a way that just naturally uses auto-regulation so you don't have to think about it is helpful.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: Now, a lot of people will say, okay, that means RPE or RIR, rate of perceived exertion or reps in reserve.
• 17:17
  Philip Pape: I actually prefer just using rep ranges for this.
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: Like for me, auto-regulation comes from rep ranges.
• 17:23
  Philip Pape: It can also, though, come from, let's say, testing a 1RM and using a back-off from that, for example, where the one RM, the one rep max, is that day's one rep max, not an all-time one rep max.
• 17:39
  Philip Pape: And this is the way to tell on that day where am I?
• 17:41
  Philip Pape: Another way to do this is using AMRAP, as many reps as possible on a final set, so that the next session you know what you're capable of.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: That is a little trickier and more advanced.
• 17:51
  Philip Pape: So I'm not going to get into it too much.
• 17:52
  Philip Pape: But for the most part, if you're using a rep range instead of sets across, so instead of three sets of five, it might be three sets of four to six.
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: And that way you have a little bit of flexibility in there.
• 18:03
  Philip Pape: And I would also say on your second and third sets, if you need to drop the weight to stay in the rep range, go ahead and do it.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: That because of the auto-regulation, right?
• 18:12
  Philip Pape: Because you feel you need to do that.
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: And you'll become more and more experienced with this over time.
• 18:16
  Philip Pape: This is not an excuse to back off and not train heavy and hard.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: You still want to get within one to three rep shy failure.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: It's just getting there may require a little bit of a trade-off versus just linearly pushing it like you would in the past.
• 18:30
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 18:31
  Philip Pape: So on a good day, oh, you're feeling great.
• 18:33
  Philip Pape: Maybe you're doing one of these weekend diet approaches I recommend where you're refueling on the weekend and then going back into the deficit on the weekday.
• 18:39
  Philip Pape: Well, Monday, you may feel really good and get everything that you planned and everything's like a two R R I R, right?
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: Two reps shy from failure.
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: Perfect, great.
• 18:47
  Philip Pape: But other days, in fact, most days in fat loss, you're probably going to be more fatigued.
• 18:51
  Philip Pape: And if you hit the same weight, it might feel like one rep shy of failure.
• 18:57
  Philip Pape: So you either do that, or if it's a grind, because you don't really want it to grind, you know, you drop off the weight for your back off sets, right?
• 19:05
  Philip Pape: So you kind of have to feel it out a little bit.
• 19:07
  Philip Pape: But if it's built in with rep ranges and with back offs and things like that, you can you can do it really well.
• 19:12
  Philip Pape: Speaking of back offs, I do love back off sets and fat loss, where you might do two sets of your lifts.
• 19:18
  Philip Pape: The first set is at a lower rep range, the second set is a little bit higher, but you drop the weight.
• 19:22
  Philip Pape: Boom.
• 19:23
  Philip Pape: It's a great way to deal with this.
• 19:25
  Philip Pape: So the key here is being flexible, but not using excuses.
• 19:28
  Philip Pape: It's kind of a fine line based on your load selection and based on the percentages and the rep ranges, right?
• 19:36
  Philip Pape: You're not married to hitting exact specific numbers.
• 19:39
  Philip Pape: It's auto regulation.
• 19:41
  Philip Pape: So with the top set back off set approach, by the way, it doesn't have to be two sets.
• 19:45
  Philip Pape: You could still do three sets.
• 19:46
  Philip Pape: You could do two or three back off sets.
• 19:47
  Philip Pape: Or you can do what we do in like the Westside style conjugate program, which Andy Baker introduced me to, where you test a 1RM and then you back off from that.
• 19:56
  Philip Pape: You do, let's say, 90% for two to four or 80% for.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: Or three to six or something like that.
• 20:02
  Philip Pape: And this approach then naturally adjusts to your readiness and fatigue level on that day, where the goal is to keep training hard enough to maintain your muscle, but not so hard that you dig yourself into a hole that you can't recover from.
• 20:14
  Philip Pape: Because remember, again, what is your most limited resource during a cut?
• 20:17
  Philip Pape: It is your recovery.
• 20:18
  Philip Pape: So now let's talk about that.
• 20:20
  Philip Pape: Again, another amazing segue.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: I'm proud of myself, guys.
• 20:24
  Philip Pape: It doesn't usually happen this way.
• 20:25
  Philip Pape: Recovery.
• 20:26
  Philip Pape: This is where most people fail during fat loss.
• 20:29
  Philip Pape: When you're in a calorie deficit, recovery capacity is far lower than it was when you weren't.
• 20:35
  Philip Pape: And even lower than you might think.
• 20:36
  Philip Pape: And guys, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who've been dieting for a long time and need to just spend some time out of a diet, this doesn't apply to you.
• 20:44
  Philip Pape: I don't want you to take this advice from that position.
• 20:48
  Philip Pape: I would rather you recover, get to maintenance, fuel up, spend there, developing your foundational habits and your behaviors, then do a fat loss phase from a good place.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: Okay, that was a side tangent.
• 20:59
  Philip Pape: So recovery drops, which means you accumulate fatigue faster and it takes longer to dissipate that fatigue.
• 21:05
  Philip Pape: And some of that is very ever-present, literal fatigue, like your low back is just feeling achy from your Romanian deadlifts or your squats or something, and it's just not going away.
• 21:16
  Philip Pape: And you got to listen to that because that's like bending before it breaks, right?
• 21:20
  Philip Pape: I don't mean break like you're gonna break your spine.
• 21:22
  Philip Pape: I just mean from an ability to hold on to things and progress and really train the way you want.
• 21:28
  Philip Pape: So the first lever is reducing volume, which we already covered.
• 21:31
  Philip Pape: The second lever, if you need to do it, is to reduce frequency, where instead of doing four days a week, you do three days a week.
• 21:37
  Philip Pape: I love this move.
• 21:39
  Philip Pape: It gives you an extra day of sleep as well.
• 21:41
  Philip Pape: It gives you a little less pressure, and then you can kind of focus on some really good, efficient quality sessions.
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: Now that doesn't mean you can't go the opposite direction, and three or four days a week becomes five or six, but very tiny sessions, because that's another way to switch things around without necessarily changing the frequency or just splitting things up across the week.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: Anyway, you have to figure out what's what works for you.
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: And you also have to optimize the other things that support recovery.
• 22:12
  Philip Pape: So, what would that be?
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: Well, sleep.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: Come on, guys, sleep.
• 22:15
  Philip Pape: If you weren't getting good sleep out of a deficit, oh damn, you really have to get good sleep during a deficit, right?
• 22:21
  Philip Pape: If you're getting six hours, you probably need seven or eight, right?
• 22:24
  Philip Pape: That's gonna affect your recovery and your hunger and your performance.
• 22:27
  Philip Pape: Do the things, get your room dark and cool, stick to a consistent schedule, all the things.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: Stress management matters more during a cut as well.
• 22:36
  Philip Pape: Chronic stress elevates cortisol, it promotes muscle breakdown, promotes fat storage, right?
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: We're not trying to do that.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: We're trying to lose fat.
• 22:43
  Philip Pape: We're trying to call on our resources the right way.
• 22:46
  Philip Pape: We want to manage our stress through walking, through breathing, whatever works for you.
• 22:50
  Philip Pape: Protein intake, people don't realize this.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: Oftentimes it needs to go up during a cut.
• 22:56
  Philip Pape: If you're already hitting 0.7 or 0.8 grams per pound at least, stay at least there, but try jacking it up to up to one gram per pound and see if that makes a difference to your hunger, for example.
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: Okay, and for your ability to stick to this.
• 23:10
  Philip Pape: Not everybody needs to do that, but it's you definitely need to have that minimum, if not more, during fat loss.
• 23:16
  Philip Pape: And then I want to I want you to consider adding light movement for recovery.
• 23:20
  Philip Pape: This is gonna live you give you a little boost to your neat, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and might actually help with the calorie burning side of the equation anyway.
• 23:28
  Philip Pape: This is your, I'll call it, optimal form of cardio if we're gonna add cardio, and that is walking, easy biking, some mobility stuff that you enjoy.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's yoga, right?
• 23:37
  Philip Pape: Nothing that's interfering with your lifting or adding more stress, things that increase blood flow without adding fatigue.
• 23:43
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: Recovery is not just about the rest, it's supporting your body's ability to adapt the whole time during fat loss because you have fewer resources.
• 23:53
  Philip Pape: Now, speaking of managing all these variables, because I know it sounds a little overwhelming when you're during a cut.
• 23:59
  Philip Pape: And that's why, that's why people struggle with this sometimes.
• 24:01
  Philip Pape: But if you're ready to do this, then do it the right way.
• 24:05
  Philip Pape: So I want to tell you about something that can make this entire process dramatically easier.
• 24:10
  Philip Pape: Some of you know, and if you don't, I'm telling you now, I've been working on an AI-powered coaching app called Fitness Lab, designed specifically to help with situations like this.
• 24:20
  Philip Pape: If you're in a fat loss phase, you've got to adjust these things properly.
• 24:24
  Philip Pape: Your training, your nutrition, you're not sure if you're doing too much or too little.
• 24:28
  Philip Pape: Fitness lab is gonna figure that out with you and for you.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: It's a coaching intelligence layer.
• 24:34
  Philip Pape: You tell it what you're trying to do as you go because it prompts you, it has conversations with you.
• 24:39
  Philip Pape: There's a chat feature and it knows what phase you're in and it will help you make those smart decisions to pivot and to adjust to your training.
• 24:48
  Philip Pape: Not make excuses, not back off.
• 24:50
  Philip Pape: It still does a great job of prodding you in a good way to keep you accountable, but it looks at your biofeedback and your sleep and your stress.
• 24:58
  Philip Pape: And by the time this episode comes out, we should have the Apple Health integration turned on, which levels it up even further.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: And by the way, we're coming out on Android as well.
• 25:06
  Philip Pape: So again, depends on when this episode comes out, when this stuff is available.
• 25:10
  Philip Pape: But the app is already out and it's incredible.
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: The feedback we're getting about how helpful it's been, it's like having a coach in your pocket.
• 25:18
  Philip Pape: Some people say it's like having Philip in your pocket.
• 25:20
  Philip Pape: I hope that's not a terrible thing.
• 25:22
  Philip Pape: Uh, if you like the podcast, it sounds weird to me, but it is what it is, right?
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: If you log that you're feeling fatigued, if your biofeedback scores are low, if your last workout was logged as feeling harder, because it's gonna ask you that did this feel harder than last time?
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: And you're like, yeah, actually it did.
• 25:37
  Philip Pape: Fitness Lab's gonna take that and suggest something to change.
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: It might pull back on the volume and adjust your load for the session based on that feedback.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: So you can still hit it hard, but not feel like past the point of no return with your fatigue.
• 25:53
  Philip Pape: If you're being consistent, hitting targets, feeling good, it might push the progression a little bit, even during fat loss, because you can handle it.
• 26:00
  Philip Pape: So, in addition to it being able to pull in your data, sleep, your steps, your heart rate variability, your rest, resting heart rate, all of that stuff with Apple Health, all of that, plus everything you tell it is going to give you extremely personalized coaching.
• 26:13
  Philip Pape: Really like nothing you've ever been able to have before because of technology.
• 26:17
  Philip Pape: So the app is now available.
• 26:19
  Philip Pape: And from December 17 to January 2nd, you can get 20% off.
• 26:23
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash app, check it out.
• 26:26
  Philip Pape: There's a two-minute quiz that will give you a plan before you even decide whether you want the app.
• 26:31
  Philip Pape: So that'll tell you, hey, yeah, this thing's for me or not.
• 26:34
  Philip Pape: All right, no pressure.
• 26:35
  Philip Pape: Witsandweights.com slash app.
• 26:37
  Philip Pape: All right, let's get back to other adjustments you make to your training during fat loss.
• 26:43
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about carbs and fuel because an underrated aspect of training during a cut is carbs in general, as well as the timing of the carbs.
• 26:53
  Philip Pape: Carbs, carbohydrates, one of the three macros, of course, along with fats and protein, fuel your glycolytic lifting.
• 27:01
  Philip Pape: They support your central nervous system.
• 27:03
  Philip Pape: They do help protect and spare muscle, they reduce your perception of effort, they improve recovery.
• 27:10
  Philip Pape: You guys know how much I love carbs.
• 27:11
  Philip Pape: And if you didn't know that, and you know that now, and you're wondering, really?
• 27:14
  Philip Pape: I thought carbs are bad, stick around.
• 27:17
  Philip Pape: We love carbs on widths and weights because they are magical.
• 27:20
  Philip Pape: And they're magical.
• 27:21
  Philip Pape: During a cut, carb timing is also important.
• 27:25
  Philip Pape: And the strategy here, because the carbs are lower.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: So here's the thing.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: Here's the thing, guys.
• 27:29
  Philip Pape: In a cut, your calories are lower, but your protein's the same or higher.
• 27:32
  Philip Pape: Ergo, or as they say in Latin, QED, or the three little dots, if you ever did geometry proofs, uh talking to my nerds out there.
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: Ergo, the carbs have to be a lot lower.
• 27:43
  Philip Pape: If protein's the same and calories are lower, the carbs have to be a lot lower.
• 27:47
  Philip Pape: So in that case, you're down to 150, 100, maybe 70 grams of carbs, depending on where you are.
• 27:53
  Philip Pape: Where do you put the carbs?
• 27:55
  Philip Pape: Well, put them around your workout.
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: If you train in the morning, load your carbs pre-workout, post-workout in the morning.
• 28:01
  Philip Pape: So that's like maybe that's breakfast and your midday meal or lunch.
• 28:07
  Philip Pape: Depend depends on when the timing, right?
• 28:09
  Philip Pape: If you train in the evening, your carbs at lunch and dinner, meals further from training can be lower carb.
• 28:16
  Philip Pape: They can have protein and fat, vegetables, low to almost no carbs potentially, right?
• 28:20
  Philip Pape: We we still like some balance, but you can do that.
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: And vegetables are a carb, and they're because they're fibrous, they will help balance out the digestion of blood sugars and all of that.
• 28:29
  Philip Pape: But I would have your carbs around your workout because that's when it's most beneficial for your performance, for your recovery.
• 28:36
  Philip Pape: So that's a strategic way to do it.
• 28:38
  Philip Pape: And if you don't do it that way, if carbs are low, if they're poorly timed, if you train fasted during fat loss, your training might feel awful.
• 28:45
  Philip Pape: Or if you're like, my training's okay, and now you try having a banana before you work out, tell me the difference.
• 28:51
  Philip Pape: If you don't feel great, then that's you.
• 28:54
  Philip Pape: The vast majority of people are like, whoa, that is fuel.
• 28:57
  Philip Pape: That is like nitrous oxide.
• 29:00
  Philip Pape: Nitrous oxide?
• 29:01
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:01
  Philip Pape: What is the stuff that when you're driving a non-street legal sports car and you want to go faster, right?
• 29:07
  Philip Pape: Nitrous.
• 29:08
  Philip Pape: So if you don't do that, you're gonna feel more flat, you're not gonna have a good pump, you're not gonna push as hard, all of that.
• 29:15
  Philip Pape: You're gonna have a better performance, most likely, if you time your carbs around your training.
• 29:19
  Philip Pape: And you know, I do I never suggest extremely low carb, even during a cut.
• 29:24
  Philip Pape: If you can get at least 100 grams of carbs, that would be ideal.
• 29:28
  Philip Pape: I know many of you can't because your calories are down to like 14, 13, 12, maybe 1100 if you're really petite, even lower than that.
• 29:36
  Philip Pape: So it really is trading off one macro for the other.
• 29:39
  Philip Pape: And oftentimes that's trying to keep fats reasonably low so you can do that.
• 29:43
  Philip Pape: Not super low, just reasonable, like 20% instead of 30% of calories.
• 29:47
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 29:48
  Philip Pape: So one more mistake, I guess, I want to address is cardio itself.
• 29:53
  Philip Pape: All right, a lot of people add cardio, just the big umbrella term cardio, to quote unquote accelerate fat loss.
• 30:00
  Philip Pape: And it sounds appealing, right?
• 30:02
  Philip Pape: Cardio can be intense, it can feel productive, it's exercise.
• 30:05
  Philip Pape: Sometimes it doesn't take that long.
• 30:07
  Philip Pape: Many of you hate cardio, but some of you don't.
• 30:09
  Philip Pape: Some of you like it.
• 30:11
  Philip Pape: Not many.
• 30:12
  Philip Pape: Maybe that's my own bias putting on the on the population listening to the show.
• 30:16
  Philip Pape: But during a deficit, when you're also strength training, cardio has to be very, very strategic because too much high-intensity cardio can be too stressful.
• 30:26
  Philip Pape: And I mean like a lot of running, even a lot of high-intensity other cardio, like biking or something like that, like too much of it can interfere with your glycogen stores because you just don't have that many carbs.
• 30:38
  Philip Pape: If you lift, if you do it before lifting, you're really gonna screw up your training.
• 30:42
  Philip Pape: If you do it after lifting or in between your training sessions, you've got to think about when so it doesn't impact your recovery too much.
• 30:49
  Philip Pape: And this is where the frequency and when you train and all of that can make a difference.
• 30:53
  Philip Pape: So, cardio, especially at high intensity or lots of volume, can increase your systemic fatigue because it does tax your central nervous system.
• 31:01
  Philip Pape: It can also do a little bit of muscle damage.
• 31:03
  Philip Pape: And I don't mean that as a like scary thing, it's just preventing the muscles from adapting or recovering as fast if you do something like running, for example.
• 31:12
  Philip Pape: And then it's gonna increase your overall stress.
• 31:15
  Philip Pape: Now, again, exercise and training always increase stress a little bit.
• 31:18
  Philip Pape: That's okay.
• 31:19
  Philip Pape: It's a hormetic stress, but if you're doing a lot of it, it could increase more your chronic stress.
• 31:24
  Philip Pape: And then that does the opposite of what we want.
• 31:26
  Philip Pape: It promotes, it promotes a catabolic environment, which means breakdown of muscle, especially when you're in a calorie deficit.
• 31:35
  Philip Pape: So, what do I recommend instead?
• 31:36
  Philip Pape: Well, anything lower intensity, like walking, easy cycling, rowing at a conversational pace, and also the occasional sprinting can be fit in there.
• 31:46
  Philip Pape: But I mean the anabolic sprinting, like we talk about on the show, that's very, very short, very high percentage of your capability for a short period, because those are highly that's still highly recoverable and will support your metabolism, not going to interfere with appetite.
• 32:00
  Philip Pape: They're gonna increase your need a little bit still, they'll burn some more calories and they won't interfere with your strength training and your recovery.
• 32:07
  Philip Pape: I would also do it after you lift, at least several hours, maybe on your off day.
• 32:12
  Philip Pape: You know, you got to be smart about it, keep it low intensity.
• 32:15
  Philip Pape: It's a tool.
• 32:16
  Philip Pape: And I have talked to many lifters on the show who are big fans of a decent amount of cardio, but it's all relative.
• 32:22
  Philip Pape: It's relative to your recovery capacity.
• 32:24
  Philip Pape: So, really, that's all it is.
• 32:25
  Philip Pape: Remember your deficit, your calorie deficit is what is driving fat loss, period.
• 32:30
  Philip Pape: Right now, your cardio may up your expenditure a bit so that you can eat more and still be in the deficit, and that's okay.
• 32:37
  Philip Pape: So, in that case, cardio should always support your goals.
• 32:40
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 32:40
  Philip Pape: It should support your goals.
• 32:42
  Philip Pape: It's contextual.
• 32:43
  Philip Pape: All right, a couple more things to cover because this is becoming somewhat of a definitive episode.
• 32:48
  Philip Pape: I want to talk about assistance work briefly.
• 32:51
  Philip Pape: Assistance work meaning the non, you know, you've got your main lifts and then your assistance work, which is the higher volume accessory work.
• 32:59
  Philip Pape: Now, when you're in a building phase, you're gonna have a ton of that, probably, right?
• 33:02
  Philip Pape: Like you might have five or six different exercises every training session, and you're accumulating all this volume and you're creating all this metabolic stress because you're trying to grow your muscles and your strength.
• 33:11
  Philip Pape: During a cut, think about the fact that you are not trying to add to your muscularity or to your strength.
• 33:18
  Philip Pape: It'd be nice if we could, but it competes with the goal of trying to lose fat, sometimes to a big degree, where it's not even possible.
• 33:26
  Philip Pape: Now you're doing neither.
• 33:28
  Philip Pape: So the guideline for assistance work is probably something like one to two hard sets each, maybe five to eight reps.
• 33:37
  Philip Pape: Make sure you're rotating movements over time.
• 33:39
  Philip Pape: I don't mean every session, but you know, you're going through training blocks, let's say, so you don't have repetitive stress, depending on how stressful the lift is.
• 33:46
  Philip Pape: And that's it.
• 33:48
  Philip Pape: You know, it's probably not the time to be experimenting with lots of drop sets and supersets and pump work and finishers and all that, because it's just not gonna have the payoff.
• 33:57
  Philip Pape: It's just not gonna have the payoff.
• 33:58
  Philip Pape: Now, some people might disagree with me.
• 34:00
  Philip Pape: There's some really great lifters out there who might say, no, you know, it's okay to do all this stuff.
• 34:03
  Philip Pape: I'm not saying it's not okay.
• 34:04
  Philip Pape: I'm saying you have to pick and choose based on what your goal is.
• 34:08
  Philip Pape: It's less important than your main lifts, in my opinion.
• 34:10
  Philip Pape: During a cut, recovery is limited.
• 34:12
  Philip Pape: Dedicate your resources to the lifts that matter most.
• 34:15
  Philip Pape: Keep those, the squat patterns, the deadlifts, the pressing, the pulling in place.
• 34:20
  Philip Pape: Keep those patterns in place.
• 34:21
  Philip Pape: Maintain all those big muscles with efficient movements that take less time, and then use the isolation work to just fill in the gaps.
• 34:29
  Philip Pape: You also have to think about joint health, avoiding injury.
• 34:33
  Philip Pape: You know, when you're fatigued, you might not be lifting as carefully or with as much focus.
• 34:37
  Philip Pape: All that comes into play as well when it comes to these things.
• 34:40
  Philip Pape: And that leads to the next thing, which is exercise selection.
• 34:43
  Philip Pape: I would stick with what you know during fat loss.
• 34:46
  Philip Pape: I would say fat loss is not the time to introduce a whole bunch of new exercises and learn a whole bunch of new movement patterns because you may not remember I mentioned before your leverages are different, your body's changing.
• 34:56
  Philip Pape: Like it may not actually pay off to even learn certain things in this time because it's not going to feel the same when you're eating more again.
• 35:02
  Philip Pape: So I would stick with things you're proficient at where you have good form and know how to load.
• 35:06
  Philip Pape: That doesn't mean you can't switch them around, right?
• 35:10
  Philip Pape: Over over over cycles, even if you haven't, it's not that it doesn't have to be the same thing you were just doing, but it's something that you already have some neuromuscular knowledge of.
• 35:19
  Philip Pape: And of course, that should include all the basic movement patterns we've been talking about, squats and deads and presses and pulls and all that, and then some simple accessories.
• 35:28
  Philip Pape: You know, don't start learning Olympic lifts during a cut, for example, if you've never done that before.
• 35:32
  Philip Pape: That's all I'm talking about.
• 35:33
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 35:34
  Philip Pape: It's stressful to do that.
• 35:36
  Philip Pape: It's mentally and physically stressful, requires more focus, requires more practice sets, more warm-up, more volume.
• 35:41
  Philip Pape: And then that could increase your injury risk.
• 35:43
  Philip Pape: Maybe I'm being too cautious here.
• 35:45
  Philip Pape: Let me know.
• 35:46
  Philip Pape: You experienced trainers and coaches out there, if I'm full of it, let me know.
• 35:50
  Philip Pape: But this is my observation.
• 35:51
  Philip Pape: I think a fat loss phase should be very targeted at what you're trying to accomplish.
• 35:56
  Philip Pape: And in my opinion, when you do that, it doesn't have to be as long because you're doing it efficiently and then you get through it in say eight weeks instead of 12 or 16.
• 36:03
  Philip Pape: Now, I mentioned joint stress briefly.
• 36:06
  Philip Pape: I do want to mention this because if certain movements start bothering your joints during a cut, which can happen because recovery is compromised, it's okay to modify the movement.
• 36:16
  Philip Pape: You know, switch to a high bar or safety bar instead of a low bar.
• 36:20
  Philip Pape: Use different grips, different widths, different potentially ranges of motion, depends on what we're talking about.
• 36:26
  Philip Pape: I would say fat loss phases should be kind of boring from an exercise selection standpoint, where you're not trying to be creative.
• 36:33
  Philip Pape: And if you're chasing programs that are like fat loss programs, that's a red flag for me, to be honest.
• 36:39
  Philip Pape: All right, let's quickly talk about the psychological side of training during a cut.
• 36:42
  Philip Pape: Just be realistic here, just like with the diet side of things, it's not gonna feel as good as during a building building phase.
• 36:48
  Philip Pape: You're just gonna feel kind of flatter.
• 36:51
  Philip Pape: You're not gonna feel the pump, most likely, because you don't have the calories and the carbs and all that.
• 36:55
  Philip Pape: Your strength is gonna dip, as we mentioned.
• 36:57
  Philip Pape: Your sleep is probably gonna be harder to come by, you're gonna have more hunger.
• 37:01
  Philip Pape: All of this is normal.
• 37:02
  Philip Pape: It's the cost of being in a deficit, and I don't want to sugarcoat it for you.
• 37:05
  Philip Pape: So the mindset shift here is you are not chasing performance during a cut, you're maintaining your performance.
• 37:11
  Philip Pape: If even though I do want you to think of, you know, I'm I'm see, this is tough.
• 37:17
  Philip Pape: Depends on how your mind works.
• 37:19
  Philip Pape: If it helps you to have a stretch goal and say, look, I'm gonna try to get stronger and build muscle, even though I might not, great.
• 37:25
  Philip Pape: That actually does kind of work for me.
• 37:27
  Philip Pape: For some people, it's very discouraging because then when they see the numbers staying the same, they feel like they're failing.
• 37:32
  Philip Pape: So it's kind of setting those realistic expectations.
• 37:34
  Philip Pape: If your strength is the same, but you lose 15 pounds, that's a massive win, right?
• 37:39
  Philip Pape: Don't compare your current cut also to a previous building phase or someone who's not in a deficit.
• 37:44
  Philip Pape: Stay in the lane and trust the process for you and compare yourself to yourself, right?
• 37:49
  Philip Pape: And not to yourself when you were building.
• 37:52
  Philip Pape: It's it's temporary discomfort, and it's just that it's temporary, but it is gonna happen.
• 37:58
  Philip Pape: You are gonna have discomfort.
• 37:59
  Philip Pape: And then when you get back to maintenance or surplus, your strength is gonna shoot back up.
• 38:02
  Philip Pape: You're gonna look incredible because you preserved everything during the cup.
• 38:06
  Philip Pape: And of course, you're gonna track a lot more than just a few things.
• 38:08
  Philip Pape: You're not gonna just track weight on the bar, you're gonna track your body weight trend, your body composition, your clothes, your sleep, your hunger, your energy, your mood.
• 38:16
  Philip Pape: Because if your strength dips slightly, but all the other things are pre good, you're losing fat, you're sleeping okay, you're not miserable, you're not that hungry.
• 38:25
  Philip Pape: You're doing great, you're doing great, it's okay.
• 38:27
  Philip Pape: All right, so let's recap the key adjustments.
• 38:30
  Philip Pape: Accept that strength will dip slightly.
• 38:32
  Philip Pape: Your goal is to maintain muscle, not gain strength.
• 38:35
  Philip Pape: Keep intensity high, at least 75% of your max, but probably reduce the total volume.
• 38:40
  Philip Pape: Maybe as much as 30 to 50%, but that really depends on your response and how aggressive the deficit is.
• 38:45
  Philip Pape: Use auto-regulation, whatever that means for you.
• 38:48
  Philip Pape: Rep ranges, top set, back off sets.
• 38:51
  Philip Pape: Manage recovery aggressively.
• 38:54
  Philip Pape: Now that that's sounds counterintuitive, right?
• 38:56
  Philip Pape: Be aggressive with your recovery.
• 38:58
  Philip Pape: Sleep, stress management, protein, the low intensity movement, all of that.
• 39:02
  Philip Pape: Time your carbs around training, avoid too much high-intensity cardio, keep assistance work minimal relative to your main heavy lifts, stick with familiar exercises and set realistic expectations.
• 39:15
  Philip Pape: And if you follow these guys, you will preserve muscle, lose fat, and come out of your cut looking lean, strong, and ready to build again.
• 39:23
  Philip Pape: So before we wrap it up, I want to mention Fitness Lab one more time because this is exactly the kind of situation where having an AI coaching layer that I've spent blood, sweat, and tears developing for you guys with all of these philosophies and principles can make a huge difference.
• 39:38
  Philip Pape: When you are managing a fat loss phase, things are stressful.
• 39:41
  Philip Pape: You're juggling a deficit, your training, your biofeedback, your recovery, your macros, all that stuff, and it can feel overwhelming.
• 39:48
  Philip Pape: And sometimes it's hard to know if you're on track.
• 39:50
  Philip Pape: That is why I developed Fitness Lab.
• 39:52
  Philip Pape: It helps you make those decisions with confidence.
• 39:55
  Philip Pape: It kind of takes the stress off of you.
• 39:57
  Philip Pape: It does a lot of that thinking for you, it takes some of the emotional stress.
• 39:59
  Philip Pape: I know it's a machine, but until you try it, don't knock it.
• 40:03
  Philip Pape: Try it.
• 40:04
  Philip Pape: And you've got to give it a little bit of time.
• 40:05
  Philip Pape: You've got to give it at least, you know, a few weeks just so that it starts to learn from you.
• 40:09
  Philip Pape: Because it's going to take your data and your progress and how you're feeling and tell you what to do next.
• 40:14
  Philip Pape: It's going to suggest it and you can chat with it.
• 40:16
  Philip Pape: It's now available on iPhone and Android, integrates with Apple Health, and you get 20% off from December 17th through January 2nd.
• 40:23
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash app just to learn about it.
• 40:26
  Philip Pape: Take a two-minute quiz so you can see if it's right for you.
• 40:29
  Philip Pape: You don't even have to buy the app until you decide it's right for you.
• 40:32
  Philip Pape: Witsandweights.com slash app.
• 40:34
  Philip Pape: All right, that is it for today's episode.
• 40:38
  Philip Pape: I hope this gave you a clear framework for how to adjust your strength training during fat loss so you can preserve every bit of muscle built.
• 40:47
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember to always train with intention.
• 40:54
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.