Hi,

I've been cutting for quite a while now and am having ok results since I sorted my diet out. For the first few months I was still increasing my weights very gradually while still cutting. But lately my weights have remained pretty similar from workout to workout with occaisional increments here and there. I wondered what other people's experience was with strength when you are cutting, since lately I am beggining to think I may be losing a bit of mass.

I had this same experience. After I noticed my strength staying the same, and then beginning to drop a little, I dropped cardio for about 12 weeks, and just concentrated on weightlifting and eating clean.

I stopped cutting because I began to lose strength. I'm at 14~15% BF now and I'm getting stronger, in fact, I'm stronger than I was when I started cutting last time. As long as my strength continues to improve, I'll continue to do what I'm doing - which is basically eat clean w/calories slightly above my BMR and do my moderate cardio. My weight routine varies greatly but is mostly based on 5~8 reps, heavier weights, 60-90 seconds rest. That's working great for me... but next time I cut, I'm going to do it much slower so that I can maintain as much lean mass as possible.

-R

I think it may depend on your program. I am on week 12 of Max-OT and have been cutting for the last 8 weeks, have made gains nearly every 2 weeks,so it can be done.

Jason

i gained then lost my strenght while cutting

i first started at 240 pounds, bench press max 200, this was december
feb. i was doing 3 sets of 5 @ 230
as of now i can barely do 4 reps of 230 pounds and now weigh 204

I have been weight training for about 14 years. Anytime my weight has changed by 10+ pounds I have found that my strength has changed.
During this time, I was on more of a maintenance training routine. I was not specifically trying to increase my weights I lifted. Currently, I am cutting. I really could care less about how much weight I am pushing. I concentrate much more on my form than anything else. I am getting too old to try to get back to where I used to (600 pound squats are but a distant memory that I don't even want to ever try to do again).

I'm not sure what approach to take to this problem - or if indeed it is a problem since some lean mass loss is to be expected while cutting. Interestingly, I went to the gym after posting this thread and had my new HRM on, which calculated that I had burnt 1214 calories during my workout of 1hour 20mins. I think that its possible that doing my cardio after my weights workout could be the culprit, although that could be total crap. I'm really tempted to go on a mini-bulk for a few weeks, although I am desperate to cut the rest of this fat.

I've just been seeing the exact same thing over the last two weeks. I've been cutting now for over 14 weeks, and most my lifts have stalled out over the last two weeks. It is particularly frustrating since I'm 5 pounds short of my goal of lifting my weight in a bench press work set of 8 reps. I've attributed my stall to several possible factors:

- I've been cutting at a steady rate of over 2 pounds per week over 14 weeks
- I've recently increased the amount of cardio I've been doing, since summer's here and ultimate frisbee has started

I've told myself that I won't worry about the possible muscle loss too much, but it is frustrating. Personally, my plan was to slowly increase my calories, as well as looking at changing up my lifting routine, but any other ideas people have would be welcome!

I started to increase my cardio 6 weeks ago, and since then my weight loss has been much more satisfactory, with a small reduction in BF% as time has gone on. I have not tried taking in more protein however, so that may be an idea. There isn't a direct correlation between my cardio increasing, but it would seem there may be a connection.