Cutting and HST....Can it be done

N

nikp7

New Member
After i finish my first cycle of HST, i was looking to do a cut.

I usually carb cycle for 2-3 weeks, which drops my body fat pretty quick, but am wondering, since im doing HST, how i can implicate this during my cutting cycle?

Im your typical ectomorph hardgainer, and usually do a cut when i lose my bottom four abs, untill they come back, and repeat my bulk cycle.

Apart from some HIIT work, how can i use HST to maintain muscle?

Any ideas?
 
I'm attempting do someting similar, very interested in hearing the answer to this. From my research, it appears that you could definitely cut using HST, but to do it optimally, you may have to change the workout a bit (grunt11 mentioned dropping the 15s, etc).
Is there an optimal way to cut with HST?
 
i'm using HST to cut at the moment. i have lost 1.5KGs in about 2 weeks. i skipped the 15s as well. i have reduced my cals from 3000 to 2000 per day, but am keeping protein high. i measured my chest and bis because i was worried i was losing muscle but the measurements came back about the same as when i started .i also do light cardio for 45 mins on my off days - incline walk, x-trainer and cycle - all low resistance. it seems to be working fine. i am also gaining strength. so yeah i definitely recommend HST for a cut.
 
There will be a shed-load of posts on this topic if you search for them.

Key things:

For most folks, cutting fat is easy to begin with if you are ~15% bf. It gets harder once you are sub-10%.

You'll need to track your cals carefully if you want to get lower than 10% bf, eg. if you want to get into contest (or even magazine cover) shape.

In order to maintain as much lean mass as possible when cutting cals to below maintenance, generally speaking, you need to use high enough loads to ensure that your body is persuaded to keep your muscle tissue around rather than to break it down for energy. It's not really as simple as that but if you are going to use HST then you will want to stick to 10s and 5s for the most part. Doing 2 weeks of 15s on below maintenance cals is most likely going to allow for some loss of muscle mass.

Personally, I think that load progressions are most useful when you are trying to add mass. It makes more sense to me to do one heavy workout per week for each muscle group in order to attempt to maintain as much muscle mass as possible. Just trying to maintain your 5RM while cutting is likely to prove very difficult indeed (some still seem to be able to increase their loads while cutting but I certainly can't).

Doing something like this should work well during a cut (it's sort of a modified UD2—Lyle would scream blue murder at that last statement! Ha!):

Each week do:
1 workout of 15s
1 workout of 10s
1 workout of 5s

Do several sets for each muscle group during the 15s session. Get a really good burn if possible. This is effectively a muscle glycogen depletion workout. If you are on low carbs, this should help mobilise fat stores.
Keep carbs low until after the 10s workout and then pick them up a bit so you have some decent energy for the heavy 5s workout. Eat more normally at maintenance cals for the day (refeed) after the 5s workout before cutting cals back again (reducing carbs) ready for the next week's onslaught.

This should be useable for quite a while. About every 6-8 weeks have a week eating at maintenance (or a little over) just to attempt to reset hormone levels a bit more than you can with a weekly refeed.

Add in cardio as you feel able but don't overdo it. Certainly, as you get leaner cardio will have to figure more prominently in your weekly schedule.

Keep protein intake high; ensure you get enough essential fats, vits and mins; for carbs use veggies and fruits.

It's not difficult but it does require discipline.

Use FitDay.com or some other site to track your cals and progress.
 
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hey Lol thanks for the post mate! what you say makes total sense. i read your blog when you were using UD2 to cut, it was an awesome read. thanks for sharing.
 
I just wanted to add that I'm doing something very simliar to what Lol just outlined above and it is working great.
 
Lol, and Toten,

do you have any dietary or training recommendations for cutting when working out 10-12x a week? I'm looking for essentially a recomp effect, but am not sure whether to cut or bulk while doing this for the next 6-8 weeks. I wanted to cut, but after rethinking it, and after grunt's suggestion in the "Working out 10-12x a week" thread, I'm not as sure.

Recomp is my ultimate goal, and I'm looking to do this with a carb cycling diet with about 3000 calories per day on my average days (will be 3250ish on my "high days" and about 2700ish on my "low days"). I weigh 185, about 12-14% body fat. Thanks guys
 
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