Thread: Cut/Bulk cycles

First off you would never cut for one week....That's just retarded.
More like bulk 8 weeks cut 6...etc

I change my workout often, 3 weeks strength/growth, 3 weeks cutting/functional. This works well for me cause I'm an injured old fart, and don't need to get any bigger and I maintain 270 7-8% bodyfat year round.

That said I keep my diet very tight all the time, cause I find it much easier than crash dieting for many weeks. Cutting for one week would seem like torture to me....takes about 5-6 days to get used to the diet so as soon as your over the hump its over and then start again a few weeks later.

Better off to just control your cheats and cycle calories/carbs a few days if you feel "bloated" during a bulk phase.

bah, cutting for a week could work. if you were disciplined and knew how many calories you needed, i dont see any reason why that wouldn't work. ive heard people say they get better results using shorter cycles anyway.

Originally Posted by myCATpowerlifts

First off you would never cut for one week....That's just retarded.
More like bulk 8 weeks cut 6...etc

And why would that be ?

What's wrong with cuting for a week, bulking for a week if that works for you..

Originally Posted by GreenMan

And why would that be ?

What's wrong with cuting for a week, bulking for a week if that works for you..

because the impact you would make with 1 week would not be significant.

You would simply be spinning your wheels.

1 week of dieting = getting rid of glycogen stores and water and **if you are lucky* maybe 0.5 pounds of fat as well (and, if you were unlucky, or if you were stupid and dieted too hard, then it would also be 0.5 of lean mass too)...

Similarly, 1 week of bulking would result in insignificant muscle gains (even if you were to pig out on 3 x maintainence your body will have an anabolic limit on adding muscle and all that would happen is mucho lardiness).


Slow and steady is much more optimal.

Originally Posted by Emma-Leigh

because the impact you would make with 1 week would not be significant.

You would simply be spinning your wheels.

1 week of dieting = getting rid of glycogen stores and water and **if you are lucky* maybe 0.5 pounds of fat as well (and, if you were unlucky, or if you were stupid and dieted too hard, then it would also be 0.5 of lean mass too)...

Similarly, 1 week of bulking would result in insignificant muscle gains (even if you were to pig out on 3 x maintainence your body will have an anabolic limit on adding muscle and all that would happen is mucho lardiness).


Slow and steady is much more optimal.

Hi Emma,

I think we have coming from different perspectives on the bulking & cutting. If we take the 'traditional bodybuilder' definitions, bulking is eating calories way above maintenence & training hard & heavy, hoping that some of the weight gain is muscle, and cutting is a severe restriction on calories with loads of cardio.

Using such protocols, what you described will undoubtedly happen.

Being a bit of an old-timer, I don't have the metabolism to support such shenanigans. My normal training involves quite a bit of cardio work, and I tweak my daily carb intake so that my glycogen levels are kept in a nice balance - not muscle-destroyingly low & not spilling over into lard.

A diet of around 2,500 cals with a p:f:c of 30:25:45 does this for me. I could cut fats lower, but the majority of the fat in my diet comes from fish (big salmon eater) nuts & oats (which are 8% fat)

A cutting cycle for me is to drop down to 2,000 cals, with all the 500 missing calories coming from fat & carb.

I don't believe this restriction eats into my glycogen levels, and this belief is supported by an electronic bodyfat measuring gadget which works on impedance (it basically measures your fluid levels & uses that to infer a bodyfat level). 1g of glycogen binds 4g of water, and a guy my size probably stores a kilo of glycogen in total. So if my glycogen levels dropped by a significant amount, say 250g, I would lose a kilo of water (about 2% of my total body water). This loss would be reflected on the scales as a loss, and on the bodyfat measure (paradoxically) as a gain, because the lower water levels would lead to an artificially high bodyfat calculation. This should happen in the first couple of days.

Neither of these observables happen when I go onto MY cutting routine - from which I infer that it doesn't eat into my muscle glycogen by any significant amount.

A bulking cycle for me involves going up 500 cals by adding another 25g protien, 75 - 100g carb and an inevitable extra bit of fat. If my glycogen was depleted, my body would use the extra carbs to top-up, and I should quicky gain water-weight & drop in bf calcuated from my gadget. Again neither happens.

Another evidence is that once a week, I habitually spend an hour on an elliptical x-trainer once a week, which burns around 800 cals. I'd guess glycogen fuels half of that, so that's 100g of glycogen. The lower glycogen gets, the more the body hangs on to it, so I would assume that if a cutting cycle ate into my glycogen by any significant amount, I would expect to notice the last quarter hour getting harder. This is not the case.

In the past, I have in the three week 'bulk', three week 'cut' to great effect. As you say, slow & steady is the key, but I find a degree of cycling works wonders in keeping the body's adaptive response fresh. I cannot see any reason why a weekly alternation of the two wouldn't work - some swear by the carb cycling diet which uses an extreme version of this on a 3 day cycle.

Originally Posted by FenderBender

I change my workout often, 3 weeks strength/growth, 3 weeks cutting/functional. This works well for me cause I'm an injured old fart, and don't need to get any bigger and I maintain 270 7-8% bodyfat year round.

That said I keep my diet very tight all the time, cause I find it much easier than crash dieting for many weeks. Cutting for one week would seem like torture to me....takes about 5-6 days to get used to the diet so as soon as your over the hump its over and then start again a few weeks later.

Better off to just control your cheats and cycle calories/carbs a few days if you feel "bloated" during a bulk phase.

Hi ronnie, good luck next year winning Olympia #9!!