Zin

OK, I have been doing a study abroad program in here France for the last 6 months. I have a gym mebership here and have succeeded in putting on a lot of muscle in the last few months. I will be returning home in July which will be good but I live in the countryside hours away from the nearest gym so I will literally have no access to weights until I go back to school in September. I am planning to use the time to do some serious cardio and cutting and I would like to have some idea of how much muscle I am going to lose in two months. Lets just use the bench press for an example( yes, I know that all of my other lifts will suffer too) - After several months of training I have a max of about 200-205 pounds. What will I be looking at in September? Where should I start? Am I going to lose the 50 or so pounds on the bench that I worked so hard to put on or will it only be like 5 or 10? I have literally no idea here, any help would be appreciated!

Zin

Paynne

Personally I wouldn't do a cut, and certainly not any cardio, if I wasn't lifting to help maintain the LBM. Can you just get a basic weight set and a bench? You can do a whole workout with just DBs.

Rauschgift

You don't even need dumbells...with a little ingenuity you can find ways to work each muscle group. You should be able to maintain for 2 months.

Big Smoothy

Zin,

Like said above, buy dumbells, and keep eating lean protein.

ClintZ28

Doing a cut without weight training is the worst thing you can do if you want to hold onto that muscle. You need to find some ways to work those muscles with as much weight as possible.

CowPimp

Keep eating a lot of food. I went on vacation for 7 weeks and all I had were some 15 pound dumbells. I did pushups, overhead presses, curls, bodyweight squats, calf raises, and went jogging some. I didn't seem to lose any strength when I came back home.

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Zin

Thanks for the responses, I do plan on doing body resistance exercises during my break, pushups, pullups, etc... but I really want to lose some of this extra body fat. I am at about 18-20% now and want to idealy be at around 10-12% The only way this is going to happen is with a good diet and lots of cardio(I know its not going to happen in 2 months but I want to do as much as possible during my break) Basically I guess I am ready to accept muscle loss with the fat loss but just how much will this set me back?

Z

PS - I only do HIIT cardio because I find that's what works most for me in the fat burning department...

Yanick

Dude, if you live in the countryside, you should be able to make due with what you have. You can do strongman training, and although it might not be optimal for hypertrophy, its a mechanical load which will help with retaining lbm. Use sand bags, tires, big rocks whatever. Hill sprints would be good if you have any hills around. Also look up plyometrics, although plyo's are more for power, you don't really have a huge choice at this moment. Like others have said, you should be able to maintain for 2 months, i know a kid who does that every summer and he doesn't really lose much size.

"...we have to remember that training is a complicated dance of stimuli and response. Our goal is to understand how to manipulate the stimuli in order to evoke the responses we desire." -Nathan J. Polenchek