What's going on guys, hope you're all coping in these strange times. As promised, I'm going to be updating you all on my current mini cut progress. If you missed the first post, head back there first by clicking here. I'm just under 2 weeks into the cut and I'm feeling seriously good. It's giving me plenty of focus during these difficult times.
Training
Training is going well at the minute. Strength is still up and, even though I'm stuck working out in my garden, I'm managing to get plenty of volume in using my olympic bar, dumbbells and bands. I'm not going to put my full training plan in this one post but, over the coming weeks, I'll release one workout from my plan through these blog posts. Here's Monday's push and abs session:
- 20kg Dumbbell Floor Press
3x AMRAP
- Single Arm Kneeling Cuffed Fly
2x 10 reps each side with a 5 second isometric hold on every rep
- 7.5kg Dumbbell Front Raises - Lifting both arms at the same time
3x 10-15 reps
- Banded Face Pull
3x20 reps
- Banded Tricep Push Down
3x15 reps each side
- Crunches
4x20 reps
- 4kg Dumbbell Oblique Twists
4x10 reps each side
At the moment I'm not doing any specific cardio, other than walking between 7-10K steps each day. I'm personally not a believer in doing any form of cardio other than daily steps when mini cutting. I believe cardio is a tool to use when doing a standard cut. So, if I do anything, I'll up my steps as the weeks go on.
Nutrition
As I mentioned in my first post, my mini cutting calories and macros are sat at:
2,000 Calories
139g Protein
42g Fat
266g Carbs
As this is a mini cut, the idea is to keep my calories and macros sat at those numbers for the whole of the cut. If my weight starts to stall, the first thing I'll do is add in more daily steps and go from there.
Recovery
If you're a follower of mine you'll know how big I am on recovery. The time you spend recovering is when new tissue is built and fat is burnt, so it's pretty damn important. Making sure fatigue levels are kept down as much as possible is also important to me. It doesn't matter what phase I'm in, my recovery plans are all the same. Every Wednesday I do some basic foam rolling, and on a Sunday I spend a good 20-30 minutes going through my full mobility plan. I'll take a hot bath first, then I'll foam roll and lacrosse ball my whole body, do some mobility exercises and stretches.
I would usually get a sports massage once a month as well but, with the current COVID-19 pandemic, that's not possible at the minute.
Since writing my last post I've also invested into an Oura ring. It's a health tracker and something that I've had for just over a week now, so I'm only just starting to build up some data on it. It's going to take about two weeks until the data it gives me is accurate. It tracks things like sleep, steps, heart rate and readiness. Up until I got this the only tracker I used was the app SleepCycle and the Health app for my steps. I'm hoping this ring helps me to take my recovery to the next level.
The final important step for me that I take daily is in regards to my heart rate and food intake. I never want to go into a meal feeling rushed, with an elevated heart rate, etc. This is particularly important with my post workout meal, where I take 20-30 minutes to relax and deep breathe before eating.
Scale Weight & Body Composition
I started this mini cut at 63.5kg, and this morning I weighed in at 61.7kg. I'm happy with that so far, that's a drop of 1.8kg in 12 days. Here's some comparison photos for you to look at:
Can definitely see a nice body composition change here already. I'm feeling positive for the weeks ahead and I'm excited to see where I can take this before buckling down into a new bulking cycle.
That's everything for now. I'll be checking in again with you all in a couple of weeks, with more updates on how I'm doing and some more progress shots.
Comments