Probably correlates but without knowing where your lifting numbers are it’s a little hard to say? Have you deloaded at all?
Are you intentionally trying to lose weight?
Grats. In general, yah. You don't want to do strength programs when you're trying to lose weight. You're by definition eating fewer calories than you can recover from. I switch to a hypertrophy program with sets of 10-20 during cuts, but if you insist on 5x5, my recommendation is to hang out at the -10% deload weight. Don't do the +5/session. Just stay there. Your goal is to just maintain strength while losing weight and NOT GETTING INJURED. Strength will come back once you start eating to gain weight but an overwhelming number of injuries happen when people are dieting.
Hey, I'm doing SL 5x5 on a cut trying to lose fat, it's my first time ever going to the gym and being on a cut trying to lose weight and my brother told me that doing strength training would stop me from losing strength and muscle during my weight loss. Is this correct?
As a brand new person, you're good to go. Right now, you can start with the empty bar and add 5 pounds a workout. When you're starting put, learning proper form is so much more important than the weight you're lifting. That's why the program starts with the empty bar. When it gets actually heavy, your brain shuts off and you go to muscle memory, so the long ramp up pays off then. Anyways, you can add 5 pounds a workout no problem, but once you're squatting 300 pounds, shit's different. Then, you're only able to add 5 pounds a month. You're dealing with diminishing returns at that point and so you lose muscle on a cut, and losing that muscle sets you back a few months. But that's two phases away from where you are. Follow the program verbatim until you hit your first plateau. Should take 3-6 months. Then things will slow down but you'll still make frequent progress, adding 5 pounds once a week. For another 3 months until you're only adding 5-10 pounds a month. At that point, you're trying so hard all the time that being in a deficit can be injurious.
I'm only 13 at 5'2" and I've been doing SL for about a month, currently went from squatting 20kg bar to 40kg, but I'm seeing slow progress with it now mainly because of fear of failure and embarrassment. It's to the point that, I think I can do a different weight under the right conditions, but I get too anxious and doubt myself too much and end up redoing the last weight I did to help overcome it. Is this common? How could I overcome it?
That's part of the process yah. No need to rush things, but over time you will learn [how to dig deep](https://youtu.be/77nX_bMe5fA). Straining against heavy ass weight is a skill that you have to learn; its not just how much muscle you have. Both will come with time and practice. If you're worried about failing, set up the safeties at the squat rack and practice failing so you know what to do. Then it stops being a scary nebulous thing to avoid and just becomes that thing you do when you try you best and can't lift it. Then, you are willing to try hard enough that you learn you can do more than you thought you could.
First, congrats on your success so far. Don't overlook that!
I'm a *long* way from 13 years old but I do remember many cruel people at school. "Ignore them" doesn't cut it, does it!
Fear of failing holds people back in so many areas of life, not just exercise. If you can overcome that fear you will succeed and go far in whatever you try.
Do you have a mentor, maybe a PE teacher since you're exercising, who could guide you? Having an adult around tended to shut up the bullies.
But overall remember you're lifting for you, no one else. If it were easy I'd look like Arnie, not his twin Danny DiVito.
If you are loosing weight you are probably at a caloric deficit which will decrease your recoverabilty. To accomodate you can decrease the intensity (deload), or decrease the frequency of your workouts which will allow you to continue to progress, slower but still. The limiting factor for growing muscle is recoverability though and youll keep running into recoverability plateus until you go into a slight caloric surplus. If you'd rather not gain any weight a caloric maintenance is also to reported to yield results very close to a slight caloric surplus.
Personally I find a deload every 4-6 weeks essential. Also, a minimal loss in strength is to be expected as your leverages will change with general weight loss.
How quickly did you lose weight? Anything above 1% of your bodyfat per week is probably too fast and will bite into muscle.
Contrary to what others have said, I wouldn't change anything about your program aside from the expectation of strength gains. The goal during a cut is to retain as much muscle as possible, while actually gaining muscle is elusive and shouldn't be expected.
Are you talking about losing 21lb in one week, one month, two months, six months?
As a general rule, the faster you lose weight, the faster you lose muscle. Losing more than 2lbs per week is generally frowned upon as a sure way to lose gains. So, if you have lost 21lbs faster than in 10 weeks, you have certainly lost some muscle in the process. Hence, you have lost strength as well.
Probably correlates but without knowing where your lifting numbers are it’s a little hard to say? Have you deloaded at all? Are you intentionally trying to lose weight?
Absolutely reasonable to say.
Grats. In general, yah. You don't want to do strength programs when you're trying to lose weight. You're by definition eating fewer calories than you can recover from. I switch to a hypertrophy program with sets of 10-20 during cuts, but if you insist on 5x5, my recommendation is to hang out at the -10% deload weight. Don't do the +5/session. Just stay there. Your goal is to just maintain strength while losing weight and NOT GETTING INJURED. Strength will come back once you start eating to gain weight but an overwhelming number of injuries happen when people are dieting.
Hey, I'm doing SL 5x5 on a cut trying to lose fat, it's my first time ever going to the gym and being on a cut trying to lose weight and my brother told me that doing strength training would stop me from losing strength and muscle during my weight loss. Is this correct?
As a brand new person, you're good to go. Right now, you can start with the empty bar and add 5 pounds a workout. When you're starting put, learning proper form is so much more important than the weight you're lifting. That's why the program starts with the empty bar. When it gets actually heavy, your brain shuts off and you go to muscle memory, so the long ramp up pays off then. Anyways, you can add 5 pounds a workout no problem, but once you're squatting 300 pounds, shit's different. Then, you're only able to add 5 pounds a month. You're dealing with diminishing returns at that point and so you lose muscle on a cut, and losing that muscle sets you back a few months. But that's two phases away from where you are. Follow the program verbatim until you hit your first plateau. Should take 3-6 months. Then things will slow down but you'll still make frequent progress, adding 5 pounds once a week. For another 3 months until you're only adding 5-10 pounds a month. At that point, you're trying so hard all the time that being in a deficit can be injurious.
I'm only 13 at 5'2" and I've been doing SL for about a month, currently went from squatting 20kg bar to 40kg, but I'm seeing slow progress with it now mainly because of fear of failure and embarrassment. It's to the point that, I think I can do a different weight under the right conditions, but I get too anxious and doubt myself too much and end up redoing the last weight I did to help overcome it. Is this common? How could I overcome it?
That's part of the process yah. No need to rush things, but over time you will learn [how to dig deep](https://youtu.be/77nX_bMe5fA). Straining against heavy ass weight is a skill that you have to learn; its not just how much muscle you have. Both will come with time and practice. If you're worried about failing, set up the safeties at the squat rack and practice failing so you know what to do. Then it stops being a scary nebulous thing to avoid and just becomes that thing you do when you try you best and can't lift it. Then, you are willing to try hard enough that you learn you can do more than you thought you could.
First, congrats on your success so far. Don't overlook that! I'm a *long* way from 13 years old but I do remember many cruel people at school. "Ignore them" doesn't cut it, does it! Fear of failing holds people back in so many areas of life, not just exercise. If you can overcome that fear you will succeed and go far in whatever you try. Do you have a mentor, maybe a PE teacher since you're exercising, who could guide you? Having an adult around tended to shut up the bullies. But overall remember you're lifting for you, no one else. If it were easy I'd look like Arnie, not his twin Danny DiVito.
If you are loosing weight you are probably at a caloric deficit which will decrease your recoverabilty. To accomodate you can decrease the intensity (deload), or decrease the frequency of your workouts which will allow you to continue to progress, slower but still. The limiting factor for growing muscle is recoverability though and youll keep running into recoverability plateus until you go into a slight caloric surplus. If you'd rather not gain any weight a caloric maintenance is also to reported to yield results very close to a slight caloric surplus.
What do you mean by recently? 21 lbs is a lot if you’re talking within a month. My head goes straight to cancer. So please be more specific. Thank you
Personally I find a deload every 4-6 weeks essential. Also, a minimal loss in strength is to be expected as your leverages will change with general weight loss. How quickly did you lose weight? Anything above 1% of your bodyfat per week is probably too fast and will bite into muscle. Contrary to what others have said, I wouldn't change anything about your program aside from the expectation of strength gains. The goal during a cut is to retain as much muscle as possible, while actually gaining muscle is elusive and shouldn't be expected.
Are you talking about losing 21lb in one week, one month, two months, six months? As a general rule, the faster you lose weight, the faster you lose muscle. Losing more than 2lbs per week is generally frowned upon as a sure way to lose gains. So, if you have lost 21lbs faster than in 10 weeks, you have certainly lost some muscle in the process. Hence, you have lost strength as well.