 Your winter bulk's over, you're fat, you're sloppy. You might even be fucking lazy, because let's face it, building muscle is a lot more fun and easy than getting shredded and staying strong. You want to lose weight and keep as much strength as you can from the off season, dig in, tap in, buckle up, saddle up. To bulk or cut, I think it's probably, it's a mistake I definitely made where I just spun my wheels too long trying to stay in a certain weight class or trying to stay in a certain level of leanness, probably held back the progress in building muscle and building strength in my early 20s. A lot of y'all, maybe you're beginners, maybe you're two, three, four years in. Even if you're 10, 15 years in like me, blocking out your bulking and cutting is going to be way more efficient to actually build strength in the muscle than actually cut. I know you're watching all your favorite, you know, Instagrammers, YouTubers, et cetera, and they're all jacked and lean year round. They're not you, they're not me, and they ain't doing the same shit we're doing. So we got to build a plan that helps us best, especially in the beginning, man. If you're trying to stay lean all the time, you're going to stay 145 pounds, 6% body fat, make no progress in muscle gains or no, no progress in strength gains. So let's first off realize, should you even be cutting? And now it's your personal choice. What you want to look like, what you want to feel like, how you enjoy training has nothing to do with me. But if you eventually want to get bigger, stronger, you're going to have to bulk and you're going to have to bulk for months, man. It's not three weeks. I spent eight years bulking and just hung out at 215, 230 pounds body weight in my late 20s to try to catch up on all the progress I stalled on. So think about that first and we'll dive into how maybe to cut a little bit better and still keep some of our strength. And like so many of it just depends on your goals. To me, it's more about the approach you take with the ultimate goal in hand. So a lot of folks, for looks, it's almost a little bit easier, I think, because you can cut real drastic and who really cares about the performance side, right? You just want to burn body fat. And as long as you continue training the best you can, similarly, then you did in your bulk, you'll retain a lot of muscle. You get your protein up, creatine up, sleep, water, and then you lift as similarly as you can to when you were bulking and you'll keep that muscle. Strength is a little bit different because we need energy to perform and calories are obviously energy to lose weight. We got to take away calories for performance. We want more calories and then also just pure leverages. If you're used to having a certain amount of cushion for the pushing on the squat, a certain amount of cushion for your bench, taking that away will become more difficult in your leverages. I think in past times there's been a lot of debate. The issue is a lot of people look at the blanket of losing weight rather than specifics for stepping on stage, for life and health, for building habits, for powerlifting, whether you do it fast or whether you do it slow, how drastic of a cut you go into. And I tend to, it does depend on the individual, I tend to want to cut quicker. I'm not a big fan of training all year at 190 pounds body weight and then within the last 8 to 12 weeks, cutting down to 183 to make your weight class. I'd prefer after your last meet or in your off season, cut down to buck 85 or something a little bit closer to the goal and maintain that throughout your prep. In terms of how I'm going to lose my body weight, I'm probably going to do it similar. Once I hit the deadlift PR, strength is going to be not as important to me and so I'm going to go into a drastic cut. Even in your off season, if you have, you know, 6 months before you meet, you could drastic cut for 2 months, maintain for the rest of it, but in the off season of maintaining it, you'll be able to get your leverages and figure out your stances a little bit different at the new body weight and probably hold on to the exact amount of strength. Yes, in the short term, you're going to lose strength cutting, but majority of folks can gain it back right back. 15 years of making content is, how do I stay motivated? Number 2 is, Mike, when you're competing next. And then 3 is like, Mike, when are you trying X? Are you going to bodybuild? Are you going to strongman? Are you going to weight lift? I don't think so. You know, I've messed around with it. I've done some stuff. There's a couple of vlogs here with Alan. Shout out to Untamed Strength at Alan Thrall, one of my favorite homies. And it's like fun. I would say percent is very low, but if there's a percent that I will compete in something again and probably be strongman over the others, I'm definitely not stepping on stage naked. I don't see myself powerlifting on platform. Weightlifting, I just can't get to the level I want to compete, but strongman is just like for shits and gigs. There's a small chance. There's a small chance. I don't have an urge for it. I don't have an urge to train for it. It kind of hurts, but never say never, but it's definitely not a priority. Like I said, everything else kind of depends, right? Are we lifestyle, just trying to look good? Are we competing in physique sport, looking aesthetic? Or are we competing in a strength sport or even a regular sport, right? Because the first thing when someone thinks about fat loss phase or losing weight is they think about cardio and they go out there and kill themselves with cardio. And the truth is, I think cardio is highly overrated for fat loss. In general, cardio, I think you should be doing in your bulk. I think you should be doing strength walk. I think you should be doing your cut. No matter what, we got to train our heart and it allows us to have a little bit better work capacity. But when we're dieting, the majority of things come from your diet and how you're training. So I'd also say the most underrated part, if cardio is the most overrated for fat loss, the most underrated for fat loss is your knee, like your non-exercise activity. So how much you walk, how much you stand, walk in your dog, doing activities, vacuuming, all that stuff, taking the stairs, walking to the store and back, all that stuff matters way more and will be way more accumulative to how much weight you lose and how much fat you lose than pure cardio. Killing yourself on the treadmill all day, every day. One, I think it's personally a waste of time. Two, I think it's gonna take away from your training after a while and I would rather focus on the performance and maintaining strength and muscle through my cut. Especially as a strength athlete, but even aesthetic, you still wanna be able to train at higher intensities and volumes to maintain that muscle. So, focus on a little bit of walking, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm not saying don't do cardio, but I'm saying as soon as you cut, everyone just hops in and starts doing the step meal for an hour. Let's just keep a solid baseline and we wanna slowly ramp that up despite whether we're cutting drastic or not. So overall, let's make sure we want to cut for our goals, not just social pressure to be lean all the damn time. I know that's cool on the internet. I know it gets likes and views. Trust me, I feel the pressure as well. But make sure you build your base and give yourself time to grow strength and muscle over time. Choose, depending on your ultimate goal, how drastic we're gonna cut or not and how big of a calorie deficit we're getting into. And then monitor your calories and your cardio. Don't go too crazy, don't go too ham. Appreciate you guys man, new video every single day now. Shorts dropping, so turn on subscriptions, turn on notifications. Appreciate you so much. Wednesday, Friday for the big ones. New podcasts every Wednesday, Friday. And I'll see you guys in the next one, man. So Mike, will we ever meet? Be a part of something big of yourself. 3sb.co, we're out.