Ivan

Monday's training was okay. I failed to make all my reps in my overhead press, despite the fact that I'm going over old ground. I take this to mean that I have some genuine functional strength loss over the course of my injury. Not the end of the world, but still unfortunate. I did some weighted chins, which seemed to go alright.

Friday's training went reasonably well, as I pushed my press up again (although I am currently covering old ground), and I managed three sets of chins with no weight. I tried front squats, but for some reason they bother my shoulder more than anything right now. I may take a break from them for a week.

Fantastic results so far. It looks like the 4 day split routine agrees with you.

Just deadlifts today. I was worried that the week off might have affected me, especially as I had not actually lifted at this weight before. But I got two clean pulls at 120 kg, and then went on to max out both my drop-down sets. Very cool. Interesting. Depending on how things go on Friday, I may give unweighted chins a go next week, then.

I tried training yesterday. I dropped my press to 45 kg, and I'll work my way back up. I can feel it in my shoulder, but it's not exactly hurting - just warning me not to overdo it. I put my front squats up, though, and managed two reps. I skipped the chins because I thought the shoulder extension at the bottom might be asking for trouble. We'll see how it goes.

I'm coming off my cut today, as I've been floating at 152 lbs for the last couple of days, and I'm reading a body fat % of roughly 10.5%. My shoulder has gone from sore to stiff, which is probably a good thing. I'll start back up next week, but I'll probably be pressing slightly lighter weights until I'm sure that everything is healed. It ought not to affect my squat or my deadlift, though.

Well, I managed to injure myself over the weekend. It was rather cold and icy out, and I slipped on a patch of frost/ice walking up a disabled access ramp (full points for irony, there). I managed to catch myself on the railing, but I pulled something in my shoulder doing it. I don't think it's anything serious, but I do think I need to let it heal before doing any more lifting. I'm guessing that this means taking about a week off (although I'll be playing it by ear). I'm frustrated, of course, but looking back at my training log, the last time I missed more than a single session was July of last year. I suppose I can't really begrudge myself the break. In the mean time, I'll finish up my cut, so I'll probably be back at maintenance when I start lifting again.

A work function yesterday evening meant I couldn't train, so I made up the missed session today. While I managed to add a rep to my front squats, I actually went back down a rep with my press. That makes it two weeks that I've been stuck at 2-3 reps @ 50kg. I'm clearly hitting some kind of plateau. I decided to drop chins and dips until I finish cutting, to see if that helps. It could simply be that I'm asking for more recovovery on a cut than is reasonable, and my presses are paying the price. I've never tried this much volume on a cut before, but being unable to dip or chin for several weeks over the holidays had made me loath to exclude them for a furthur 2-3 weeks while cutting. And speaking of cutting, I'm down to 153 lbs, but I'm still not quite at my body fat goal, so I suspect I'll be cutting for another week.

I skip breakfast, but not to reduce calories (I'm on a tightly controlled diet), but because I practice intermittent fasting. It works for me.

Last night was a learning experience, as I'd never done these exercises in combination before. I started with my snatch into overhead squats, which went well, although my snatches were a little rough, probably because its been a few weeks since I did any. I then moved on to my deadlifts, and added two reps to my top set. Yay! Except... First, I got pretty light headed after each rep. This is probably cut related, and has happened before. No big deal. However, I also had trouble locking out the last couple of reps. I've never had a problem with lockout before, and I've lifted this weight before as well. My guess is that I prefatigued my upper back with the overhead squats, which lead to the lockout issue. The obvious solution is to move deadlifts from the second exercise to the first exercise, as they are one of my primary strength goals. However, I'm a little loath to throw a weighted bar up into the air and try and catch it above my head after a tough set of deadlifts. Colour me crazy, but that sounds like a good way to hurt myself. I'll probably give it a try next week, ramping up from a very light weight, but it may be that I have to park the overhead squats for the time being, and replace them with something else (curls, unweighted chins?). We'll see. My final exercise of the day, weighted dips, took the expected beating from moving from first to last exercise. No big deal.

Boy, I know how that feels. Two days into this last cut, I was up by a pound. Now, I'm down four pounds. Just stay the course, it'll be fine.

Anytime you try tweaking your routine there is going to be some back and forth while you figure out what works. As long as you end up with something that you can use for a decent period, I wouldn't worry about it.

Yesterday's training was totally decent. I made some more progress on my press, adding a solid +1 rep to my top set, for a total of 3. I also managed 3 reps on my front squats, which had just gone up in weight. Hopefully, I'll be able to push one or both of those exercises up to 4 reps on Friday, meaning increased weight on Monday. My chins made no progress, but I'm still cutting, and it's my last exercise of the day. My expectations are limited to not wanting pencil arms while I focus on pressing and deadlifting, so I'm not too bothered by the lack of progress.

Welcome to the thread. Because this is a relatively short cut, right after a bulk, and covering ground I've covered before, I'm doing more than I would on a longer cut. But yeah, two compounds per session was the rule of the day whenever I expected my cuts to last more than a couple of weeks.

Deficit eating affects your ability to recover. If you can eat at a deficit and still make progress, you don't need to change a thing, but it sounds (from your past experience) like that is not the case. When cutting, you want to focus on high intensity, low volume lifts. Reverse pyramid training is probably the single best lifting style for this, but there is no reason that sets across can't work too, if you don't mind dropping down to 3x5. Let your recovery ability guide you here. Drop any assistance exercises, and focus on the main compound lifts. I would try only two exercises per session, three at the outside (if your system can recover fast enough). Make sure you are getting at least 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. A number of my challenges have involved deficit training. You can see my sig for the links.