Please critique my cutting weight training routine and answer 1 question

KurtBarlow

The question is how many different exercises does one need when trying to minimise muscle loss in a dieting phase , here's what I have started doing . I rotate the following spilt and train for 40 minutes 4 times a week

Workout 1

Body parts-Chest, Shoulders, Triceps

Exercises-Incline Dumbbell press , Seated DB Shoulder Press, Standing Dumbbell 2 hand Extension

Sets -5 for each movement

Reps -12,10,8,6,12(I increase the weight as I decrease the reps)

Rest In between Sets-60 Seconds

Extra shoulder work-Given the nature of the shoulders I also do 3 sets of 12 of side Db raise and 3 sets of 12 of reverse delt fly again resting 60 seconds in between sets

Workout 2

Body parts-Quads, Hamstrings, Back , Biceps

Exercises-Barbell squat , Lying leg curl, pull ups , Barbel curls

Sets -5 for each movement

Reps -12,10,8,6,12(I increase the weight as I decrease the reps)

Rest In between Sets-60 Seconds

So as you can see I am only doing 1 exercise movement for each body part EXCEPT for shoulders given how they are designed

Thoughts?

Cill94

You basically want to train the same way you would to grow muscle. What you’re doing there looks fine. Maintain your training volume as long as you can and eat plenty of protein. I’d rest at least 90 seconds between sets.

Black Sheep

In terms of maintaining muscle mass while in a deficit, if you're keeping protein intake high and still lifting that's as much as you can do and you won't lose as much as you think.

With regard to your programming in general:-

One exercise for a body part is fine, especially as you're actually doing quite considerable volume there. If you're progressing and the intensity is high then more would be redundant. I assume you're progressing what you've outlined by tracking progressive overload on weight and / or reps completed.

Cilian is right on the rest periods, if you did less volume I would suggest resting two or three minutes and go heavy and intense.

At the moment you're alternating two full-body workouts four times a week. So in a given week you're doing A, B, A, B, all full-body workouts. You might recover better and progress for longer if you cut that back to three workouts a week, A, B, A, and the next week B, A, B and so on.

Or, if you were up for a change, I think you're missing a trick by not going from full-body workouts to an upper / lower based approach. So you'd go upper, lower, rest, upper, lower, rest, rest etc. You could repeat the same upper and lower workouts but really you'd get more mileage if you programmed two upper and two lower. Make one lower quad dominant, the other hamstring / posterior chain dominant. Make one of the upper days chest, tricep, side delt, the other one back, bicep, rear delt or whatever you like.