How I like in the mirror but I noticed that I have been at same weights but it has become harder, which is probably because of my cut. I am losing strength which is normal. I didn't know when I should take a week off. If it should be during a bulking phase? Or in the middle of the cut/bulk?
I would really like my muscles to grow during this next bulk, especially biceps and glutes. I do like a healthy heart though
Ok, here are some thoughts I have. And...I wrote all this and I've come back here to say something. I think you know I think you've done an incredible job and know a ton already and have amazing discipline. You probably know me well enough by now to know I'm full of strange opinions - which is why I need to explain myself (that and I'm just long winded).
The ONLY times the mirror is useful for a natural lifter is when they first start out and muscle growth comes pretty fast, and when you are losing weight.
Beyond this, the mirror on a day-to-day basis is almost useless for a natural athlete with the exception of maybe seeing water retention, glycogen retention, etc. This is compounded by the fact that our perceptions on a daily basis are kind of inaccurate. Some days we will look at the mirror and say, "Yeah, I am d#mned good" and then the next day - "Wow, I need to lose some fat."
But it's more mental than actual physical changes.
The reason that I say the mirror isn't a good gauge of progress is based in the following (stolen from Lyle McDonald but generally agreed upon in a lot of places):
Year of Proper Training/Potential Rate of Muscle Gain per Year
1 20-25 pounds (2 pounds per month)
2 10-12 pounds (1 pound per month)
3 5-6 pounds (0.5 pound per month)
4+ 2-3 pounds (not worth calculating)
Lyle points out that these are for MEN. Women, he says, have about half of these rates of gain.
So, in the first year, in the first month of lifting - yeah, maybe a male may put on 2,3,4 or even 5 pounds of muscle. Yeah, you may be able to see a pound of muscle change in a week (not really sure) - so a newbie may be able to use the mirror to assess growth. But after 2-3 years, all of a sudden that same male is lucky to gain 6 pounds a YEAR, or 1/2 pound per MONTH, or about 60 grams of muscle per week.
Do you think you can tell the difference of a 60 gram gain in muscle in the mirror this week? Oh, wait, that's for a man. For a woman it may be more like 30 grams? How can you really tell if you're progressing?
This is why, despite everyone trying to fight the idea, properly applied progressive overload is so fundamental. Nobody wants to accept that a stronger muscle is a bigger muscle. They want to believe in the magic of hypertrophy work vs. strength work but very few people accept that if you do hypertrophy work correctly, you will still get stronger. Only instead of being 50/50 strength to hypertrophy; it will be more like 45/55 strength to hypertrophy (illustrative - it's a small change).
But even doing hypertrophy work, as you get stronger you will get bigger eventually. Yes, you can get stronger without gaining size - but not forever. You can only make so many neurological adaptations before the muscle tissue will no longer support a weight and needs to grow to accommodate the stress.
So, progressive overload is fundamental. It is the ONLY way to gauge progress on a workout-to-workout basis. And if you aren't better at your workout TODAY than you were the last time you did the same workout - then you need to assess what is going on.
So, you have this long list of exercises - it's a lot of work, no one can question that - but are you pushing yourself on any of it? How do you know if you're better at it today than you were 3 days or a week ago? And the long list creates variables that are difficult to account for. If you do an extra rep on one exercise, is it because you are stronger? Or because maybe you didn't do quite as much over the 10 sets prior?
As far as the healthy heart - aerobics aren't that good for your heart. LISS barely stresses your heart at all. Go do deadlifts or squats for 10-15 reps or even 20 reps to FAILURE and then see what you think about 1 hour on the bike being exercise for your heart.
Finally - yes, cutting and losing strength can go hand-in-hand. Even more dramatic -when you cut you deplete glycogen and you will usually lose A LOT of strength from that. This is why you will likely notice you lose a bunch of strength soon after starting a diet, and if you stick with it you kind of level out and the loss stops, and then after that happens you may start gaining again. The loss of glycogen causes significant strength loss FAST. But it's not necessarily muscle loss. I would assume people who focus on hypertrophy work, because of that 45/55 scenario above, will have more glycogen to lose and this loss will take longer and go deeper. I would also suggest this is a BIG part of the reason so many people think they lose muscle on diets, etc. - because they lose glycogen and strength but the tissue is still there.
