Cutting Workout Plan: Keep Muscle While Losing Fat

You spent months building muscle. Now you want to strip away the fat so all that work actually shows.

The problem is that most people lose a significant chunk of muscle during a cut because they train wrong. They drop the heavy weights, crank up the cardio, slash calories too hard, and wonder why they end up looking flat instead of lean.

A good cutting workout plan prevents that. It keeps your training heavy enough to signal your body to hold onto muscle while you use a calorie deficit to burn fat.

This guide covers exactly how to adjust your training for a cut, gives you a complete 4-day program, and walks through cardio, nutrition, and the warning signs that mean it's time to stop.

TL;DR

TL;DR

A cutting phase means eating in a 300-500 calorie deficit while training hard enough to preserve muscle mass. The biggest mistake is switching to light weights and high reps.

Keep your heavy compound lifts. Reduce total volume by 20-30%, but do not reduce intensity. Train 4 days per week on an upper/lower split with 2-3 cardio sessions (mostly walking or low-intensity).

Eat 1-1.2g of protein per pound of bodyweight, cut for 8-16 weeks, and aim to lose 0.5-1% of your bodyweight per week. If strength drops more than 10% or you feel terrible, it's time to stop.

Use the free workout planner to build a cutting program that fits your schedule and equipment.

What Is a Cutting Phase?

A cutting phase is a period where you intentionally eat fewer calories than you burn in order to lose body fat while training to preserve as much muscle as possible.

It's the second half of the classic bulk/cut cycle. During a bulk, you eat in a surplus to fuel muscle growth and accept some fat gain along the way. During a cut, you reverse course: create a deficit, strip the fat, and reveal the muscle underneath.

The goal is not just weight loss. It's fat loss with muscle preservation. That distinction matters. Anyone can lose weight by eating less and doing more cardio. But if you lose 15 pounds and half of it is muscle, you haven't improved your physique. You've just gotten smaller.

If you're not sure whether you should cut, bulk, or try to do both at the same time, check out the body recomposition guide for a full comparison of your options.

Training Changes During a Cut

Your training during a cut should not look dramatically different from your training during a bulk. The stimulus that built the muscle is the same stimulus that keeps it. But there are a few key adjustments.

Keep Intensity High

This is the single most important rule of cutting. Do not drop to light weights with high reps to "tone" or "define" your muscles. That is a myth that refuses to die.

Heavy weights are what signal your body to retain muscle tissue. When you're in a calorie deficit, your body is looking for any reason to break down muscle for energy. Lifting heavy tells it: "This muscle is being used. Don't touch it."

Keep your working weights as close to your bulking weights as possible. You might lose a rep or two on your top sets as the cut progresses, and that's completely normal. But you should be fighting to maintain your numbers, not voluntarily dropping them.

If you want to understand why this matters so deeply, the progressive overload guide explains the mechanisms behind muscle retention and growth.

Reduce Volume Slightly

While intensity stays high, total volume should come down by roughly 20-30%. That means fewer total sets per muscle group per week, not lighter weights.

Why? Recovery is compromised during a cut. You're eating less food, which means less energy for repair. Trying to maintain the same volume you handled during a bulk will eventually lead to overtraining, excessive fatigue, joint pain, and poor performance.

A practical way to do this: if you were doing 16-20 sets per muscle group per week during your bulk, drop to 12-14 sets during your cut. Cut the accessory work first and keep the big compound lifts at full effort.

Make sure you're also taking your rest days seriously. Recovery matters even more when you're in a deficit.

Prioritize Compound Movements

Compound exercises should form the backbone of your cutting program. Movements like the Barbell Squat, Barbell Bench Press, Barbell Deadlift, and Barbell Bent Over Row work multiple muscle groups at once.

This is efficient for two reasons. First, you train more muscle with fewer exercises, which lets you keep volume manageable without neglecting body parts. Second, compound lifts are the exercises where you can push the heaviest loads, which sends the strongest muscle-preservation signal.

Isolation work still has a place. But when you need to cut sets, cut the isolation exercises before you cut the compounds.

Cutting Workout Plan (4 Days)

This is a 4-day upper/lower split designed specifically for a cutting phase. Volume is moderate, intensity is high, and every session is built around compound movements with targeted isolation work to fill in the gaps.

Program guidelines:

• Train 4 days per week (example: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday)
• Rest 90-120 seconds between compound lifts, 60-90 seconds between isolation lifts
• Warm up with 2-3 lighter sets before your first heavy exercise each session
• RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion): 7-9 out of 10 on working sets
• Progress by maintaining or increasing weight on the bar week over week

Day 1: Upper Body A

This session emphasizes pressing movements with some pulling and arm work to balance it out.

Day 2: Lower Body A

This session focuses on quad-dominant movements and hip hinges. Keep the squat heavy.

Day 3: Upper Body B

This session flips the emphasis to pulling movements with supporting press and arm work.

Day 4: Lower Body B

This session shifts the emphasis to posterior chain and single-leg work.

This plan hits every major muscle group twice per week with enough volume to maintain muscle but not so much that recovery becomes a problem. You can browse more workout routines or explore the full exercise library if you want to swap in alternatives that match your equipment.

For a deeper look at weight loss programming specifically, the workout plan for weight loss covers additional schedule options including 3-day and 5-day setups.

Cardio During a Cut

Cardio is a tool during a cut, not the main driver. The calorie deficit from your diet does the heavy lifting. Cardio just gives you a little more room to eat or speeds up the process slightly.

How much cardio:

2-3 sessions per week is the sweet spot for most people. That's enough to support fat loss without eating into your recovery.

What type of cardio:

Walking is the best option during a cut. It burns calories, doesn't generate significant fatigue, doesn't interfere with your lifting sessions, and you can do it every day if you want. Aim for 30-45 minutes per session, or simply target 8,000-10,000 steps per day.

HIIT (high-intensity interval training) can be useful but should be limited to once per week at most. HIIT creates a large recovery demand. When you're already in a calorie deficit and lifting 4 days per week, adding multiple HIIT sessions is a fast track to burnout.

When to do cardio:

The best options are after your lifting session or on a separate day entirely. Doing cardio before lifting will fatigue you and hurt your performance on the weights, which is exactly the opposite of what you want during a cut. Your lifting sessions are your muscle-preservation priority.

If you want to dig deeper into weight loss workout routines, there are additional cardio and lifting combinations built for fat loss.

Nutrition for Cutting

Training is only half of the equation. Without the right nutrition, you'll either lose muscle, stall your fat loss, or both.

Calorie deficit: 300-500 calories below maintenance

This is the range that supports steady fat loss without being so aggressive that you lose muscle. A 300-calorie deficit is more conservative and better for muscle retention. A 500-calorie deficit is more aggressive and works well if you have more fat to lose.

Do not crash diet. Dropping your calories by 1,000+ below maintenance might produce fast scale weight changes, but a significant portion of that will be muscle. You didn't spend months building it just to diet it away.

Protein: 1-1.2g per pound of bodyweight

Protein is even more important during a cut than during a bulk. When you're in a deficit, your body is more prone to breaking down muscle tissue. High protein intake counteracts this by providing the amino acids needed for muscle protein synthesis and increasing satiety so you feel less hungry.

If you weigh 180 pounds, aim for 180-216g of protein per day. Spread it across 3-5 meals. For a full breakdown of how protein drives muscle retention, read the protein for muscle growth guide.

Fats and carbs:

After protein is set, split the remaining calories between fats and carbs based on your preference. A common approach is to keep fats at a minimum of 0.3-0.4g per pound of bodyweight (for hormonal health) and fill the rest with carbs. Carbs fuel your training, so don't slash them to zero.

Track your food.

At least for the first few weeks. You don't need to track forever, but most people dramatically underestimate how much they eat. Even a week of tracking will calibrate your sense of portion sizes.

How Long Should a Cut Last?

Most cuts run 8-16 weeks. That's long enough to make significant progress without the physical and psychological toll of extended dieting.

Rate of weight loss: 0.5-1% of bodyweight per week

For a 180-pound person, that's roughly 0.9-1.8 pounds per week. Losing faster than this dramatically increases the risk of muscle loss.

The leaner you are, the slower you should go. If you're starting at 20%+ body fat, 1% per week is fine. If you're already at 15% and trying to get to 10-12%, slow it down to 0.5% per week or even slightly less.

Diet breaks can be useful during longer cuts. After every 6-8 weeks of dieting, spend 1-2 weeks eating at maintenance calories. This helps restore hormones, improve training performance, and give you a psychological reset. You won't lose your progress. You'll come back to the deficit feeling refreshed and stronger.

Signs You Should Stop Cutting

A cut should make you look better, feel better (eventually), and perform reasonably well in the gym. If any of these are going in the wrong direction for too long, it's time to pull the plug.

1. Strength dropping more than 10%. Some strength loss is expected during a cut, especially on isolation lifts. But if your compound lifts are falling off a cliff (losing more than 10% across the board), you're likely losing muscle.

2. Constant fatigue that doesn't improve with rest. Being a little tired during a cut is normal. Being exhausted every day, even on rest days, is not. That's a sign your deficit is too aggressive or you've been cutting too long.

3. Poor sleep quality. Prolonged calorie restriction can disrupt sleep patterns. If you're struggling to fall asleep, waking up frequently, or feeling unrested no matter how many hours you get, your body is telling you something.

4. Frequent illness. Getting sick every few weeks is a red flag. Your immune system is compromised by extended dieting, and frequent illness means you've pushed past the point where your body can handle the stress.

5. Loss of menstrual period (for women). This is a serious signal that should not be ignored. Losing your period during a cut means your body is under too much stress and your hormonal health is being compromised. Stop the cut and consult a healthcare professional.

6. Binge eating episodes. If you find yourself unable to control your eating and regularly bingeing, your deficit is too steep or you've been restricting for too long. This is your body's survival mechanism kicking in, and fighting it with more willpower usually makes it worse.

7. Extreme, persistent hunger. Some hunger is normal during a cut. Being ravenous all day, every day, for weeks on end is not sustainable and often leads to the binge eating pattern above.

8. Loss of motivation to train. If you used to love the gym and now you're dreading every session, your body and mind are telling you to take a break. A cut that destroys your relationship with training isn't worth it.

If you experience any of these for more than a week or two, it's time to either reduce your deficit, take a diet break at maintenance calories, or end the cut entirely.

FAQ

Can you build muscle while cutting?

For most experienced lifters, no. A calorie deficit is not an ideal environment for muscle growth. However, if you're a beginner, returning to training after a break, or carrying significant body fat, you can absolutely build some muscle during a cut. This is essentially body recomposition. For everyone else, the goal during a cut is muscle preservation, not growth.

Should you change your exercises when cutting?

No. Keep the same exercises you were doing during your bulk. The movements that built your muscle are the same movements that will help you keep it. Switching to machines and cables exclusively because "you're cutting now" removes the heavy compound stimulus your body needs. Stick with Barbell Squats, Bench Press, Deadlifts, and Rows as your foundation.

How much cardio should you do during a cut?

Start with 2-3 sessions per week, primarily low-intensity work like walking. Add HIIT only once per week at most. If fat loss stalls, increase daily steps before adding more structured cardio sessions. The goal is to use the minimum amount of cardio necessary to keep fat loss moving, not to maximize calorie burn at the expense of recovery.

When should you reverse diet?

When your cut is done (you've reached your target body fat or hit the 16-week mark), gradually increase calories back to maintenance over 2-4 weeks. Don't jump straight from a 500-calorie deficit to maintenance in one day. Add 100-150 calories per week, primarily from carbs and fats, while keeping protein high. This helps restore metabolic rate and prevents rapid fat regain.

What if you stop losing weight during a cut?

Plateaus are normal. First, make sure you're actually in a plateau and not just experiencing normal water weight fluctuations. Track your weight daily and look at the weekly average over 2-3 weeks. If the average truly isn't moving, you have two options: reduce calories by another 100-150 per day, or add one more cardio session per week. Don't do both at the same time. Make one change, give it two weeks, and reassess.

Is a 4-day split enough for cutting?

Yes. Four training days per week is the sweet spot for most people during a cut. It provides enough stimulus to maintain muscle across all major groups while leaving adequate recovery time. You can check out other split options in the best workout split guide if you want to compare, but an upper/lower split 4 days per week is one of the most effective approaches for a cutting phase.

Plan Your Cut

A cut doesn't have to be complicated. Keep your weights heavy, reduce your volume slightly, add a little cardio, eat enough protein, and stay consistent for 8-16 weeks. That's the formula.

The hardest part is having a structured plan and sticking to it. That's where tools help.

The LoadMuscle workout planner lets you build a custom cutting program based on your schedule, equipment, and goals. It handles the programming so you can focus on showing up and putting in the work.

Get the app and start your cut with a plan that's built to preserve every pound of muscle you've earned.

If you need more ideas, browse the full library of workout routines or explore the exercise database to find movements that fit your gym setup.