Mini-Cuts Create Momentum



Losing fat is much quicker than building muscle. Thus, a properly executed mini-cut provides you with evidence that you are in control of your physical appearance. It provides proof of the concept that smart training and nutrition elicit positive outcomes (shocking news I know). This is very powerful and should not be underappreciated. Many people give up on transforming their physique because they don’t see a change. Investing a bit of time and effort in a mini-cut is very rewarding from both a physical and mental perspective. It builds trust in the individual that their efforts will be rewarded. This was huge for me! The first bit of physique success I had was getting lean. The confidence this gave me encouraged me to push further and pursue increased muscle mass. It took more time, but I persisted because I had the belief from my mini-cut results to propel me forwards.



Get Lean to Get Big



All of the best muscle-building results I’ve seen began when the person was lean. There are two key elements here:



The length of your building phase can be longer
Your insulin sensitivity and P-ratio are more favorable and they stay favorable for longer
If you try to bulk up with relatively high body fat at the outset then you’ll most likely not enjoy how you look as your weight climbs (and so does your body fat) or you’ll run into issues with your capacity to gain a desirable ratio of muscle to fat. For most guys that contact me about coaching or training advice, starting out a bulk without mini-cutting will probably end up with them becoming skinny fat.



The Solution to Skinny Fat



Talking of skinny fat, mini-cuts are a phenomenal tool to solve skinny fat. You can quickly strip away the fat and put yourself in a position to bulk up and get big while staying lean.



Short and Sharp



Mini cuts are great because they’re so efficient. Due to their short length, they can be very aggressive. Efficient is good. As a coach, getting a quick result for a client helps build their trust in me and their buy-in to my advice in the future.



Lean female doing dumbbell rows in a gym



Why Do You Need a Mini-Cut?
During a mass gaining phase, you need a calorie surplus to gain weight. If you do everything right, a good proportion of this weight will be muscle. Unfortunately, it is inevitable that some of the weight gains will be stored as fat. This is perfectly normal. Anyone who tells you that you can gain 100% lean muscle naturally is lying. The problem is that over time you gradually gain a higher proportion of fat to muscle. As you reach higher body fat levels your partitioning ratio (P-Ratio) deteriorates.



Your P-Ratio describes the ratio of lean muscle to fat gained as you gain weight. When you are at low levels of body fat your P-Ratio tends to be better. When you have high body fat it is worse. In essence, this means the fatter you get, the fatter you get.



If you are not yet happy with your level of muscle mass but do not lean either this creates a conundrum that lots of lifter’s face. They want more size, but they are getting fatter chasing it. The gains they make in scale weight don’t result in them looking better. They end up fatter! A Mini-cut can solve this issue. A short-term, aggressive cutting phase allows you to rapidly improve your P-Ratio and make your next bulking phase far more productive.





How Fast Should You Lose Weight During a Mini-Cut?
Given that this is a short-term strategy taking you from the top of your bulk to “lean enough” to grow, the risk of muscle loss is very low. Muscle loss tends to only really occur during long-term diets or when reaching extremely low body fat levels. Neither is a concern during a mini-cut.



So, how fast can you lose during a mini-cut?



This depends somewhat upon your body fat percentage. The fatter you are the quicker you can lose weight. As a rule, of thumb I suggest the following guidelines:



15+% body fat – lose 1.5-2% of your body weight per week
12-15% body fat – lose 1-1.5% of your body weight per week
10-12% body fat – lose 0.5-1% of your body weight per week
Less than 10% body fat – You don’t need to mini-cut. Get growing!
Calculating Your Deficit
Using the time-old information that 1 pound of fat contains approximately 3,500kcal of energy, you can estimate the deficit you need to create to lose at an appropriate weight. To lose a pound a week you would need a daily deficit of 500 calories (500 x 7 = 3,500). To establish your target deficit, simply calculate your suggested percentage weekly weight loss figure. To calculate a 2% loss, you would multiply your body weight by 0.02. For 1.5% multiply by 0.015. For a 1% loss, it would be 0.01, and so on.

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