Contradicting goals? Need some help.

[InProgress]

I have been on a forced break from lifting for the past 3 months. I just got back into the gym and I feel like my strength just plummeted while I was off.

I have 2 goals in mind before I start trying to bulk seriously.

1. I want to gain back the lost strength
2. I want to lean out to around 9-10% bf before I begin bulking.

My question is this:

Are these goals contradictory? Should I expect to be doing one or the other, but not both?

It seems like I would want to have my strength back to where it was before I took a break so that when I begin bulking I will get optimal muscle gains. I have been limiting my carbs to mostly morning oatmeal Mon. – Sat. with a free day on Sunday to get some carbs back in the system. I just feel like since I have not been eating many carbs, that I am not able to give it my all in the gym, thus making it hard to gain back my lost strength.

Your help and suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks guys.

[bradley]

I think that you will gain back some strength just not as much or as fast as you would if you were in a caloric excess. Might pull up more info by running a search on muscle memory in the training forum. I would go ahead and at least eat at maintenance level or go ahead and start bulking by slowly increasing cals.

[nejar462]

Well if you weigh less you'll squat and deadlift more, as long most of the weightloss is fat.

[Dan Dragon]

Your nutrition looks like a ckd to me, but be careful not to eat more than 30gr of carbo on monday to saturday otherwise you´re not in ketosis and you won´t lose fat but muscle and feel weak of course. Also carb-loading day is very important, you have to superhydrate your muscle by eating and drinking low GI-carbos and by drinking a lot of water (at least 4 liters, sorry, but i don´t know exactly how much gallons that would be, ~ 1 gallon i guess). Prior to that carbo-day you could do a depletion workout, meaning that you work your whole body in a low intensity way with a circle manner until you feel a certain drop in energy.

This is to squeeze the last bit of carbo out of your muscle. After that workout you immediately start carbo-loading. Oh, BTW prior to this depletion workout drink ~30-50 gr of high GI carbo(fruit juice, gatorade) , to take you out of ketosis bec your muscle wouldn´t burn glucose but ketones otherwise.

I don´t think that your goals are contradictory, the best for you would be to eat just enough to get stronger in your workouts until you´re satisfied with your BF (that means you lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, which is possible with ckd) and then raise your calory intake by ~500kcal until you don´t grow stronger and then raise the calory intake again and so on.

BTW, there are 2 very good articles about ckd (cyclical ketogenic diet) in the nutrition archive!

Good luck with your goals, InProgress, and keep us updated

[bradley]

Originally posted by Dan Dragon
that means you lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, which is possible with ckd

I would think that it is possible but these kind of results are not likely.