How necessary is a hold/ "maintain tissue" phase after a blast?

[initialize]

When coming off of a blast, do you guys do a "hold" phase in order to maintain as much as you've gained from the blast as possible, I.e at least eating at maintenance for a set number of weeks/months?

Or are there any of you who go straight from a blast into cutting, for example?

 

[shredded.lyfe]

If you go straight into cutting and drop your milligrams and calories at the same time you are going to spend many years wasting your time

 

[urmumsurdad30]

No, if I get too fat after a bulk, I go straight into a cut and have NEVER lost muscle. Likewise, after a blast, I'll go down to a cruise and reduce calories but again, have NEVER lost muscle.

This whole "let it cook/marinade phase" bs is fucking stupid. What you've built, will stay. Muscle breakdown doesn't happen unless all other energy sources are severely depleted.

 

[Jaybird85uk]

There’s no real evidence that muscle requires time at a heavier weight to be retained. What actually matters is whether your training remains productive.

People only lose muscle during diets because their performance drops and they can’t tolerate the same training, not because they started cutting too early.

A mini cut can work perfectly well if it reduces fatigue and you’re still able to train hard enough to maintain training performance. The problems arise when someone is already overreached or barely progressing before they cut. In that case, the calorie deficit just exposes other issues.

 

[ripper908]

keep protein / nutrition in check and train just as hard as on a blast and you shouldn't lose tissue

people tend to get off a blast and start half assing everything for some reason

 

[Slowww]

I do a hold phase and it seems to work. I like to hold the peak calories or peak weight by lowering calories if the scale is still moving for 4-10 weeks.

Whether it’s bro science or not it has worked well for me. It isn’t something I would feel comfortable changing based on previous results unless there was very strong science to show it isnt necessary.

I think whether or not people point to specific research about whether or not this is helpful for reducing catabolism, allowing the body time to create a new set point is also useful, and so is being able to keep those calories high so you can adjust and push past the following off season or bulking phase (if digestion and blood glucose/insulin sensitivity were managed well)

 

[RockyP]

While they are outliers due to their genetics, if you see what some of these pro guys look like a few months after a show when they are on HRT / health phases, they retain most of their size and just soften up a bit. If we are talking about after a bulking phase, the devil is in the details here. It's going to come down to diet and how fat you got. This is why it's really important not to get fat, ever. Like you will gain some bodyfat on a massing phase of course, but you don't want to lose at least the outline of your abs. Why? Because the next phase will be that much harder and more likely to result in loss of lean tissue you just added.

At the competitor level, a long (5-6 month) off season usually transitions into a health phase and then a contest prep. Some contest preps will start with 6 to 8 weeks of massing and then switch compounds and cut calories to initiate the cutting (to take advantage of the increased metabolism from the massing phase). If you are just looking to add size over time, you likely do not want to go directly from a 16 - 20 week high dosage bulking blast into a cutting phase with harsher androgens. The most important thing here isn't the gear, it's the nutrition. You want to stay as lean as you can while adding tissue. Dorian Yates said this a long time ago, and Mike Mentzer said it even before he did. I don't care how much gear your are taking, if you go more than 500 cal surplus per day (accounted for based on activity level / TDEE), you are likely to get fat. It won't happen overnight and you can dial things in day by day, but if you're running compounds like nandrolone, anadrol, dbol, hihg test, etc. with surprlus calories / carbs you are going to hold some water interstitially (as well as intramuscularly, which is a good thing), but your margin for error in gaining fat is low. Remember, any fat loss that exceeds 1 to 2 lbs per week, even with gear on board, is risking losing muscle. So you don't want to gain too much too fast, for a multitude of reasons.

TLDR - I'd suggest a 250 mg cruise and if anything, increase your GH dosage post blast. It will help keep muscles full and it's very anticatabolic. Keep your training intensity high but peel back volume a little to account for the lower gear. And bring food sown just a bit, as your nutrient partitioning will be a bit off compared to where it was on blast.

 

[NotHuman]

When coming off of a blast, do you guys do a "hold" phase in order to maintain as much as you've gained from the blast as possible, I.e at least eating at maintenance for a set number of weeks/months?

Or are there any of you who go straight from a blast into cutting, for example?

I think a “hold muscle” phase is largely a myth. There isn’t any data on this or anything so we are just playing a guessing game. In my opinion, you can go straight into a cut phase, especially if you’re still going to be on gear during the cut to maintain anabolism.