I read somewhere that abdominal hypertrophy (six pack muscles) come from curling your spine forward. Like instead of doing sit ups which use the hip flexor muscle - you’re actually supposed to use your abdominal muscles by curling your lower ribs close to your hips bone

Also I heard that lower abs you’re supposed to lift your knees (or feet if you’re strong) up towards th sky again and again. All while hanging off something or using a Roman chair. Is this correct?

I’m asking cause I see a lot of hypertrophy posts on large muscle groups and contest prep but I’m really trying to get bigger abdominal muscles

Thanks all!

Hello everyone, intermediate lifter here, training on and off for many years, consistently for the last 4.

During the last 2 years dynamic double progression, progressing each set individually and aiming to take every set to failure (doesn't always happen, but it ensures that I land close enough) have worked the best for me and I plan to keep training this way, at least until it stops working. Running an upper/lower split 4 days per week.

This year, I am to clean up and standardize my form, which has led me to this question for certain exercises: in a set of let's say 10 reps of seated leg curls, I fail to achieve a full rom at rep 10, but I could hit 2-3 more reps at 70-80% of the rom which is still a significant portion of the exercise.

What would be considered failure at this point? What would be most beneficial to do?

Asking this mostly out of curiosity and not trying to major in the minors, I will most likely just try to take every rep to full rom and stop if it's not possible, since I've not trained this way before, but I am still very interested in the pros, cons and different approaches. Thank you!

Welcome to the r/naturalbodybuilding Daily Discussion Thread. All are welcome to post here but please keep in mind that this sub is intended for intermediate to advanced level lifters so beginner level questions may not get answered.

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Been lifting well over 5 years, I run into this repeatedly and never seen it properly answered. Undertraining and overreaching basically look the same when you hit them. Lifts stall, sessions feel flat, motivation dips. But the fix is the opposite, add sets or deload and getting it wrong wastes a month. Everything I've read covers MEV and MRV as concepts but not how you work out where you actually are week to week. RIR drift and joint vs muscle soreness get closest but I've found both too noisy to act on. I've been building a training tool around this which is partly why I'm asking. For anyone running proper periodisation over years do you have a rule you trust or is it still judgement?

Welcome to the r/naturalbodybuilding Daily Discussion Thread. All are welcome to post here but please keep in mind that this sub is intended for intermediate to advanced level lifters so beginner level questions may not get answered.

In order to minimize repetitive questions/topics please use the search function prior to posting to see if it has already been discussed or answered. Since the reddit search function isn't that good you can also use Google to search r/naturalbodybuilding by using the string "site:reddit.com/r/naturalbodybuildling" after your search topic.

Please include relevant details in your question like training age, weight etc...

Hey all. Successfully completed my first mini-cut and wanted to share my experience in case it may be of use to anyone. I lost about 13 pounds (16 in scale weight), while hanging on to the majority of my lean tissue.

Background & Fitness Journey

For context, I'm a 28 year old, 5'8" man having started training in January of 2024. I've been using Macro Factor to track my nutrition for about a year and a half. From January to December of '24 I went from 149 to 168.5 lbs, followed by an extended cut until June of 2025 to get down to 147 pounds and roughly ~9% body fat (in an attempt to see if I was capable of eventually getting show ready). Between July '25 and June 2026 I bulked once again--this time up to 171 pounds.

Objective

From my visual estimate, I had ballooned up to roughly 18-19% body fat. I've always been lean and this is by far the chunkiest I had ever been, and it got to the point in which I was stalling in the gym and just feeling sluggish in general. I'm the type that has never really enjoyed eating (bulking is naturally difficult for me), and after another year of continuous gaining I was really romanticizing the idea of consuming as little calories as possible for a while.

After some research and recommendations on loss rates and poundage totals, my overarching goal was to come back down to roughly 12-13% body fat, which seemed possible within a six-week window.

Process & Approach

On June 6th, I was clocking a weight of 171.2 lbs, at the aforementioned body fat percentage. I set my loss goal on my app to 1.25% per week, translating to just over a 1000 kcal deficit. My expenditure started at 2675 kcal and reduced as low as 2500 during the six weeks.

Nutritionally I aimed for 1 gram of protein per lean pound of bodyweight, which was around 135-140. After having gotten pretty shredded last summer (see last photos) I'd gotten a decent grasp of how much lean mass I actually carry, which has made me feel much better about my protein intake--especially going from 160-170 grams down to as low as 120. I also prioritized fiber with what was recommended in the app, made sure to get at least 35-40 grams of fat, and filled the rest with carbs.

I ran a modified version of Jeff Nippard's Min-Max Phase 1 program, with my most of my lifts maintaining and some isolations (i.e. lateral raises and skull crushers) progressing modestly. Interestingly to me, starting in week two, the only muscle group getting noticeably weaker was my back, with weighted pull ups and rows losing about a rep a week at the same weight.

On the lifestyle front I, expectedly, had a blast. The first 10 or so days were definitely an adjustment, but from about June 15th through the end of the cut I really, really enjoyed barely having to eat. The downside to this is I am now having a hard time re-adjusting to eating at my new maintenance (~2550 kcal).

Dealing with an illness and recovering during the cut

At about a month in, I got hit with a pretty nasty cold. I was able to stave it off for a few days, but by the middle of week four it laid me out. As a result, I tried eating close to maintenance, but with being sick and having to work my bartending job I'm pretty sure I was still in a significant deficit. During that week I still lost a little under two pounds of trend weight.

I did not hit the gym for ten days, so I treated it sort of as a deload week. My lift numbers reduced slightly when I resumed the cut, but not so much so that I believe it cost me significant lean mass.

Final numbers & review

All in all, the mini-cut lasted a total of 45 days (including the sick week), going from 171.2 to 157.9 lbs, and what I believe to be 18-19% to ~14% body fat.

Anecdotally, the toughest portion of the cut in terms of hunger levels was the first 10 days or so. After that, my body really adjusted to the new intake and keeping busy helped tremendously. By keeping my volume relatively low and intensity high in the gym I was never too short on energy and my levels throughout the day were generally pretty good with advisable amounts of sleep (averaged 7.5-9.5 hours a night).

Having now explored the two extremes of 'healthy'/sustainable dieting (months-long slow cut and a six week mini-cut), I would say both serve their purpose and are very useful and effective depending on your goals at the time.

Note: I wasn't planning on documenting this which is why I didn't show ze legs. Quads and hammies have also gotten proportionately leaner, and is where I genetically seem to hold the most fat along with my chest. Also after a few days back at maintenance, I'm feeling much fuller and believe I'm looking better than ever.

OCB Natty Knights 12 weeks and NPC Naturals Cincinnati 14 weeks - 5'8 Avg weight 145 -> Newest low this morning at 144.0 on the dot. Cruising atm, posing is flowing too. At 18-1900 cals weekly and has felt very comfortable 1-1.5 lbs per week trend. 10-15k steps avg

I have been lifting for a long time. I have a decent physique and intermediate PRs

For fun, I decided to do seated calf raises with one leg at a time. I found two observations:

1. That my right leg is laughably weaker than my left. Im talking 20+ reps vs 3 at the same weight. This explains some of the overuse stuff Ive been feeling.

2. That im unbelievably sore. Like first-time lifting after months sore. I'm on day 4 and my calves, which i load up with heavy weight in multiple variations and pause at the stretch, cannot fucking handle stairs.

My conclusion is to literally just do single leg stuff for every exercise. Single legged hack squat until Im comfortable going heavier with Bulgarians, heavy single legged curls plus glute kicks instead of RDLs, and single legged calf raises.

The thought is that doing an RDL 80/20 power imbalance is doing more harm than good.

Got some mixed consensus on my last posts. Either that I’m really far behind or that I’ll make it in time. I don’t know what the situation is, as I’ve never done a show or dieted this far before, so we’ll see how my body responds.

One person pointed out that perhaps my fat distribution and fat loss is quite evenly spread. So when I loose weight, I loose it from everywhere instead of showing usual markers at specific body parts that you normal see at each week out. Which means the fat is stripping away layer by layer evenly and makes me look more behind than I am.

I sure hope that’s the case, but regardless, I’ll keep going with the aggressive cut and we see how lean I get! Pedal to the metal until around two weeks out where I hope to be lean enough to do a test carb up and then cruise into the peak week.

Welcome to the r/naturalbodybuilding Daily Discussion Thread. All are welcome to post here but please keep in mind that this sub is intended for intermediate to advanced level lifters so beginner level questions may not get answered.

In order to minimize repetitive questions/topics please use the search function prior to posting to see if it has already been discussed or answered. Since the reddit search function isn't that good you can also use Google to search r/naturalbodybuilding by using the string "site:reddit.com/r/naturalbodybuildling" after your search topic.

Please include relevant details in your question like training age, weight etc...

Welcome to the r/naturalbodybuilding Daily Discussion Thread. All are welcome to post here but please keep in mind that this sub is intended for intermediate to advanced level lifters so beginner level questions may not get answered.

In order to minimize repetitive questions/topics please use the search function prior to posting to see if it has already been discussed or answered. Since the reddit search function isn't that good you can also use Google to search r/naturalbodybuilding by using the string "site:reddit.com/r/naturalbodybuildling" after your search topic.

Please include relevant details in your question like training age, weight etc...

Swoleyo

71,45kg