Routines for cutting and losing fat

What training for a cut means

Cutting means losing fat and keeping the muscle you have, so it shows more. They are two separate jobs. Fat comes down when, for a while, you eat less energy than you burn, that is, in a calorie deficit. Strength training takes care of the other half, which is giving your body a reason not to lose muscle while you eat less.

That's why a cutting routine isn't very different from one for building muscle. It still has the main lifts of each pattern, like the dumbbell goblet squat, a press and a row, with hard sets and a load that goes up over time. In a meta-analysis of 114 trials in people with overweight or obesity, combining strength training with fewer calories lowered body fat percentage the most, and lean mass was maintained (Lopez et al., 2022). Strength training alone, with no calorie restriction, lowered fat by about 1 kg on average compared with not training.

What changes in the routines on this list is mostly the format. Several use supersets, sessions of 30 to 45 minutes or a short block at the end. They don't burn fat on their own. They're a way to train the whole body in little time, which is usually what's missing when you're also watching your food. To know how much to eat, the calorie calculator gives you a starting point for your goal.

How to spread the days across the week

Mobbe's cutting routines run from 3 to 5 days. With 3 days, each session works the whole body and it's best to leave a rest day between them. With 4 days, you alternate upper and lower. With 5 days, the week follows a push, pull and legs scheme, and adds one upper day and one legs day with cardio.

Choose by the days you can sustain, not the days you'd like to have. While you're eating less, a 3-day routine you do every week does more for you than a 5-day one where you miss two days. If you want to add activity, walking or doing cardio on your rest days is compatible with strength training (Schumann et al., 2022).

Which routine to choose

• If you train at home. Bodyweight Home 3 Days uses your body weight, a pull-up bar, a band and a bench. Each demanding exercise has an easier version, like the push up with your hands on a bench or the loop band pull up.
• If you're short on time and have 3 days. Express Full Body 3 Days fits in 35 minutes and Full body density 3 days in 30. Both work the whole body with two-exercise supersets.
• If you like finishing with something more intense. Metabolic circuit 3 days adds a few short rounds of burpees at the end of each session, with a no-jump version. It's a matter of taste, not a requirement for losing fat.
• If you have experience and 4 days. Upper-lower density 4 days keeps the main lifts of each pattern in 45-minute sessions.
• If you have 5 days and want recomposition. Recomp 5 days has the most sets on the list, with main lifts like the back squat and the barbell row, and closes the week with 10 minutes on the bike after the weights.

If your main goal is to build muscle and not lose fat, see the muscle building routines, which have more sets per muscle.

What weight to use, how many sets and how much rest

To cut, you don't need to switch to light weights and lots of reps. A meta-analysis by Schoenfeld et al. (2017) found that muscle grows similarly with light or heavy loads if the sets are hard, but that heavy loads give more maximal strength. If, when you eat less, you swap your usual weights for light sets that you finish far from failure, you take away exactly the stimulus that helps the muscle hold on. The weight routines on this list mostly use ranges of 8 to 12 reps, with 1 or 2 in reserve.

A hard set doesn't mean reaching failure. Stopping close to it gives the same muscle as reaching failure (Refalo et al., 2023), and the ACSM (2026) suggests finishing with 2 or 3 reps in reserve. Reaching failure, on the other hand, delayed recovery by 24 to 48 hours in one study (Morán-Navarro et al., 2017), a cost with no gain in return.

The table counts the sets where each muscle is the primary one and the days it's trained. The volumes are moderate, lower than in the muscle building routines, because the goal is to maintain and not to run long sessions. Muscle can also be built with few sets, especially when starting out (Currier et al., 2023). The main lifts also add work to other muscles, like the press for the triceps or the squat for the glutes.

Supersets are what let you fit into 30 or 45 minutes. They pair a push exercise with a pull one, like the dumbbell bench press with the cable row, and while you do the second, the muscle from the first rests. A meta-analysis by Zhang et al. (2025) found that they shorten the session without losing volume or strength and muscle results compared with straight sets. They do feel more demanding.

Rest isn't cut to burn more. Resting more than 60 seconds between sets for the same muscle gave a bit more muscle than resting less, and going past 90 barely changed the result (Singer et al., 2024). That's why Upper-lower density 4 days says to lengthen the rest between rounds to 90 seconds if you lose more than 2 reps from one round to the next.

Common mistakes when training to cut

1. Switching to light sets to get defined. High reps don't burn the fat from the area you train. Keep the weights that get you to the routine's reps and the indicated RIR.
2. Swapping the weights for cardio. Cardio adds expenditure, but muscle is kept with strength training. In the Lopez et al. (2022) meta-analysis, what lowered fat the most while maintaining lean mass was strength training with fewer calories. If you do both on the same day, lift first (Murlasits et al., 2018).
3. Expecting the circuit to do the work of food. An intense block at the end of the session or a shorter rest doesn't replace the calorie deficit. If your weight doesn't move for several weeks, the first thing to check is your food, not the routine.
4. Cutting food all at once. A very big cut makes it harder to sustain the loads and the routine. The usual approach is a moderate deficit you can keep up for weeks, with enough protein. The protein calculator gives you the grams for your weight.
5. Training without logging. Without a log you don't know whether you're holding your weights or they're dropping. That data is what tells you whether muscle is being kept.

How to progress while cutting

The weight routines on this list use double progression, which combines adding reps and raising weight. Plotkin et al. (2022) compared the two approaches in trained people over 8 weeks, and both worked.

1. Pick a weight that gets you to the bottom of the range at the indicated RIR. If the routine says 3 × 10–12 at RIR 2, find a weight where you can do at least 10 reps with 2 left in reserve.
2. Add reps with that weight, session after session, without changing your technique or range of motion.
3. Take the smallest increase when all sets reach the top of the range, and start again from the bottom.

In Bodyweight Home 3 Days you don't add weight: when you complete the top of the range on all sets, you move to a harder variation. In the inverted row, for example, you bring your body more horizontal.

With less food, the pace is usually slower than in a bulking phase. If you hold your weights and reps while your body weight goes down, the routine is doing its job. If your loads drop for several sessions in a row, check your sleep and food before changing routines. In Mobbe every set is saved and, when you train, you see what you did last session so you know what to beat.

Questions about cutting routines

Sources

1. Currier BS, D'Souza AC, Singh MAF, et al. American College of Sports Medicine Position Stand. Resistance training prescription for muscle function, hypertrophy, and physical performance in healthy adults: an overview of reviews. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2026. doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000003897
2. Currier BS, Mcleod JC, Banfield L, et al. Resistance training prescription for muscle strength and hypertrophy in healthy adults: a systematic review and Bayesian network meta-analysis. Br J Sports Med. 2023. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2023-106807
3. Lopez P, Taaffe DR, Galvão DA, et al. Resistance training effectiveness on body composition and body weight outcomes in individuals with overweight and obesity across the lifespan: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Obes Rev. 2022. doi:10.1111/obr.13428
4. Morán-Navarro R, Pérez CE, Mora-Rodríguez R, et al. Time course of recovery following resistance training leading or not to failure. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2017. doi:10.1007/s00421-017-3725-7
5. Murlasits Z, Kneffel Z, Thalib L. The physiological effects of concurrent strength and endurance training sequence: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Sports Sci. 2018. doi:10.1080/02640414.2017.1364405
6. Plotkin D, Coleman M, Van Every D, et al. Progressive overload without progressing load? The effects of load or repetition progression on muscular adaptations. PeerJ. 2022. doi:10.7717/peerj.14142
7. Refalo MC, Helms ER, Trexler ET, Hamilton DL, Fyfe JJ. Influence of resistance training proximity-to-failure on skeletal muscle hypertrophy: a systematic review with meta-analysis. Sports Med. 2023. doi:10.1007/s40279-022-01784-y
8. Schoenfeld BJ, Grgic J, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. Strength and hypertrophy adaptations between low- vs. high-load resistance training: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Strength Cond Res. 2017. doi:10.1519/JSC.0000000000002200
9. Schumann M, Feuerbacher JF, Sünkeler M, et al. Compatibility of concurrent aerobic and strength training for skeletal muscle size and function: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Med. 2022. doi:10.1007/s40279-021-01587-7
10. Singer A, Wolf M, Generoso L, et al. Give it a rest: a systematic review with Bayesian meta-analysis on the effect of inter-set rest interval duration on muscle hypertrophy. Front Sports Act Living. 2024. doi:10.3389/fspor.2024.1429789
11. Zhang X, Weakley J, Li H, Li Z, García-Ramos A. Superset versus traditional resistance training prescriptions: a systematic review and meta-analysis exploring acute and chronic effects on mechanical, metabolic, and perceptual variables. Sports Med. 2025. doi:10.1007/s40279-025-02176-8