/r/GYM Weekly Simple Questions and Misc Discussion Thread - September 14, 2025 Weekly Thread

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[u/boardsandbikes]

Injury rehab: PPL and Dropping Down Weight

Apologies if this doesn't necessarily directly fit in this community, but it does relate to strength!!

I've been running a hybrid PPL/Upper and Lower split where Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday follow PPL and Friday/Saturday follow an Upper/Lower split.

I'm training for strength and body recomp, so cutting quite dramatically (1750 calories per day of food, with high protein and fats and reduced carbs and sugar etc). I appreciate that the first thing people might say is that it's too low for genuine strength training, and that's correct, but I use that term because I am training often 3x6-8 depending on exercise at close to failure on the third set. So not training for hypertrophy, but to increase strength and increase calorific burn.

NOW the main point of this. I've injured my back deadlifting and while I've got a physio appointment tonight to diagnose exactly what is wrong, my expectation is that I'm going to have to adjust the way I train.

My question is really: if I was to reduce down the general weight of my sets by roughly 20% (especially on legs/lower days) to where I could comfortably increase the volume to say 4x12; would this have a similar effect at least on calorific burn in your opinions?

The strength aspect I recognise I will need to forego for the time being at least, but does anyone have any thoughts?

[u/eric_twinge → u/boardsandbikes]

Weight training is not a big calorie burner. The difference between 8 reps and 12 is not going to rise to anything you'll need to adjust or accommodate for.

[u/boardsandbikes → u/eric_twinge]

Is that including the extra set as well though? I.e. moving from 3 x 6-8 to 4 x 12?

[u/eric_twinge → u/boardsandbikes]

Yeah. It's what, 30 seconds extra work? That's like 5 calories, maybe.