GoodFriday: On recovering muscle, mistakes, & power

Happy GoodFriday!

Here’s something I heard, thought, and did this week.

Something I Heard: Learning From Mistakes

“We must not be too proud or too stupid to profit from our mistakes.”
— Chesty Puller, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller by Burke Davis

Something I Thought: Knowledge Isn’t Power

Knowledge isn’t power it’s potential. What you do with that knowledge is power.

You can learn all you want but if you don’t do something with that knowledge it’s virtually useless.

Something I’m Doing: Hitting Pause on My Deficit (and You Might Want To, Too)

Over the last 12 weeks, I’ve dropped 16 pounds while holding onto my strength and lean body mass. It took diligent work tracking every calorie, but the payoff was worth it.

My goal during this cut wasn’t just to lose weight, it was to maintain strength and preserve as much lean mass as possible. The primary purpose of a calorie deficit is fat loss, but some lean tissue loss is almost inevitable. To minimize that, I kept my protein intake high, trained hard, and avoided an overly aggressive calorie deficit.

Now that I’ve hit this first milestone, I’m shifting gears. Rather than pushing deeper into a deficit, I’m moving into a maintenance phase to recover, and rebuild.

Here’s why that matters:

A recent study on trained lifters found similar muscle gains whether they were eating at maintenance, +5%, or +15% above maintenance. That means you don’t need to be in a big surplus to make progress. If you’ve just come out of a deficit, your body is primed to respond, maintenance is often the sweet spot for regaining lost lean tissue and getting your energy, recovery, and performance back on track.

This is a strategic reset.

One that sets you up to push even further, stronger and more resilient than before.

Until next week!

-Cameron Harn