Why do minicuts and not just the real thing? Like, why not just mass for 24 weeks straight and diet for 16 weeks after that, and repeat? Well, that’s a fine way to do things, but the advantage of minicuts is that first of all, they prevent massing from really ever becoming TOO stale. In other words, how productive are weeks 16-24 of a straight mass really going to be in terms of muscle tissue to fat tissue gain ratios? Probably not as productive as they would be if a 6 week minicut was inserted after the first 12 weeks of massing. In addition to this downside of long masses, long cuts themselves have downsides. When weight is lost in lower amounts and over shorter timescales like minicuts, muscle loss is a very small concern and there is almost no diet fatigue developed. You can usually just bounce right into a massing phase after and be primed to continue gaining. But after a longer (12 weeks or more) diet, altered hormone, NEAT, and hunger levels can make re-massing more complicated at best, because you now have to deal with all of the side effects of the long cut while you try to re-start the mass train
