Cerb I'm sure you must have heard some stuff from layne and a bunch of other coaches recently about all the reverse dieting concepts? He and others have a lot of stuff on youtube related to it you might find interesting but basically as you said it's very slowly adding back calories so the body adapts and increases BMR/TDEE without adding much body fat back.
I suppose you could apply a similar theory to the gear.
Adjos, how much fat would you tend to lose in those 7-10 days? I imagine no real muscle loss in such a short time. My biggest stall to long term gains in lifting was too much switching over to cutting from bulking. Whenever I got away from my solid 7-10 month bulks and instead would have a surplus for a few months followed by cutting for a few months I never netted any progress. But if one were to be in a surplus for say 4 months and put on some muscle and maybe 3-4lb of fat and then lose 2-3lb of that fat in just 2 weeks while retaining muscle that could allow one to make net gains for a very long time in theory before too much fat was added that a serious much longer cut was necessary.
I probably wouldn't do BB reverse grip but with the smith it felt pretty good since I didn't have to worry about stabilizing much. I'll see how it feels next week with all of my sets having the wider grip.
PJR pullovers were another one Cerb mentioned, I've done them once before but it's been years so maybe whenever I need to switch out the reverse smith presses I'll try those.
Couldnt quantify it - if I had to guess 1-2 lbs at the most. The aim in my mind isnt so much pro-active fat loss, its more re-achieving insulin sensitivity. A lot of what you see loss is the same as at the beginning of any diet when you switch from say a gaining diet to low carb - the initial onset when leptin is still nice and high will be a bit more dramatic.
What my true goal is - is to duplicate on a micro cycle level the same effect a bodybuilder gets the first week after a show.
Obviously the effect is not as dramatic seeing as a 12 week diet really makes you very very insulin sensitive.
But usually the week after a show we have all experienced gains eating cheat foods the entire week. The effect slows down each subsequent week thereafter, so in my mind I though why not kick it back to the dieted condition and reset the sensitivity enough to make gains under a more nutrient partitioned environment.
So in the end its more about not gaining as much fat, than it is actual fat loss. I accept the evil of fat gains when gaining size but curbing that gain so its less is a win to me.
I want to refine the cycle, something more like 10 days of diet for 20 some odd days of gain diet. Its gonna take some trial and error and I would think that each person would have to personalize such cycles to their own bodies unique adaptation to each part of the cycle.
To add to this, I think the use of metformin, r-ala and other supps and meds to help keep insulin sensitivity higher would be very smart.
Also in the past the first week of high carbs, I will use insulin then drop it subsequent weeks until the low carb reset.
DNP can be used efficiently in there as well-use it for a bit and your insulin sensitivity on the back side goes way up.
Again still havent worked out a rock hard protocol.