The 28-Day Shred in Durata: four weeks, screen by screen

Starting the cut

The finder asks three questions: goal, experience, days per week, and returns a shortlist. Pick fat loss and it surfaces the challenge cuts. The 28-Day Shred is the four-week one: three full-body barbell days to preserve muscle, two ramping cardio days to burn, run over four weeks.

There are no training maxes here. The compound lifts run double progression off a working weight, so the app asks what you can currently handle for the prescribed sets and starts there, 100 kg on the squat in this run. Start honest rather than heavy: in a deficit the weight is there to keep the muscle, not to be chased, and the app nudges it up on its own when your reps say you're ready.

The program page lays out the split before you commit: three full-body sessions (one squat-led, one deadlift-led, one front-squat-led) plus a steady Zone-2 run and a HIIT interval session. The cardio days are draggable in the planner, so you can put the run and the intervals wherever they fit your week.

The barbell work holds the line: double progression

Open the first full-body session and the squat is 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps at 100 kg. The chip under the exercise name reads "↑ DP · 8–12 · all sets hit 12 → +2.5 kg", so the rule governing the lift is on screen while you train. That's double progression: the weight is fixed and you chase reps inside the range first. Only when all three sets reach the top of the range (12 here) does the weight go up, 2.5 kg at a time.

This is the right rule for a cut. Linear progression assumes you can add weight every session, and you can't while you're eating in a deficit. Double progression lets you make progress by adding a rep at the same weight, which is exactly what holding muscle looks like, and only moves the load when you've genuinely earned it. Nothing is configured; every lift carries its own range and increment.

Each full-body day trains different patterns so the whole body gets worked across the week. Day one is squat, bench, row and Romanian deadlift; day two is deadlift, overhead press, pulldown and leg press; day three is front squat, incline bench, Pendlay row and leg curl. The heavier compounds sit in an 8–12 range; the machine accessories run higher, 10–15 or 12–20, because that's where they do their work.

The cardio is the part that climbs

Here is what actually changes over four weeks. The two cardio sessions ramp on a schedule, and the app builds the whole ramp for you. You never edit an interval or set a minute count.

The HIIT session starts at 30 seconds of work and 30 seconds of rest for 12 rounds. Every week it hardens: the work interval gets longer, the rest gets shorter, and the round count goes up. The steps are clean: five seconds onto the work interval and five seconds off the rest, every week. By week four it's 45 seconds on, 15 seconds off, for 18 rounds. That is half again as long per effort, six extra rounds, and a work-to-rest ratio that has gone from 1:1 to 3:1. A genuinely harder session, prescribed for you, arriving automatically each week.

The steady Zone-2 run climbs the simple way: 20 minutes in week one, then 25, 30, and 35. Five more minutes of easy aerobic work each week. Between the two, the conditioning load rises every single week while the barbell work holds steady, which is the whole design of a cut. The training gets harder where it should, and the app is the thing scheduling it.

The squat still moves: 2.5 kg a week, when you earn it

Even in a deficit the squat climbs, because double progression only asks for a rep at a time. Hit 12 on all three sets at 100 kg and the next week the app puts 102.5 kg on the bar, back at the bottom of the range. Hit 12 there and it's 105. Then 107.5. Four weeks in, the squat has gone 100 → 102.5 → 105 → 107.5 kg, with 110 kg prescribed for the week after. A clean climb, no stall, no deload, entirely off the reps you logged.

The last session shows the whole mechanism in one screen: 107.5 kg on the bar, the PREV·R column reading last time's 105 × 12, and the volume line +90 against it. You didn't calculate the jump or decide you were ready. The app read three sets of 12 and moved the weight. That the lift climbs at all during a cut is the double-progression rule working as intended: hold the load until the reps are there, then add.

What four weeks looks like afterwards

Twenty sessions across four weeks fill the History calendar from the start date, three full-body days and two cardio days a week. The squat's own Estimated 1RM chart draws a clean upward line across the block: no dip, because there's no stall to deload. That's what a well-run cut should look like on paper: strength held or gently rising while the conditioning load does the work.

The strength view tells the story from above: an estimated one-rep max per lift, and weekly volume stepping up as the reps fill in, all tracked without a spreadsheet. Four weeks of training, every number driven by the app.

The payoff: what four weeks of cardio bought you

The squat moved a little, on purpose. That is double progression holding the line through a deficit. The number that actually tells the story is the conditioning: the HIIT session went from 12 rounds of 30-on/30-off to 18 rounds of 45-on/15-off, and the steady run added 15 minutes. Nothing here was typed in; the app built and scheduled the whole ramp. The fat loss came from the deficit. The cardio capacity is what four weeks of training actually bought you.