What if I told you that you could work on your strength and aesthetics at the same time? Powerbuilding aims to combine both disciplines; powerlifting and bodybuilding. But it has to be done the right way
What’s Powerbuilding?
Powerbuilding is combination of bodybuilding and powerlifting. It uses the three main powerlifting movements (squat, deadlift, bench press), and supplementary bodybuilding exercises to work on the aesthetics and symmetry of your body.
Powerbuilding tries to combine two disciplines that are incompatible at first.
The planning of the program will be a key piece to get the expected results. If not, it will be a mess and a waste of time. You won't get stronger nor leaner.
Powerlifting
Powerlifting is a strength discipline consisting in three main movements. These are squat, deadlift and bench press.
The lifter will have to try lift his/her maximal weight on each movement. Both the relative strength (per body weight) and total strength will give a winner of the competition.
This discipline is a great way of gaining strength overtime (study). Stronger muscles will help you on your training performance, physical appearance, and lowering risk of injuries (study)
Squat
Squat is one of the greatest movements to train the lower body. As a compound movement, it involves both knees and hip extension.
It trains mainly the quadriceps, but also your back chain, glutes, harmstrings, calfs, and core (study)
Deadlift
Deadlit is one of the best exercises to train your strength. Involving almost all muscles in your body (study), it's a great exercise when looking for general hypertrophy and a time-efficient exercise.
There are a lot of variants of deadlit. But the only accepted variants in powerlifting competition are conventional deadlift (CD) and sumo deadlift (SD).
CD is widely used among heavy subjects. It feels more comfortable, but SD tends to let you lift heavier weights.
SD shows higher activation of the quadriceps and tibialis, and the stimulus will be more focused on the posterior chain when doing CD (study)
Bench Press
Bench press involves to the chest, triceps and shoulders. All these muscles are responsible for a elbow extension, and shoulder flexion and abduction.
Depending on the width of your grip, the involvement on muscles will be different (study)
The wide grip will involve more the chest and shoulders. On the other hand, narrow grip will involve more the chest and triceps.
Bodybuilding
Bodybuilding focuses on building muscle and on the symmetry of the body. By using progressive overload and muscle hypertrophy, bodybuilders can plan their programs to optimize muscle building
The mechanisms underlying muscle hypertrophy are three: mechanical tension, metabolic stress and muscle damage (study).
By inducing these and playing with the intensity and volume of the trainings, we can progress over time and build muscle adaptations.
Bodybuilding training program is formed by high-intensity compound and isolation exercises in between 6-12 reps. Different muscle groups are trained on different days to help recovering at its fullest.
Benefits of Powerbuilding
Powerbuilding is an emerging fitness trend, and it has more and more practicants each year. But why? What are the benefits of training powerbuilding?
It Gives Variability to your Training
Body composition and strength are a long-term process. If you want to be good at it, you need time. And the worst enemy is boredom.
Powerbuilding makes the training workout more variable from session to session. By mixing both strength and hypertrophy training, it's less likely you'll get bored of one of them.
Powerbuilding can then help you sticking to the plan and thinking about the long term mentality.
Powerbuilding Motivates You To Lift Heavy
Lifting heavy is more motivating than a simple hypertrophy training. Strength is an objective measure, while your physique is subjective and hard to notice the change.
Lifting heavy motivates you to train hard. It demands of focus, alertness and a lot of effort.
Powerbuilding combines strength and hypertrphy training. The strength side of the coin will help you go motivated to the gym, to then give your best each workout.
Creates a Synergy Strength-Muscle Mass
Muscle mass and strength are directly related. The more muscle mass and muscle hypertrophy, the stronger you are (study).
Powerbuilding can create a perfect synergy between both disciplines to boost the results.
However, powerbuilding doesn't specialize on any of these disciplines, and it won't explote your maximum potential on any of the disciplines. Instead, it aims for a complete, strong, and lean athlete.
Complete Training Approach
Powerbuilding is all about trying to plan a complete program to touch upon all aspects of your strength and muscle mass.
Different from powerlifting or hypertrophy training, powerbuilding periodizes both disciplines to get the most out of them.
It combines both disciplines in such manner that the interference between them is minimized. You'll still enjoy both disciplines when doing powerbuilding. They are separate in time and space, and one won't make the other one worse. Not at all.
How to Make a Powerbuilding Program?
All Powerbuilding Programs should be carefully planned to combine strength and muscle hypertrophy to perfection.
Either by doing separate training sessions, or separate them within the same session, there has be to be some borders between strength training and hypertrophy training.
Only then you'll be able to give your best for each of the disciplines. And only then you'll get the best results.
Separate Days Approach
In this case you must separate strength and muscle hypertrophy in different days.
If you go 4 days a week, do 2 for strength, and the other 2 remaining will be for muscle hypertrophy.
By doing this, you'll be fresh and ready to go for each workout, and the fatigue created from one discipline won't translate to worse results on the other one.
Day 1: Upper Body Strength
Day 2: Lower Body Hypertrophy
Day 3: Upper Body Hypertrophy
Day 4: Lower Body Hypertrophy
Same Session Approach
In this case, both strength and hypertrophy training are combined in the same session.
Start with the strength training, as it is more demanding and requires of focus and alertness.
Once you are done with strength, move on to hypertrophy training with the same muscle groups you trained during the strength session.
Day 1: Squat + Lower Body Hypertrophy
Day 2: Bench Press + Upper Body Hypertrophy
Day 3:Â Deadlift + Lower Body Hypertrophy
Day 4: Upper Body Hypertrophy
Powerbuilding Competitions
To date, there are no official Powerbuilding Competitions. It's a novice sport, and there's still much to do to standarize and regulate the discipline to make competitions fair for all competitors. But you can do your own powerbuilding competition.
Bodybuilding competitions always have two seasons a year. The first season, going during the fall, and the seconds season in the spring/summer. Powerlifting competitions usually go from spring to fall (May-October).
With the dates of each discipline, you could manage to compete at both. It could be done during the same year, or in different years.
Same Year Approach
If you choose to do it the same year, go first for the powerlifting competition. It will serve as an 'off-season' to put muscle mass on.
Then, start cutting-off and shredding to prepare for the bodybuilding competition on the next season of the year.
Different Year Approach
A more sustainable approach would be to take your time between competitions and do them in different years.
Compete one year in powerlifting, and take some time off to prepare for the bodybuilding competition next season.
Conclusion
Powerbuilding is an emerging trend that combines powerlifting and hypertrophy training in once. It aims for a complete, strong, and lean athlete.
In this post we have seen the benefits of doing powerbuilding and the different approaches to plan the training program and compete.
