Powerbuilding

Powerlifting meets Bodybuilding, my new venture

So my natural bodybuilding contest season is over, my two shows are done and I can proudly say I got shredded and placed in both shows. Goal achieved, and I can be happy that it was a job well done. I didn’t enter because I thought I’d win, or had anything to prove, I decided to compete to experience a journey like no other, and use the lessons it provided to better enable me to coach my clients. However, I do not now want to compete for a good 3 years or so, because muscle building is slow and contest prep is very hard. Apart from building my business, spending time with family and friends and enjoying life you might wonder what my training goals are. I am firmly in love with bodybuilding, however I love lifting heavy things, and think powerlifting is pretty damn cool, so why not combine the two?

Defining Powerbuilding 
Powerbuilding can be defined as a set of principles applied to one’s training with the aim of producing muscle growth, through increasing strength in movements tested in powerlifting.

That means the bench press, back squat and deadlift, and is something I actually have been doing for years, but never really focussed heavily upon. It is all about focussing on getting strong in these movements, and that produces growth. Using the lessons learnt from the best powerlifters and bodybuilders, to get our desired result; a strong and muscular body.

Principles of Powerbuilding
As said it is about using the best techniques and approaches from bodybuilding and powerlifting and combing them to get a desired result. I will now go into these.

Progressive Overload– without this you will not improve in any desired aspect. It is the backbone of any successful strength or muscle building programme. Essentially, if you are not pushing more total volume, you are not going to get bigger or stronger. By volume I mean your weight x your reps, so you either need to be adding more to pounds to the bar or doing more reps.

Periodisation– simply put this is the method of varying training modules including but not limited to total volume, intensity and frequency. There are almost infinite ways to periodise a programme, but current evidence is showing that an undulating method is superior to linear. This means you do not have long focussed blocks focussing on either strength, hypertrophy or power. But you focus on all three in a much shorter time period, allowing you to progress on all of them.

Frequency- in this case we are talking about how often muscle groups are trained. It is becoming widely known that as natural athletes our protein synthesis post workout is up-regulated for 48 hours post workout. Therefore, it makes sense to train each muscle group every 48 hours or so, rather than once a week like the old school bodybuilders. So with Powerbuilding you will train muscle groups a minimum of twice per week, that means using either upper/lower, push/pull/lower or full body type splits. Higher frequency of exposure to good training stimuli means more potential opportunities for growth!

Calorie Surplus– we wanna grow muscles right? we want to get stronger don’t we? that requires energy. If we are not in a calorie surplus we are either less than our bodies need to sustain itself or just enough. How then are we meant to build more muscle? Simple enough, we can’t. So key to a successful Powerbuilding method is consuming enough food, but not too much, remember we still care about aesthetics, we’re bodybuilders too. Plus we know muscle takes a long time to come by. Therefore, look to gain around 0.5-3lbs a month, depending on your training age, less the longer you have been training.

So now you know what my training aims are this ‘offseason’ to get big and strong :D. Hopefully entering my first powerlifting competition next year in the under 82.5kg weight category. Not set myself a overall total kg’s lifted target yet, but I will be. Anyone want to join me in powerbuilding? bodybuilding or powerlifting? Be sure to check out my online coaching, in which I provide weekly guidance on nutrition and training, bespoke and personalised.