How To Get Bigger & Stronger At The Same Time (Powerbuilding Science Explained)

How can we become really strong and at the

same

time

really strong? Many people seem to think that you can't or at least shouldn't, because the way you should train to be strong is very different from how you should train to be strong. They say it's big, but I really don't agree with this. It is very common to hear that if you want to be strong you need to lift heavy weight with few repetitions and if you want to be big you need to lift light to moderate weight for a relatively short

time

. higher reps and there is some truth to this, I mean if you just look at any old personal training manual you will probably find a table that looks like this one that outlines clear and distinct rep zones for strength hypertrophy and resistance for strength. lift heavy for size, lift moderate and for endurance lift light and this has led to an avalanche of infographics on Instagram like this one that perpetuate the oversimplified idea that training heavy will make you strong but not as big and training light to moderate It will make you great. but not as strong, but this is not exactly what

science

says.

A major study by Schoenfeld and his colleagues divided 20 trained men into two groups, one group trained with moderate loads doing 10 repetitions for each exercise and the other group trained with heavy loads doing three. repetitions of each exercise, the total volume was equalized between the groups and after eight weeks, both groups gained the

same

amount of muscle. Heavy weights and moderate weights were equally effective at building muscle mass and this was not just an isolated finding. I printed all the studies. You could find out the effect of high reps versus low reps on muscle hypertrophy now, obviously we won't have time to look at each of these in detail, but luckily research reviewer Greg Knuckles already did that work for us, so each point here represents. a different set of data now, if the Instagram infographics were correct, we would expect to see a curve like this where you see the best growth with moderate weights and worse growth is seen with heavy and light weights, but this is not what What we see instead is that there is no obvious relationship between rep count and hypertrophy.

Obviously, there are differences from study to study, just as there would be differences from person to person, but in general, heavy weights, moderate weights, and light weights can clearly cause muscle. As long as you're training hard enough now as a quick aside, there seems to be a limit to how light you can get. A 2018 article found that once you get down to 20 percent of your one-rep max, you tend to see less growth, but that would actually be very light, at least 50 to 100 reps for most people, so not It's really a practical concern anyway, the bottom line is that unless you're going really ridiculously with light and heavy weights, light weights are effective. to build muscle, but what about strength?

Do you need to lift heavy objects to get strong or is it the same as size? As long as you train hard enough you will see gains in any rep range. Well, it turns out that for strength, the rep range really matters. In that Schaunfeld study, the heavy group that did three reps per set had significantly better strength gains on the bench press than the moderate load group and this was shown. Because strength is a specific skill, this means that if you want to get better at lifting weights. heavy things you have to lift heavy things and so far this is all good news for the power builder because it means we can do some heavy lifting, called pure strength, and it will still count towards our size goals, so this brings back to The question I posed at the beginning, how can we train to gain strength and size at the same time?

Well, we definitely need to do some low rep weight lifting to get strong, but as tempting as it may be, we can't just do weights. I work with low reps exclusively because, although the results of the Schoenfeld study seem to indicate that low reps are best on the surface, you get the same hypertrophy gains with better strength gains. If you dig into the details, you'll learn that the heavy sessions required more than four times as long to complete and the subjects reported greater physical and mental fatigue, so clearly if we want to balance both goals we definitely need to use a structured combination of different rep ranges, This is especially important because using a mix of different rep ranges can likely trigger growth through different mechanisms; furthermore, it appears that lower rep sets indicate muscle growth primarily through mechanical tension, while lower rep sets indicate muscle growth primarily through mechanical tension.

The higher rep sets probably indicate growth primarily through metabolic stress and the rep counts in the middle would use more than a combination of the two, so to maximize overall growth it makes sense to me to use some combination of the two. three now. If you're a little more concerned about getting

bigger

but still want to get

stronger

, you may want to set up your training in a way like this. of your working sets come in zone 6 to 12, but you still have a solid third dedicated to lifting weights for strength development. On the other hand, if you care a little more about getting

stronger

, you should allocate more sets to the lower rep ranges.

With most of your volume now coming from that heavier one to five rep zone, but regardless of how you split it, that heavy cut should be directed toward the lifts you want to strengthen, probably the squat bench press and the deadlift. dead for most. of us, so let's go ahead and focus a little more on those lifts. I already said that strength is a skill, this means that it is not enough to simply lift weight, you also need to practice and refine the technical aspect of lifting to achieve it. as strong as you can be, and while it technically counts as lifting a lot of weight, simply amping yourself up for a series of poorly executed balls into the wall once every two weeks, unfortunately, probably won't do much for your max.

I recommend intentionally practicing the big lifts about twice a week and maybe more in person. I squat two or three days a week bench press two or three days a week and deadlift one or two days a week depending on the frequency of the squats and because the deadlift tends to take It's more of a recovery tool than the others. two and in my new power development program, which alternates between full body weeks and upper and lower weeks, the full body week might look like this, in which you do squats, bench press and deadlifts all twice per week before in during the week you can go pretty hard and heavy, so you can take these sets to something like an rp of 8, maybe 8.5, where you leave only one or two reps in the tank and then later on in week, you focus more on technical work, where you're training a little further from failure, but really honing your form now it's important to remember that if you were to just go in and max out the powerlifts each session, not only would you probably have recovery problems.

It would also start to instill bad technique habits that could end up hurting your strength return in the long run and I think getting better with technique is an extremely important and underrated form of progression, so if there is a part of the lift that you struggle with you can Use this technique later in the week to address those issues, for example if you find that your deadlift is slow off the floor, you can come out of a deficit to help address and strengthen that technical sticking point or if you find that rounding of your back increases as you go.

You lose tension in everything positive. You can do pause deadlifts with lighter weights to help strengthen that weak link. Paused squats can also be useful for improving posture and explosive power out of the hole and then making sure your bases are covered for bodybuilding. Simply add so-called accessory movements to fit your hypertrophy goals in a way that doesn't interfere with your recovery from the other lifts - for example, doing a heavy pendlay row the day before the heavy deadlift could fatigue your lower back and impede your performance the next day so do a chest supported row and most of these accessory sets should be in the 6-12 rep range with some in the upper metabolic zone of 12 plus and this will allow you to pack on quite a bit more volume. easily and eliminate that high effort beast mode mentality without the same recovery cost that approach would have in heavy powerlifting and including enough accessory work is extremely important for the power builder because even though

science

tells us He says we can be fooled with low rep sets.

Bench press squats and deadlifts don't adequately exercise all muscles on their own, so focusing on just the big three will leave some muscles understimulated. Squats are amazing for your quads and pretty good for your glutes. The bench is amazing for your pecs and front. delts and pretty good for triceps and deadlifts are amazing for spinal erectors, glutes and good for hamstrings, but that still leaves five key bodybuilding muscles that will be underdeveloped if you focus on these power lifts exclusively. : lats, biceps, rear, deltoids, calves and abs. Therefore, when adding accessory work, you really need to emphasize these muscles.

Generally speaking, aiming to perform at least eight to ten sets for each of those muscles each week is a good idea, which is why I like the idea of ​​having a traveling hypertrophy day. where you can just go in and crush any body part that didn't get enough volume during the week's main workouts. This is when I will do most of my side delt and bicep crunch work personally, so that covers how I can set up a sample workout week. Now I want to take a step back and take a quick look at periodization and downloads.

Now the periodization would need a full video to do it justice. Just look at that NSCA definition, but for now we can just take periodization to simply mean how you organize your training over time to maximize gains and minimize overtraining. Now, in my opinion, beginners don't need to worry too much about periodization, if you're still in your first year or two of lifting you should. able to just focus on progressive overload by adding a little bit of weight to the bar each workout, just simple linear progression is the way to go for you, but at a certain point you'll hit a plateau doing that and that's where you see the big picture.

Periodization becomes important, so the broadest way to periodize to generate power would be over the course of a full calendar year, also known as a macro macrocycle. Here I like to use a version of block periodization where we divide the entire year into discrete phases, each with a unique primary. Focus, for example, you could start the new year with a power development phase where you focus equally on gaining size and strength. Then, if you start a cut for the summer, you may want to transition more into a pure hypertrophy block where you taper the heavy strength work down to what it takes to maintain and then after the summer is over, You might want to increase calories again and run a pure strength block where you have enough accessory work to maintain your size and then I would finish the year with another pure hypertrophy block taking advantage of those new strength gains from block 3, so now you can apply more overload to overcome any plateaus you encountered in block 2.

But if you don't want to map everything out that way, you can totally shorten your periodization planning by simply incorporating higher sets into your workouts, even if the only change you make to your programming Current is to simply add a heavy upper set once a week before the bodybuilding volume you would normally do, you should see solid improvements in strength. without detracting from your size goals, as long as you continue to monitor your recovery. For example, if you normally do three sets of ten repetitions on the bench press but would also like to increase your strength,Simply perform a heavy set of one to three reps beforehand and, in my experience, this is a simple and effective way to develop maximal strength while still having almost all of the rest of your pie dedicated to moderate to high rep ranges and then over time you gradually add some weight or a rep. to that top set heavy and again, it doesn't have to be and shouldn't fail every session, it just needs to be reasonably heavy and reasonably challenging in a lower rep zone and lastly a concern when combining strength goals and Size is simultaneously recovery, which is why I have emphasized throughout the video the importance of avoiding failures in heavy lifts and always prioritizing overweight technique;

However, I still think most lifters will benefit from occasional deloads to relieve soft tissue and joint stress and promote recovery, at least once every two months, reduce the weight on the bar and the volume about 25 to 50 percent of what you would normally do. Now, this is not a time to simply be lazy, but as an energy generator, you should take this week to focus. about ways to really improve your technique on the big lifts and improve your mind-muscle connection on the accessories, both of which will be much more effective with slightly lighter weights, so how can we get really strong and really strong at the same time?

Let's analyze it in detail. In five easy steps, we must first combine rep ranges by doing some heavy lifting because strength is specific and some light to moderate lifting to avoid exhaustion. We need to refine our technique on the big lifts by practicing them about twice a week and then using accessory lifts. To hit five of the key muscles that the bench squat and deadlift underestimate, beginners should use a simple linear progression to overload for at least the first year of training, while intermediate to advanced practitioners should consider periodization. long-term block or higher sets to continue exercising. progress, then we need to continually manage the recovery by generally avoiding failures on large lifts and downloading at least once every two months and finally, if you would like to have all that information in one actionable file. routine many of you know I just launched my new 10 week power development program designed for intermediate to advanced lifters with the goal of gaining size and strength at the same time and will be on sale during the first week of release.

The program I've been running myself for the past few months and I've tried it out with some friends, clients, and some trainers, and I truly think it's my best work to date as far as programming goes. I wrote it too. That all you need is some pretty basic equipment and I performed it the first time in a garage with just a power rack, some dumbbells and bands, and if there are any exercises that require equipment I always provide substitutions to make it more accessible. with a separate technique manual to address sticking points on big lifts and a fully customizable spreadsheet to track progress, so you can simply plug in your current lifts and it will automatically fill in the weights you need to do now if you're still In your first year or two of training, I would recommend running my fundamentals program, which also includes a full body split and an upper and lower split, but the programming is more beginner-oriented, so I'll put a button for the new program here next to my head, if you want to watch it, I will also leave a link to everything I talked about in this video in the description box below, don't forget to give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video, please subscribe if I haven't yet done and I'll see you all here in the next one.