The Secret Powerbuilding Template

I purposely made the title of this article sound super cool and catchy because **SPOILER ALERT** the actual information sadly isn’t that exciting. You’re welcome for that purposeful and pre-meditated deceit.

“Powerbuilding” is some kind of buzzword that’s been developed to describe the process of both trying to get more muscular AND stronger. As if it’s some kind of new revolutionary endeavour.

“Dude, I’m not a powerlifter, I wanna be jacked too. I’m a powerbuilder”

Don’t get me wrong there are those who NEED to specialise heavily in one or the other because they are competing at a high level. But for the other 98% of us….

When did getting strong and getting jacked become an either/or scenario?

In fact, you don’t have to go back that far (i.e. before the wide spread use of PEDs) to see that the strongest people were also the most jacked. In the 50’s if you asked these people “What do you compete in?”  their answer would be “It depends what time of year it is”. The reason being that they would be competing in multiple different sports. You had Mr.Universe’s competing in Strongman or Olympic lifting or even performing feats of strength as part of circus attractions, just at different times of year.

At this point pretty much everyone was training 3 days per week with some kind of whole body split. It was only when PEDs became wide-spread and high level bodybuilders started relying heavily on body part split training with more isolation work (out of necessity) that the water started to become muddy.

So let’s lay it out clear for y’all…. 95%+ of you need to focus on being bigger AND stronger. Getting stronger will aid in getting more muscular and vice-versa. It’s only once you get to a very high level that you really need to start specializing in one. For example, think of a high level powerlifter who is already at the top of their weight class so can’t gain anymore weight/muscle. Although you could still argue they could progressively add muscle and lose fat to therefore carry more muscle at the same weight.

So let’s just stop with all these millennial terms, trying to sound like we’re special, when in reality we are all really training for the same thing…. to be able to fight a fully grown grizzly bear and win (or at least LOOK like we would stand a chance).

Strength and Hypertrophy training aren’t THAT different

We seem to have a widespread misconception that training to get stronger involves maxing out every day, inhaling ammonia like it’s going out of fashion and resting long enough to have afternoon tea between sets. Likewise “bodybuilding training” seems to drum up the image of doing 30 rep leg extensions “pump style” and resting only long enough to shove down your 19^th meal of chicken and broccoli.

In reality the training parameters for BUILDING (not displaying) strength and growing muscle aren’t that different.

Training Split

As I mentioned previously, for a long time there really was only one training split, whole body 3 days per week. Then things changed and body part splits became a thing for hypertrophy/bodybuilding training; the Bulgarians came up with a crazy system where you max out daily (in multiple sessions) and the whole fitness industry started arguing with each other.

Yes, training 6 times a week CAN work…. for a small number of people, or if the volume is super low. Likewise, some can get great results from training twice per week. But lets look at what applies to the 95%+ of us who have jobs, families, life stress and got dealt a modest hand when it comes to the genetic lottery.

Firstly, when it comes to strength, frequency is important for maximising your performance in the short-term. Increasing frequency can be a manner of peaking by increasing your efficiency and motor skill at that lift. But these are short-term neurological adaptations.

Say you go from back squatting once per week to three times per week. You will likely get some quick increases in strength (after the initial adaptation period) but these adaptations will stall after 4-6 weeks. Then you’re left back squatting three times per week for no extra benefit. So, while you can do your chosen lifts many times per week, I believe it is best reserved for when you need to peak your performance.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t do a VARIATION of squat three times per week (in fact I would encourage it). But doing the exact same lift multiple times per week, in my opinion, is unnecessary for long-term progression. In fact, it could HARM your long-term progression by not leaving you room to do variations of that lift that target and improve your weak points.

Doing at least a variation of your target lift multiple times per week is going to improve strength better than performing it once per week. Likewise it will also be superior to performing isolation movements (or movements that are not similar to your target lift) several times per week as it will have a more direct carry-over neurologically.

For example, performing Romanian deadlifts twice per week will improve your deadlift more than performing lying leg curls twice per week.

So for strength we want to perform compound movements that RESEMBLE our target lift multiple times per week; ideally ones that work on a our weak point.

Now with regards to hypertrophy, the scientific literature is pretty consistent in illustrating that training a muscle group twice per week is superior to training it once per week. There is then decent evidence that training a muscle group three times per week can be even more superior; however the benefit is MUCH smaller than that of going from once to twice per week.

Now this makes sense considering that protein synthesis is elevated for 36-48 hours after a training session. So if you train a muscle group on Monday morning then protein synthesis will be elevated in that muscle until Wednesday morning (roughly). It makes no sense to train a muscle AGAIN while you are still reaping the benefit from the previous workout; but it does mean we could train that muscle again on Wednesday morning.

Therefore IN THEORY, we get the most time with elevated protein synthesis for a specific muscle group by training it every 48 hours or so; i.e. Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

So, that begs the question, how do we go about stimulating all of our muscles every 48 hours without over-training by doing some kind of weird high frequency body part split….. we train the whole body (or at least half of it) at each training session. Within each session we do just enough volume to get the desired elevation in protein synthesis (again reference back to maximally effective reps in my previous article) and we use compound movements to make hitting each muscle group efficient.

And voila… as if by magic (or rather by some form of manipulative content writing) we have in essence ended up at the same answer for both of our goals: long term strength development and hypertrophy.

This is why, unless you’re a very high-level bodybuilder, at Thibarmy we favour the following training splits in the vast majority of cases regardless of whether a person is training for strength or hypertrophy:

Whole Body 3 days a week + Gap workout (for lagging or under-stimulated muscle groups) – 3 stimulations for each muscle group per week

Push/Pull/Push/Pull – 2 stimulations for each muscle group per week (quads are trained on push day, hamstrings on pull day)

Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower – 2 stimulations for each muscle group per week

Lift specific (i.e. squat, bench, deadlift, OHP or Row) – 2 stimulations for each muscle group per week (most of the time this essentially ends up becoming an Upper/Lower split wearing a different hat).

Rep Ranges

When it comes to BUILDING strength on the big compound movements the best rep range to use is going to be 4-6. Why you ask? Because this gives us the best mix of some neurological adaptations while still accumulating enough volume to provide a good hypertrophy stimulus. Yes, when preparing for a test or competition one would train in a lower rep range (1-3) but this is because we are trying to maximise neurological adaptations to peak at a certain point. But in reality we are not building strength at this point, we learning to display the potential we have already built with our previous work; big difference.

Now you CAN build strength with sets of 1-3 but it tends to be inefficient, as it requires you to do A LOT of sets to accumulate enough volume to get the desired physiological adaptations. So it’s not an approach that suits most people; unless you’re like me and you hate reps so much that you’re willing to do 20 sets of 2 @ 75-80% rather than have to try and count to a number greater than 3 (or get mildly out of breath under any circumstance).

Now if we’re training for hypertrophy most will jump to the traditional “8-12 is optimal” conclusion but this isn’t strictly true. This is because of the principle of maximally effective reps. Now, I’m not going to go in to detail here as I’ve spoken about this in a previous article . But in essence, when you perform a HARD set (to failure or 1 rep in the tank) it is only the last 5 or 6 reps that actually stimulate muscle growth effectively. All the reps preceding that just act as a warm up for the reps that really count.

SO, if only the last 5 or 6 reps of a set count towards our desired stimulus (providing you’re pushing your sets hard enough, which is a whole other rant) why would we do sets of 15 or 20 reps? It just means we need to perform more reps that provide little to no stimulus to get those magic 5 or 6 reps. It’s just more volume for our nervous system to recover from and more energy expenditure.

So am I saying we should only perform sets of 5 or 6 reps on all movements to minimise “wasted reps”? No.  Firstly, while this works fine for the big compound movements, if we start lifting heavier loads on all our accessory/assistance work also then we tend to accumulate too much joint/soft tissue stress and we end up too “beat up”.

Likewise, many exercises really don’t lend themselves to lower rep ranges. Isolation movements for small muscle groups (which are often hard to connect with and feel working) or that are easy to “cheat” on by recruiting other muscles (think recruiting the traps on lat raises) don’t respond well to lower reps. It becomes hard to focus on the target muscle and they often benefit from using a more controlled tempo to eliminate cheating mechanisms.

6-10 reps tends to be the sweet spot for most movements used for hypertrophy. It gives the best mix of moderate loading to reduce joint/tendon stress while only involving a few “wasted reps” per set. For smaller movements like lateral raises I’d advise upping this again to 10-15 for the reasons mentioned above. But any higher than this is going to become inefficient.

For the compound movements however I would still stick to 4-6 reps for hypertrophy. It involves little to no wasted reps (provided the load is adequate) which is important because performing an extra 10 reps on a heavily loaded back squat is going to bring much more neurological fatigue than performing an extra 10 reps on a dumbbell hammer curl. So minimising “wasted reps” is actually considerably more important on these movements. Furthermore, very few lifters can maintain optimal technique for anything above 5 reps (heck, most struggle to get 3 good reps in my opinion), so performing these movements for 6-10 often simply results in 4-5 good reps followed by 4-5 garbage reps. And that doesn’t help anything.Are there benefits to doing higher rep ranges? Yes, but we’re talking about hypertrophy here and this is what is optimal for that goal.

Rest Periods

Once again we have a common misconception that training for strength requires longer rest periods than training for hypertrophy. This simply is not true. In fact the vast majority of research in to hypertrophy and rest periods have quite clearly shown LONGER rest periods are more beneficial.

This misconception most likely came from the fact that strength training is associated with focussing more on compound movements whereas hypertrophy training is associated with more isolation work. So it is true that you should rest more after a set of deadlifts than after a set of cable tricep pressdowns. But this has NOTHING to do with whether you are training for strength or hypertrophy and has everything to do with the nature of the exercise.

The more neurologically demanding an exercise is the more rest that is required to perform optimally in the next set. Optimal performance is what you need to keep in mind here because this is why longer rest periods are BETTER for hypertrophy. Optimal recovery allows you to lift more load and work harder on the next set compared to if you rested less. If we lift more load and/or achieve more reps then the hypertrophy stimulus is going to be greater as more productive (key word) work has been done. Leading in time to more gainz (bro).

Our set of deadlifts requires considerably more neurological output to coordinate and perform than our set of tricep pressdowns. So therefore it requires more time for the nervous system to recover back to a state where it can perform that task optimally again. Hence more rest needed.

So regardless of your goals (unless you training for aerobic capacity, lactate tolerance etc) your rest periods should be set to allow you to perform optimally for your next set.

Here are some general guidelines:

Highly neurologically demanding work (max effort sprints, full Olympic lifts, high-level gymnastic work) – 4-5minutes between sets

Big, basic compound movements with spinal loading (squat, deadlift, overhead press) – 3-4 minutes

Compound movements with little to no spinal loading (bench press) – 2-3minutes

Multi-joint movements on cables/machines – 120-150s

Single-joint movements on cables/machines – 90-120s

*Remember this is assuming achieving maximal hypertrophy is your goal*

Exercise Variation

This is the only place where training for strength and training for hypertrophy can vary quite a bit, but it’s easily navigated.

If we want to increase our strength then we obviously need to perform that lift at least semi-regularly. Strength in a specific lift benefits from less variation IN THE SHORT TERM. But in the long term we want to perform variations of that lift that target our specific weakness/sticking point, i.e. performing front squats if your quads are the weak point in your back squat. Likewise, we need to perform these assistance exercises regularly, or for long enough, to perform well enough on them for them to have the desired effect.

Hypertrophy however benefits from a larger degree of variation. Now, we’re not going to go down the whole muscle confusion (bro) route here BUT being very efficient at a lift can reduce its efficacy as a hypertrophy exercise. Your body adapts to the motor requirements of a lift. Which is great for strength as it makes the lift less taxing to perform; think about Olympic weightlifters that can clean/snatch/squat every session. But it also means that the exercise gives a reduced stimulus.

So we need to rotate our hypertrophy exercises more regularly to keep getting the strongest possible stimulus from them.

But these two paths do end up crossing over more than you think. Usually because the assistance exercise or variation you need to build up your main lift is likely also targeting a weak or lagging muscle group (from a hypertrophy perspective). If you’re doing front squats to improve your back squats then chances are your quads are also underdeveloped, which the front squats will help with.

So we can quite easily get a good stimulus for both strength and hypertrophy by rotating our assistance exercises/variations semi-regularly (say 3-5 weeks or once per training block) and our smaller isolation movements (with a lower skill element) more regularly. For example if we were bringing up our quads and back squat:

Main Squat Assistance movement (all for 4 weeks each): Frankenstein Squat -> Paused Front Squat -> Front Squat

Secondary Squat Assistance movement (Quad emphasis, all for 2 weeks each): Leg extension -> Sissy Squat -> Split Squat -> Front foot elevated Split Squat -> Hack Squat -> Leg Press

This gives us the best mix of performing the assistance compound movements for long enough for them to have a positive effect on the main lift while having them still provide a good hypertrophy stimulus while also keeping our isolation work varied enough to maintain maximal stimulus.

So the Secret to Powerbuilding is……

Completely unremarkable and boring. But don’t hate me; I did warn you way back at the beginning that this was the case.

So if you want to be big AND strong do the following:

Use a training split that allows you to hit each muscle group in some capacity twice per week (or more)

Focus on a handful of main lifts you want to improve and use primarily compound lifts in your training

Perform 4-6 reps on your strength/compound lifts and 6-10 reps on your more hypertrophy/isolation-based lifts (most of the time)

Rest long enough to perform optimally on your next set. You’ll rarely suffer by resting too long (within reason)

Vary your compound movements less frequently than your isolation exercises

Train HARD

I can’t emphasise this last point enough. Now we have the opposite issue that we had maybe 30 years ago. There’s TOO MUCH information. People are getting bogged down in minutia and worrying about nutrient partitioning and resistance profiles of exercises when they’re not even training hard enough to stimulate any progress in the first place.

I’ll always take a 50% efficient program with 100% effort applied over a 100% efficient program with 50% effort applied.

Don’t be that person.