How To Get Bigger & Stronger At The Same Time (Powerbuilding Science Explained)
Summary
TLDRThis script discusses the possibility of gaining both size and strength through a balanced approach to weightlifting. It challenges the common belief that heavy lifting is for strength and light lifting for size, citing a study that shows both heavy and moderate weights can build muscle. The video suggests a structured combination of different rep ranges to maximize muscle growth and strength, emphasizing the importance of technique and recovery. It also touches on periodization and deloads, offering a comprehensive guide for intermediate to advanced lifters.
Takeaways
- ๐ช The belief that training for strength and size requires different approaches is a common misconception.
- ๐๏ธโโ๏ธ A study by Schoenfeld et al. showed that both heavy and moderate weights can effectively build muscle mass when total volume is matched.
- ๐ There is no clear relationship between rep count and muscle hypertrophy; all rep ranges can cause muscle growth if trained hard enough.
- ๐ซ Training very light (below 20% of one rep max) tends to see less muscle growth, suggesting a practical lower limit for effective training.
- ๐๏ธโโ๏ธ For strength, the rep range does matter, with heavy lifting leading to better strength gains, indicating the specificity of strength training.
- ๐ A structured combination of different rep ranges is recommended for balancing strength and size goals.
- ๐ Power building involves a mix of heavy, moderate, and light lifting, with a focus on compound movements like squat, bench press, and deadlift.
- ๐ง Technique practice on big lifts is crucial for maximizing strength and should be done about twice a week.
- ๐ Including accessory work is essential for addressing muscles not adequately hit by the big three lifts, such as lats, biceps, and abs.
- ๐ Periodization and deloads are important for managing recovery and preventing overtraining, especially for intermediate to advanced trainees.
Q & A
What is the common belief about training for strength versus size?
-The common belief is that to get strong, one should lift heavy weights for low reps, while to get big, one should lift light to moderate weights for higher reps.
What did the study by Schoenfeld and colleagues show regarding muscle hypertrophy and rep ranges?
-The study showed that both heavy and moderate weights were equally effective at building muscle mass when total volume was matched between the groups.
According to the script, is there a clear relationship between rep count and muscle hypertrophy?
-No, the script indicates that there is no obvious relationship between rep count and hypertrophy, as all rep ranges can cause muscle growth if trained sufficiently hard.
What is the significance of training with heavy weights for strength?
-Training with heavy weights is significant for strength because strength is a specific skill, and lifting heavy weights helps to get better at lifting heavy stuff.
Why can't heavy low rep work be done exclusively for both strength and size?
-Heavy low rep work can't be done exclusively because it leads to longer training sessions, higher mental and physical fatigue, and doesn't adequately stimulate all muscle groups for size.
How should one balance strength and size training in a workout routine?
-One should use a structured combination of different rep ranges, with a focus on heavy lifting for strength and lighter to moderate lifting for size.
What is the recommended rep range for most working sets if the goal is to get bigger but still strong?
-For a goal of getting bigger but still strong, most working sets should be in the 6 to 12 rep range, with a third dedicated to heavy lifting for strength development.
How often should one practice the big lifts to refine their technique?
-The big lifts should be practiced about twice per week to refine technique and maximize strength gains.
What is the importance of accessory work in a power building program?
-Accessory work is important to hit key muscles that the squat, bench, and deadlift underemphasize, ensuring full muscle development.
What is periodization and why is it important for intermediate to advanced trainees?
-Periodization is the organization of training over time to maximize gains and minimize overtraining. It's important for intermediate to advanced trainees to break through plateaus and continue driving progress.
How often should deloads be incorporated into a training program?
-Deloads, which involve reducing weight and volume, should be incorporated at least once every couple of months to relieve soft tissue and joint stress and promote recovery.
Outlines
๐๏ธโโ๏ธ Training for Strength and Hypertrophy
The paragraph discusses the common belief that to get strong, one should lift heavy weights for low repetitions, while for size, one should lift lighter weights for higher repetitions. However, scientific studies, including one by Schoenfeld, show that both heavy and moderate weights can effectively build muscle mass when training volume is matched. The paragraph emphasizes that while there is no clear relationship between rep count and hypertrophy, there is a threshold below which gains decrease, suggesting that extremely light weights might not be as effective. The importance of combining different rep ranges for both strength and size is highlighted, as well as the need to balance heavy lifting with adequate recovery.
๐ช Balancing Strength and Size Training
This section delves into the specifics of how to train for both strength and size, suggesting a structured approach that includes heavy lifting for strength and lighter weights for hypertrophy. It mentions the need to practice the technical aspects of lifting to maximize strength gains and the importance of not overloading on heavy lifts to prevent poor technique and recovery issues. The paragraph also discusses the role of accessory exercises to target muscles that may be underdeveloped by focusing solely on the big three lifts (squat, bench press, and deadlift). It advises on the frequency of training for these lifts and how to incorporate technique work and accessory exercises to ensure comprehensive muscle development.
๐ Periodization and Recovery for Optimal Gains
The final paragraph touches on periodization, explaining it as the organization of training over time to maximize gains and minimize overtraining. It suggests different phases of training, such as power building, hypertrophy, and strength blocks, as part of a yearly plan. The paragraph also introduces the concept of top sets, which are heavy sets added to workouts to improve strength without compromising size goals. Lastly, it emphasizes the importance of recovery, suggesting occasional deloads and focusing on technique during lighter weeks to promote better lifting form and muscle mind connection.
Mindmap
Keywords
๐กHypertrophy
๐กStrength
๐กRep Ranges
๐กVolume
๐กPeriodization
๐กDeloads
๐กAccessory Movements
๐กMechanical Tension
๐กMetabolic Stress
๐กPower Building
Highlights
It's possible to train for both strength and size simultaneously, contrary to common belief.
Heavy weight training for low reps is commonly recommended for strength, while moderate weight for higher reps is suggested for size.
A study by Schoenfeld et al. showed that both heavy and moderate weights can effectively build muscle mass when total volume is matched.
Research does not support the idea that there is an optimal rep range for hypertrophy; all rep ranges can lead to muscle growth with sufficient training.
Light weights below 20% of one's one-rep max may lead to less muscle growth.
For strength training, the rep range does matter, with heavy lifting leading to better strength gains.
A structured combination of different rep ranges is necessary to balance strength and size goals.
Heavy lifting should be complemented with moderate to high rep ranges to avoid burnout and promote recovery.
Technique practice on the big lifts is crucial for maximizing strength gains.
Accessory lifts are necessary to target muscles that are underemphasized by the squat, bench press, and deadlift.
Beginners can focus on progressive overload for the first year or two of training.
Intermediate to advanced trainees can benefit from long-term block periodization or top sets.
Recovery management is key, with a recommendation to avoid failure on heavy lifts and to deload periodically.
A new 10-week power building program is introduced, designed for intermediate to advanced lifters aiming to gain size and strength.
The program includes a technique handbook and a customizable spreadsheet for tracking progress.
For beginners, a fundamentals program with full body and upper lower splits is recommended.
Transcripts
how can we get really jacked and also
really strong
at the same time a lot of people seem to
think you can't or at least
you shouldn't because how you should
train to get strong is very different
from how you should train to get big
they say but i don't really agree with
this
it's extremely common to hear that if
you want to get strong you need to lift
heavy weight for low reps
and if you want to get big you need to
lift light to moderate weight
for relatively higher reps and there is
sort of some truth to this
i mean if you just look in any old
personal training handbook you'll
probably find a table that looks
something
like this one outlining clear and
distinct rep zones for strength
hypertrophy and endurance for strength
you lift heavy
for size you lift moderate and for
endurance you lift light
and this has led to a flurry of
instagram infographics like this one
perpetuating the oversimplified idea
that training heavy will get you strong
but not that big and training light to
moderate will get you big
but not that strong but this isn't quite
what the science says
one important study from schoenfeld and
colleagues split 20 trained men into two
groups
one group trained with moderate loads
doing 10 reps for each exercise
and the other group trained with heavy
loads doing three reps for each exercise
total volume was matched 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 wasn't just one isolated
finding either i printed out every study
i could find looking at the effect of
high reps versus low reps on muscle
hypertrophy now obviously we won't have
time to go through each of these in
detail
but luckily research reviewer greg
knuckles has already done that work for
us
so each dot here represents a different
data set now if the instagram
infographics were right
we'd expect to see a curve something
like this where you see
the best growth with moderate weights
and you see worse growth with heavy
weights
and light weights but this isn't what we
actually see what we instead see
is this no obvious relationship between
rep count and hypertrophy
at all obviously there are differences
from study to study just like there'd be
differences from person to person
but overall heavy weights moderate
weights and light weights
all clearly can cause muscle growth as
long as you're training sufficiently
hard now as a quick aside there does
seem to be a bottom end
to how light you can go one 2018 paper
found that once you dip down to 20
percent of your one rep max
you do tend to see less growth but that
would be really
really lightweight at least 50 to 100
reps for most people
so it isn't really a practical concern
anyway the bottom line is that unless
you're going really
ridiculously light heavy weights and
light weights are both effective at
building muscle but what about strength
do you need to lift heavy to get strong
or is it the same as with size as long
as you're training hard enough you'll
see gains in any rep range
well it turns out that for strength the
rep range really does matter
in that schaunfeld study the heavy group
doing three reps per set
saw significantly better strength gains
on the bench press than the moderate
load group
and this is because strength is a
specific skill this means if you want to
get better at lifting heavy stuff
you've got to lift heavy stuff and so
far this is all good news for the power
builder because it means we can do some
heavy
so-called pure strength work and it'll
still count toward our size goals
and so this brings me back to the
question i posed at the beginning how
can we train for strength and size
at the same time well we definitely need
to do some low rep
heavy lifting to get strong but even
though it might be tempting
we can't just do heavy low rep work
exclusively
because even though the results of the
schoenfeld study seem to indicate that
low reps are the 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 took more than
four times as long to complete and the
subjects reported higher mental and
physical fatigue as well
so clearly if we want to balance both of
these goals we definitely need to use a
structured combination of different rep
ranges
this is especially important because
using a mixture of different rep ranges
can likely trigger for growth through
different mechanisms as well
it seems lower rep sets signal for
muscle growth primarily through
mechanical tension
whereas higher rep sets likely signal
for growth primarily through
metabolic stress and rep counts in the
middle would use more of a combination
of the two
so to maximize growth overall it makes
sense to me to use some combination of
all three
now if you're slightly more concerned
with getting bigger but still want to
get stronger you might want to set up
your training
something like this most of your working
sets coming in the 6 to 12 zone
but you still have a solid third
dedicated to heavy lifting for strength
development
on the other hand if you care a bit more
about getting stronger you should
allocate more of your sets to the lower
rep ranges
with the majority of your volume now
coming in that heavier one to five rep
zone but regardless of how you split it
up
that heavy slice should be directed
toward the lifts you want to get
stronger on the most
probably the squat bench press and
deadlift for most of us so let's go
ahead and narrow in on those lifts a bit
more now
i already said that strength is a skill
this means it isn't quite enough to just
lift heavy
you also need to practice and refine the
technical aspect of lifting
to get as strong as you can be and even
though it technically counts as lifting
heavy
just amping yourself up for one poorly
executed balls to the wall set once
every couple weeks
unfortunately probably isn't going to do
a whole lot for your max
instead i'd recommend intentionally
practicing the big lifts around twice a
week
and maybe more personally i hit the
squat two to three days a week
bench two to three days a week and
deadlift one to two days a week
depending on the squat frequency and
because deadlifts tend to take more of a
recovery tool
than the other two and in my new power
building program which alternates
between full body weeks and upper lower
weeks
the full body week might look something
like this where you hit the squat bench
press and deadlift
all twice a week earlier in 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're leaving just one or two
reps in the tank and then later in the
week you focus more on technique work
where you're training a bit further from
failure
but really honing in on your form now
it's important to remember that if you
were just going to go in and max out on
the power lifts every session
not only would you likely run into
recovery issues you'd also start
ingraining poor technique habits
which could end up hurting your strength
return over the long run and i think
getting better with technique is an
extremely important and
under-appreciated form of progression
and so if there's a part of the lift
that you struggle with
you can use this technique work later in
the week to address those issues
for example if you find your deadlift is
slow off the floor you can pull from a
deficit to help address and strengthen
that technical sticking point or if you
find your back rounding increases as you
lose tightness throughout the positive
you can do paused deadlifts with lighter
weights to help strengthen that weak
link for you
paused squats can also be helpful for
improving posture and explosive power
out of the hole and then to make sure
your bases are covered for bodybuilding
you sort of just sprinkle in so-called
accessory movements
to fit your goals for hypertrophy in a
way that doesn't interfere with your
recovery from the other lifts
for example putting a heavy pendlay row
the day before heavy deadlifts
might fatigue your lower back and impede
your performance the next day
so do a chest supported row instead and
most of these accessory sets should come
in the 6 to 12 rep range
with a few in the higher more metabolic
12 plus zone and this is going to allow
you to accumulate more volume quite
easily
and scratch that beast mode high effort
mentality without the same
recovery cost that approach would have
on the heavy power lifts and including
sufficient accessory work is extremely
important for the power builder
because even though science tells us
that we can get jacked off low rep sets
the squat bench press and dead lift
don't hit every muscle adequately
on their own so only focusing on the big
three will leave
some muscles insufficiently stimulated
squats are amazing for the quads and
quite good for the glutes
bench is amazing for the pecs and front
delts and quite good for the triceps and
deadlifts are amazing for the spinal
erectors glutes
and good for the hamstrings but that
still leaves five key bodybuilding
muscles that will go
underdeveloped if you focus on these
power lifts exclusively
the lats biceps rear inside delts calves
and
abs so in sprinkling in the accessory
work you really need to emphasize
these muscles now generally speaking
aiming to hit at least eight to ten
sets for each of those muscles every
week is a good idea
which is why i like the idea of having a
roaming hypertrophy day where you can
kind of just
go in and smash any body parts that
didn't quite get enough volume
during the main workouts for the week
this is when i'll hit most of my bicep
side delt and ab work personally so that
covers how i'd set up a sample week of
training now i want to take a step back
and take a quick look at periodization
and deloads
now periodization would need a full
video to do justice just
look at that definition from the nsca
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 really need to
worry too much about periodization
if you're still in your first year or
two of lifting you should be able to
simply focus on progressive overload
by adding a little bit of weight to the
bar each and every 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
bigger picture periodization becomes
important
so the broadest way to periodize for
power building would be over a full
calendar year
also known as the macro macrocycle here
i like to use a version of block
periodization
where we break the full year up into
discrete phases each with a unique
primary focus
for example you could kick off the new
year with a power building phase where
you're focused equally on gaining size
and strength
then if you start a cut for summer you
might want to transition into more of a
pure hypertrophy block
where you decrease the heavy strength
work down to just what's needed to
maintain
and then after summer's over you might
want to bump the calories back up and
run a pure strength block
where you have just enough accessory
work to keep your size on and then you'd
finish off the year with another pure
hypertrophy block
leveraging those new strength gains from
block 3 so now you can apply
more overload to break through any
plateaus that you may have encountered
in block 2.
but if you don't want to map everything
out like that you can totally shortcut
the periodization planning
by simply incorporating top sets into
your workouts
even if the only change you make for
your current programming is simply
adding one heavy top set
once per week before the bodybuilding
volume that you'd normally do
you should see solid strength
improvements without detracting from
your size goals
as long as you continue to monitor your
recovery so for example if you normally
do three sets of ten reps on the bench
press
but you'd also like to get your strength
up just throw one heavy set of one to
three reps beforehand
and in my experience this is a simple
and effective way to build
top end strength while still having
almost all of the rest of your pie
dedicated to moderate to high rep ranges
and then over time you just gradually
add some weight or a rep to that heavy
top set
and again it doesn't have to be and
shouldn't be to failure every session
it just needs to be reasonably heavy and
reasonably challenging
in a lower rep zone and lastly one
concern with combining strength and size
goals simultaneously
is recovery this is why i've emphasized
throughout the video the importance of
generally avoiding failure on the heavy
lifts
and always prioritizing technique
overweight however i still think
most lifters will benefit from
occasional deloads to relieve soft
tissue and joint stress
and promote recovery so at least once
every couple months reduce the weight on
the bar
and the volume by roughly 25 to 50
percent of what you'd normally do
now this isn't a time to just be lazy
instead as a power builder
you should take this single week to
focus on 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 jacked and
really strong at the same time
let's break it down into five simple
steps first we need to combine rep
ranges doing some heavy lifting because
strength is specific
and some light to moderate lifting to
avoid burnout we need to refine our
technique on the big lifts by practicing
them about twice per week
and then use accessory lifts to hit five
of the key muscles that the squat bench
and deadlift underemphasize
beginners should use a simple linear
progression to overload for at least the
first year of training
while intermediate to advanced trainees
should consider long-term block
periodization
and or top sets to continue driving
progress then we need to continually
manage recovery by generally avoiding
failure on the big lifts
and deloading at least once every couple
months and finally if you guys would
like to have
all of that information put into an
actionable routine many of you guys know
i just launched my new
10 week power building program designed
for intermediate to advanced level
lifters with the goal of gaining size
and strength at the same time
and that'll be on sale for the first
week of launch this is the program that
i've been running myself for the last
few months and i've test run it with a
few friends
clients and some coaches and i really do
think it's my best work to date as far
as programming goes
i also wrote it so that all you need is
some pretty basic equipment and i ran it
through the first time myself 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
it comes with a separate technique
handbook for addressing sticking points
on the big lifts
and a fully customizable spreadsheet for
tracking progress
so you can just plug in your current
lifts and it'll autofill the weights
that you need to do now if you're still
in your first year or two of training
i'd recommend running my fundamentals
program instead
which also includes a full body split
and an upper lower split but the
programming is more geared toward
beginners
so i'll put a button to the new program
over here next to my head if you guys
would like to check it out
i'll also leave a link to everything
that i discussed in this video in the
description box down below
don't forget to leave me a thumbs up if
you enjoyed the video subscribe if you
haven't already and i'll see you guys
all here
in the next one
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