Powerlifting or Bodybuilding?
In recent days I’ve been asked this question quite a few times. Especially from fathers looking to start their sons in sports. As a whole, including myself, people are at least including some sort of powerlifting into their workouts in this day and age. But for the focus of today’s article, we’re going to stick with the idea that we’re training for very strength based sports specific training. Things like wrestling, football, and other contact sports.
Which is better for sports specific training?
Well, bodybuilding and powerlifting are different sports themselves. So I’ll give you a brief overview on why that is.
Bodybuilding is a sport that emphasizes muscle size, shape, and definition. If you get into bodybuilding, you’re going for a very aesthetics based way of training. And if you go into an actual strict bodybuilding program, there’s going to be not a lot of emphasis on physical performance at all. When you’re on stage at a bodybuilding show, the only thing that really matters is how you look.
Powerlifting, on the other side of the spectrum, is all about combined strength on three specific barbell movements. They compete in a max squat, deadlift, and bench press.
One thing you’ll find is that both of these differ in their goals. In bodybuilding, you’re training for 1-4 sets of 8-12 reps to achieve hypertrophy. In powerlifting, you’re going to be doing around five sets of five reps for just about every big movement with the specific goal of building strength. And in all honesty? Both have their benefits. That’s why “powerbuilding” has recently come into the public spotlight.
What Is Powerbuilding?
Powerbuilding is a sort of combination of the two strength sports. Each have their own respective training styles and diets that lend themselves to specific outlooks. And, at the end of the day, the pure pursuit for either one is going to eventually outdo powerbuilding.
But for a beginner, powerbuilding is a great launchpad to get your beginner gains in both strength and aesthetics, and then you can easily adapt your program to be more centered around one or the other. It’s a tradeoff of sorts, but when you’re first starting your body will react really well to the combined workout types. The big key for powerbuilding is so center at least three days around the three big barbell lifts. This includes, as mentioned above, bench pressing, squatting, and deadlifting. But with powerbuilding you’re also going to use assistance work, and fill those days in between with your standard bodybuilding type shoulder/bicep/tricep etc days.
Eventually, yes, you’ll have to choose one or the other. But for just starting sports specific training, it’s a great way to get your feet wet and see which way you want to go in the future. And which style of weight training most benefits your body type.
