What is Powerbuilding? Strategy, Benefits, & Tips

When it comes to your personal fitness plan, deciding the best focus for your goals and health is important. Depending on whether you are going for weight loss, strength, or aesthetic muscle building, there are strategies to help you reach each goal.

For those who want to land somewhere in the middle, those not necessarily only seeking to fall into only one of these categories, or those who want to be well-rounded in their gains, power building can be a good place to focus.

What is Powerbuilding?

Powerbuilding is where the person trains to develop larger muscles combined with more traditional strength training.

The focus is on looking good and lifting ability, not one or the other. If someone wished, they could even enter power building competitions, but it’s definitely not necessary to training as a powerbuilder.

In fact, many who train in power building do so with no intention of ever entering any type of competition.

The goal is power building through a hybrid of the other types of workout training. For this reason, it appeals to many different types of athletes.

Although the practice isn’t anything new, it is gaining popularity recently and even appeals to those beginning to explore the world of weightlifting and muscle building.

How is Powerbuilding Different?

As stated before, the purpose of power building is to be able to lift heavy weights and have the desired appearance of your muscles. In almost every other type of competition-based or other common muscle building practices, the focus is either on aesthetics or strength instead of a combination of both.

For example, in bodybuilding, the focus is to build definition in the right muscles. The look is all someone is going for when bodybuilding and so the workouts and diet revolves around what will help with hypertrophy.

When it comes to powerlifting, the focus is not on the look of the muscles but the strength of the person. They’re not judged on how toned they are but instead on how much weight their bodies can deadlift. While both of these approaches to fitness are valid and applauded in their respective ways, they are not the only right ways to achieve your goals.

The other thing that sets power building apart is that the practice is not competition-focused, although power building competitions exist for those interested in entering.

Power building can be started by beginners just looking for a way to get their desired results or even used by those looking for a better balance. It has also become popular for those seeking a less strict approach to working out and dieting.

Recommended Powerbuilding Workouts

The purpose of power building is to keep workouts short and sweet. Unlike other muscle building workouts, you don’t want to spend hours at the gym every single day, nearly seven days a week.

Your workouts shouldn’t exceed an hour and you shouldn’t find yourself working out more than four to five days every week.

Spending too much time in the gym will cause harm to your muscles, not growth stimulation. So resist the urge to push yourself as far as possible and enjoy the free time you’ve now gained.

Reps

Along the same lines as not wanting to overwork your muscles, you also don’t want to force yourself to do an excessive amount of reps. A low number of cycles should be your goal. If you’ve done eight sets of ten bench presses, you should stop there.

Even though you may feel as though you could go for longer, tell yourself you will go for nine tomorrow instead, which leads to the next goal of the workout routine.

Progression

Progression is the name of the power building game: adding onto whatever you’ve accomplished in order to move forward. Start off with seven sets of ten and then increasing to eight.

Begin with bench pressing 160 pounds on Monday and then add little by little to reach 180 pounds the next week or even two weeks. Muscles don’t grow overnight, and in order to ensure the aesthetic and power growth you seek, you don’t want to force yourself to go too far, too fast.

Instead of focusing on isolating one muscle for the day, you will want to work on compounding. No more leg days, instead it will be squats, legs, and core days or whatever combination you decide works best for your body.

Maybe most important of all, allow yourself a proper amount of cool down between reps. You will want to wait for at least two minutes before beginning your next set. Resting will provide you with proper recovery time and prevent injuries.

Recommended Foods

Powerbuilding doesn’t come with a strict list of do’s and don’ts. That doesn’t mean you can eat sugar and carbs for every meal and still expect to see stellar results.

Instead, this means that in order to achieve goals you don’t need to consume five dozen raw eggs and obscene amounts of meat for every meal.

Eat healthily and if you are looking for added boosts there are things you can add to your diet. Eggs-not raw or in excess-are a great source of protein. Balanced meals and eating every three hours will add to the efficiency of your diet.

For added boosts, you can even use protein powder in smoothies or pre-workout supplements.

The freedom of your diet comes down to the rules and allowances you make for yourself. If you want to make your diet limited, then you can do so.

Benefits of Powerbuilding

When it comes right down to it, the purpose of exploring a muscle-building strategy is finding one that works well with your personal fitness goals and limits. Powerbuilding’s biggest strength lies in its versatility. This versatility comes from the limited guidelines.

You can eat healthily and don’t have to do a bunch of reps. Furthermore, we advise building toward longer and heavier sets. You don’t have to have done any kind of weight training before starting, there will be benefits for a beginner or an expert.

It can be used as a stepping stone before focusing on bodybuilding or powerlifting or it can just be used as a way to keep your strength and aesthetics well-balanced. Whatever the reason you want to try power building, it might just become your new favorite workout program.

Have you tried powerbuilding yourself? What are your thoughts on this weightlifting strategy? Let us know in the comments below!