Top Tips for Powerbuilding Beginners
TOPIC: Strength & Conditioning
Powerbuilding is a huge asset to the performance training industry — being able to look dangerous and actually be dangerous is a deadly combination. Let’s discuss the top tips for any powerbuilding program to help you create workouts possible for building serious size and strength.
Written By
Joseph lucero
Joseph Lucero CSCS, owner of Harvesting Strength, is a powerlifter and strongman coach with years of practical S&C experience in high school, collegiate, and professional settings. His athletes have brought home powerlifting medals, strongman championships, and major bragging rights.
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The Origins of Powerbuilding
In the world of strength, athletes associate building strength with powerlifting and building lean size with bodybuilding. But what if you want both? Many athletes have come around to the idea of powerbuilding, which allows you to train like a powerlifter and bodybuilder simultaneously.
Why not look the part and act it, too?
But what is the technical definition of powerbuilding? Powerbuilding is a blend of the three main powerlifting lifts: squat, bench press, and deadlift, combined with bodybuilding accessories and volume to evoke more muscle growth and development.
There wasn’t an exact moment when athletes began powerbuilding, but there are two iconic athletes who performed powerbuilding-styled workouts to give their performance an edge — Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronnie Coleman.
Arnold is known as one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time. He won the Mr. Olympia title seven times in his career, a huge accomplishment. Did you know, though, that Arnold did a lot of powerlifting before bodybuilding? Ronnie Coleman, eight-time Mr. Olympia champion, was a previous powerlifter as well.
Besides the fact they are some of the top bodybuilders of all time, Ronnie and Arnold loved to lift heavy. Lifting heavy generally comes from the principles of powerlifting. But as bodybuilders, they also had to focus on hypertrophy accessories for maximizing their musculature. So by merging both powerlifting and bodybuilding, “powerbuilding” training came onto the scene.
The Basic Principles of Powerbuilding
Powerbuilding is a unique training strategy that harmoniously merges powerlifting and bodybuilding tactics to build both size and strength. Striving for a balance of functional strength and aesthetic appeal, powerbuilders incorporate heavy compound movements like the squat, bench press, and deadlift to target multiple muscle groups simultaneously. Compound movements trigger growth in muscular strength and density.
Powerbuilders use traditional movements and variations of these lifts, such as pause squats or deficit deadlifts, to address specific weaknesses. They then use accessory exercises to help target specific muscle groups for hypertrophy. The beauty of powerbuilding is that if you get stronger, you get bigger. And if you get bigger, you have the potential to become stronger. These two concepts can coexist and help build upon each other in a program.
How do you implement a powerbuilding program correctly? The goal of this article is to help discuss the top tips of a powerbuilding program while also including a sample program to teach you how to take action and perform your next successful powerbuilding workout.
Overall, powerbuilding is a versatile and effective training methodology, catering to those seeking both functional strength and aesthetic progress. By combining the principles of powerlifting and bodybuilding, powerbuilders can attain a robust, muscular body while consistently pushing their raw numbers boundaries.
Our Top Tips for Powerbuilding Programming
How do you create a solid powerbuilding program? Before we get to that, we need to discuss some of the top tips for your next powerbuilding workout:
- Powerlifting Compound Movements are Primary
- Bodybuilding Movements are Secondary (but necessary)
- Manipulate Rest Rates
- Time Under Tension or Volume – Spare Your Joints
- Incorporate Deload Weeks
Powerlifting Compound Movements are Primary
Every powerbuilding program must start with a compound movement like squat, bench, or deadlift. This is what makes it a powerbuilding program. Depending on the athlete, the lift could be either a traditional powerlifting movement or a variation lift instead. Using a variation could help prioritize a weak point of a lifter’s strength.
For example, a pause squat could be the variation of choice used to either grow the bottom of their squat or to grow the size of their hips. Either way, the squat is the overall compound movement of choice and needs to be prioritized in a powerbuilding routine.
For context, I recommend that the compound movements be prescribed as so:
Powerbuilding Concept |
Conditions |
Rest Intervals |
Exercise #1 Powerlifting Compound Movement |
2-3 sets of 3-6 reps |
2-3 minutes |
Exercise #2 Powerlifting Variation Compound Movement |
2-3 sets of 3-6 reps |
2-3 minutes |
Bodybuilding Movements are Secondary (but necessary)
After you’ve completed 1-2 powerlifting compound movements, move into the hypertrophy-focused accessories to help with growth. This is where you “train like a bodybuilder” which requires you to do movements with massive intention. Meaning, doing movements to help build size and density of isolated musculature.
Training like a bodybuilder means you often want to train to exhaustion or failure, which is a massive trigger for elevating the size of your muscles. Exhaustion can come from either training with volume or with time under tension. The key between either is intentionality, though — you have to do the movement with purpose.
Don’t go into a workout telling yourself to do 20 reps of machine chest flies just to do them. What is your goal? If your goal is to build muscle, focus on exhausting your efforts and feeling every rep in your chest. The mind-muscle connection is real, folks. If you aren’t aware of it, the mind-muscle connection speaks about how your mind operates during movement. If you are narrow-focused on the movement and “feel” the muscle working within every rep, then you have a strong connection between your mind and body. This recruits more effort and more exhaustion into the working muscle for a better hypertrophy end result.
Manipulate Your Rest Rates
One of the biggest secrets to a successful routine is manipulating your rest intervals. Powerlifters often take several minutes in between sets to recharge and recuperate before the next heavy set. But when it comes to building size, it’s recommended that athletes take less rest to elicit enough exhaustion for an anabolic reaction.
So how does this work in a powerbuilding routine? For powerbuilders, I recommend 2-3 minute breaks in between heavy compound movements, and 30-60 seconds rest breaks for hypertrophy-focused accessories.
These lower rest rates tire you out much quicker, and can limit the intensity of the workout to keep you from overloading. Although this sounds like a limiter for building strength, it actually isn’t. If I were to push you to exhaustion, you’d build up your work capacity to be able to tolerate a harder workout. Building your work capacity through these rigorous workouts means you’ll be able to lift heavier weights more efficiently as you can recover faster. The more efficient you are, the more safe you are.
Time Under Tension OR Volume – Spare Your Joints
When you do the bodybuilding focus of your workout, it’s important to consider volume training or time under tension. In both scenarios, the weight is not as heavy, which can help spare your joints. Choosing the correct style of hypertrophy training depends on the athlete and their condition.
With time under tension, you move the weights with a specific tempo to help exhaust the working muscle. This could be ideal for someone who struggles with joint pain or perhaps doesn’t do well with high volume training. I have had many clients who use time under tension to help build more muscle without having to overdue the volume in a workout. You don’t necessarily need to do a ton of volume if you’re working with tempo.
But there are many studies that support volume-based training as a more effective way of triggering hypertrophic results. Volume training can be done traditionally, or using unique concepts such as giant sets, supersets or drop sets.
Either way, the option to use time under tension or volume training exists and should be tactfully decided based on your strengths and limitations as an athlete.
Incorporate Deload Weeks
Powerbuilding is very, very intense. It’s the merge of two extremely tough sports. With the idea that you’re hitting heavy compound movements and hypertrophy accessories afterwards, this means the workout from start to finish is exhausting.
It’s important that you focus on peaking strength every 12-16 weeks and deload every 3-4 weeks. This means you are playing with different percentages of strength, measuring your progress and seeing if you are making gains in your performance.
For creating a deload workout, you could be using the same workout but dropping the weight to 70%-80% of your previous workout. If you did 2 sets of 6 reps on bench press with 300 pounds, the deload week could have you do 2 sets of 6 reps with 210-240 pounds. The key is to stay consistent with how often you deload, and by how much.
Sample Powerbuilding Programs
Powerbuilding Concept |
Conditions |
Rest Intervals |
Powerlifting Compound Movement |
2-3 sets of 3-6 reps |
2-3 minutes |
Powerlifting Variation Compound Movement |
2-3 sets of 3-6 reps |
2-3 minutes |
Bodybuilding Compound or Isolation Movement |
2-5 sets of 10-20 reps |
60 seconds |
Bodybuilding Isolation Movement |
3-5 sets of 10-20 reps |
60 seconds |
Bodybuilding Isolation Movement |
3-5 sets of 10-20 reps |
30-60 seconds |
Squat Day
Exercise |
Sets and Reps |
Rest |
Squats |
2×5 reps |
2-3 minutes |
Dead Squats 1” above parallel |
2×3 reps at RPE9 |
2-3 minutes |
DB RDLs |
2×10 reps |
60 seconds |
Single Leg Hamstring Curl |
2×20 reps each leg |
60 seconds |
Leg Press Machine |
3×20 reps |
30 seconds |
Push Day
Exercise |
Sets and Reps |
Rest |
Bench Press |
2×3 reps |
2-3 minutes |
Band Resisted Speed Bench Press |
3×3 reps at 70% of 2×3 |
2-3 minutes |
30 Incline DB Bench Press |
3×10,8,6 reps |
60 seconds |
Rear Deltoid Flies |
3×15 reps |
60 seconds |
Push Ups |
5×20 reps |
30 seconds |
The powerbuilding approach seamlessly combines the realms of strength and physique training — a potent combination for serious gains in muscle size and raw, primal strength. Don’t hesitate to try these workouts when you find yourself unsure about your gym routine. By the end of it, you’ll experience both a satisfying depletion of energy and an invigorating muscle pump that demonstrates the effectiveness of this versatile training style.
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