Powerbuilding, Simplified: How to Gain Strength and Size [220+ Studies]

When training for both strength and hypertrophy, a lot of lifters spin their wheels for both goals. We walk you through the research on both training goals and how to balance the two in the gym.

Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:48 Training Volume
4:12 Repetitions in Reserve (RIR)
6:22 Load (% of 1RM)
8:01 Frequency
9:15 Primary Variables for Hypertrophy & Strength
9:48 Shotgun vs. Sniper Approach
10:59 Practical Programming
13:03 Individualization
14:30 Periodization
15:42 Summary

Transcript

How do you maximize both strength and hypertrophy at the same time? Honestly, a lot of lifters go about this wrong and end up spinning their wheels for both training goals. So, today we’re going to talk about this common training approach - which is often called powerbuilding. I’m going to break it down for you so you can feel confident in your approach and focus on training hard.

What’s going on, my name is Josh Pelland. I’m a strength coach and researcher working on my PhD on the topic of training volume.

I’m also an owner here at Data Driven Strength, alongside Zac Robinson. Zac and I are excited to be bringing some new content to our YouTube channel, all aimed at helping you maximize strength and hypertrophy by integrating research into practice. So, be sure to subscribe and turn on the notification bell as we have a lot of exciting stuff coming your way.

To understand how to design a powerbuilding program, we must first understand the training variables that drive each strength and hypertrophy. For this, we can look to the research.

Let’s start with probably the most popular training variable, volume. Volume is simply the number of sets performed per muscle group or per movement per week. For hypertrophy, training volume seems to be quite important.

As we can see from a 2017 meta-analysis of 15 studies from Schoenfeld and colleagues, groups performing 9 or more sets per week saw an average of 8.2% growth compared to 5.8% in groups performing less than 9 sets. Now, this difference didn't quite reach statistical significance, but there’s a clear relationship here.

In fact, some data even suggests that benefits can increase up to 20+ sets per muscle group or per movement per week.

Another meta-analysis, this time from 2022 by Baz-Valle and colleagues analyzed 6 studies and found nominally greater hypertrophy in the quads, biceps, and the triceps in groups training with 20 or more sets per week compared to 12 to 20 sets per week. The difference only reached statistical significance in the triceps, but again, this general relationship between volume and hypertrophy seems pretty consistent in the research.

A 2017 meta-analysis of 9 studies from Ralston and colleagues included studies that compared single-set protocols to multi-set protocols. In other words, they looked at strength gains between groups that did one set per exercise compared to multiple sets per exercise.

This analysis found significantly greater gains in higher volume groups, which ended up being 6-12 sets per week compared to lower volume groups, which ended up being 5 or less sets per week. So, volume seems to matter for strength as well.

However, if we dig deeper, volume may not matter as much for strength as it does for hypertrophy. When looking at the 2017 Schoenfeld meta-analysis for hypertrophy and the 2017 Ralston meta-analysis for strength, we can use the effect sizes to approximate how much additional gains you get from additional volume - and for our purposes here, you can think of an effect size as a measure of relative gains in strength or hypertrophy. For hypertrophy, doing about 5 or less sets per week resulted in the ballpark of 60% of the gains, whereas for strength, doing a similar amount of volume resulted in approximately 80% of the gains. This isn’t a perfect comparison, and there are always limitations to research, but it ultimately supports what we frequently see in practice: less weekly volume is required to get most of your potential strength gains so long as these sets are rather specific, but more is required to get most of your potential hypertrophy gains.

Now, for these sets performed in the gym, how close to failure do they need to be? This is where RIR, or Repetitions in Reserve, comes in. To make sure we’re on the same page, 1 Repetition in Reserve simply means that one more rep could be completed before failing.

Luckily, our research team recently pre-printed a series of meta-regressions - led by Zac, my counterpart here at DDS - looking at this relationship for both hypertrophy and strength.

For hypertrophy, our model of 26 studies actually showed greater gains as RIR decreased, or as lifters trained closer to failure. Now, there’s a lot of limitations to this analysis, and it’s unclear the exact nature of the relationship. However, I think it’s safe to say for now that training to or close to failure is quite important for hypertrophy.

On the other hand, for strength, in our analysis of 54 studies, we see essentially no relationship. As you can see here, as RIR decreases, or as you get closer to failure, if anything, we see less strength gains.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself “what the heck is this guy talking about, I can just go in and do light, easy sets and still maximize strength?” Well no, that’s obviously not true. That’s why it’s important to emphasize that our analysis only included what’s called load-equated studies. In other words, the percentage of 1RM had to be the same between groups, and the only thing that differed was the number of repetitions performed in each set. So, this means that once you have a given percentage of your max on the bar, how close to failure you train doesn’t really matter for strength.

So, this leads me to the variable of load, or the percentage of your 1-rep-max that’s on the bar. So, if your max deadlift is 200 kg and you are doing a set with 150 kg, that’s 75% of your 1RM.

Load seems to matter a lot for strength and seems to be our most predictive variable of gains. As you can see from a pre-printed analysis of well over 100 studies by Swinton and colleagues, there is a convincing increase in strength gains as a result of training with a higher percentage of your 1 rep max.

This makes sense when we think about the principle of specificity - ultimately, powerlifting tests your ability to lift heavy loads, so you have to lift heavy loads.

On the other hand, for hypertrophy, a 2021 analysis of 20 studies by Refalo and colleagues found that lower loads (less than 60% of your max) and high loads (more than 60% of your max) resulted in similar hypertrophy. Combining this meta-analysis with some other research, as long as you’re lifting with anywhere in the range of about 30% to 85% of your 1RM, it seems that load doesn’t really matter for hypertrophy.

In short, our primary variables for hypertrophy seem to be volume and proximity to failure; whereas for strength, our primary variable seems to be load or the percentage of your 1RM.

For the nerds watching, you’re probably thinking the last variable I’m going to talk about is frequency, which is the number of times per week a muscle or movement is trained. I will, but I’m going to keep it brief. From some recent meta-analyses, specifically a 2018 analysis from Grgic and colleagues for strength and a 2019 analysis from Schoenfeld and colleagues for hypertrophy, it seems that frequency does not independently drive either training outcome.

To keep things practical, I’ll just tell you what I like to do in practice when writing programs for a DDS client interested in a powerbuilding approach: usually, each muscle group is typically trained about twice a week, then, in terms of the main lifts people like to focus on for strength, squat is usually trained 2 times per week, bench press is usually trained 2-4 times per week, and deadlift is usually trained 1-2 times per week. There’s a lot of nuance and room for individualization here, so comment below if you want a full video on training frequency.

So, to recap, here’s a table showing you what variables seem to independently matter for each strength and hypertrophy. Volume seems to matter a lot for hypertrophy but only a bit for strength. Proximity to failure seems to matter a lot for hypertrophy but not much at all for strength. Load seems to not really matter for hypertrophy, but seems to matter a lot for strength. And frequency doesn’t seem to be a primary variable for either.

If there’s one thing you should take away from this video, it’s that strength and hypertrophy training are not the same. And this is where many go wrong with a powerbuilding approach. A lot of lifters will take a shotgun approach and try to maximize everything all at once: they’ll do lots of sets on squat, bench, and deadlift with high loads and very close to failure. This approach is suboptimal for both outcomes and can lead to you spinning your wheels. For strength, it’ll be hard to have quality sets with high loads due to high fatigue. And for hypertrophy, you may not be able to tolerate much total training volume. Further, for a lot of lifters, squat, bench, and deadlift are not ideal hypertrophy movements.

So, given this shotgun approach is not great for a lot of lifters, let me introduce you to the sniper approach: polarized training. Polarized training means that every set has a purpose. You’re either trying to get an excellent stimulus for strength or an excellent stimulus for hypertrophy.

To get an excellent stimulus for strength, again, we can use high loads and low-moderate volume. To achieve this, you can use what’s called a “top set”. As the name suggests, top sets are the heaviest set of the day, and they’re specific to the lift you want to get better at. So, if you’re deadlifting, you can do a top set of the deadlift itself or a close variation like a pause deadlift. A good ballpark for top sets is 1 to 4 reps with 85 to 95 percent of your max. Then, after the top set, you can get a bit more specific practice through what are called “backoff sets”. Backoff sets can be anywhere from 2-10 reps in the 70-90% range.

After a couple backoff sets, it’s unlikely that more sets on the main lifts will make a massive difference for strength gains. And if you keep beating your head against the wall with more backoff sets, you’ll just leave yourself with little energy for the rest of the session.

So, once you’ve gotten the highest return on investment you can for your strength-focused sets, now’s the time to get an excellent stimulus for hypertrophy. It’s generally going to be better to do this on other exercises - think leg press, Romanian deadlift, and machine chest press.

These exercises will allow you to expose the prime movers in the main lifts to longer muscle lengths or a more stretched position - which seems to be helpful for hypertrophy - as well as safely push close to failure and tolerate a good amount of volume. These same principles for hypertrophy can be used for muscles not extremely involved in the squat, bench press, and deadlift - think pulldown variations for the lats and curl variations for the biceps.

You may have noticed that I’ve been rather vague in terms of exact numbers for each training variable, and this is on purpose. At Data Driven Strength, some lifters we work with only do a couple sets on bench press per week and others that perform more than 20. In other words, the exact application of these principles is subject to individualization.

This leads me to an important point: some people can do really well with a lot of sets performed on the main lifts of squat, bench press, and deadlift. In our experience, this seems to be related to the “build” of the athlete - for example, someone that squats relatively upright with a lot of forward knee travel, can probably get a lot of quad growth from squats and as a result, do very well with a less polarized approach.

In fact, we can look at a sub analysis we performed only looking at studies using high loads of 80% of 1RM or more. In these studies, the relationship between training closer to failure and hypertrophy is considerably less dramatic. So, if you don’t feel beat up from it and you feel you can get a good hypertrophy stimulus from one of the main lifts, you can perform a lot of sets with say 75% of 1RM or more on the main lift, and you may find that to be an efficient approach for you.

Now that we understand the principles for a good power building approach, let’s zoom out and consider how this may change over the course of months. The fancy word for this is periodization.

The good news is that a lot of lifters probably don’t need to worry about periodizing their training, especially if you haven't been training productively for at least a few years.

However, if you’re limited on time or want to switch things up here and there, you can have a slight emphasis on hypertrophy or strength at any given time.

In a hypertrophy biased phase, you can simply decrease the load and/or sets on the main lifts and increase the sets and/or train even closer to failure on your hypertrophy work. Then, in strength biased phases, you can do the opposite. In strength phases, the name of the game is feeling invigorated for your top sets, so don’t be afraid to pull back a decent amount on your hypertrophy work to make this happen. As long as this isn’t making up more than ~20% of your total training time over the course of say, a whole year, you’re unlikely to compromise hypertrophy.

To quickly recap, your programming will become more productive for both strength and hypertrophy if you take a polarized approach and make sure each set is very efficient for either strength or hypertrophy.

There’s a lot more we can discuss here, such as individual level consideration based on weak point analysis, advanced volume cycling strategies, and more. Let us know what you want to see from us next in the comments below. And if you want more free content like this directly in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter, which is the first link below.