Why golden era bodybuilders train both powerlifting and bodybuilding…

he fitness industry always said that bodybuilding is separated from powerlifting.

They always said, you either train for power or for muscle.

If you train for power, then you should do 5 sets of 5, and if you train for bodybuilding you should do 4 sets of 8 – 12 reps.

But, unexpectedly golden era bodybuilders disagree.

“I think the heavy squats, heavy deadlift, heavy cleans and presses built the foundation around… and I still do it to this day, that’s why I think my physique still looks the same”

— Robby Robison at 78 years old.

Robby Robinson, and golden era bodybuilders don’t train with ‘8-12 reps’ but they combined powerlifting and bodybuilding.

And personally I think it’s the best way to:

• Build muscle
• Prevent injuries
• Building strength

The are 2 main reasons for this.

The first one is powerlifting will make you stronger than if you just train bodybuilding.

And what that mean is…

the strength that you get from powerlifting will transfer to bodybuilding.

J.C Hise is one of the biggest guy in the silver era. He has this thing called ‘indirect effect’. He is the guy that promotes the 20 reps squat, and he labeled 20 reps squat as ‘magic’. Btw, 20 reps squat is when you take your 10 reps max, and do it for 20 reps with 1 – 5 deep breathing between each rep.

He said that one all out set of 20 rep squats will break any plateau (not only for squat, but for every other exercises)

Another guy, that convince me about this ‘indirect effect’ is Marvin Eder. He’s a silver era bodybuilder that can bench 500 lbs, and deadlift 700 lbs.

But that’s not the whole twist. Because he can do 80 wide grip pull ups in a row, and doing 1000 dips in 17 minutes. And his training was like this:

• Day 1: upper body (strength/low rep/low volume)
• Day 2: lower body (strength/low rep/low volume)
• Day 3: upper body (hypertrophy/high rep/high volume)
• Day 4: lower body (hypertrophy/high rep/high volume)

And yet, Marvin Eder just show the ‘strength transfer’ from powerlifting to bodybuilding.

But powerlifting alone is not enough.

There are thousands of cases where powerlifters got injured.

And I think that is not because they lift too heavy weights, but they don’t combine with bodybuilding.

Here’s the thing…

Every powerlifting coaches agree on one thing. If they can cut range of motion, they will cut it.

And what happen is, your muscles and joint become stiff.

And what happens to that stiff joints when it’s under heavy load? Boom, they got wrecked.

And this is where bodybuilding comes around to perfect powerlifting.

Bodybuilding is about range of motion.

Bodybuilding is where you got the huge stretch, and the peak contraction, which if you do it with good form it will build you healthy joints.

And also don’t forget.

Bodybuilding rep ranges (8+ reps) is better fol building muscle.

So now when you combine them both:

• You got ‘strength transfer’ from powerlifting to bodybuilding
• And we know that more strength = more muscle in 8+ rep ranges
• We get healthy joints, muscle, and tendons.

And to combine them, wait for my next mail.

Kevin | BuildlikeArnold