 Our next caller is Graydon from Alberta, Canada. Hey Graydon, how can we help you? Hey guys, first off just want to say absolutely love you guys found your show just a little over two years ago and it's absolutely helped my training a ton. So just wanted to ask I played basketball and football like my whole life growing up and my offseason training was always centered around like bodybuilding type movements. But I've wanted to start a powerlifting program and I'm wondering what are the benefits and detriments of incorporating bodybuilding movements into a powerlifting program. Oh okay great question. You know of all the strength sports I would say bodybuilding and powerlifting have probably the most to learn from each other. There's a lot of value that powerlifters can get from doing certain bodybuilding movements or even focusing on hypertrophy and there's a lot of value that bodybuilders can get from from you know learn that they'll learn from powerlifters. So here's the stuff that I would avoid for powerlifting. I would avoid lots of the isolation movements or over emphasis on lots of isolation movements you know lots of side laterals and you know kickbacks and those kind of exercises. There's a little bit of value for powerlifting in that especially if there's an imbalance but not a ton. Now the value you get from bodybuilding for powerlifting really mainly revolves around the type of volume the changing the angles and a little bit of hypertrophy. If you get a powerlifter and you get them to add a little bit of muscle or size there all of a sudden their stability goes up and they feel like the more in control of the bar. So you could do higher reps cycles of higher reps unilateral training so powerlifters do a lot of bilateral type training but if they went through a cycle where they did you know lunges for example front squats single leg type exercises when they go back to the powerlifting they typically notice better stability in their lifts they feel more stable in their in their heavy lift. So those are the things I'd look at because bodybuilding is really good for just for size and for balancing the body out a little bit more so than powerlifting I would say. So there's one major detriment that Sal didn't address that I think you should definitely know that both bodybuilding and powerlifting do a disservice to athletics is that a lot of the training is like in the sagittal plane like everything is. Well I'm surprised I was going to comment that you had bodybuilding as the the go-to training program for those sports. Yeah so that's the the real bummer about both those I mean sports is so much rotational strength right there's so much in that if you get really really strong in one plane it does really hinder that and and that's a lot of times where like injury happens I know where my injury happened playing basketball I was because I train like this I train mostly in the you know powerlifting bodybuilding type of world or modality and then I still like to go pick up a basketball every once in a while and it just I mean that's where I hurt myself. Great is your question to get better at basketball or is your question to get better at powerlifting? Better at better at powerlifting like I really want to make some like major strength. Yeah but he's also off-seat he's also you do you still play sports? No no this is just oh I said that was growing up I played a lot of sports and that's all I really knew about training was like watching Steve Cook videos and training. Got it got okay I misunderstood so I was under the impression this is just off season because there's a lot of value in bodybuilding and powerlifting style workouts in and off season to any sport as long as you just keep in mind all the stuff that I was talking about but okay so if you're not even worried so but that's the thing you got to be careful of though I just want to let you know that like if you start to move in this powerlifting bodybuilding world and if I don't know if you still get the itch to go play ball every now and then like I do yeah so be careful because you get really strong in one direction you ask the body to rotate left or right or turn in a sharp direction or you know slow down real quick and go the other way and it's just you haven't been training that way but yet your muscles are really strong from bodybuilding and powerlifting and that's a lot of time where the injuries occur well just one thing I've noticed from bodybuilders that convert over to powerlifting especially with the deadlift is just like technique wise like a lot of like trying to really pull and you know having their elbows just slightly bent to really like muscle up of the weight versus training their body to you know really master the technique of it and really apply you know the force and get their body to to go through the proper mechanics of it so you know spend some time not really like stacking the plates right only but really like honing in on the the technique of of these main I would go I would go powerlifting 80% or maybe 90% of the time 10 to 20% bodybuilding and you're going to get carry over you'll get some good carry over you know for example powerlifters nowadays this was never the case before but nowadays you see powerlifters doing bicep curls I mean they used to say they used to make fun of doing curls but then people were tearing their biceps and so now you see more of them doing bicep curls here and there to prevent that from happening so and same thing with tricep you know exercises you see them doing more press downs and cable exercises so you know if it's 80 to 90% powerlifting 10 to 20% bodybuilding you'll get great carry over for your powerlifting well great are you following do you have any maps programs uh no I want to start maps power okay I was one I guess is it are you saying that it's better to like in a powerlifting program to do your powerlifting program and then incorporate a week or two of bodybuilding or bodybuilding movements in your powerlift follow maps powerlift I would just focus on powerlifting yes follow maps powerlift it's got everything you need you'll be you'll be set yeah and you're trust I mean a good example of how good you'll still look don't worry I don't know if you follow our buddy Ben Pollock but Ben Pollock is a bodybuilder powerlifter guy who goes back and forth between two who's also who helped write that program with us but that's black belt stuff we gotta master it first yeah yeah just follow the maps powerlift program we'll set we'll send that over to you Graden oh awesome thank you so much no problem I I totally uh misunderstood yeah I know when you were answering I was listening to you I was thinking the same well when I read I play I oh it's as I played right so past tense but I was assuming that like he said and then he brings up offseason I thought he was going to go but he was just telling us his sister but he did still say that he will go play so and this is this is both my big injuries that I've had have been because the last you know decade plus I've been you know bodybuilder powerlifter guy you're asking your body to do something different you're putting a big engine in a car without great handling for example that's right your horsepower is going to increase and so yeah if you're not you know maintaining the the quality and integrity of your joints it's you're gonna feel it well the irony is injuries always happen from lack of strength it's just the lack of your specific strength right so you can get really strong in one area but you're weak in others and that means that you're gonna your risk and the risk of injuries increases absolutely because you know like you said you're I was if I was out of shape right as far as strength wise and I just laid off a plain basketball for let's say two years but wasn't lifting went back to playing basketball I would less likely be get injured but because I built all that horsepower up built all that muscle then went in there trying to do movements like that that's where you get trouble now that I understand his question better it seems to me like a lot of what we answer to with people that really want to still incorporate their cardio they they don't want to lose you know this endurance but meanwhile they want to build their strength well he wants to get into powerlifting and really like indulging that but doesn't want to lose the bodybuilding thing you know part of it talk about a modality though that really is going to you know play well oh yeah and his question really is is there a detriment it's like well no not unless that's the majority of your training I mean bodybuilding training is not for looks not going to give you more stamina and that'll help with your powerlifting because bodybuilding is more volume typically higher reps you're gonna be better at hypertrophy which is good you'll do more of the unilateral type exercises which I've you know I've noticed in myself backing off the bilateral stuff doing the unilateral stuff go back to the bilateral stuff and then I'm able to surpass my previous past but but but keeping like just taking the time to just focus on that you know is you're going to get the skill of it and then you could get creative and interweave them together but really to just focus on that's going to be massive for him