Bodybuilding Periodization and Powerlifting

Nancy and I just posted a podcast that we recorded as we were starting Week 2 of our Bodybuilding Periodization program.  Here's the interesting thing.  Periodization does not seem much practiced in bodybuilding, but powerlifting, particularly as practiced at the Westside Gym seems to have embraced it hook, line, and sinker.  Eric Cressey even recommends periodizing the diet (which oddly makes sense when I think about how I suddenly lost weight after my eating extravaganza in Prague this past Spring).

It's interesting to me how performance driven sports like powerlifting have been quicker to adopt regimens like periodization.  I suspect this is because the end goal is much more easily observed.  Each month, you can either lift more or you can't.  Bodybuilding is a different animal.  You train for months for a contest, and then a judge tells you whether you physique meets the criteria or not.

There are things to recommend bodybuilding:  the focus on both strength and body fat in the best circumstances can translate into a healthy focus on leanness and conditioning, something powerlifting frequently lacks.  But, powerlifters definitely have their heads screwed on straight when it comes to doing things that are measurable.  It's easier to apply science.  After all, the basis of science is measurement.

Comments

[Scott]

That's a very good summary of one of my reasons for leaning more toward powerlifting - I like things that can be measured.

[Bud Gibson]

Ultimately, what decides me in all of this is a health focus. I think the issue with all lifting sports is that they primarily focus on something other than health (e.g., appearance in bodybuilding; power in powerlifting). That of course is only natural, but it can lead to some aberrations [sic], for instance fat powerlifters and bodybuilders collapsing on stage from dehydration. In both sports, people advocate sometimes dangerous often unproven performance enhancing drugs.

[Ralfe Sean]

Bud, there are very serious injuries in powerlifting. I have seen the ambulances take competitors away from the meets. But, the culture that periodization emerges from is very much different from the history of bodybuilding. It is different to reconcile the traditions of the two groups. But the human body does not know about all of that, and has its own plan. The metabolic path to a muscle pump ( measurable with a mirror ) is, indeed, different from the training pathway to a record setting one RM before an audience.

[Bud Gibson]

Ralfe, I certainly do not mean to lionize powerlifting. In fact, I was going to write an article called the trouble with lifting sports in which I discussed some of the issues you just brought up. Rather, I was just pointing up a difference in measurement technique. I'll post more on this tonight.