How To Design A Hypertrophy Program (Muscle Building for Powerlifting)

0:00 hey everybody what's up Chad wi Smith here for Juggernaut Training Systems in Juggernaut Ai and today I'm going to be talking to you about designing a hypertrophy block for powerlifting so if you're interested in getting customized training for yourself this video as all Juggernaut things are brought to you by the Juggernaut AI app and you can get a two-e free trial by visiting Juggernaut A.A a link down in the description so before we get on the Whiteboard and start putting it together of how a hypertrophy block is actually going to look we need to understand why is hypertrophy training important to powerlifters and the first thing that makes it important is that the mus the most muscular powerlifters are typically the ones who win meets they're typically the strongest lifters in the world if you were to line up you know maybe 10

0:46 100 kilo class 220 lb weight class lifters and you had you know from International Elite lifters down to class 4 beginner power lifters the thing that you would probably notice is the class four lifters are you know 6 foot or 62 and the international Elite lifters are you know 5 foot s and 220 and this doesn't mean necessarily that being short makes you better at powerlifting though you know all things being equal it can certainly help uh what that's really telling you is that the people who have filled out their frame the most who are the most muscular are the best lifters and that's happening you know and those those taller lifters by the time if they were to ever make it to International Elite you know being 6'2 they're not going to be 100 kilo class lifters they're going

1:33 to have built more and more and more muscle until they're maybe you know 308 140 K class or the best weight class that's why they call it super super heavyweight with that the the importance of that muscle is that the more muscular size The increased cross-sectional size that you have the greater force potential production you have so it doesn't mean necessarily that you know day one because you you know you're not going to pull a bodybuilder off the off the stage and have them beat a highle competitive powerlifter but with time you know and and increasing the nural force production qualities alongside of it that bigger muscle has greater potential to produce more force and lift the heaviest weight possible there are some other benefits to hypertrophy

2:19 training as well for powerlifters it's going to increase your work capacity so the amount of high quality work that you can do in the next phases of training strength and peing is going to be higher and give you more potential to get stronger as you do that hypertrophy training and build more muscle and and sorry build the work capacity through higher volume work a dedicated hypertrophy phase for powerlifting is also going to kind of resensitize your body to higher intensity training because if all you're ever doing are sets of you know one two or three reps in that heavy peing style of training your body is going to you know cease to have the directed adaptation and we're going to get the other side of that coin you're going to have adaptive resistance from doing the same thing for too long so getting you know those higher rep

3:04 sets the higher volume works and more exercise variation maybe different tempos with the exercises is going to help you avoid adaptive resistance and resensitize the body to high intensity training and make you stronger in the long term finally another benefit to high perch feed training is going to be that it's giving your tendons and Joints a break from those really heavy maximal loads and yeah could you structure training that's not going to cause too much joint stress even though you're train heavy all the time it's possible but it's way way more likely that by giving yourself a little bit of a break both physically and then also mentally from the just kind of grind and of that heavy load all the time that giving your joints a break is going to set you up for more long-term better training that's what we're really here

3:50 to do is train for the longterm to get as strong as we possibly can you know not just this month not just in this training cycle not just for this meet but you know for years and years and years to come so now that we know why hypertrophy training is important for powerlifters how should we set up this hypertrophy training so hypertrophy is building muscle and you know really you can build muscle with any rep range as long as you're training close enough to failure but we find The Sweet Spot to be in the compound list about 6 to 12 reps if you're going heavier than that you know so five or less reps it's going to create fatigue management issues and you're really going to get into more General strength training or peaking training and yeah that will build some muscle because you're training close to failure but you're going to have to do so many sets of that that's going to

4:36 just be really really demanding on you know joints tendons everything else and if you're going above 12 reps and of course this is all personal and individualized but going above 12 reps in the compound exercises then you're probably getting too far away from specificity and the reps are going to become too slow it's going to become more you know muscular endurance effort the aerobic demands of it probably going to be beyond what you need as a powerlifter so we find that 6 to 12 reps tends to be the sweet spot for most powerlifters as they look to develop hypertrophy now training in that 6 to 12 rep range how heavy should we be going most of the time it's going to be 60 to 80% range because we want to be training you you need to be training close enough to failure to give those muscles the stimulus that they need to grow so if

5:23 you're more on the you know 10 to 12 reps that's going to be more work in a 60 to 65% range as you get up to you know to six reps then you're going to be doing more 75 to 80% training range but the majority of the training being done you know two to three reps in reserve 7 to eight RP and occasionally touching 9 RP 10 RP taking sets to True failure so when you're training for hypertrophy for powerlifting it's also important that we choose exercises that support hypertrophy training well so this is going to mean a couple different things it's going to be exercises that support you know bigger ranges of motion uh you know good stretch through the muscles like our friendss over there at RP and team full ROM Dr Mike isrel always talk about it's going to be choosing exercises that aren't disruptive to the

6:09 other lifts because we're not just training the squat or just training the bench press or just training the deadlift we're training for powerlifting the biggest total possible so we need to train all three lifts effectively so doing a lot of low bar squatting yeah maybe you can use a heavier load but if it's too disruptive to your shoulder uh you know elbow arm Health that it takes away from your bench press train that might not make it a good option for for hypertrophy training then also in hypertrophy we're going to be looking to avoid adaptive resistance and future training blocks so some of that's going to be variation for variation sake so we're not necessarily doing the same exercise you know through 12 16 20 weeks of consecutive training but using some variations to you know hit the muscles from a little bit different angles have the the force going into the joints and muscles in a little bit different way uh

6:56 and keep the body you know sensitive and responding to the competition exercises as you get closer to competition and it becomes the appropriate time for those so we're looking to train you know a lot of muscle through a pretty full range of motion in a way that manages fatigue uh to handle High volumes in the lift that you're training as well as the other lifts that are important to powerlifting success and we're looking to avoid adaptive resistance through the training process so some of my favorite exercises for powerlifters during a hypertrophy phase are in the squat we're doing very very very little low bar squatting some people if they're very flexible might not have an issue getting into that tight low bar position and it won't disrupt their bench press but even those people I still like to have them high bar squat more so than low bar

7:41 squat front squat safety squat bar belt squat leg press and hack squat variations are all going to be great primary exercise options during hypertrophy phases for the bench press any grip bench press can work you know it tend to stay away from the competition grip during the highper pre phase to avoid that adaptive resistance so if you're a close grip bench presser in in comps we're using more medium and wide if you're a wide grip bench presser we're probably using more close grip uh so any of the grips really can be useful incline bench press variations extended range of motion bench press variations if you have access to a like a cber bar uh that can be a good one as long as your shoulders are healthy dumbbell press variations are going to have more benefit in hypertrophy phase than they

8:27 would in any other phase of your training and then training with machines like different chess press machines can be really valuable too because it's going to just allow you to put a lot of stress on the muscle with a lot less neural stress or joint and tendon stress along with that now for the deadlift we're looking at mostly conventional deadlift variations because we want to recruit as much muscle as possible and not interfere with the training of our other lifts yeah if you could you do a lot of Sumo deadlift training it builds up your hips and glutes really well probably but for a lot of people that's going to be too stressful you know training sets of 6 8 10 reps in the Sumo too stressful to their hips and it might interfere with their squat training so we're typically looking at conventional variations from any height so deficit from the floor or from blocks RDL

9:14 variations are going to be good here good morning variations I like much more in hypertrophy than in a strength or peaking phase using that as an exercise like to get more out of less using less weight and that's just a theme to think about with all of these exercises is that we want to get less out of more so as you can kind of manipulate your Tempo you know maybe you're down in a three count with a short pause uh at the bottom position of the lifts then exploding up and if that helps you get you know more muscular damage more pump really you know for lack of a better term in the muscles that we're trying to train with a little bit less weight with 5 lbs 10 lbs less less neural stress that's along with that and less you know stress on your joints and tendons that's going to be a good thing so when you're choosing exercises for hypertrophy for powerlifting we're looking to avoid

10:00 adaptive resistance we want to use a lot of muscles through a big range of motion we don't want to interfere with the training of our other exercises so don't let your squat interfere with your bench or your deadlift interfere too much with your squat so those are some of our favorite movements to use of course if you have something else that you like and has worked well for you by all means go for it all right so now that we've talked about why hypertrophy training is important so the general overview of how we want to approach it let's start to put it all together on the Whiteboard for you here so you can have an idea of an effective way to set up a hypertrophy block for powerlifting now this is not the effective way it is one of many possible effective routes to build more muscle to set you up for more powerlifting success in the long term but hopefully this gives you a better idea of where to begin so in this

10:47 example we're going to train five days a week Monday Tuesday Wednesday Friday and Saturday we're going to have two primary bench press days two primary squat days and what I'll call one and a half days for the deadlift so we're going to bench on Tuesdays and Saturdays we're going to squat on Mondays and Fridays and we're going to have deadlift on Wednesday and a little bit more on Friday and that'll be the half day of the deadlift so we talked about exercise variation and its role in hypertrophy training so we want to have some variation for variation sake to avoid adaptive resistance over the long term of training but we also want to choose exercises that allow us to train with more volume and they don't disrupt the training of the other lifts so I don't want to do bun of low bar squatting on Monday knowing that I'm going to bench press on Tuesday and then have my elbows and and wrists and shoulders be really sore so we'll do

11:34 some high bar squatting on Monday and then our other squat variation on Friday couple you know and a lot of different ways that you could approach this uh I have a a video called variation for fatigue management that goes more in depth into this idea but you know unless you're really really strong big and strong and this Wednesday deadlift day is going to be so disruptive you can probably get away with another barbell squat variation here uh but but if you do feel too kind of wrecked from your Wednesday deadlifting maybe the belt squat or a leg press variation here but we'll still build in some fatigue management and we'll do the front squat here on Friday so there's our two primary uh squat days now for the bench press you know let's say that you're more of a wide grip competition bench presser so we want to avoid adaptive

12:21 resistance again build in some variation address weak points so we'll do close grip and then here on Saturday let's do incline and our Wednesday deadlift session we can do deficit and then for our half deadlift session you know you could use even something like a back extension if you need a weighted back extension 45° uh is preferable there compared to doing it on a on a ghr so let's say you have access to that and you do a 45 degree back Rays so there's our primary work now how are we going to load these well as we move through hypertrophy training the important thing that's going to drive that hypertrophic response is increasing volume and that

13:07 can happen in a lot of ways I could do the same sets and Reps from week to week to week but just with a little bit heavier weight and now volume has increased through increased absolute intensity you could train for you know with the same intensity and maybe in week one you're doing sets of seven in week two you're doing sets of eight and week three you're doing sets of nine you know now you've increased the relative intensity because of course the same weight for nine reps is harder than it is for seven reps you could increase the number of sets that you do from week to week uh even at the same weight or at increasing weight you could increase you know so there's a lot of different ways to address this increased volume and you can combine those different ways as well and depending on how advanced of a lifter you are you may be able to handle

13:54 you know more beginner lifters are going to have be able to have steeper increases in volume from week to week uh more advanced lifters are going to probably have to be a little bit less aggressive with it so a lot of different considerations here I have a very in-depth video called like designing squat training designing bench press training designing deadlift training that goes into this and for 20 minutes just on each lift and all those considerations but you know dealing with probably more the middle of our bell curve here we can make a small increase in intensity and a small increase in the to the total number of sets so maybe this first week we're going to do you know uh set of eight at seven and then we do you know 3x 8 after that at you know 60 to

14:40 65% bench press typically can handle higher volume than the than the squatter deadlift can so you know we might do something similar here eight at seven and then we do 5 by8 at 60 to 65% deadlift typically handles the lowest amount of volume of the big three so we're going to you know stay with our same idea eight at seven and then you know we'll call it still 3x8 here for the front squat we want to have a little bit smaller session than our our first day of the week our primary squat day was so instead of doing the top set and then three down sets we'll just do three straight across sets here and then for our 45° back raise which you probably

15:27 don't have an established Max in so we can't really deal with percentages there but let's do a little bit higher reps cuz it's not as stressful as an exercise as the deficit deadlift would have been so we'll do 3x10 and we'll call it 6 to7 RP for all of those and then for your incline bench finally we had six 6x8 total sets here on Tuesday let's do 5 by8 total there so this is going to be for your primary work and of course there's going to be some accessory exercises on top of this with the accessory exercises for the upper body we're typically looking at you know a back exercise so some sort of row pullup or chin-up variation uh and then some direct you know shoulder

16:13 training direct tricep training direct bicep training you know your your bodybuilding pretend bodybuilder type of type of work that we're doing there you're going to be doing that for a little bit higher volume so if we're bench pressing for sets of eight you know maybe your direct lat works so your rows pull-ups type of stuff could be in that same 8 to 10 rep range maybe 8 to 12 and then the more isolation work for shoulders triceps biceps that's going to be more like 10 to 15 reps maybe even you know the occasional set of 20 plus cuz that stuff because it doesn't induce as much fatigue you can train that close to failure or to failure a lot more frequently you know with like a band tricep push down than you can a close scrip bench press so keep all that in mind as you're treating your accessory work and then for the lower body work

17:00 you know we're going to be looking at some sort of you know direct quad work which I like to use unilateral exercises for that so typically on one of these days we would do a split squat variation on one of the squat days a split squat variation on the other day a lateral squat variation like a cic squat which I think is really underutilized by powerlifters and in a general phase which hypertrophy is General by Nature uh doing that more General work uh lateral exercises is going to be so helpful to keep you healthier in the long term as well as getting your adductor strong keeping your hips and low back healthy keeping you moving outside of just up and down forward and back that so much of powerlifting is similar on the on the deadlift day and then we're also doing some posterior chain exercise like a ghr reverse hyper

17:46 dumbbell RDL glute Bridge you know lot of lot of different variations that we can use there but again with the accessory exercises training a little bit higher rep range uh you can train closer to failure more often than you would with squat bench and deadlift variations cuz those movements just aren't as fatiguing they're not as stimulating so as we progress this week to week we can increase our load our absolute intensity so just using a heavier weight we can increase our relative intensity using the same weight for a little bit higher reps so going from sets of eight up to sets of nine with the same load we could increase our number of sets that we do so going from you know three back down sets to four back back down sets and you can combine those you could go more sets at more

18:32 weight typically more beginner type of lifters are going to be able to do that and have steeper increases in volume from week to week as you're you know adapting you're adapting more as you go and you're getting stronger faster in your beginner gains phase than someone who's been Lifting for 10 years but all of those are viable options so you know kind of dealing with middle of the bell curve population probably watching this video we'll we'll combine those so we go from A8 at seven to a 8 at 8 and 1/2 for your top set and now from three sets of eight at 60 to 65% we could do three sets of eight at maybe 62 to 67% we could go to four sets of eight at 60 to 65% we can go to four sets of 8 at

19:18 65 to 70% or 62 and A5 to 67 so let's stay at the same 3x8 we'll just go 62 to 67% and following those same kind of ideas here here our top set goes to eight reps at 8 and 1/2 and we're doing 5x 8 now at 62 to 67% 8 at 8 and 1/2 3x 8 at 62 to 67 here on the kind of secondary work maybe we increase the number of sets and increase the intensity a little bit 4X 10 and 6 and 1/2 to 7 and 1/2 run into room a little bit all right apologies technically difficulties on uh running out of running out of ink there so on our incline you you can go up to

20:04 6x8 if you want and then a small increase 62 to 67% and now finally in this third week if we're training with you know what we call it 3 plus one so three weeks of hard training increasing uh the overload from week to week and then a onee deload after maybe we go eight at you know 9.5 to 10 if you feel good let's set a new eight rep max there at eight rep PR again you could increase intensity so we could go to 3x8 at 65 to 70% we could go to 3x9 at the same intensity that we did before we could go to 4x8 at the same intensity we did before we could combine those ideas so let's keep the same number of sets we're just going 65 to 70% same ideas over

20:53 here I'd be more inclined to stay more on the 9 to 9 and a half RP range on deadlift and squat than I would be on bench press bench press is just not inducing as much fatigue so you can get away with going heavier more often so sorry about it getting a little messy there but you get the idea from week to week we're increasing volume that could be a little bit heavier weights for the same sets and Reps it could be you know an extra set it could be an extra rep or two per set it can be a combination of those as long as we're increasing the volume of work from week to week to week then we're going to be building more muscle we're going to be building more work capacity setting us up for success in the long term with our hypertrophy training so the goals of hypertrophy

21:40 training for power lifters are to build more muscle because the more muscular lifter typically wins and that bigger muscle has more Force production potential we also want to increase our work capacity so we can do more quality work in the next phases of strength and peaking and we want to avoid adaptive resistance by doing you know we don't want to be doing the same thing for too long uh and our body is accommodating to that when you're setting up hypertrophy training we're going to be training mostly sets a 6 to 12 Reps for the primary exercises little bit higher rep range for the accessory maybe 8 to 20 reps uh that's going to be done mostly in the 60 to 80% intensity range you know at the end of a hypertrophy block right before you know you have a planed de lo yeah go ahead set a new PR that might mean a 10 RP you

22:27 don't want to be doing that all the time but we do need to be training close enough to failure to stimulate uh the hypertrophy in the muscle we want to be choosing exercises that allow us to train that kind of lend themselves to high volume and bigger ranges of motion without interfering with training the other exercises we don't want our squat training to disrupt our bench and deadlift training we don't want our deadlift training to disrupt our squat training too much it's all going to work together for the biggest total we want to use variation for variation sake again to avoid adaptive resistance you probably aren't going to be the most successful you can be by just doing the competition lifts through every phase use some variations hit the muscles from a little bit different angle that's going to help you stay healthier it's going to help you build more muscle and be stronger in the long term and you want to have long-term thinking when it

23:13 comes to strength hopefully the work on the Whiteboard here gave you a good idea of how to set up a block of training and if you're still confused about it you can just sign up for a twoe free trial of the Juggernaut AI app and get the smartest program for you it's got know over 4,000 reviews with a 4.9 star average so people all over the world love it from beginner lifters to Advanced lifters and anyone in between so I'm Chad Wesley Smith please comment like subscribe all that good stuff visit Juggernaut A.A for a twoe free trial thanks for watching [Music]

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