Putting a finer point on resistance training

Why Bodybuilding-Style Resistance Training Is Inappropriate for Athletes

Paul Dillett, shown in the featured image: when he looked his best, he was at his weakest; bodybuilding training is not strength training.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s physique caused millions of young men nationwide and worldwide to take up resistance training. Ironically, the type and style of resistance training Arnold used during his peak competitive years would be wildly inappropriate for young men with athletic aspirations.

At his competitive peak, Schwarzenegger was performing 700-plus resistance training sets per week, this spread over twelve weekly training sessions. He invented “the double-split” training routine: twice a day, six days a week, Arnold would weight train. In the morning he would go to the gym to work “minor” body parts: calves, abdominals and forearms. A second, longer, heavier lifting session occurred in the afternoon-evening.

Arnold Built the Base Before He Polished the Statue

My cohort, Jim Steel, head S&C coach at University of Pennsylvania for 20 years, makes the point that Schwarzenegger built his mountain of mass as a teenager not training the way he did during his peak years. Steel riffed, “Arnold’s 700-set, double-split era was really about refining, defining, and working on symmetrical deficiencies. He built his size becoming the Austrian powerlifting champion using power training tactics.”

Arnold built his humongous size as a teenager using reduced-volume power training. He sought maximum strength. Arnold understood increasing strength increased muscle size. Unbeknownst to most Arnold fans, he trained for powerlifting titles in Europe and pulled in the near-700-pound range. The 700-set-per-week West Coast protocols came along well after he had created his mountain of muscle mass using strength training tactics.

Everything subsequent to his teen years was polishing and refining the bulk he had already built. If the name of the game is the acquisition of size and strength, don’t look to a 700-set protocol; look to Arnold’s near-700-pound deadlift era. While bodybuilders inspire young men to obtain muscle, the modern bodybuilder’s resistance training protocols are antithetical to athleticism.

Bodybuilding Contest Shape Is Not Athletic Readiness

Bodybuilding is divorced from performance. On the day of the competition, bodybuilders are often weak as newborn kittens. Despite looking like archangels come to visit earth, a bodybuilder on the day of a “show” can be too depleted to perform athletically. To optimize muscular delineation, to bring out muscle “detail,” the competitive bodybuilder may manipulate fluid, food, sodium, and carbohydrates. When they compete, many are starved, feeble, weak, drained, listless, and exhausted.

An elite pro bodybuilder will often attain an extremely low body-fat level. Even at the local amateur levels, competitors routinely obtain single-digit body-fat levels. How ironic that when the bodybuilder looks their superhero best, they are often at their weakest and most unathletic.

Bodybuilding resistance training protocols are inappropriate for athletes. A modern bodybuilding resistance-training session uses procedures designed to flush a targeted muscle with torrents of blood to obtain the mythical “pump.” Bodybuilders will take set after set “past failure,” using partial reps, forced reps, drop sets, and extended sets. Bodybuilding is not strength training. What does an athlete seek from resistance training? What does a bodybuilder seek from resistance training?

What the Athlete Wants Versus What the Bodybuilder Wants

Athlete: usable strength of all types: isometric, isotonic, absolute, explosive, and sustained.

Bodybuilder: dramatic increases in lean muscle mass and correction of symmetrical imbalances.

The athlete uses resistance training to become bigger, stronger in absolute strength, more explosive in explosive strength, and more able to stay strong for extended periods in sustained strength. Resistance training can also make many athletes faster when the added strength is expressed properly. There is no top-end speed without sufficient strength. No matter how fast or slow you are, getting significantly stronger can improve speed if the training is matched to the sport.

Strength training can make an athlete more robust and resilient when programmed intelligently. Strength training is used to increase power, strength, and explosiveness, and to improve the ability to exert maximally for longer durations.

Specialization Training Belongs to Bodybuilding

The bodybuilder uses resistance training to increase the size of targeted muscles and correct the symmetrical imbalances we all have. Is your chest puny and your legs thick and heavy? This type of symmetrical imbalance can be corrected through “specialization training”: extra work, more sets, more exercises, and more frequency for the lagging body part.

Specialization programs are always synced up with a calorie-surplus nutritional program. You cannot diet down while trying to bring up a lagging body part; you are at nutritional cross-purposes. When trying to bring up weak legs or lagging arms, big clean eating is required.

Some Bodybuilders Were Also Brutally Strong

Some immortal bodybuilders were ungodly strong and grew huge because they became powerlifter strong. Franco Columbu: 700-pound deadlift, 525-pound bench press, 185-pound bodyweight. Sergio Oliva: Cuban Olympic weightlifter. Dorian Yates: 435 x 6 barbell incline press, 455-pound 70-degree row. Ronnie Coleman: 800-pound squat and deadlift.

Others built incredible size using moderate poundage and high volume. Dr. James Wright was the health and science editor at Flex magazine for 20 years. Jim told me of watching muscle monster Paul Dillett train and obtain massive pumps using “puny poundage.” Paul Dillett was massive beyond belief yet would routinely pump his massive 21-inch biceps for over an hour, never using more than 40-pound dumbbells. He blasted the biggest deltoids in bodybuilding with 135-pound barbell presses and endless sets of lateral raises with light weights done for high reps.

Paul Dillett and the High-Volume Pump

The bodybuilder’s goal is not strength. The bodybuilder’s goal is muscle size. Jim Wright expressed to me his opinion that certain individuals were “wired differently” and this physiological anomaly enabled them to obtain massive muscle pumps using weights that appeared insignificant. Jim told me Dillett could blow his chest up to insane proportions doing set after set of high-rep wide-grip paused bench presses with 185 pounds.

The bodybuilder’s training template consists of repeatedly performing higher-rep sets, mostly taken to positive failure, many sets taken past positive failure, using forced reps, drop sets, and extended sets. The targeted muscle is engorged with blood, over and over.

Often, to amplify the degree of muscle fiber stimulation, the elite bodybuilder will perform an exercise without locking out a rep, nor allowing a rep to drop all the way down: the bodybuilder performs partial “burn” reps, moving within a purposefully shortened range of motion. Another bodybuilder strategy is to hit a long series of exercises for the same muscle, string together five exercises for biceps done without rest.

Bodybuilding Is Not Strength Training

Progressive resistance training has a multitude of strategies and protocols that shift and change dependent on shifting goals. Are you a bodybuilder seeking lean muscle mass and symmetry? Are you an athlete seeking to improve all types and kinds of strength and thereby improve physique and performance?

Progressive resistance strategies differ. Bodybuilding is not strength training. Strength training is not bodybuilding. Be one or the other. Don’t be lukewarm. Be clear in your vision. Pick a path. Then pursue it with disciplined ferocity.

Equipment Notes for Goal-Specific Resistance Training

Resistance training tools are neutral. The goal determines how they are used. A bodybuilder might use the same dumbbells, barbell, plates, and bench as an athlete, yet use them for completely different reasons.

For athlete-style strength work, lifters and facilities can compare Olympic weightlifting bars, weight plates, dumbbells, and weight benches. These tools can support squats, presses, deadlifts, rows, power work, and assistance work when programmed toward performance.

Specific examples such as the Iron Grip Competition Series 20 kg needle bearing bar, IRON COMPANY urethane Olympic grip plates, IRON COMPANY urethane dumbbells, and the Arsenal Alpha multi adjustable bench may fit certain strength rooms when the product, room, user group, and training goal align.

The equipment does not decide whether you are training like a bodybuilder or an athlete. The goal, exercise selection, loading, volume, rest, technique, and intent make that decision.

Safety Note for Bodybuilding, Strength Training, and Athletes

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW strength-training perspective. It is not individualized medical, rehabilitation, nutrition, or programming advice.

Bodybuilding contest preparation, extreme leanness, dehydration, aggressive dieting, forced reps, drop sets, repeated training to failure, and high-volume specialization are not automatically appropriate for athletes, beginners, younger lifters, older lifters, or people with medical concerns.

Athlete-focused strength training also needs to be scaled. Heavy squats, presses, deadlifts, and explosive lifts require sound technique, appropriate loading, competent coaching when needed, safe equipment setup, recovery, and honest stop rules.

Stop or scale back for sharp pain, dizziness, chest pain, unusual shortness of breath, numbness, uncontrolled bar path, repeated technical collapse, severe dehydration symptoms, or any symptom that feels different from ordinary training discomfort.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.