MattDoesFitness, a British powerlifter with a 250 kg squat and 260 kg deadlift, explains how to build strength and muscle together. Do heavy compound lifts first when your nervous system is fresh, then add bodybuilding accessories. Keep accessory volume moderate, 3-4 sets per exercise, so you don't sacrifice strength gains.
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What's going on, guys? Now I know what you're thinking— why is Rob's younger, more attractive English brother making a video for his channel? Let me stop you there. We're not actually brothers. We are in fact divorcees. We actually lived under a civil partnership back in the late '70s, and during that time I obtained his YouTube login details. Ipso facto, bit of banter, I'm making this video. In all seriousness, my name is Matt from the channel Matt Does Fitness, and me and Rob Lipsett been good friends for a while now. And we started speaking on YouTube, we both became machine athletes, we obviously met for the first time at BodyPower, um, and let's just say there was not a lot of clothes involved. Now we thought it would be a cool idea if he made a video for my channel, and I of course made this video for his channel. Okay, a little bit about myself. I'm a powerlifter from England. I'm actually training for the British Championships, which actually this weekend. Now my current PRs are a 550-pound squat which is 250 kilograms, a 365-pound bench press, which is 167.5 kilograms, and a 575-pound deadlift, which is 260 kilograms. However, where I differ from a lot of powerlifters is that I also enjoy bodybuilding, and that makes up quite a lot of my training. So what I typically do is one of my main 3 lifts first, and I'll follow that up with some isolation bodybuilding type stuff. Now, the link to my channel will be in the description, so if you enjoy the video, go and have a look at my channel. If you like what you see then by all means feel free to subscribe. Anyway, on with the video. So when we kind of decided, we'd settled on this idea of making a video for each other's channels, I was thinking, what should I do? You know, before I got onto the actual idea, the actual concept of the video, I thought, I've got to appeal to the fans. Yeah, the guys have to enjoy it. Now I was thinking, obviously Rob is very clearly Irish, so I thought, Irish fans, what are the Irish fans going to want? Give them what they're going to enjoy. So I think it goes without saying You're gonna like this. Okay, I'm gonna get on with the video now because I've wasted the last minute of your life, and let's face it, that is time you are never getting back. So what I thought I'd talk to you about today is combining powerlifting with bodybuilding. I think a lot of guys that go to the gym see them as two separate entities, but I believe they can complement each other really well. So I'm going to give you My top 3 tips for getting aesthetic and strong. Number 1, quite simply, you must prioritize your strength work over your bodybuilding type stuff. Um, in simple terms, doing bodybuilding stuff before your strength work is going to have far more of a detrimental effect on your strength gains than the other way around. So for example, if I'm doing a bench press day, I'll go into the gym, I will do my heavy bench press sets first, I'll then move on to my chest, my triceps, my shoulder, kind of bodybuilding type work But that is the way around you want to do it, because in terms of your strength work, you need to be fresh. Your CNS needs to be primed and ready to go. And if it is fatigued and you've done a lot of, you know, say like, you know, 10 sets on a chest dumbbell press before you go and do your bench press, you're never going to get that same quality, and therefore you won't get the same strength gains. Number 2 relates to how you program your actual setup. So I think a mistake a lot of people make is they don't, they don't factor in recovery. So they might do, say, a bench press on a Monday and then do like chest the day after. They might do a big kind of squat session and then go and do loads of leg presses the day after. You need to kind of split these things up. So the way I do mine is I'll look at it— I'll look at my bodybuilding work in a push-pull-legs split. So essentially I have, um, a squat day, a bench press day, a deadlift day, and I will couple my squat workout with some leg accessory work. I'll couple my bench press workout with some chest, shoulders, triceps, so some push accessory work. And then I'll cover my deadlift day with some Paul accessory work, which is obviously back and biceps. And if you repeat that, it gives all of those body parts sufficient recovery. It also gives you a chance to hit them sufficiently, and obviously you are able to prioritize your strength work so you're getting strong whilst getting that added volume, which is obviously going to get you bigger, um, and looking awesome. Number 3: don't do too much bodybuilding type stuff. The biggest mistake I think people make is that they go in, they do their kind of the squats or the deadlift, and then they go and do like 50 sets of rows or like bicep curls or, you know, dumbbell flies, whatever it is. That is far too much. You don't need to do that much. If you do your bench workout and you want to do your push stuff, just look at 3 to 4 sets on maybe 3 to 4 to 5 exercises. You don't need to go berserk. If you get 3 to 4 good quality working sets with a dumbbell fly and you're doing, you know, your 8 to 12 reps, whatever that may be, that is enough. You don't need to go then do an additional 6 sets of another fly. Just look at it from a quality point of view. Bear in mind, with the push-pull legs, that, that kind of, that split, the frequency is going to be fairly high. So you're going to be hitting each body part at least twice a week. Therefore, you don't need to go balls out in terms of your volume. Um, so just, yeah, think about that. Think about the, the quality. It's all about quality with strength work, with getting those strength gains. You need to get the volume right, but if you go too far, you go too high up the spectrum, it is going to be counterproductive and you're going to end up affecting your strength gains big time. And that is that, guys. I wanted to make it nice and short, nice and concise, didn't want to kind of drag it on. But I really hope it's been informative. I hope you've enjoyed it. Um, if you have done, like I said, feel free to go and check my channel out. And if you like what you see, then by all means subscribe. Of course, big thanks to Rob Lipsett. I'm gonna make a big effort to get out to Ireland so we can hang out and really kind of bond, take the bonding to the next level, maybe do some kind of jelly wrestling, uh, perhaps a bit of naked breakdown dancing. All that stuff will be recorded, kind of, you know, that, that goes without saying. Um, so thanks for watching, and I'll see you later.
