Hey, BBM team. I’m just wrapping up Powerlifting II and man, I had a really successful run with it. Added weight to every main lift and somehow, throughout the course of the program, added 30 pounds to my squat. Amazing. Thanks for the excellent programming, guys. I was originally planning on running Powerbuilding III next but examining one of my lifting videos yesterday gave me a moment of pause. I posted here on the forum a while ago about my nerve compression issues which I went under the knife for and corrected. However, my body is still catching up to the muscular asymmetry the nerve compression itself created. My right trap looks visibly lower/smaller than my left trap. That being the case, do you think the totality of the programming presented in Hypertrophy II would impose a greater growth stimulus on that lagging right trap or would it be roughly equivalent with Powerbuilding III? Personally, I’m leaning heavily towards Powerbuilding III but I love investigating the BBM perspective on these matters. Thanks, guys!
That’s awesome to hear about your progress. To your question, I think both would be similar, with a slight edge to hypertrophy II or bodybuilding over PB III. Either way, I’m not sure you can go wrong.
Maybe I’ll give Hypertrophy II a shot then next week. I’d like to do my best to correct this muscular asymmetry as it’s pretty visible and I’m worried it could eventually start to handicap me on some other lifts. Do you think I’ll be able to more or less maintain my current 1RMs over that 10 weeks without exposure to singles, sets of 3-5 reps, various other powerlifting-style programming variables presenting in the powerlifting and powerbuilding templates? Now, that my squat is getting a little bit decent, I’m worried about tanking comp lifts by running pure hypertrophy cycles.
I think it is very likely you maintain strength (at worst) and I don’t think people should do singles year-round, in general. Even competitive powerlifters.
Alright. Can’t hurt to give Hypertrophy II a go, then. I’ll see how I do. Thanks, Jordan!