From Powerlifting to Performance: How to Bridge Your Athletic Preparedness Gap
If you are a powerlifter seeking new athletic challenges, the transition from the focused world of strength sports to training for more diverse athletic activities can be equal parts exciting and frustrating. Navigating aches, pains, and injuries, while trying to transition from being a powerlifter to a more well rounded athlete can turn into an unsuccessful juggling act if you don’t have a solid road map to follow. The good news is from my experience many powerlifters follow a very similar path starting out in the gym, which leads them to have very similar needs to one another, and makes their roadmaps toward getting "more athletic" look largely the same. My aim in this article is to break down what getting “more athletic” means for people that share this common training path, and provide you with a road map for the transition in to training to support activities that happen outside of the gym. I’ll go over how most powerlifters seem to start out, and how it results in a great athletic foundation - but with a few notable gaps. I’ll go over what the common gaps are, and some practical steps you can put into your training right away to help solve them. I hope that the steps in this article bring you closer to finding the tools you need to explore the world beyond the gym a little further, and to finding more and better experiences through exploring what your body is capable of.The Common Path to Powerlifting…
It’s been really interesting to see that there’s a whole group of powerlifters that have shared almost the exact same experience of how they got into powerlifting. If Rich Piana, Christian Guzman, or David Laid played any part in getting you to check out a gym, I’m talking about you. These lifters typically begin in the gym training either just to get jacked, or trying to put on some muscle to help them in sports. After a couple years training like a bodybuilder chasing abs and bicep veins, they’ll eventually trade in the cutoff tee for a belt and some knee sleeves, and shift to more strength-focused training. After doing a meet or two and experiencing what powerlifting has to offer - maybe due to COVID cancelling competitions and closing gyms, nagging aches and injuries, or simply finding new interests - these people seem to transition out of powerlifting and start tailoring their training toward more athletic endeavours outside the gym like hiking, running, or team sports. 
While this introduction to training isn't the gold standard athlete development model, it does seem to produce a lot of athletic potential for the people who follow this path. If you break it down in hindsight, it makes a fair bit of sense - starting with higher volumes and lighter weights are good conditions to build muscle and learn good technique when you're new to the gym. By the time the transition into powerlifting happens, a solid base of muscle and technique has been built that can now be trained to produce big forces, and the intricacies of technique can be further challenged and developed by heavy loads. By the time these people start looking at turning themselves into more well rounded athletes, they’ve already built a muscular and strong foundation complete with good training knowledge, training habits, and a solid base of technique. They’ve completed what could be looked at as a big long hypertrophy block followed by a big long strength block - two thirds of a traditional block periodization model stretched over a couple years. Not a bad spot to start thinking of turning yourself into an athlete.
Guidelines for Typical Block Periodization:
[1]It’s a good start, but it’s missing something…
While this training pathway builds a great foundation, it’s important to recognize that training to get jacked and training for powerlifting are quite isolated in the big picture of what can be achieved in a gym. Powerlifting is one of the only activities (sports..? sound off in the comments) where you really only have to worry about training for hypertrophy or strength. Pretty much every other sport or activity requires at least a nibble out of every main slice of the physical adaptation pie: hypertrophy, strength, power, and endurance. So while starting out getting jacked and strong early in your training career gets you to a great spot, it also leaves some big gaps in your physical preparedness in the context of activities that don't happen in a gym.
For most people on the powerlifter-to-athletic-activity pipeline these gaps look more or less the same - and pretty much regardless of what athletic activity you want to chase after powerlifting. Here are the 4 most common and impactful areas I’ve come across in my own training and in working with lifters in a similar situation that tend to hold people back, and why they’ll be important regardless of what athletic pursuit you’ll be going after next:The Gaps:
Gap #1: Tolerance to Lower Body Impacts
Examples: landing from a jump, stepping off something from a height, running, or hiking long distances.Increasing your tolerance to lower body impacts takes away a number of common injuries that I see keeping people from performing how they want to. The tendon issues, joint aches, and "overuse" injuries that people complain of are usually just a result of poor landing mechanics and their tissues being unaccustomed to decelerating. The mix of these areas being grossly untrained by powerlifters and being very important for almost any activity out of the gym makes addressing them even more impactful.Gap #2: Moving at high speeds
Examples: jumping, throwing, running, or sprinting.This goes hand in hand with the lower body impacts - being unaccustomed to accelerating and moving at higher speeds can explain a lot of the common aches and injuries people run into when getting out of powerlifting and into being athletic. Another case of being horribly neglected in powerlifting programs, and being very crucial to almost everything else.
Gap #3: Single Leg Strength and Stability
Examples: stepping up or down, lunging. Powerlifting happens on two legs working together at the same time, where most other sports and activities involve spending considerable time operating on one leg at a time.
One requirement you get when on a single leg that you don't get when you're on two legs is a bigger demand on the muscles of your outer hip that control the position of your pelvis and thigh. Your pelvis is the link between your spine and your legs, so when you don't have enough strength or coordination in the muscles controlling the pelvis it will usually show up somewhere up or down the chain as knee or back problems. For example, the inability to control knee caving (which is largely taken care of by muscles of the outer hip) has been linked to ACL injury and knee pain [2]. As almost all athletic activities are based upon you doing some sort of locomotion with your legs - which when you think about it is just jumping from one leg to the other - it’s pretty important that you have a relatively high baseline of strength, stability, and control on one leg in order to perform your best. Gap #4: Aerobic activity
(Yes, I know, I’m sorry but it is time to actually do a little cardio…)Examples: Pretty much any sustained activity over ~3min.If you have ever tried to perform any type of remotely cardiovascular activity after spending time really diving deep into powerlifting then I'm sure you know very well why having at least a baseline level of cardiovascular endurance could be beneficial. And you know, being a generally healthy human being is kind of important. Instead of preaching the benefits of cardio at you that you've likely heard before I'm just going to focus on letting you know how to make doing it not be completely terrible in the next section.Right, so now that we know what areas need to be improved for most people, let’s look at some practical ways to go about improving them. How to Start with Plyometric Movements
Layering in some basic plyometrics and power based movements tackles both the lower body impact and high speed movement gaps - killing two birds with one stone. As you go through the progressions of plyometrics and movements aimed at increasing your muscular power, you generally get better at moving faster and absorbing more impact. The goal with beginning plyometrics is to find a level of these movements that your body can tolerate, then slowly and gradually turn up the intensity and volume so your tissues can slowly get accustomed to doing more. One easy way of doing this is to put some low level plyometric and jumping movements in your warm-up before your normal workouts. Even the most strenuous of jumping movements still create very little fatigue in the grand scheme of things so your workout won't be negatively affected. A basic warm-up that includes some beginner jump work before a squat-focused day might look something like this:(Click on any of the underlined exercises to see a demo video)
WARM-UP #1
1) 1:00 jump rope
(introducing your body to low level impact, training the "springy aspect" of tendons)2) 15 Slow Tempo Bodyweight Squats
3) :30 Glute Bridge
4) :30 Deep Squat Hold
5) 5ea World's Greatest Stretch
6) 10 Bodyweight Squats Slow Eccentric, Fast Concentric
(like a jump on the way up, but not leaving the floor)7) 10 Drop Squats
(working on your landing technique, introducing your body to slightly higher intensity impact)8) 5 Seated Vertical Jumps with 75% effort
(further working on jumping/landing technique, and introducing higher level impacts)9) Followed by your barbell specific squat warmup
You can slowly turn up the duration (ex: skip for 1 min week one, 2 min week two, etc.) or intensity (ex: double-unders instead of regular jump rope, 100% effort vertical jumps instead of 75% effort) of the jumping movements to further acclimate your body to higher levels and longer durations of impact and high speed movements. After 3-5 weeks you may be ready to move on to movements that are a little more challenging, and expose you to higher levels of force, faster force development, and introduce some reactive elements - like in the slightly more advanced warm-up below:
WARM-UP #2
1) 15 Slow Tempo Bodyweight Squats
2) :30 Glute Bridge
3) :30 Deep Squat Hold
4) 5ea World's Greatest Stretch
5) 30 Pogo Hops
6) 10 Bodyweight Squats Slow Eccentric, Fast Concentric
(like a jump on the way up, but not leaving the floor)7) 10 Vertical jumps separated by a few seconds rest
9) Followed by your barbell specific squat warmups.
If you see a positive effect with the warmups, and want to explore a little more, there are higher output and more complex power-focused movements and plyometrics that can help you take things further. Things like weighted jumps, depth jumps, dumbbell snatches, landmine jerks, and hang cleans may be good things to gradually progress in to. Doing 2-5 working sets of one of these higher output power movements before your strength work is a great way to expose your body to higher impact forces. The most important thing is to slowly layer these things into your training to give your tissues time to adapt, and give yourself time to master the proper techniques. Start with low intensities, light weights, and low volumes, and slowly turn up the dials one at a time. After you've gradually built up your tolerance to impact and moving at higher speeds in a controlled gym environment, you'll be better equipped to face these things when you run in to them in athletic activities outside the gym. How to Start with Single Leg Movements
While you've definitely done some single leg work, it likely hasn't been a large part of your training. So just like layering in your plyometric work, start easy and gradually turn up the dial.
The variation you choose will often dictate how much volume or intensity you can handle, so I've made a sample list of progressions on a bodyweight split squat (easiest at the top to hardest further down) and reasons or scenarios when you might use each one. Start easy, and gradually add sets, reps, and weight with a given exercise until you hit a ceiling and progress starts to stagnate before moving up to the next variation.
It is not a comprehensive list of all the split squat variations, but rather just a possible path that will work for a lot of people to get them to a split squat variation that can be heavily loaded. Towards the bottom of the list, these variations can be used to train for strength or hypertrophy in a very similar way that you'd program a squat.
Building your strength on one leg in combination with more jump work will help you be a little better equipped for more athletic pursuits. After you've experimented with pushing your strength on something like a barbell split squat, experimenting with more dynamic lunging variations, lateral squat/lunge variations, or step up variations can also be very beneficial depending on what you are training to support. How to Start with Aerobic Work
(and make it at the very least tolerable)
Like with the other recommendations, dip your toe in first when starting aerobic work. The main two things to be aware of are (1) the impact on your joints, and (2) your level of cardiovascular fitness. Oftentimes people will have no trouble keeping their breath but have screaming knees, or vice versa - so it’s nice to know how to address the breathing and the joints independently.To get yourself used to impact and keep your joints happy, start with low-impact methods of cardio that you enjoy, or at least can tolerate - running can be a bit too much on powerlifter knees and backs starting out. Find a baseline of a low impact mode of cardio where you're pain- and discomfort-free, and slowly turn up the dial by doing longer or more intense sessions. If you’re doing this in the gym then think elliptical, spin bikes, or assault bikes. If you're already using your warmups to slowly introduce your body to more impact, then after a couple weeks with the lower impact modes you should be ready to start introducing bits of some higher impact cardio modes like running or playing sports. For example, if you want to do 30 total mins of cardio, try 5 mins running and finish up the rest on your preferred low impact mode. Then gradually increase the running by a couple minutes each week. To get yourself used to the breathing or cardiovascular fitness part of this, just keep things easy - no need to worry about heart rates or percentages for the majority of people. When starting out you shouldn’t be breathing hard enough that you couldn’t carry on a conversation during your session, and you should feel like you could still go a little longer when you finish. The next cardio session should either be a little longer, or a little more intense (faster, more inclined, harder pedal resistance) than the last. Just keep it easy and don't overthink it too much. The most important advice I can give is try to make it something you enjoy. I personally would rather cheese-grate my knees on the treadmill than run on it for 20 minutes, so I advocate for doing things outside like biking, going for a swim, or doing some light hikes to make things a little more tolerable. Bonus tolerability points for gathering some meathead pals and making it a group affair. Over time it may actually become something you look forward to and enjoy doing. Wrapping it Up…
Shedding the sticky “powerlifter” label and trying your hand at something new and athletic can be a bit of a leap. Once you know where your physical preparedness gaps are - and how to gradually work on filling them - things get a little clearer. The information in this article is what I have found to work most of the time for most people, but that doesn’t mean individual factors can be ignored. Feel free to contact me here or book a video meeting with me if you have any questions, or to discuss how these things might apply a little more specifically to your situation. I hope the practical steps discussed in this article can help you get a start at venturing beyond the gym, unlocking new possibilities for your body, and continuing to explore your limits.
References:
[1] Haff, G., & Triplett, T. (2016). Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning (4th ed.). Human Kinetics.
[2] Wilczyński, B., Zorena, K., & Ślęzak, D. (2020). Dynamic Knee Valgus in single-leg movement tasks. potentially modifiable factors and exercise training options. A literature review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(21), 8208. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17218208
