Back in late August 2022, Andrew hurt his knee when he landed on a trampoline in an unsafe manner. He did not do any weightlifting-type moves for at least 6 weeks until we got clearance from the doctor. A few weeks ago, the MRI thankfully confirmed that his knee was fine and the doctor gave him the green light to resume training.
During the healing period, I had him do nothing but upper body push-pull, high rep, type bodybuilding training. He also did lots of core.
Bodybuilding will make you stronger, but that is not the primary goal of bodybuilding. Bodybuilding’s primary goal – through volume – is muscle hypertrophy. Although strength and power are a function of the Central Nervous System (CNS), bigger muscles will generally also make you stronger. Bodybuilding is about appearance, strength training is about performance. But each can benefit from the other.
When Andrew resumed training, we started with the power versions of the competition lifts (catching the bar high), with the intent of slowly getting him back into the full positions.
I tested his power clean and jerk, and to both of our surprise, he set a 100-lb PR with an RPE of 5. Only one explanation: Those upper body push-pull and core training made him stronger.
HoofGripWL 