Bodybuilding and Powerlifters: Can't We All Just Get Along?

Frankly, I've never understood the animosity that is sometimes apparent between bodybuilders and powerlifters, even those who recreationally identify with one or the other, despite not competing. In reality, the way these two types of lifters train should be fairly similar. Today, I hope to point out some of the similarities and differences between the training structure of these two groups.

Compound is King

Most any successful lifter, whether training for form or function, is likely to have a lot of the same meat and potatoes movements that you see at the core of any well structured resistance training program. Both camps do a lot of squatting, pressing, and pulling. The obvious difference is that a powerlifter must be proficient in the specific variations relevant to their competitive performance: the barbell back squat, bench press, and deadlift. A bodybuilder has more freedom to decide which variations on these basic movement patterns work best for their physique development. However, it just so happens that those competition powerlifts are also staples in the programs of a huge number of bodybuilders. As well, bodybuilders typically include substantially more upper body pulling than powerlifters. 

Accessory Work for Weak Points

Both bodybuilders and powerlifters understand the need to address weak points during training. For a powerlifter, that means developing strength and muscle mass in those muscles which are preventing them from lifting more weight on the big three. For bodybuilders, it means attacking a lagging body part with extra volume so it doesn't look disproportionately small on stage. This type of isolation work is valuable for both parties. 

For example, a lot of powerlifters do isolated tricep work to improve bench press lockout strength. Meanwhile, a bodybuilder might perform a greater volume of the very same exercises because their triceps are underdeveloped. Either way, the way this is addressed in training is often similar. Granted, powerlifters will include variations of the big three which help address these weak points as well (e.g. board pressing), but that doesn't mean they always eschew the method that is traditionally considered a bodybuilding practice.

What Factors Determine Strength?

If you haven't already read this great article by Greg Nuckols, then I highly suggest you check it out. It outlines the major factors that determine how strong you are with respect to a given movement. You know what the most important factor is long term? It's muscle mass. That is to say, a good chunk of a powerlifter's training time should be spent building a sufficient amount of muscle mass. This isn't to suggest that higher loading doesn't contribute to building muscle mass, but that higher volume training focused specifically on building muscle is functional for a powerlifter.

Contest Preparation

This period of time is when the most marked differences in training will be apparent. A powerlifter should spend more time training at a higher intensity when approaching competition so that neurological improvements can be maximized before stepping onto the platform. If a powerlifter structures their training like many other athletes, that is, transitioning from general to specific as competition approaches, then a large amount of time will be spent training like a bodybuilder. However, that new found strength can only be fully realized by implementing maximal loading.

Conversely, a bodybuilder doesn't give two shits about his performance when he steps on stage. He cares only about maintaining as much muscle mass as possible. Training will remain more similar to the offseason, except there is typically a higher volume of cardiovascular exercise and lower volume of resistance training due to the caloric deficit they must impose upon themselves to reach competition level body fat.

The Split

The way training is arranged throughout the week is noticeably different for powerlifters and bodybuilders, but the differences are more superficial than it appears at first glance. Bodybuilders typically have days devoted to training a given body part, such as a back workout or a leg workout. Powerlifters tend to focus their arrangement of training based on the movements they want to improve. Honestly, each method makes quite a bit of sense for what they are trying to accomplish. 

A decent amount of the time, though far from always, the arrangement looks more similar than it might sound when you really analyze things.  However, the viewpoint they take to arrive at this final arrangement is reversed. Let me explain. If a bodybuilder has a day devoted to leg training, then they are likely to start with some squat variation. Obviously there are plenty of exceptions to this, but it is very common. The reason being that squats are one of the most complete leg development tools, and one of the best suited exercises to heavy loading. Other movements done for the day are meant to complement the areas that squats don't adequately develop on these lifters. To shore up these weaknesses in physique, they might do hamstring curls if their hammies don't respond to squats as well as their quads or glutes, for example. Thus, the day looks similar to what a powerlifter would structure for a day focused on developing the squat. For the powerlifter, they arrived at their training arrangement by thinking "The squat is one of my competition lifts, so I should prioritize it, then perform accessory movements that improve this lift." For the bodybuilder, their training structure resulted from thinking "The squat is one of the best developers of leg mass on the planet, I should start leg day by performing some squat variation, then hit my weak points with other supporting lifts."

Stop Being Assholes

One person's reason for lifting weights doesn't have to be the same as yours. You should learn from others; as Bruce Lee said, "Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own." Both powerlifters and bodybuilders can learn from one another. Both camps can, and should, implement training that is typically associated with the other group, but the relative distribution of these forms of training will certainly be different. If you can't accept this, and you disrespect others with different goals simply because their goals don't appeal to you, then you're not a bad ass. Rather, you're a douche bag. We're all brothers and sisters in iron. Stop hatin'.

Resource Management in Gaming

Almost any game has some form of resources that must be managed, and it's an extremely important part of success in a given game. Common examples include, but are not limited to, life, mana, skill points, and currency. I want to explore this concept in more detail, specifically as it relates to Hearthstone. However, there may be some concepts and ideas you can take from this post and apply them to other games you enjoy.

Identifying the Resources

Before we can discuss how to manage the available resources in Hearthstone, let's identify what they are. First, and perhaps most obviously, there is mana.

Hearthstone has an interesting system for accumulating mana whereby both players, save for a few niche cases, have the same available mana each turn. This is effected by cards like the coin, innervate, and wild growth, but generally speaking each player will have parity with their opponent's available mana on a given turn.

The next resource I would like to point out is that of cards. Anyone who has played other collectible card games (CCGs), such as Magic: The Gathering, is probably very familiar with this resource, and perhaps with the concept of card advantage. If you are not, then don't worry; we will come back to this concept later.

Another important resource in Hearthstone is life. You often don't think of it as a resource, because you generally don't "spend" it directly to perform most actions. However, indirectly, different decision might cause you to lose different amounts of life. There are also cases where you do directly spend life, such as the Warlock hero power, or with the Warlock class card Flame Imp. Obviously, this is an extremely important resource because if you run out of your limited resource pool here, you lose the game.

Damage is another resource that you have available to you. Some forms of damage are persistent, or at least recurrent, such as minions, weapons, and hero powers. Other damage sources, in the form of spells, are single use. There are exceptions to this description. An example would be the card Headcrack, which is a spell that can be a recurrent source of damage.

The final one I want to mention is that of tempo. This is a less tangible resource, but because of the way the combat system in Hearthstone works, it is typically more relevant than in other CCGs. I will define tempo here as your relative power/impact on the board. That is, on any given turn, do you have more or less in play than your opponent, or can you effect the board state with spells? It is closely tied to your mana because you use mana to alter the board state. If you generate a very efficient conversion of mana to a dominant board state, then you are generating tempo. This can indirectly result in more efficient management of all your other resources, though is less intimately tied to these resources than mana.

Resource Interplay

Although I made an attempt to relate tempo to your other resources, in reality, they all can have interactions with one another in a given situation. Making the play that is more mana efficient might be less card efficient or result in you taking more damage. This interplay is extremely important. At any given moment you have to decide which resources need prioritiy. Clearly, it is never the correct decision to move life to such a low priority that you are considering spending more than you have, because that results in losing the game. The tricky part is figuring out whether the life you "spend" now by making a given decision will leave you with zero life the next turn, or five turns from now. 

This interplay is important because it also effects future turns. Perhaps spending more life now by making a given play will result in saving life in the long run because it will result in tempo advantage, which means board control, more efficient minion trading, and less damage coming at your face. Maybe your opponent is playing an aggressive deck, and that kind of investment in future turns isn't an option because you will be dead two turns from now, so a payoff five turns from now is irrelevant. Maybe your opponent is playing a more control oriented deck and your life total is under very little pressure, but they can win the attrition battle by making you run out of cards while they hold several. 

These are all simply examples that, I hope, illustrate the point that these resources are very transient. Using one more efficiently might mean sacrificing efficient usage of a different resource now, or on future turns. Conversely, proper management of resources can perpetuate efficient usage of different resources. Sometimes there is even a synergistic effect, such as when you generate lots of tempo through a high mana efficiency, and it sets you up for efficient usage of all other resources.

Mana

Mana, once again, is probably the most obvious available resource. You have a certain amount that you can use each turn, and there is no carryover of unused mana to the following turn. Thus, any mana you don't use is lost forever. If you repeatedly fail to efficiently use your available mana, and your opponent succeeds in this task, then they are most likely going to generate tempo. The only exception would be if the quality of your cards is absurdly high compared to your opponent.

Thus, it behooves you to try and use as much mana as possible each turn. Of course, this has to happen within reason. Being a slave to mana efficiency at the expense of all other resources is typically a bad idea, unless you're very certain the tempo generated by this efficient use of mana is your primary route to victory. A very common example of this would be using all your mana efficiently, only to have you opponent use an AOE spell to nullify all of the tempo these mana efficient plays gained you.

Typically, decks where you are in the more aggressive role care a bit more about mana efficiency. If you don't efficiently use your mana for the first several turns, then you are a lot more likely to lose because mana efficiency tends to matter a bit less as the game goes on, and mana is a less constrained resource. As well, because your card quality and power tends to be lower, and thus the mana cost of your cards also tends to be lower, it becomes very hard to continue to use your mana efficiently late into the game because you don't have the cards to spend it on. There are certainly exceptions in the form of tempo decks with fantastic draw engines (e.g. most Rogue decks). Nonetheless, mana efficiency, to some extent, is important no matter what style of deck you are playing or what your win condition might be.

Cards

Ah card advantage, one of the most consistently important aspects of any CCG. This is simply the idea that you only have 30 cards, and in any given game, you might see only a fraction of those. If you can play more cards, or require your opponent to use multiple cards to nullify a single card you play, then your opponent will no longer have the card resources to make plays while you are still putting on the pressure.

Examples of cards that generate card efficiency are cards that draw multiple cards (e.g. Arcane Intellect), minions that replace themselves (e.g. Azure Drake), or cards to nullify multiple opponent cards (e.g. Flamestrike). These are generally considered to be powerful effects, but you can also see that they are mostly negative tempo plays, save for the exception of a well timed AOE spell. Even then, they don't typically provide you with tempo, but merely nullify the tempo advantage that your opponent has gained thus far.

Card efficiency tends to be more important in longer games. The example that epitomizes the importance of card efficiency is if one player runs out of cards. If this happens, they WILL lose the game in the vast majority of situations (Fatigue damage could still theoretically win you the game if your opponent has cards in hand but can't draw any more). Thus, card advantage tends to be the hallmark of the control deck archetype. They want to make the game go long, and force you to expend a lot of cards to nullify their individual cards, thus starving you in the long run. It's a cruel, slow, painful death, and that's one of the reasons control tends to be my favorite archetype.

Life

Life is one of the most tricky resources to manage in Hearthstone. You literally don't care about expending all of your life except for one. As long as you have one life left when your opponent has zero, you win. You don't sort of win, or get more points for having more life when you finish them off, so winning with 30 life is the same as winning with three. As such, converting life into other resources, such as tempo or cards, is always the best decision if you are extremely confident you have enough life to last until you can execute your game plan and win. It also the most dangerous and unforgiving resource to mismanage. If you run out of cards in your hand, then you can always top deck really well while your opponent bricks. If you waste a bunch of mana, then you might be able to make mana efficient and powerful plays later in the game with your hand full of unused cards. If you run out of life... you're fucked.

Aggressive decks prey on the critical importance of properly managing this resource. They hope to force you to make decisions that are inefficient with respect to other resources, because they know you have to value your life total above everything against their lightning fast onslaught of face damage (note: Fuck you Hunter players; I hate you all, you degenerate scum). 

In contrast, because aggressive decks plan to win the game very quickly, they tend to value their own life total far less than other decks. They only need their life pool to last them the first several turns of the game under most circumstances. A control deck might need their life pool to last them 20 turns before they can finally win. This is why you typically see no little to no cards to gain you life in an aggressive deck, but some amount of life gain in a more control oriented strategy.

Damage

Damage is one of the more forgiving resources that one can manage in Hearthstone. Because of Hearthstone's focus on minion based combat, and the fact that minions represent recurrent sources of damage, allowing yourself the tempo advantage of having board dominance can mean you can to deal a huge amount of damage using one card, and for a low mana investment. For example, if your opponent never gets to kill the Leper Gnome you played turn one because you keep playing bigger threats, then it might deal 14 damage over the course of several turns.

With that said, damage efficiency is still very important. Management of this resource is more difficult in decks that run lots of fragile minions capable of dealing damage quickly, but not likely to live multiple turns. An example of this is the card Wolfrider, which is something you see in extremely aggressive decks. Thus, damage efficiency is more important in decks that need to execute their plan quickly, or rely on a lot of spell damage, which isn't recurrent. Control decks can be a lot more frivolous with their damage efficiency, but as always, deciding when you need to be damage efficient is extremely contextual. It can be important regardless of the archetype.

An example of a situation where the importance damage efficiency is epitomized is when a spell based Mage decks plays a control Warrior deck. If they don't deal damage in a very efficient way, then it will be extremely hard to end the game because of the massive amount of extra life a warrior can generate. Mage decks relying on spell damage often don't plan to be able to deal 50 damage, even if 30 is relatively easy.

Tempo

As mentioned, tempo is the least easily quantified of all aforementioned resources. However, it may be the most important in Hearthstone. Once again, because you get to have minions attack other minions directly, having dominance of the board which allows you to do this is extremely advantageous. You get to make the most efficient attacks, and your opponent can do very little to stop you. As a result, tempo can result in more efficient use of your cards, damage, and life. By default, if you have tempo advantage, you are very likely managing your mana better than your opponent.

Often times, lower cost cards are great at providing tempo and being efficient in terms of damage output. However, these same cards tend to be less card efficient. For example, Fireball is a card that deals six damage for four mana, while Pyroblast is a card that deals 10 damage for 10 mana. Thus, Pyroblast does more damage per card, but does less damage per mana. As such, Fireball is a card that provides tempo because it can have a larger impact on the board per mana spent. With that said, this can impact the available resources on later turns. Casting Fireball on a taunt minion that you would have had to sacrifice minions to kill will net you more damage in the long run because it allows you to attack more times with those minions. 

Again, this interplay of resources is always important to consider. If using a card that "does less," but at a greater mana efficiency, results in more efficient conversion to other resources later, then it indirectly becomes a card that "does more."

Matchup Specific Resource Management

One of the keys to efficiently using all these resources is to recognize what your opponent is trying to accomplish, and thus, how you can beat that strategy. If your opponent is trying to execute an aggressive strategy, then life becomes a substantially more valuable resource, unless your strategy is to simply kill them faster. As well, the delayed impact of making really value oriented plays that sacrifice tempo for card efficiency are not worth it most of the time. You will not have the time to realize the benefit of this investment. It's like investing money in stocks when you know the world is going to end in two weeks. You won't have time to reap the benefits of the accumulated value on the initial investment because you'll be dead.

If your opponent is trying to win a war of attrition by making really card efficienct plays and draining you of resources, but you know you can't compete with their card quality, then tempo and damage efficiency are what you have to prioritize. Don't try to beat him at his own game; win on a level where you a better suited to generate value. Force the opponent to make inefficient plays because they are forced to value their life total over their card value.

I only referenced a couple of examples, but I hope it paints the picture. There are a lot of variables that will help you decide which resources are most important. However, once you get used to identifying what resources are important, you will be able to more accurately and effectively do so, and adjust this level of importance based on game state.

Wrapping Up

There are too many variables and possible situations for me to analyze all of them. There are endless factors that contribute to how managing these resources will alter your game plan. The bottom line is that you should always be evaluating which resources are most important in the overall matchup and at any given moment within that matchup, if you can efficiently convert a less important resource into a more important resource, and if you have time to make plays that result in a delayed gratification of invested resources.

I hope this information proves useful and nets you some extra wins on your next ladder climb. Feel free to comment below if you have anything to contribute to this set of ideas, or if you just want to tell me I'm a raging douche bag. Cheers!

Differences Between Novice and Advanced Trainees

A lot of people become interested in strength training because of the influence of someone they know or have seen compete at a high level. As a result, it is only natural for a novice to be interested in the training methods of someone they idolize or respect, and that has produced results they hope too see for themselves. Unfortunately, this highly motivated desire to achieve results leads them to follow a program that is not well suited to their training status. I hope to outline some of the major differences between more novice and advanced trainees, and thus, the differences in programming that make the most sense for these individuals.

Ability to Tolerate Training Stress

As a novice, the ability to tolerate stress induced by strength training is minimal. This is one of the things that defines you as a novice. Obviously, if you have not been exposed to a stressor previously, or had very minimal exposure, then you have not developed any significant adaptations to resist the disruption in homeostasis that this stressor imposes upon your body. Attempting to duplicate the training program of someone who has spent years conditioning their body to this kind of stress makes no sense. As a practical example of this, imagine how sore you were the very first time you squatted with a heavy barbell. Now, after years of training, evaluate how sore you get after squatting a heavy barbell with the loading parameters you used on day one. I imagine that the difference is pretty dramatic. This is not to suggest that soreness is the only indicator of imposed demand upon the body, but I do think it helps illustrate the point.

There is a balance between the imposition of a stressor, and your ability to recover from that stressor. If you exceed your recovery capacity by a large margin, then your next productive training session will necessarily have to be delayed. As a result, you cannot generate as many instances of stimulation, and your progress over the long term will be blunted. Training stress does not produce linear results. That is, performing 10 sets of an exercise does not produce twice the strength gains as 5 sets of an exercise. As a result, you want to find the appropriate level of volume to stimulate change, meanwhile allowing you to train again relatively soon. Thus, there is a minimum volume required to stimulate change in the first place, but an upper limit to this volume where the level of diminishing returns increases because of the undue need to spend longer recovering.

Margin of Error

Finding the optimal amount of training to allow for recovery and progression is challenging. It is one of the more nuanced aspects of designing a proper strength training program. However, for a novice, the margin of error is much larger than for an advanced trainee. 

As a novice, you can be relatively sub-optimal with your volume selection with lesser consequences. The reason is that you are so inefficient early on, and your body's ability to adapt to this new stressor so plastic, that it's virtually impossible to generate enough stress to exceed your capacity to recover. Thus, if you do exceed the optimal level of volume, the additional time required to recover from this superfluous volume is fairly low. Spending an extra day or two out of the gym is really minimal in the grand scheme of things. For a more advanced trainee, exceeding this recovery capacity could induce levels of fatigue that require a much longer hiatus, or at least a dramatically reduced workload. 

Minimum Threshold to Disrupt Homeostasis

As training status increases, the minimum threshold at which adaptation occurs increases with it. If you've ever broken a bone where a joint had to be locked at a given angle in a cast, or know someone who has, then you've seen the result of this: atrophy. The muscles that move that joint are unable to be subjected to mechanical stress, so detraining occurs and these muscles decrease in size. This is like getting a preview of what a more sedentary version of yourself would look like. 

How much stimulus is required to strengthen and grow these atrophied muscles? Not very much. Your normal day to day activities are sufficient to cause adaptation of these tissues and the neurological pathways that control movement at that joint. Thus, this is an example of an artificially lowered threshold for adaptation. However, relative to a highly trained individual, an untrained individual is much like that atrophied limb: the minimum threshold necessary to induce adaptation is substantially lower. This is true of both volume AND intensity. That is to say, as a novice, you could lift a load that is a small percentage of your 1RM and still see improvements in muscular strength and size. As you progress, the minimum volume and intensity necessary to see progress in strength increases. Thus, as a novice trainee, lifting loads at 90% of your 1RM is completely unnecessary. You can induce strength adaptation at a much lower intensity, which is desirable considering that it also allows for more proficient development of technique while motor learning is still in its earliest stages.

Rate of Progression

I would argue that the single most important determinant of training status would be the rate of progress you can expect. For a complete novice trainee, a fairly linear rate of progression can be expected. That is to say, adding 5-10lbs to the bar every single time you hit the gym is the norm. The duration that a trainee is able to do this is highly variable, and even variable between exercises. Variables that affect this honeymoon period include training volume, training frequency, training intensity, genetics, nutrition, diet, sleep habits, and the rate of implemented progression relative to potential progression. What I mean is that if you had the ability to predict the exact load increase your body could tolerate each time, and dial in that exact increase each session, you would end this period of linear progression much sooner. Since your load increases are just best guesses, it can result in some amount of untapped potential each time you hit the gym, thus prolonging this period of newbie gains.

More advanced trainees, especially as one approaches their genetic limits, take quite a bit longer to see progress. The same relative progression a novice trainee sees in a matter of a few days may take many weeks of training and recovery, wrapped up in a more complex program, for a more advanced trainee.

Practical Application

The bottom line is that novice trainees should stick to fairly basic programming utilizing a linear rate of progression and a low overall training volume. Great examples of tried and true novice programs include Starting Strength and Greyskull Linear Progression. Don't get caught up trying to emulate the programs of individuals much more advanced than yourself. Conversely, recognize when you start plateauing and need to increase the complexity of your programming for continued progress. Happy lifting!

What is HearthStrong

I have been both an avid gamer and an avid lifter for over a decade now. During this time period, my observation is that both of these activities are becoming more mainstream. As a result, the cross section of individuals that share these interests is growing, and it's great to know more people find these pursuits rewarding and enjoyable.

As someone who has a very strong passion for both of these activities, I am excited to start this blog and provide an outlet to write about these subjects that are complex and encompass stimulation for both mind and body. I have competed in gaming at a reasonably high level, achieved a considerable amount of progress in developing strength, and posses many years of professional experience in the fitness industry. As such, I feel as though I have a lot of solid information to share with geeks out there who like to pick up heavy things.

Although the entire realm of fitness and gaming are topics that are game for me to write about, I want to narrow my scope a bit more than that for the majority of information posted on this blog. Under the umbrella of fitness information, I want to focus on strength training; under the umbrella of gaming information, I want to focus on Hearthstone. I hope everyone enjoys reading this blog as much as I enjoy writing for it. Happy lifting and happy gaming!