People in the powerlifting community like to argue that you need to be a fat ass and overweight in powerlifting in order to lift the big numbers. Is that always true? No. Not really.

From what I’ve seen in powerlifting over the last few years is that powerlifters come in all shapes and sizes from skinny to muscular to very overweight people.

In the past, it used to be that powerlifting was for fat asses only but I think bodybuilders have picked up on powerlifting over the years. I’ve noticed that powerlifting has become extremely popular in the bodybuilding world. More and more people with bodybuilder like physiques has been competing for powerlifting.

What will it take to get people to realize that powerlifting isn’t just for fat asses? If Russell Orhii isn’t good enough to prove that then I don’t know what to say. Russell Orhii is a young black dude as you can see in the video above and if you look him up in youtube, you’ll see that he has a great bodybuilding physique. A bodybuilder that is into powerlifting.

Some say bodybuilders can’t lift the huge numbers in powerlifting. Um, please. Of course they can! Don’t you know that hypertrophy like training style like lifting in between the rep rages of 8 – 12 can build you pretty good strength? Yes. Building muscle on every body part can build you pretty good strength. A lot of powerlifters out there refuses to train like a bodybuilder still and I do both. I want to get huge someday but I’m not gonna be “fat” huge, I wanna be “muscular” huge if that makes sense. Even if I’m a powerlifter now, I still train like a bodybuilder. I can’t ignore hypertrophy training. A lot of powerlifters don’t want to admit that hypertrophy training and building muscle can be useful for strength training. You don’t want to do heavy sets and few reps all the time.

I do want to become a great powerlifter someday but I’m not gonna stuff my face with a lot of calories and gain a lot of bodyfat… no freakin’ way. I’m gonna continue to build muscle to get strong. On chest day, I do heavy sets and few reps on bench but I do hypertrophy on everything else. Hypertrophy can’t be ignored. A huge chest will help get you bigger numbers on bench.

Anyhow, watch Russell Orhii’s attempts at the RAW Nationals from over the weekend. Although he was slightly disappointing, I thought he did great. This dude is gaining my respect. I’m a huge fan of Russell. I hope to meet that dude in person someday.

Kev