Most of the bodybuilders reading this might be confused by the title of this article alone! Bodybuilding for the most part is as different from Olympic power lifting as a republican is from a democrat. The point that most bodybuilders miss is that there is actually quite a bit of commonality between the two sports. Let me ask you a question? When was the last time you saw an Olympic lifter on your television screen who wasn't packed with dense, quality muscle mass? The fact of the matter is most Olympic lifters are built quite solidly and have the body awareness to take full advantage of any lift in order to gain muscle mass. I'm not going to sit here and debate whether an Olympic lifter could enter a body building competition (because most of them can't) but that doesn't mean that I don't think Olympic lifts can play a vital role in any bodybuilder's routine. The first question many of you may ask is why there aren't as many monstrous Olympic lifters as there are bodybuilders. The one thing that separates the two sports more so then anything are their weight categories and how these categories effect the way in which the athletes approach dieting. Body building on the one hand encourages you and rewards you for packing on as much muscle as you possibly can in order to wow the judges with your gorilla like muscles and low body fat percentages. Olympic weight lifting encourages you to be able to lift as much weight as possible while maintaining the smallest size you can in order for your lifts to be impressive. In other words bodybuilders diet simply to cut down their body fat levels in order to look better for their competitions, while Olympic lifters use dieting as a tool to remain smaller while still increasing the weight they can lift in order to be in the proper weight category for their relative strength. What is the relevance of all this in the scope of bodybuilding? Simply put, if Olympic power lifters were to ignore their caloric intake and focus their diet around gaining size they would be more then capable of putting on as much muscle mass as their bodybuilding counterparts. So how do you incorporate Olympic lifts into your body building routine? It's a lot simpler then it seems. First of all there's really only two lifts you should focus on incorporating. These 2 exercises are the clean and jerk and the snatch. Both of these techniques are proven to add mass to your thighs, back, traps and arms! The best part of it all is you only need to add one of them to your upper body workout and the other to your lower body routine to take full advantage of them. Am I saying that there will eventually be an Olympic lifter who will become a champion bodybuilder or that the next great Olympic lifter is currently a bodybuilder? NO! All I'm saying is that there are great benefits to incorporating Olympic lifts into your routine as they will do nothing but help with your progress! |
