This video presents a complete push-pull-legs training week combining strength and hypertrophy phases, adapted from an upcoming powerbuilding program that alternates between full-body strength weeks and split hypertrophy weeks.
Jeff Nippard's Powerbuilding Phase 2.0 is a 12-week program that alternates between full-body strength-focused weeks (odd weeks) and push-pull-legs hypertrophy-focused weeks (even weeks). The program features increased exercise variation, advanced intensity techniques like myo-reps and drop sets, and slightly more volume than Phase 1, leaning more into the 'building' side of powerbuilding. It's designed for intermediate to advanced lifters looking to develop both muscle and strength simultaneously. The program is available in 4x, 5x, and 6x per week versions at jeffnippard.com, with minimal equipment requirements—a power rack, barbell, and dumbbells suffice, with exercise substitutions provided for cable and machine movements.
The video's key training claims are well-supported by recent research. The seated leg curl study by Maeo et al. (2020) found that training-induced increases in muscle volume were greater for seated leg curls (+14%) versus prone leg curls (+9%) for whole hamstrings, with the biarticular hamstring muscles showing even greater differences (+8-24% vs +4-19%). Multiple studies confirm that seated leg curls are the best overall option for hamstring growth, though lying leg curls can be useful for sartorius development and Nordic curls may benefit the short head. The mechanism is clear: the biarticular hamstrings are lengthened more in the seated (hip-flexed) position than the prone (hip-extended) position, and existing data suggests that longer-muscle-length resistance training (LML-RT) leads to greater increases in muscle size than shorter-muscle-length training (SML-RT).
Regarding the rectus femoris and leg extension seat positioning, research demonstrates that the rectus femoris provides little contribution to compound movements requiring simultaneous knee and hip extension (like squats), but studies by Maeo et al. (2018), Zabaleta-Korta et al. (2021), and Burke et al. (2024) show that seated leg extensions cause preferential hypertrophy of the rectus femoris. A study by Mitsuya et al. (2023) and Larsen et al. (2024) found that a 40-degree hip flexion angle (seat positioned back) elicited greater proximal rectus femoris muscle activity than the traditional 80-degree hip flexion angle, with 'extreme' evidence supporting greater hypertrophy for the rectus femoris at the reduced hip flexion angle.
The knee valgus technique Nippard describes is more nuanced than commonly understood. While dynamic knee valgus is recognized as a risk factor for lower limb injuries, research concludes that although knee abduction moments may strain the ACL, this strain plateaus at a level insufficient to injure the ligaments, and the amount of hip medial rotation may be normal and not sufficient to cause lateral patellar misalignment. The benefit of pushing knees out from a valgus position during squat recovery is that as knees move inward, hips tend to move backward and the trunk inclines forward—pushing knees out allows the lifter to move hips forward again to regain better posture. However, knee valgus during squatting can be solved through knee stabilization, hip strengthening, and ankle mobility exercises, and most coaches recommend minimizing it during training even if some valgus occurs during maximal efforts.
This 12-week program alternates full-body strength weeks with push-pull-legs hypertrophy weeks to build muscle and power simultaneously.