By: Joe Sullivan
Joe Sullivan is a world-class powerlifter, competitive bodybuilder, and highly respected coach known for his technical expertise and raw intensity both on and off the platform. A former all-time world record holder and one of the strongest pound-for-pound squatters in history, Joe brings over a decade of elite-level experience to his work with lifters of all levels. Through his coaching, content, and mentorship, he helps athletes build not just strength but also confidence, resilience, and purpose.

Powerlifters Are Movement Economists

The goal in powerlifting is simple: move the most weight possible using the most mechanically efficient and often shortest range of motion allowed by competition rules. It’s not a flaw in thinking; it’s the nature of the sport. But that mentality often bleeds into training in ways that might be holding lifters back.

Take the bench press lockout, for example. If a lifter struggles here, the typical go-to solutions are board presses, Spoto presses, or other partial range variations targeting that specific portion of the lift. This kind of targeted overload makes sense within the competitive context of powerlifting, but it misses a broader opportunity, one that full and extended range of motion training can provide.

The Case for Full and Extended Range of Motion

Training through a full range of motion with deliberate eccentrics and pauses at lengthened positions has long been championed in hypertrophy-focused communities, particularly by RP Strength. But in the world of strength sport, these practices are often misunderstood or dismissed entirely.

That needs to change.

When you expose connective tissue, muscle, and joint structures to controlled, extended ranges of motion under load, like taking a hack squat well below competition depth or pausing a dumbbell press with the handles below the chest. You don’t just build muscle. You build resilience. You create robustness in your tissues. You increase your capacity to withstand technical breakdowns under maximal loads, where the margin for error is razor thin and the difference between a tendon staying attached or rupturing violently can come down to a few millimeters.

What Strength Athletes Can Learn from Bodybuilders

No, you don’t need to train like a cyborg with a five-count eccentric on every rep, or develop mobility that rivals a gymnast. But you do need to understand that bodybuilding principles like full range of motion and positional intent are not just for aesthetics. They are performance tools.

Spending time in deep, controlled positions helps buffer your joints and connective tissues against catastrophic failure. It improves proprioception and increases usable mobility. It helps you adapt when things go wrong, which, on the platform, they often do.

Will an extended ROM dumbbell press translate to your bench lockout like a two-board press might? Maybe not directly. But it will make your pecs, rotator cuffs, and tendons far more durable when you’re pressing one hundred percent of your max after a long pause.

This is not about abandoning specificity. It’s about supporting it.

Bridging the Divide

There’s a strange tribalism in strength training.

Powerlifters speak the language of specificity and efficiency.
Bodybuilders speak the language of control and contraction.

But at the end of the day, we all want the same thing. We want to train harder, longer, and better without breaking down.

If both camps were willing to step outside their dogma and view training through a shared lens, we’d all be better for it. Full range of motion training is not anti-strength. It supports longevity, adaptation, and performance.

Personal Reflection

I was self-coached for most of the first decade of my lifting career as I pushed toward elite totals and began entering the conversation as someone to watch. After placing second at the US Open in 2017, Chris Duffin from Kabuki Strength reached out and invited me to join their team.

At the time, I was already familiar with Kabuki’s movement system, which draws heavily from DNS principles and other biomechanical schools of thought, so I went all in with their coaching. I’m incredibly grateful for that period. It shaped a lot of how I think about movement.

Even as I moved beyond them and sought out other avenues, that drive to learn, grow, and expand my knowledge remained.

Still, even as I broke my first all-time world record in 2020, I had been dealing with persistent issues. Repeated pec strains. Chronic knee pain. I was doing everything I thought was right, but something still wasn’t clicking. I knew how to work hard, how to push, how to chase perfect execution. But I had hit a ceiling I couldn’t see past.

Then I moved to Las Vegas with my partner, Brianny, and started periodically training with Jared Feather, someone I now consider a brother.

I had always respected the RP school of thought. Their focus on methodical execution, volume management, and the value of slow tempo work aligned with my own approach. I had used slow eccentrics regularly in a powerlifting context to build skill. But I didn’t fully understand how profoundly these principles could change the trajectory of my training.

I began applying those techniques: slow eccentrics, pauses in the stretched position, full range of motion execution to movements powerlifters often relegate to the accessory bin. At the same time, I reduced my weekly frequency on the big three to once per week.

The rest of my volume came from movement patterns that mimicked the competition lifts. Squat, press, and hinge patterns, but done with a bodybuilding approach. Machines, dumbbells, cables. All with strict tempos and intentional contractions.

What happened next changed everything.

I went on to break a long-standing world record seven more times after 2020. And I did it while training in the most pain-free state I had ever experienced as a powerlifter.

For years, I had been caught in the trap of overvaluing specificity. Only when I took a step back and focused on the foundations of movement—tissue quality, range of motion, execution—did I unlock a new ceiling for myself and for the lifters I now coach.

A Lesson Learned Late

I didn’t escape the wear and tear of 17 years at the top of powerlifting. The damage was done, and ultimately, I had to step away. But I am unbelievably grateful for the second wind I found during those last few years. At a time when I thought my career was over, I was able to climb the mountain again and again.

I’ll never stop preaching this message:

If I had embraced these full ROM principles earlier, the kind you’ll find all over the RP Strength YouTube channel and training systems. I believe I could have added years to my career. I would have built more muscle. I would have been more resilient. I could have competed longer in the sport I love.

But this isn’t about trading your compound lifts for a cable curl. It’s about giving yourself the best chance to stay in the fight. To stay strong. And to stay standing year after year, cycle after cycle, competition after competition. And push the limits of what we all think possible again and again.

Find Joe on… 

Instagram: @joesullivan_aod