Strong, Conditioned, and Ready for Anything — How to Become a Hybrid Athlete

Summary

Podcast Summary

The Art of Manliness – Episode: "Strong, Conditioned, and Ready for Anything — How to Become a Hybrid Athlete"

Release Date: January 6, 2026
Host: Brett McKay
Guest: Alex Viada, coach, physiologist, and author of The Hybrid Athlete

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the concept of hybrid training: combining both strength and endurance modalities to become a well-rounded, capable, and adventurous athlete. Brett McKay interviews Alex Viada, a coach famous for his own feats of deadlifting over 700 pounds and running ultramarathons the same week, to explore the logic, programming, and benefits behind becoming a "hybrid athlete." They discuss how to balance and program strength and endurance training together, test progress, recognize and manage both types of fatigue, and implement practical approaches suited for everyone—from powerlifters and runners to busy parents wanting all-around fitness.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Alex Viada’s Hybrid Journey and Why Hybrid Training?

• Alex's Own Story:
  • Began as an all-sport, active youth (football, boxing, swimming), lost shape in college, regained it with powerlifting, then challenged himself to run a 5K with humbling results.
  • Sought a way to combine lifting and running efficiently, eventually building a method for "all-around capability" without burning out in any modality.
  • Quote: “All my fitness that I had for most of my youth was gone. I was a one trick pony and I hated it.” (04:27)
• Benefits of Hybrid Training:
  • Health: Avoids drawbacks of single-modality focus—better cardiovascular health, muscle size, bone density, coordination.
  • Access to Experiences: “Allowing yourself as an individual to say, well, there's some exciting stuff out there. I want to try that. I want to feel like I can dip my toe into any activity and at least give it a credible shot.” (07:01)
  • Enhanced Recovery & Performance: Strength improves running durability; cardio aids recovery for lifters.
• Memorable Example:
  • “I realized today that when I wrap my knees for squats, I'm not winded afterwards.” (20:13) – About lifters noticing improved training density through endurance work.

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2. Challenges When Crossing Over

• Lifters Trying Running:
  • Body type, tightness, gait inefficiency, soreness. Plyometrics recommended for improving running mechanics and efficiency.
  • “One of the biggest things is just getting lifters kind of loose, limber and feeling good about running.” (09:45)
• Endurance Athletes Trying Strength:
  • Requires different mindset—momentary aggression, full-body strain, handling intra-abdominal pressure.
  • “Lifting is an inherently straining activity...it's a completely different mindset.” (11:25)

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3. Testing and Progress for Hybrid Athletes

• How to Benchmark:
  • Not about constant maxing out or doing both a marathon and powerlifting meet on the same day.
  • Use sub-max benchmarks (triples, controlled intervals) and gradually increase training loads/intensity as those become easier.
  • “You're not actually retesting your one rep max. What you're doing is you're re-estimating your peak performance and seeing how all of this sub max training matches up to it.” (13:41)
  • Rarely disrupt training for maximal tests; progress can be measured through improving ease of submaximal efforts across modalities.
• Smart Progression:
  • “My thing with benchmarks is they always disrupt the training. And my whole thing is just keep doing quality work as long as you can until you actually need to test it.” (16:43)

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4. Hybrid Strength Training Approach

• Treat Strength as a Skill, Not Just Volume:
  • Focus on heavy, low-rep work (max effort), speed/velocity (dynamic effort), and skill (form/bracing) training for main lifts.
  • Complement with higher-rep hypertrophy/isolation work.
  • Training split: Upper/lower split (stimulate a muscle every 3 days ideal), e.g. two upper, two lower days—vary focus (strength vs. hypertrophy).
  • “Strength training is all about getting stronger at a specific movement.” (22:38)
• Progressive Overload:
  • Don’t add weight weekly. Instead, adjust the estimated 1RM/peak metric upward when submaximal loads become easier, and recalculate training percentages.
  • “As long as you're increasing that metric...if you're increasing it steadily, like month to month, you're making progress.” (29:26)

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5. Hybrid Endurance Training Approach

• Balancing Intensity and Volume:
  • High-intensity work gives "more bang for your buck," but can only be done in limited amounts weekly; fill in with lower-intensity (Zone 2) work.
  • “High intensity and low intensity work the way I consider, like protein and carbs in a diet...They can probably only handle two to three hours of high intensity work before they start breaking down. So to get in, all the work that their body can actually adapt to, like low intensity work is volume dependent.” (35:27)
• Sample Hybrid Week (Endurance):
  • Three workouts:
    • One speed or threshold interval session (e.g., 3x8 min at 5K+30s pace)
    • One shorter interval + zone 2 cooldown
    • One longer steady-state Zone 2 (e.g. 1.5 hrs on weekend)
  • “Mix it up and go crazy. Do four by six minutes at that same pace.” (42:52)
• Progression in Endurance:
  • Gradually nudge up threshold paces (e.g., 1-2 sec per week), track ranges for pacing to accommodate daily fluctuations.
  • “You’re just setting...guardrails on your performance...that is more than enough to continue to make progress.” (44:52)

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6. Managing Fatigue in Hybrid Training

• Types of Fatigue:
  • Peripheral Fatigue: Muscle soreness/acute tiredness. Managed by not overtaxing the same muscles before important sessions.
  • Central Fatigue: Neurological, CNS-driven—not always "felt." Can limit output for up to 48 hours after maximal/lots of eccentric work, hard intervals, long runs.
  • “What your brain is doing is telling your muscles, okay, let's turn down the power a little bit. We're running out of energy stores...We can't sustain this...We’re going to put a brick under the gas pedal here and stop the body from injuring itself.” (47:26)
• Programming Around Fatigue:
  • After long run, stick to hypertrophy/upper body work until central fatigue recedes; save max effort/velocity for later in the week.
  • “If I do a really long run today...what lifting sessions can I still do on Monday and Tuesday that I know I can benefit from? That's probably going to be hypertrophy work.” (53:45)
  • Avoid "chasing fatigue"—don’t force progress just by making every session harder.
• On Deloads:
  • Only program full deloads if truly necessary; otherwise, just reduce everything by 10% for a week if metrics (like broad jump test) indicate accumulating fatigue.
  • “If your program is well constructed, you should never be pushing and blowing past their thresholds. You should be just pushing on it...” (55:53)

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7. Recovery and Real-Life Application

• Recovery Tips:
  • Avoid ice baths/NSAIDs unless needed—attenuate inflammation, slow adaptation.
  • Emphasize frequent easy movement (walks, hourly breaks), adequate calories, and never train starved, especially when doing both modalities. Compression devices and mobility work help.
  • “If you work a desk job, get up every hour and walk for two to three minutes…feed to fuel your workouts.” (59:05)
• Time Commitment for the Busy Person:
  • 45 minutes a day, 5x/week is enough: upper/lower hypertrophy, one full-body strength, and three short cardio sessions, with a longer easy session on the weekend (which could be a family ruck/walk).
  • “That is enough. Because right there, as long as you’re training with intent...that minimum effective dose, as long as it’s targeted, is probably less than you think.” (61:56)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Readiness:
  “You're training for different sports, but you want to train to be capable at any moment.” (13:41, Alex Viada)
• Challenge vs. Lifestyle:
  "If you need to decide, if you think, okay, what should I train for this year? Think about the kind of person and the kind of athlete and the kind of individual that you’ll become while training for it. And if that's what you want to be, then it's a good event." (18:55, Alex Viada)
• On Progressive Overload:
  “Overload refers to the general physical principle that if a stimulus exceeds the body's current capacity, the body will adapt to that stimulus. That's the overload principle.” (29:26, Alex Viada)
• On Fatigue:
  “Fatigue always masks fitness. The lifting you're doing might make some of your fast runs feel a little bit harder. The running you're doing might make your lifting feel a little bit more challenging.” (16:43, Alex Viada)
• On Easy Progression:
  “You don't ever have to test your max. So that way when you're finally ready for an event, you can say, cool, all right, well you know, my threshold is now this. Let me test it. There should be no question in your mind which you can hit.” (13:41, Alex Viada)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 04:27 – Alex’s background and transition to hybrid training.
• 07:01 – Hybrid training’s benefits for health, longevity, and lifestyle.
• 09:45 – How lifters can start running; challenges and fixes.
• 11:25 – Endurance athletes learning to lift; mindset differences.
• 13:41 – How hybrid athletes should monitor and test progress.
• 20:13 – Hybrid benefits: Strength helping endurance and vice versa.
• 22:38 – Programming strength as a skill, not just for fatigue.
• 29:26 – Rethinking progressive overload in strength and hybrid contexts.
• 35:27 – Balancing high/low intensity in endurance training.
• 39:49 – Sample endurance programming week for hybrid athletes.
• 45:48 / 47:26 – Two kinds of fatigue: peripheral vs. central.
• 53:45 – How to program around fatigue (consolidation of stressors).
• 55:53 – Deloads, when and how to use.
• 59:05 – Recovery strategies and importance of fueling.
• 61:56 – Hybrid for busy people: what the schedule can look like.

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Resources & Guest Info

• Alex Viada’s Instagram: @alexviada
• Website: Complete Human Performance
• Book: The Hybrid Athlete (Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kindle)

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Takeaway

Hybrid training means you don’t have to choose between being strong and having endurance—you can do both, safely and effectively, without burning out. The key is programming with intent, respecting different types of fatigue, and focusing on skill and sustainable progression. Even a busy parent can fit it into a week, and the benefits go beyond competition—hybrid training prepares you to live a more adventurous, capable life.

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For more resources, check out the episode show notes at artofmanliness.com/hybridathlete.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Thank you very much.

[A]

So we had you on the podcast in 2023. We talked all about zone two cardio. That's right, and wanted to bring you back on because you've got a book out. You've written the book on a fitness approach called hybrid training and this combines strength training with endurance training. So this is if you want to be a powerlifter and run ultra marathons at the same time. I think to better understand hybrid training, I Think it would be useful to talk about your own fitness background. How has your approach to strength and fitness evolved over the years and how did it eventually lead to hybrid training?

[B]

Sure. Yes. So my first fitness started. I was actually back in, oh gosh, even pre elementary school days. Always really active kid did a lot of different sports all through elementary school, middle school, high school, you know, everything I could, everything I could get thrown into, everything from, you know, football, boxing, track, swimming, tennis, whatever, and went to college, went to a D1 school and was clearly not good enough to play on any team. So for the first couple years of college, I lost the ability to do anything except I still ate like a 17 year old who was playing, you know, six different sports. So, you know, got really out of shape. Finally by my senior year, Dial it back in. Got back into shape. Got back into shape primarily through lifting. Got really into lifting heavy, got really into powerlifting, got a lot of enjoyment out of it. And after a couple years I was just chatting with some friends and long story short, got challenged to run a 5k with them. And the training for that, like the first session was probably one of the most eye opening, slash, embarrassing, slash. You know, I, I just realized all my fitness that I had for most of my youth was gone. I was a one trick pony and I hated it. So I, I kind of resolved, I said, all right, I'm a powerlifter, I'm talking to runners. None of them know how to, how to still run while respecting my lifting. You know, all of them say, well, yeah, I don't know how you do both. So I kind of made it this personal experiment and for the next couple years I tried and failed magnificently to combine them all. And you know, after a couple more years I finally got better at it and started branching out. I kept progressing in the lifting, really got into long distance cycling, I got into more long distance running events and really the whole practice at that point just became, all right, let's come up with a methodology. Like, let's talk about the system that I actually used to, to be able to train for all these things without crashing and burning in any of them.

[A]

So you're doing cycling, you're doing running. Have you done like marathons, ultra marathons?

[B]

Yeah, I've done a couple marathons, done a couple of ultras, done a few Ironman triathlons, you know, and on the endurance side of things, I was far from elite. I had some decent performances there, here and there. But you know, the events I like doing the ultra long distance Ones I've, I've just always been a little too heavy to do them really fast and efficiently. But I enjoyed them, enjoyed them a lot. You know, really like doing things like, you know, long mountain hikes, you know, big summits, things like that. And yeah. So really just kind of, kind of tries to do a little bit of everything. Like I said, I think what I enjoy and what I've always maintained is that this is all about developing the capability to go do fun things.

[A]

So what are the benefits of hybrid training? Like, why would someone want to do it? Let's say they're a powerlifter and they're like, this is just my thing, I'll just focus on that. Or let's say they're just a runner. Why would I want to start powerlifting? What are the benefits, you think?

[B]

Yeah, you know, it's, it's funny because it's very easy to stay with one sport and say, hey man, this is, this is everything I want. Like, you know, why would I start doing any sort of hybrid training? Training? I mean, the first is, and this is kind of the most cliche slash boring one is honestly health. Single minded pursuit of any one sport does not typically lead to the best health outcomes. And we can see that for people who do nothing but run, there's kind of this almost dose dependent inverted U curve in terms of running and health where, you know, a little bit of it to a good bit of it is quite good for you, but when you really become all into it, it leads to all sorts of other problems. Kind of same with lifting. You know, to be healthy when you get older is all about good cardiovascular health. It's about maintaining musc, muscle size, bone density, coordination, all those things and training for all that. You know, training to keep all that requires some sort of hybrid approach. But you know, again, that's kind of that quote unquote boring one. The second one would be simply because you want to try new things. And I, I think a lot of people, they think, okay, yeah, you know, I'm a, I'm a gym rat, I love lifting heavy, or I'm a runner. A lot of times people might have some level of interest in what is the draw behind this. You know, you're a powerlifter, you love spending time in the gym. You might very well say, yeah, you know, I wish I could just go like hike that mountain and go camping or go hiking with the kids or go backwards hunting or anything else. And you might feel like that path is shut off to you because you've never trained for it. You know, you think I'm. I'm a big, strong guy, but, you know, if I have to walk five miles, I'm done. And I think it's allowing yourself as an individual to say, well, there's. There's some exciting stuff out there. I want to try that. I want to feel like I can dip my toe into any activity and at least give it a credible shot.

[A]

No, I. I can. I was gonna say, I can see the appeal of that. So I'm a strength guy. I just do powerlifting. The main major barbell lifts. In this past Thanksgiving, I did a turkey trot. It was a 5k, a little shorter than a 5k, and, man, I'll tell you, winded. I mean, I. I was kind of proud of myself. I kind of stuck with it for maybe the first mile and a half, and then eventually I had my hands on my head, huffing and puffing, walking.

[B]

But it's. It's cool, though, right? You're like, hey, man, I'm out here. I'm, you know, with family. I'm doing this. And it doesn't even have to be about saying, year. I'm going to be, like, top 10% of my age group. I'm going to be. Nah, Sometimes it's just saying, hey, you know what? Maybe if I find a way to just incorporate a little bit of intelligent running into my program, I can, you know, keep going out and doing these things and say, hey, man, yeah, I gave it a shot. Yeah, I felt good about it. And I think that's really. It doesn't have to be about pursuing elite performance and these other things. Sometimes just saying, like, yeah, I want to go out with the family and do this. That sounds cool.

[A]

I'm curious, whenever you are dealing with clients who come from, let's say, just a strength background, what are the biggest challenges that they have in starting? Like, okay, I'm gonna start running 5Ks, you know, marathon.

[B]

You know, I think sometimes the. One of the biggest challenges, of course, is body type, because, you know, you typically a lot of lifters, not only do they tend to be a little bit bigger than the average runner or a lot bigger than the average runner, but, you know, a lot of lifters, over time, you've got a lot of what I would call sort of functional tightness and functional. Different functional ranges of motion. As much as I hate that term. You know, a lot of lifters can be a little bit tighter in the hips sometimes. You know, ankle mobility, men up. Sometimes the things like running efficiency, like quick rebound. You know, a lot of things that are developed through plyometrics. Some lifters may not have. Some do. Certainly there, there are some lifters out there who take great pains to do this. But there are a lot of things in your running mechanics that may be slightly off because you spent so long in your career training in certain body positions, training certain muscles, training for maximum strength. So I think a lot of lifters who go to running find running just extremely uncomfort at first. The gait doesn't feel natural. Everything gets sore really, really quickly. So one of the biggest things is just getting lifters kind of loose, limber and feeling good about running. And one of the great things is things like plyometrics are great for runners of all levels. They will just make you a faster, more efficient runner whatever you do. And a lot of lifters take really well to plyometrics just because you're like, hey, you know, this is explosive power. I can kind of vibe with this. And getting a lot of lifters just into running and having them start doing some plyometrics, they go, oh, wow, you know, this is a good challenge. I feel uncoordinated, but I don't feel wildly out of my element. And sure enough, they immediately start becoming better runners on top of it.

[A]

What about endurance athletes transferring over to strength training, like powerlifting or something like that, or even like power building, combining hypertrophy training with it?

[B]

Yeah, and I think one of the toughest things there is, I think lifting inherently, it's not that it requires a greater pain tolerance by far. I mean, you know, endurance sports actually, actually do require a greater pain tolerance threshold than lifting. But lifting is very much about momentary discomfort and second to second aggression. Being able to attack a lift, being able to get that level of dialed aggression, and also to deal with that level of kind of full body strain, the increase in intra abdominal pressure, the sudden axial loading, things like that. A lot of endurance athletes, it's not that they're worse at that than the average person. It's just, I think it's very much a surprise. It's a very different way approaching exercise. It's a completely different mindset. You know, running is very much about managing discomfort. Running is about breathing and getting in the zone and everything else. And for a lot of them, lifting is an inherently straining activity. And I think getting into that mindset and saying, all right, this is going to require a different way of thinking about exercise and a different way of thinking about effort, that's One of the hardest things.

[A]

Yeah, it's a different kind of hurt.

[B]

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

[A]

Like you said, it's a different type of exertion when you lift weights. That's kind of it.

[B]

Like you're under a heavy squat, you feel the bar in your back, back pushing on your neck. You know, you've got that intra abdominal pressure, you got a little, that strain in your knees and hips. Like it's a very different sort of thing. And you have to be, you have to be in the mindset for it.

[A]

Yeah. So I imagine a lot of people who have a focus on one fitness modality. So if they're strength training, doing hypertrophy, they probably have the mindset. I want to see progress. I want to be able to test myself to see if I'm making progress. And so for a strength athlete, that's going to be, every once in a while you're going to do a one rep max lift, all exertion to see, okay, how am I doing with my strength. With an endurance athlete, I imagine it's the same thing. They had this focus. I want to get better, I want to be able to run longer, faster. And so they're going to do a marathon or a 5K and try to beat their best time. With hybrid training, you're training both of these things at the same time, strength and endurance. How do you test to see how you're doing? Are there challenges you set up for yourself? Like, okay, I'm going to deadlift £600 and then immediately afterwards go run a marathon? Or is it, I mean, what does that look like for you?

[B]

See, and that's, that's actually a really, really good question because there is a whole subset of hybrid athletes are all about the challenges. And you know, there are all these number challenges and combinations of events and everything else. And to me, I, you know, my view of hybrid training has always been, yes, you're training for different sports, but you want to train to be capable at any moment. And one of the ways that I, I, I personally do a lot of my endurance training, a lot of my lifting training, I will, when I first put together my programmer first start a new client or start a training cycle, I have a pretty good idea what my run one rep maxes are and kind of what my running threshold is, you know, that, you know, lactate threshold, slash a little bit like the 5k/10k pace, somewhere in between there and I know what those numbers are. And as I put together my program, my workouts for the week or for the month I'm thinking, okay, you know, this week I'm lifting 90% for X number on the bench press and then 85% of my max for X number repetition, so on and so forth on the running and going, okay, this week this workout is 3 by 10 minutes at 97% of my threshold. Okay, great. And so what I'll do is I'll run those for a couple weeks. Then what I do is I take that one rep max or threshold number and say, okay, these workouts are getting easy. Let me recalculate all this based on a 5 pound increase in my 1 rep max or a 5 second per mile improvement in my threshold pace. The next week or next two weeks I run these new numbers. Everything seems good, I'm still be getting them done, I'll increase it again. So what happens when you do this? You're not actually retesting your one rep max. What you're doing is you're re estimating your peak performance and seeing how all of this sub max training matches up to it. And this doesn't sound very exciting, but it's sort of like the thing you realize when, hey, like I'm doing my old max for, you know, for a triple now my max is clearly better. Or yeah, you're like my, I'm doing, you know, 10 minute intervals at a pace where I could barely run three minutes, you know, a couple months ago. A lot of this type of continuous reevaluation, I'll tell people, like, set benchmarks for yourself. A specific run, a specific run course, a circuit, a workout. You know, same thing with the lifting. Know kind of how a triple feels and how five reps feels. And as you progress, as things get easier, continue to challenge yourself by upping those. You don't ever have to test your max. So that way when you're finally ready for an event, you can say, cool, all right, well you know, my threshold is now this. Let me test it. There should be no question in your mind which you can hit. Now I know a lot of people like to say, oh, well, I like getting benchmarks every couple weeks, every couple months. But my thing with benchmarks is they always disrupt the training. And my whole thing is just keep doing quality work as long as you can until you actually need to test it.

[A]

Yeah, going for a benchmark does disrupt your training. I've seen that in my own strength training. Whenever I do like go for a one rep pr, I'm out for a couple days.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The amount of fatigue that you build up in Just that one single exertion. It fries you.

[B]

Yeah. And, you know, the thing is, it could also be mentally tough because, you know, especially in a. In a hybrid program. And one of the reasons I use this method is because fatigue always masks fitness. The lifting you're doing might make some of your fast runs feel a little bit harder. And, you know, the running you're doing might make your lifting feel a little bit more challenging. So I'm like, hey, if you're really going to take a test of benchmark and you've really got a peak for it or you've got to taper for it, you got to pretty much take a whole week off of training for both to let yourself recover so you can really test an honest benchmark. And that gets disruptive. So I'm like, hey, always just have an ongoing sense of what your performance is. Check your current performance against, like, benchmark workouts. You know, ones that are submax, but you know how you perform, and you'll always be able to tell where you stand. And, I mean, using this method, I've got, you know, I've got some marathon runners. I got one. One person I work with on marathons. Just as a recent example, her running threshold went up by 45 seconds per mile over the course of eight months. And just by tracking her threshold and telling her to run at a certain percentage of that threshold, I was able to get her marathon time. Like, her final marathon time was within, I think, 45 seconds of what we predicted, and we hadn't had to test anything in that whole time period.

[A]

Yeah. So, I mean, so it sounds like your approach to hybrid training. I mean, you can do the challenges that are out there. Like, hey, I'm gonna. One, we're at max all the big barbell list, and go run a marathon. It sounds like your approach is, I'm just gonna do this continuously, so I'm, like, ready for anything.

[B]

Exactly, exactly. Because, you know, the challenges are cool. They capture the imagination and all that. But at the end of the day, like, if you're just training for two specific things like that, why do them both in one day? That's not the best way to get the best performance of each one. Like, do them a couple weeks apart, go register for a marathon, and, you know, sign up for a powerlifting meet three or four weeks later if you really want to test them. You know, I'm like, do do something real with it. Because I think a lot of these challenges, you're intentionally making it harder than it has to be by you know, kind of creating something arbitrary. Just be the best lifter you can be and be the best runner you could be. See where it ends up.

[A]

Well, do you do that? You know, if every year, do you kind of plan out, okay, I'm gonna run these events and then I also wanna do, you know, one or two meets a year. Like, do you schedule that out for yourself?

[B]

Yeah, I actually haven't done the last couple years. I've just been dealing with a lot of moving a couple times in the last few years and all that. Haven't really had the intent to doing it. But this next year I've definitely got. Probably planning a powerlifting meet sometime in the late summer. Probably do an event in March, running events. So, yeah, just planning out ones. And for me, the most important thing is my whole thought with training for events, unless there's like one event you really wanted to do for years and years and years. My whole thing is if you need to decide, if you think, okay, what should I train for this year? Think about the kind of person and the kind of athlete and the kind of individual that you'll become while training for it. And if that's what you want to be, then it's a good event. You know, if I'm thinking, all right, I'm going to go train for this, you know, Ironman or whatever, what this is going to mean is, you know, a lot, a lot of long weekends of this. Here's how my body's going to feel, here's how my schedule is going to feel, here's what I'm going to get good at. If I like the way that looks, then it's a good event to sign up for. If I just want something to test myself and I don't like how that training is going to look, then I just should keep training for fun until something comes along that's going to force me to be more of the person that I want to be.

[A]

I imagine another benefit of doing hybrid training is that doing strength training will probably improve your endurance training and endurance training will improve your strength training.

[B]

Yeah, that's. That was a huge thing. That was actually going to be the third thing that I mentioned earlier. If you're a lifter, your recovery between lifts. And honestly, the amount of density and the amount of productive volume you could do in a training session does have an aerobic component to it. Better aerobic engine. You're going to recover faster between sets. The work later on in a session is going to be higher quality. You could do more dense work which means you can benefit from more productive work. I tell the story a million times and I might even have told you the story before, but I've always got the example of that one powerlifter I worked with who, I mean, strong guy, like 400 kilo deadlift strong guy. And he was commenting that since he started doing more cardio, he hadn't done cardio before. He was like, you know what, man? I realized today that when I wrap my knees for squats, I'm not winded afterwards. And I think what, what really drove that home was here was a lifter who was a great power lifter and something as simple as like wrapping his knees or even like loading plates and all that was creating so much fatigue that he wasn't able to lift at his potential. You give him a little bit more condition, a little bit cardiovascular endurance, and suddenly his training sessions were more productive. He could do 10 to 15% more productive work by the time he stood on that platform than he could before. That's just going to make him a better lifter. And, you know, same thing on the running side. Like talking to one of my colleagues, he's a ultra marathon runner. And you said, you know what the craziest thing about starting to do more serious strength training was? He said, at mile 96 on the downhills, I still felt like I was racing and not just holding on. My quads didn't get torn up. I felt like I still had power in my legs. I felt like I could actually still accelerate and be a fast runner when I would normally just be shattered.

[A]

Yeah, that's awesome. I've noticed that since our last conversation about Zone 2 cardio. I started implementing Zone 2 cardio into my programming. So I get two hour long sessions in a week. And I definitely noticed an improvement in my strength training sessions. It's like not winded. I could get stuff done. I didn't have to rest as long between sets and it was just a lot more productive.

[B]

Yeah, that's huge.

[A]

Yeah, that's huge. Oh. So let's talk about hybrid training. But I think to do that, let's talk about each component first. So the strength and the endurance separately. And then we'll look at how you program the two. What does strength training look like for a hybrid athlete and the way you do it.

[B]

Yeah, so a lot of it is very, very dependent. And my, my main thing with training, especially hybrid training, is training with intent and realizing that, you know, you need to know exactly what you want to stimulate during a session in order to put the session together. So strength training, specifically training to get stronger. I always say strength is a skill. Strength training is all about getting stronger at a specific movement. So strength training can be more than one thing. Strength training, I, you know, I use a lot of conjugate cues before, you know, I've talked about using max effort and dynamic effort and what I also now term skill effort. So strength training program for a hybrid athlete, if their goal is to get stronger in a specific movement, isn't just going in and doing like three sets of eight or three sets of ten or anything else. Usually it's saying, okay, what aspect of strength in this movement do I want to train today? Say I'm going into bench press. Do I want to do some heavy near max effort bench press, Do I want to do some heavy near max effort and then do some speed work, velocity work, repetitions where I'm focused on high bar speed, full recovery in between, or skill work where I'm focused on nothing but bracing and proper form and all that. The reason why I do that is because a workout like that may be very minimally fatiguing. If somebody does dynamic effort, slash skill work in their lifting, they're not exhausting themselves, they're not exhausting their arms, they're not reaching muscular failure. So strength training is very much about movement specific and working on maximum force production, rate of force production and skill in the movement. So if you say, all right, I'm putting together a strength program, I'm a hybrid athlete, I want to get a really strong bench press and squat, you're thinking, okay, do I need to do endless sets of chest press and endless sets of leg press and no, let me start with my strength day or two days for the week here. I'm starting out with some max effort bench. I'm doing a couple dynamic effort drop down sets and that's it for the strength side of things. Maybe I'll then do some hypertrophy work after that, which is a little bit different. That's, you know, picking more isolation movements or externally brace movements, you know, things like machines of the like and then doing a couple of sets. You know, I abide by the effective reps model and you know, staying well shy of failure on that.

[A]

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[B]

Yeah, I do typically do upper, lower. I think the really, it's. It comes down to frequency. And for both strength and hypertrophy, stimulating a muscle every three days or so is pretty close to ideal. So that's anywhere between, you know, two and three workouts per week. I find with full body, it's a little bit harder to do because with that frequency, you have to do way too much in every single session to hit everything kind of optimally. So I find that too upper, too lower. And as a general, I, I try to make the emphasis of each one of the upper and each one of the lower a little bit different. So they could be the same basic things, like your upper could be a push, pull. But on one day, if this is just a generic athlete who just wants to get better at everything, one day may be more strength focused. So what we're doing is we're potentially doing heavier weight, fewer reps, and then we're doing comparatively lightweight and velocity emphasis. And then the next day might be hypertrophy focused, where instead of the bench press, we're going to do a machine chest press or something similar. And rather than heavy weight or lightweight, quickly, we're going to do moderate weight and aim for like one to two reps in reserve. You know, something like that.

[A]

Gotcha. How do you go about driving progressive overload in a hybrid strength program?

[B]

So my perspective on progressive overload is that, and I'm sure you probably heard this a million times already, but it's that progressive overload is typically misinterpreted by people as thinking you have to add load every week. And you know, my contention has always been with progressive overload that overload refers to the general physical principle that if a stimulus exceeds the body's current capacity, the body will adapt to that stimulus. That's, that's the overload principle. And progressive overload principle just means that as the body gets stronger and fitter and better adapted, that stimulus needs to eventually increase in order to remain adequate to trigger that adaptation. My whole thing with progressive overload is, let's just say the limits of my potential are right now I can bench 225 for 10 and that to me is kind of the limit of what I can do. So I bench 225 for 10 for three sets or whatever this week, next week, do I have to change that? There is almost a 0% chance I am now so strong one week later that 225 for 10 for 3 sets doesn't still represent a great stimulus. So when I'm talking about progressive overload for strength athletes on a hybrid program, remember how I said before, you know, I kind of predict, go back and you know, predict what their one rep max would be. Let's just say I'm an athlete and I predict my max at 300 pounds and I say, okay, and I can do 225 for 10. I'm just making up numbers right now. And let's just say, all right, now I've done that for a couple weeks. This still is feeling easy. Let me set my 1 rep max to 305 and recalculate my percentages based on that. And I'm going to say, okay, well this week I've got 230 for 10. Let me try that because that's the same percentage. 230 for 10 still feels easy, still feels good. There should be no question. So that's what I'll typically do is say as long as you're increasing that metric that you're basing your workout percentages on, if you're increasing it steadily, like month to month, you're making progress. It's a little bit the same thing with running, and we can talk about that a little bit later. But you know, again, my main thing is as long as those underlying one rep max or underlying peak performance metrics that you're calculating, your percentages go on, as long as that's improving, you're improving. It doesn't even have to be at a quick rate. I mean, heck, a lot of lifters would be happy to add 5% to one of their big three, you know, over the course of six months. So, you know, in doing that, I make sure that, you know, every week you might rotate number of repetitions and, you know, percentages and all that, but you're sort of circled around this benchmark that you're increasing every couple weeks.

[A]

Yeah, I thought that was interesting. You mentioned that just now and then you talked about this in the book. But with progressive overload with strength training doesn't necessarily mean you have to increase the weight or the rep every single week.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Cause I've. I've fallen into that trap where it's like, okay, I gotta get. If I, If I did 2:25 on the bench this week at five reps, then next week I gotta do 2:30. I had, I had this problem earlier this year for about the past, I would say from September through November, I was on this tear. I was doing 531 with my strength training and I was making awesome progress. And I remember we got to the point where towards the end of November, I was getting pretty high with the weight on the big lifts and I did my, my max lifts for the one rep thing on the. Of the five, three one. And I just, it wasted me. I had a deload for like two or three weeks.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because it just destroyed me because every week I was trying to push further and further and further. I mean, I'll admit I enjoyed it. It was great.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

But the aftermath of it, it's dest disrupted my training. I'm finally getting back to where, okay, I'm feeling better now. I'm starting to build myself back up again. And I imagine as a hybrid athlete where you're combining endurance training and all this, like, you don't want that to happen because it'll just not only disrupt your strength training, but it's going to disrupt Your endurance training as well.

[B]

Exactly. You know, because that's one of the things I've always maintained is like, let's say on any given day, you're operating at 94 of your peak potential. For example, like, okay, you know, going in, I'm doing a pretty hard workout. I think, okay, that's a tough workout. It's probably not the hardest I could have pushed. It's hard. It's hard. Don't get me wrong. But, you know, like, if I was really. If this was like the last workout of my life, I probably could have pushed harder. Now, if I'm hell bent on making progress, and I'm like, I'm gonna add five pounds to everything next week, I probably could. There's probably enough buffer in there that I could probably push a little bit harder next week even if my fitness didn't improve. And I see this a lot with newer runners because they're like, all right, you know, every week I'm just going to try to go a little bit faster. On this one course that I do now, I'm going to try to shave a couple seconds off this loop around my neighborhood. Chances are the main reason they're able to do that so consistently is because they're pushing themselves closer and closer and closer to their limit every single week. They're improving. Yeah, but they're probably improving at a slower rate than the numbers seem to be going up. And eventually they hit that limit, they hit that ragged edge, and then they realize they're either not making progress or they start doing things like on the lifting side, you know, they change their form, they cut depth a little bit, their bench gets a little bit messier, so they can maybe make progress. Another week or two in the numbers, and then they've really hit a wall. Every workout is a Herculane effort. Everything has gotten worse. But they're like, all right, all right, well, you know, I've hit some maxes. Not saying that's what you did, but I'm saying this is. This definitely happens.

[A]

All right, let's shift more into endurance. Talk about it. Specifically, you train people who are running, biking, they're swimming, all sorts of different events. But with endurance, there's different philosophies on how you train for endurance events. A lot of competing theories. One is, you know, most of your stuff just be low intensity. Then maybe a bit is high intensity or. No, that's not right. It needs to be medium intensity. What's your approach to endurance training?

[B]

So do you mind if I ramble a little bit on this one because I think it's. It's kind of okay.

[A]

It's. It's all. I mean, yeah, because it's all over the place. Like, I. I read about it. I'm like, oh, man, I don't know if I want to run because this sounds complicated.

[B]

Yeah. And that's honestly one of the most fascinating things, is how much of this stuff has been, like, almost misrepresented over the years. So if you look at, like, Seiler's old research in 80, 20 and all of that, and you know, how elite athletes do 80 easy work and 20% hard work, all of that stuff was coming out at the same time as a lot of these coaches and researchers were still trying to define what these zones meant. Like, how do we define zone 2? Is it a percentage of heart rate? Is it a percentage of output? Is it that first ventilatory threshold where your rate of breathing picks up and you can't breathe through your nose anymore? Like, what is that line? And there are so many different definitions. Same thing with, like, the zone 3 to zone 4, like your lactate threshold, onset of blood lactate accumulation, VT2, you know, 97, 92% of your VVO2 max. There are so many different definitions for all these delineations that you're kind of like, okay, how do we all even know what we're talking about here? Because when we analyze elite athlete programs, one of the things that really happened in I would say, the 2000s is there was this idea among a lot of American trainers especially that higher intensity stuff was king. And just going for slow, easy jogs was not the way to get your best results. Personally, I found a lot of discussions at the time stem from the fact that if you're a trainer and you are training in a gym, telling somebody to go run for two hours is probably not the best way to control their progress. Being able to sit with them through a 15 minute, you know, high intensity interval session is a lot easier. So there's a certain element of, I would say, a little bit of bias from some of these governing bodies, at least in the west, on what kind of training we have our athletes do, or certainly our gym goers. The other thing is, if we get away from this idea that, you know, I think the most important thing is high intensity stuff has its place. And high intensity doesn't always mean sprinting. High intensity in a lot of these programs means what we would consider, like, high zone three slash, low zone four. Like all this workaround threshold, what it comes down to at the end of the day is I consider high intensity and low intensity work the way I consider, like protein and carbs in a diet. High intensity work. Elite athletes do high intensity work until they reach a limit, and then everything else becomes zone two. And that's because they're training 14, 15, 16 hours a week. And they can probably only handle two to three hours of high intensity work before they start breaking down. So to get in, all the work that their body can actually adapt to, like low intensity work is volume dependent. You can do lots of it. It still has positive heart benefits. They're putting in 10 hours of Zone 2 work per week just because they've hit the limit on how much high intensity work they can do. It's like saying, okay, if I'm only going to eat 2,000 calories a day, I need to make sure I get at least 150 grams of protein. If I eat 7,000 calories a day, I probably don't need to eat 500 grams a day of protein. I'm gonna make up all the difference in carbs. That's my approach to high intensity versus low intensity training. If you only have 45, 50, 60 minutes a week to do conditioning work, it can probably all be higher intensity. And that means, like, you know, close to your threshold. That means like repeats at your 5k pace, not like sprints. But you can probably do 45 minutes to an hour of that if you're doing two hours. Two hours of high intensity work per week is probably a lot for somebody who is not a huge runner. So maybe stick with that hour of high intensity and do an hour of zone two. If you've got six hours a week to train and you're like, hey, I'm also a lifter, but I really, really want to train for this marathon or whatever else you say, okay, an hour of high intensity work you can do. When you get a two hours of high intensity work, your lifting sessions start to suffer as well, because that's just too much high intensity work on top of the lifting. So you, as a hybrid athlete may do an hour of high intensity and five hours of zone two. So my thing is that all of these have their place. You get more bang for your buck with the high intensity, but you also hit a limit on what you could do pretty quickly. So think about what you could do in terms of high intensity. What's the maximum amount you can do and feel good about doing? And have all the recipes zone too.

[A]

So what does sort of a generic typical week look like, of endurance training for a. A generic hybrid athlete. Sure.

[B]

So let's just take a generic hybrid athlete who says, look, I've got, I'm in the gym three, four days a week. Let's say four days a week, and I've got another 150 to 180 minutes. Like, you know, three hours or less. Two, two to three hours to do some additional cardio. I'll typically say, all right, you know what? Then you've got, you know, three or four days of training. Let's just condense your conditioning into three workouts. You can do, let's say 45 minute high intensity intervals on Monday. You can maybe do a slightly shorter session on Wednesday. That can be 30 minutes of high intensity with a long zone 2 cooldown. And then on the weekend, you just do another hour and a half of zone two. That's it. I'll typically say, like, you know, one speed workout, if you can handle it, one peri. Threshold workout and one easy workout. If you're not into the speed workout, you do one threshold workout and two zone two or two threshold workouts and one zone two. Okay. Really simple.

[A]

Yeah, that, that doesn't seem too bad.

[B]

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's. And the thing is, like, those threshold workouts for people, I'll say, okay, they say, well, what's a threshold workout? I say, well, what's your 5K pace? Add 30 seconds to that pace. Consider that your threshold pace. Now just do three by eight minutes at that pace and, you know, jogger walk for two minutes in between. Okay, that's pretty easy. Great. There you go. There's your threshold workout. That's all you have to do. That's 24 minutes of threshold work right there. Boom. Done.

[A]

Yeah. I've learned that that high intensity doesn't have to be as hard as you think it is.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I started doing the Norwegian 4x4.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

After a strength training session on the assault bike, when I first started doing it, I was just doing an all out sprint on this thing. Just going as hard as I can. And then I was like, oh, my gosh, four minutes. I. I can't even do this for like a minute. This is crazy. I have to do this four more times. This is insane. And then I, I started reading up out. It's like, like, no, you dummy. Like, it's not an all out sprint on these things. Like, you're going hard, but it's like 90% of your heart rate, which is not that hard. I mean, it's Hard, but not as hard as you think it would be. And I, once I started doing it like that, I thought, okay, I, I could do this for four minutes.

[B]

Well, and, and that's exactly it. I always kind of liken it to lifting where, yeah, if you go all out for four minutes, you can do it, but you're probably not going to be able to do another quality interval like that. On the other hand, if you do it the way you approach lifting, if you go to failure on your first set of lifting, you're gonna get one set done and the next couple sets are gonna be garbage. So I consider like hard intervals to be like one rep in reserve to two reps in reserve. Like tough, challenging. You're pushing yourself, but you're leaving a little bit in the tank. So that's why I say like, that's, you know, that the exact same philosophy between the two is you should be running and lifting with one to two reps in reserve on each set.

[A]

Okay. So if you're just a generic hybrid athlete, you want to strength train and do some endurance training at the same time so that maybe you could do a 5k anytime you want. It's going to be what you say, an hour of like low intensity zone 2 cardio. That could be just a slow jog or maybe a ruck or inclined treadmill. And then you say 30 to 45 minutes of high intensity work.

[B]

Yeah. And you know the way, the way that can. Here comes the other debate. Does that mean 30 to 40 minutes at high intensity or does that mean a 30 to 40 minute long high intensity workout? Because if you're doing three by eight minutes intervals, that's 24 minutes. But you've got a 10 minute warmup. You know, you got two minutes in between, you got a five minute cooldown, that's a 45 minute workout. I typically mean like 30 to 45 minutes total high intensity. So that could be two workouts. So Monday, do your three by eight minute intervals. Tuesday, mix it up and go crazy. Do four by six minutes at that same pace. You know, both are 24 minutes and you know, have a warm up and a cool down. And then later in the week do your hour and a half of zone two. You could do an incline walk, you could do a ruck, you could do an easy run, whatever that's gonna get you probably 95% of the results you could possibly ask for.

[A]

And then you mentioned this earlier when we were talking about how do you drive progress with strength training. But what does that look like for endurance training.

[B]

So my favorite thing to do is just adjust that threshold. Like, my. My thing is say, okay, like, if I am predicting that my threshold is like, you know, let's say an 8:30 pace, and I'm gonna be doing three by eight minutes at an 8:30 pace every couple weeks, I can just drop that by a second or two. That's all it takes. Okay, just. Just a second or two. And I can even give myself a range. Usually I give myself a range just to allow. And I say, okay, I'm doing my thresholds between 8:20 and 8:40. And two weeks later, I'm gonna be doing it between 8:18 and 8:38. And that way I let myself. I give myself a little bit of flexibility week to week. But. But after two months, my slowest allowable pace is going to be the same as my fastest allowable pace was back then. So I'm still going to get that steady improvement. I'm going to give myself room to, you know, kind of fluctuate. If I find myself continuously really struggling to hit the slowest end, I know something is wrong, but that's really all it is. And you're just setting those kind of guardrails on your performance, and that is more than enough to continue to make progress.

[A]

All right, so that doesn't sound that complicated.

[B]

No, no. And it could get really technical. Like, if I'm doing a complicated program with somebody, I'm adjusting their threshold. I'm looking at all their percentages across, you know, 14 different types of workouts and all of that. But fundamentally, you can make it really, really simple.

[A]

All right, so let's talk about combining the two. Strength and endurance training. And one of the challenges of hybrid training is that you have to be a bit more thoughtful about managing fatigue. So if you're training hard with weights, well, you might not have that oomph you need for your endurance work. Or, you know, the same goes for endurance. If you're training hard, you're running hard, and then the weight room and you're like, oh, man, I can't get this squat. I loved your section on fatigue because you really get into the weeds of it. We don't have to do that here. But what I thought was interesting is a lot of people, when they think about fatigue, they think there's just one kind of fatigue. But you described there are two main types of fatigue you have to think about as a hybrid athlete. What are those two types of fatigue?

[B]

So I think we're talking about peripheral versus kind of central in that whole thing. Yeah. So this is really, really interesting. So peripheral fatigue is the fatigue that we all really know about sore muscles. You just train legs, you know, you, you, you pretty much can't sit down on the toilet. Going down the stairs sucks. Like all of that peripheral fatigue we're pretty familiar with, and we're pretty familiar, I think, with how peripheral fatigue is going to affect us workout to workout. I just go hammer legs. My sprint workout or my speed workout is going to be garbage. And if I work legs really hard on Friday and trash them, even my, like, incline ruck on the treadmill is going to feel awful. So we know that's peripheral fatigue and that's, that's actually the slightly easier one to manage because you go, all right, all I need to do to manage peripheral fatigue is think, if I do this workout today, is this going to hurt my ability not to do the workout tomorrow, but to hit the target objective tomorrow to trigger the appropriate stress? That's the big thing. So am I going to be able to do tomorrow's workout to a level that's going to still force my body to adapt? And that's a pretty low bar, actually, because if you're like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna, if I, this, this leg workout's gonna hit me so hard that I'm probably not gonna be able to do all my intervals tomorrow. Well, then probably I should consider rearranging things. If you're like, yeah, I'm gonna do all my intervals, they're just gonna be really tough. That's fine, leave them there. So that's peripheral fatigue. The harder one to manage is central fatigue. And central fatigue is so much more about understanding the impact that long term recovery and the adaptation process has on your actual body's ability to do work.

[A]

But tell us more about central fatigue. So what is it exactly?

[B]

Yeah, so central fatigue is actually much more neurological. So the body has a lot of feedback mechanisms. The body has a lot of protective mechanisms. I don't know if anyone's ever heard of Nokes, the central governor. Who's listening here? I'm sure you have, but that was Noakes whole idea that there's a portion of the brain that limits performance to keep the body safe. And that's if you run too hard, if you're running at your limit, what your brain is doing is telling your muscles, okay, let's turn down the power a little bit. We're running out of energy stores. The muscles are accruing too much damage. We can't sustain this. We're actually going to turn down the maximum throttle. We're going to put a brick under the gas pedal here and stop the body from injuring itself. So what's interesting is there's actually a good amount of merit to that, even if there's no central governor, but the nerves. A lot of the sensory nerves and muscles, if they are overly stimulated, they actually can reduce the amount of force and contractility that the brain can apply to the muscles. And so this is actually something that is actually really notable when you're doing things like recovering from injury, if something feels painful, if you feel pain in a muscle or around a joint or anything else, that pain signal itself actually turns down the output from your motor cortex from your brain. When you've just done a hard workout, when you're recovering and when your body is sending out all those pro inflammatory compounds to, you know, break down old tissue, rebuild new tissue and everything else, those pro inflammatory compounds, even if you don't feel the discomfort because you know, your brain may not even be registering the discomfort, those nerves are still picking up on the damage, on the inflammation. They're still sending that signal to your brain to reduce its power. And what's interesting is that again, you may not even feel it. So you may go for like, let's just say you go for a really long run over the weekend, but it's all zone two and you're going, yeah, you know what, my legs are a little bit tight, but I've eaten plenty. I feel great. What you're not feeling is the massive amount of inflammation in your legs at that point and the potent signal that's sending to your brain for the next 48 hours to not produce maximum force in almost any muscle through. So if you've got a large amount of central fatigue from either a very long endurance workout, a very high repetition lifting workout, a lifting workout with a lot of eccentrics, a running workout with a lot of eccentrics, even like hard sprints or downhill sprints or anything else, you may find that for the next 48 hours, your peak strength is limited. What that can mean is if you're doing anything on those days that requires a lot of perfect coordination, you're doing Olympic lifts, you're doing velocity based work, you're doing anything like that, you are probably going to suffer and your max effort work is going to suffer too. So it's important to consider when you're looking at central fatigue, you're thinking, okay, if I have a workout that is just, I know this is just causing a lot of wear and tear for the next 48 hours. Make sure that you're not scheduling anything that requires maximum force output. Like, hey, okay, cool, if I run long on the weekends, then I am not going to start out my week with my quote unquote strength training. I'm just going to do a couple of hypertrophy days. Because hypertrophy days, it's not as important I build coordination. It's not, no, I'm just doing repetitions. I'm going to do all of my explosive strength, skill, proficiency work later in the week when I have less central fatigue.

[A]

And if you did like a one rep max, a heavy lift session, like, you wouldn't want to do sprint work for your cardio the next day, possibly.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Because there's also a huge amount of like neurological psychological fatigue from that kind of stuff as well. You do a heavy one rem max. That is a lot of trauma. That is a lot of, a lot of resources your brain and body are expending at that moment. So it is, it's very much saying, okay, even if mentally and physically, I don't feel that bad. I have to take into account that there are probably other factors there that are reducing my performance that I can't see.

[A]

And this goes back to that idea that you said, fatigue, mass fitness, right?

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

People have experienced that. Whenever I've had this happen to me, the fact this happened to me a couple about a month ago, so I did a really heavy deadlift. I think it was 585. 575.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

For a single rep. And then the next week I was scheduled, you know, to do five reps at, you know, some other weight. I think it was like 4:75, 485. I can't remember what it was, but I couldn't even get the bar off the ground because what had happened, because not only had I done a single rep max on that deadlift, but I'd done like a bench press and then a shoulder press. And so I imagine I just kind of fried my cns. And my CNS is like, no, you're doing this, you need to take a break.

[B]

And it's fascinating because one of the things that can happen is when you do a one rep max, I guarantee nobody's form is perfect. And that doesn't mean that they're injuring themselves. But there could be so many microscopic areas where certain muscle groups have just been overtaxed, certain joints have been overtaxed. Your body at that point is probably dealing with a thousand tiny Quote, unquote, You know, micro injuries at that point, and you may not even feel it. It. But then the next time you go to lift, as soon as you pick up the bar, all of those little micro injuries and everything else are sending these pain signals to your brain. And what's happening is that that initial spike of power that you're used to to get that bar moving, it's just not there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you pull and you're like, yeah.

[A]

Well, I was gonna say that's what was crazy. So when I did that, when I went in to do that 5 rep on the deadlift, I was like, I'm feeling good. I'm awesome. And I. I get the bar. I'm just like. And I just bent the bar and like, no, it's not happening.

[B]

Yeah, it's crazy how that happens too. And that's why central fatigue can be so interesting, because it's not peripheral fatigue. You're like, it's, oh, my legs feel fine, my back feels fine. You go in, you're hyped up. You're like, all right, I'm ready to go. And then you start pulling and you go, wow. It's just like you're checking for an extra plate. You're like, is this thing stapled to the floor? You just don't have that pop, that aggression, that drive. And sometimes you'll even know subconsciously. You're like, wow, I was actually babying that initial pull a little bit. I wasn't exploding as fast as I know I could. And it's all just kind of subconscious, and it's just that. That lack of central drive, and it's killer, and it could be so discouraging. And that's why I'm like, the more aware you are of central fatigue, the less likely you are to make really bad training decisions if you have a single bad session.

[A]

All right, so knowing this idea of central fatigue and peripheral fatigue, tell us, like, how do you. I mean, we kind of talked about a little bit. Let's get more into detail and kind of lay it out clearly for people. How do you program strengthened endurance work so they don't interfere training of the other.

[B]

Yeah, so the main thing is, like I said, it's. There's a little bit of this consolidation of stressors approach that I talk about in the book. Consolidation of stressors is basically saying the way I think about it is a little bit of what I just talked about. Like, if I do this workout today, what training stimuli can I still trigger if I'm still recovering? From this workout. So if I do a really long run today, if I'm looking at my program and go really long run on Sunday, what lifting sessions can I still do on Monday and Tuesday that I know I can benefit from? That's probably going to be hypertrophy work. And so I'm going, okay, so weekends I have my long run. Monday and Tuesday are my upper and lower body hypertrophy days. Okay, cool. Well, if I do a lower body hypertrophy session, I'm probably not going to be able to do some like, explosive, explosive running afterwards. So I do I long run Sunday. Do I want to do upper body on Monday and then lower body and a run on Tuesday? No, no, no. How about I do run on Sunday? I could even say, hey, maybe I'll lift lower body on Monday. Sounds crazy, right? Well, no, my legs are still probably going to be a little bit sore, but I can probably still do three sets of 8 to 10 on leg press with sore legs because that's just that I am not relying on my legs feeling fresh to be able to trigger the target adaptation. Then Tuesday I do my upper body hypertrophy work. And maybe even then maybe I can do a little bit of tempo work or, you know, even an easy run. Then I do my speed work, my speed session on Wednesday. Then I do now on Thursday, like, hey, you know what? My legs recovered, central fatigue is nearly gone. I'm going to do my leg strength and explosive power workout on Thursday. There's not a lot of central fatigue from that. So Friday I could do upper body strength and explosive work and maybe my tempo run. Take Saturday off, Sunday back to the long run. There you go. It seems almost kind of counterintuitive because you're like, I'm doing legs on the, you know, but that's the way you think about it.

[A]

Yeah. That's interesting. With hybrid training, do you have your athletes, you know, do deloads, like take breaks from the training or are you just kind of. No. As long as things cruising and you're feeling good, you can keep going.

[B]

Yeah, usually if I do a deload, it's because there's a burning need. To do a deload is something is actually really overreact. So one of the things I use to test for central fatigue is I'll just do a basic broad jump test. So Monday or whatever day, you know, starts the week, starts the cycle, have them do either five or seven broad jumps, you know, drop the highest and lowest average the rest. That's a pretty good Description of how well their muscular strength and maximum force production is going. Also check the resting heart rate, things like that. All of that seems good. I think, okay, great. You know, they're. They're still recovering well. If they get pretty poor performance the rest of the week, I tend to sort of reduce everything, Reduce the intensity of everything by about 10%. It's not a full deload, but it's a little bit of this. If your program is well constructed, you should never be pushing and blowing past their thresholds. You should be just pushing on it and, you know, creating a little bit of pressure on their thresholds, on what they can recover from. So if you back off 10%, you relieve that pressure, you give them a week of a little bit easier, and they should be ready again to push the next week. One of the things I try to do by, especially by saying be aware of central fatigue and things like that is so you don't immediately have to think, oh, wow, I'm smoked. Let me do a deload if I have a day. And, like, I've had those same things where a deadlift session. I come in and I'm warming up, and I'm like, all right, still a hundred pounds off my max. And I pull this thing, and it feels like it's barely moving. And I'm like, wow, this is. I'm supposed to do £100 more than this. And this thing is like 10 out of 10 effort. I know. Okay, you know what? I'm not going to quit. I'm not going to give myself a deload. I'm just going to reduce the intensity of my accessories by about 10%. Have the next two or three lifting sessions be about 10% easier. Maybe take one round off my interval run tomorrow and see how I'm feeling by the weekend and retest, wait for next week. That's really all you need to do most of the time.

[A]

Well, going back to that idea of, like, you can't really rely on your feelings, how you feel. I've had instances where I felt like complete garbage. I was just tired, didn't sleep well. I was like, oh, man, this gym session is gonna suck. And I go down there, and I'm like, man, the bar's fast. Like, I could pull this easily.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I hit a pr.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But then you have those moments, like I said earlier, it's like, oh, man, I'm feeling good. I'm gonna go down there. Bar doesn't come off the floor. And I think maybe those instances where I was Feeling not great. Like I'm feeling tired, like I didn't have any central nervous fatigue, even though it felt like I did. And so I was able to perform well. Yeah, the human body's weird.

[B]

It's, it's really weird, man. Like you, like you said you could do all the tests to be like, wow, physically I'm performing great. I feel like absolute garbage. But physically I'm performing great. And I always say, well, okay, you should probably still consider taking it easy eventually. But it is true that kind of understanding all these things and they do, they stop you from making bad decisions, they stop you from saying, oh, maybe I just need a whole week off. In reality. Yeah, your sleep's probably not great. Yeah, you're probably tired. Yeah, getting more sleep is a priority. But you know that already. It's not the training that's wearing you down, it's everything else. And the training is such a small part of everything that's stressing you out.

[A]

Out.

[B]

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know, keep the training, maybe reduce it by 5 or 10% and work on everything else and by the next week you'll be right back to it.

[A]

What does recovery look like for a hybrid athlete? Any special considerations there?

[B]

Honestly, the main thing I see for, for hybrid athlete, you're talking so many different, you know, potential stressors that you really want to avoid a lot of the more aggressive types of recovery. And I, I talk a lot about how things like ice baths and all that can be potentially maladaptive. You know, just because if you're a hybrid athlete, you're relying so much on, you know, really rapid adaptation. And adaptation could be a little bit more subtle. So anything like ice baths or heavy use of NSAIDs or anything like that, that could diminish the inflammation response, the pro inflammatory response is going to make you adapt more slowly. For a lot of individuals who do hybrid programs, I say really the most important thing in recovery is first of all, compression devices are great. Focus on things like your circulation, focus on things like not, you know, not letting your muscles get too tight. I always say, like the best thing for recovery, if you work a desk job, get up every hour and walk for two to three minutes, whatever you're doing, keep moving a little bit, keep steady caloric intakes. I am very, very much about, if you're a hybrid athlete, never train starved. And there are a lot of people who are things like advocates of fasted training and so on and so forth. I think you could do that a little bit. I think there's some positive research, positive adaptations on that, that. But if you're training multiple modalities and you're always dealing with background level of fatigue, avoiding a relative energy deficit is really important. So, yeah, little things, stay moving, keep moving, stay mobile and honestly, feed to fuel your workouts. And since you generally have less recovery time between sessions, feeding to fuel your workouts becomes really important.

[A]

So what's the general time commitment for hybrid training? Just for like a general athlete? Is it possible for a busy dad to do this?

[B]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, because if you're doing a conventional hybrid program, let's just say you're a busy dad. You're like, you know what, man, I've got 45 minutes a day to devote to myself, maybe five days a week and weekends. Maybe if I get up early, I could get in a 30 minute run before the family gets going. That's plenty. You do one upper body workout. You know, you could do an upper body hypertrophy, a lower body hypertrophy and a full body strength workout. That's going to get you a lot of good results. And then you say, I have three cardio sessions. One day I'm going to do, you know, a 40 minute interval session, the next day I'm going to do a 30 minute interval session and then I'm going to try to do 40 minutes of zone two when I first wake up early on a Saturday. Or I'm going to do something like take the family for a walk and I'm going to put £55 on my back and whichever kid wants to be carried at that time and boom, there we go. That is enough. Because right there, as long as you're training with intent, as long as you're like, man, I'm not just doing curls for the sake of doing curls, I'm doing deliberate exercises here. I'm deliberately training to get stronger. I'm focusing on quality of movement. You know, I've got this conditioning so I can do more density workouts in my training. You can get it done because that minimum effective dose, as long as it's targeted, is probably less than you think.

[A]

And then after that, once you get that going, sign up for a 5K.

[B]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Challenge the family to one too. It's even better.

[A]

Well, Alex, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

[B]

Yeah, so my Instagram account's usually the best place to find me. It's just. Alex Viada, the Complete Human Performance is my website and the book the Ultimate Hybrid Athlete is I think it's pretty much everywhere. It's on Amazon, it's on Barnes and Noble. There's a Kindle version. You should be able to find it. So those are probably the best resources.

[A]

Fantastic. Well, Alex Viada, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

[B]

Excellent man. Thank you very much.

[A]

My guest today was Alex Viada. He's the author of the book the Hybrid Athlete. It's available on Amazon.com, you can learn more information about his work at his website, complete humanperformance.com also check out our shownotes at AOM is Hybridathlete where you find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the A1 podcast. If you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us your view on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot and if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think we get something out of it. As always, thank you for your continued support. Until next time's Brett McKay remind listening on podcast, but put what you've heard into action.