The Art of Manliness - Strong, Conditioned, and Ready for Anything： How to Become a Hybrid Athlete

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00:01:01.280 one more time shopify.com slash manliness brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the

00:01:08.860 aom podcast which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors

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00:01:34.400 Strenuous Life program at strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show.

00:01:45.880 For decades, fitness cultures tended to break people into two categories. You're

00:01:49.820 either a strength guy or an endurance guy. You lift heavy or run far, but not both. But my guest

00:01:55.580 today says you don't have to choose. You can excel at both modalities and be ready for anything.

00:02:00.280 Alex Viata is a coach, a physiologist, and the author of The Hybrid Athlete. He's a power lifter

00:02:05.200 who's also completed Ironman triathlons, and he's deadlifted 700 pounds and run an ultra marathon

00:02:09.720 in the same week. Even if your goals are much more modest, you'd like to say, set some weightlifting

00:02:14.160 PRs in the gym and be able to run a decent 5K. Alex's training philosophy can help you combine

00:02:18.500 lifting and endurance in a smart, sustainable way that builds true all-around fitness.

00:02:23.440 In our conversation, Alex explains how to combine training for strength with distance

00:02:26.640 sports like running or cycling, how to test your progress, how to recognize and avoid

00:02:30.840 the two kinds of fatigue, and why becoming a hybrid athlete will help you live more

00:02:34.200 adventurously and more capably.

00:02:36.460 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash hybridathlete.

00:02:48.500 All right, Alex Viata, welcome back to the show.

00:02:55.780 Thank you very much.

00:02:57.020 So we had you on the podcast in 2023.

00:02:59.140 We talked all about Zone 2 cardio.

00:03:01.800 That's right.

00:03:02.600 And I wanted to bring you back on because you've got a book out.

00:03:06.480 You've written the book on a fitness approach called Hybrid Training.

00:03:11.000 And this combines strength training with endurance training.

00:03:14.660 So this is if you want to be a powerlifter and run ultramarathons.

00:03:18.380 at the same time. I think to better understand hybrid training, I think it would be useful to

00:03:23.480 talk about your own fitness background. How has your approach to strength and fitness evolved

00:03:28.520 over the years and how did it eventually lead to hybrid training? Sure. Yes. So my first fitness

00:03:34.120 started, I was actually back in, oh gosh, even pre-elementary school days, always really active

00:03:39.060 kid, did a lot of different sports all through elementary school, middle school, high school,

00:03:43.540 you know, everything I could, everything I could get thrown into everything from, you know,

00:03:46.800 football boxing track swimming tennis whatever and went to college went to a d1 school and was

00:03:53.200 clearly not good enough to play on any team so for the first couple years of college i lost the

00:03:57.780 ability to do anything except i i still ate like a 17 year old who was playing you know six different

00:04:04.180 sports so you know got really out of shape finally by my senior year dialed it back in got back into

00:04:09.480 shape got back into shape primarily through lifting got really into lifting heavy got really

00:04:13.580 into powerlifting, got a lot of enjoyment out of it. And after a couple of years, I was just

00:04:18.620 chatting with some friends and long story short, got challenged to run a 5k with them. And the

00:04:23.820 training for that, like the first session was probably one of the most eyeopening slash

00:04:28.200 embarrassing slash, you know, I just realized all my fitness that I had for most of my youth was

00:04:33.920 gone. I was a one trick pony and I hated it. So I kind of resolved. I said, all right, I'm a

00:04:39.240 powerlifter i'm talking to runners none of them know how to how to still run while respecting my

00:04:44.900 lifting you know all of them say well yeah i don't know how you do both so i kind of made it

00:04:49.420 this personal experiment and for the next couple years i tried and failed magnificently to combine

00:04:54.460 them all and you know after a couple more years i finally got better at it and started branching

00:04:58.640 out i kept progressing in the lifting really got into long distance cycling i got into more long

00:05:04.120 distance running events and really the whole practice at that point just became all right

00:05:07.920 let's come up with a methodology like let's talk about the system that i actually used to be able

00:05:12.760 to train for all these things without crashing and burning any of them so you're doing cycling

00:05:17.080 you're doing running have you done like marathons ultra marathons yeah i've done a couple marathons

00:05:21.940 done a couple of ultras done a few ironman triathlons you know and on the endurance side

00:05:26.560 of things i was far from elite i had some decent performances there here and there but uh you know

00:05:30.980 the events i like doing the ultra long distance ones i've i've just always been a little too heavy

00:05:35.540 to do them really fast and efficiently, but I enjoyed them. Enjoyed them a lot. You know,

00:05:39.260 really like doing things like, uh, you know, long mountain hikes, you know, big summits,

00:05:43.440 things like that. And yeah, so really just kind of, kind of tried to do a little bit of everything.

00:05:48.200 Like I said, I think what I enjoy and what I've always maintained is that this is all about

00:05:51.600 developing the capability to go do fun things. So what are the benefits of hybrid training?

00:05:56.420 Like, why would someone want to do it? Let's say they're a power lifter and they're like,

00:05:59.600 yeah, this is just my thing. I'll just focus on that. Or let's say they're just a runner.

00:06:02.700 why would i want to start power lifting what are the benefits you think yeah you know it's it's

00:06:08.220 funny because it's very easy to stay with one sport and say hey man this is this is everything

00:06:11.880 i want like you know why would i start doing any sort of hybrid training i mean the first is and

00:06:16.120 this is kind of the most like cliche slash boring one is you know honestly health single-minded

00:06:21.560 pursuit of any one sport does not typically lead to the best health outcomes and we can see that

00:06:26.800 for people who do nothing but run you know there's kind of this uh almost dose dependent inverted u

00:06:31.820 curve in terms of running and health where you know a little bit of it to a good bit of it is

00:06:36.060 quite good for you but when you really become all into it it leads to all sorts of other problems

00:06:39.800 kind of same with lifting you know to be healthy when you get older is all about good cardiovascular

00:06:44.560 health it's about maintaining muscle size bone density coordination all those things and training

00:06:49.860 for all that you know training to keep all that requires some sort of hybrid approach but you

00:06:53.980 know again that's kind of that quote-unquote boring one the second one would be simply because

00:06:57.960 you want to try new things. And I think a lot of people, they think, okay, yeah, you know, I'm a,

00:07:02.220 I'm a gym rat. I love lifting heavy or I'm a runner. A lot of times people might have some

00:07:06.880 level of interest in what is the draw behind this? You know, you're a power lifter. You love

00:07:11.280 spending time in the gym. You might very well say, yeah, you know, I wish I could just go like

00:07:16.040 hike that mountain and go camping or go hiking with the kids or go backwards hunting or anything

00:07:20.340 else. And you might feel like that path is shut off to you because you've never trained for it.

00:07:25.180 You know, you think I'm, I'm a big, strong guy, but you know, if I have to walk five

00:07:28.700 miles, I'm done.

00:07:30.260 And I think it's allowing yourself as an individual to say, well, there's, there's

00:07:33.900 some exciting stuff out there.

00:07:34.880 I want to try that.

00:07:35.700 I want to feel like I can dip my toe into any activity and at least give it a

00:07:40.160 credible shot.

00:07:41.780 No, I was going to say, I can see the appeal of that.

00:07:44.620 So I'm a strength guy.

00:07:45.420 I just do powerlifting, the major, major barbell lifts.

00:07:48.860 In this past Thanksgiving, I did a turkey trot.

00:07:51.260 It was a 5k, a little short than a 5k.

00:07:54.100 And man, I'll tell you, winded.

00:07:56.680 I mean, I was kind of proud of myself.

00:07:58.100 I kind of stuck with it for maybe the first mile and a half.

00:08:00.920 And then eventually I had my hands on my head, huffing and puffing, walking.

00:08:05.880 But it's cool though, right?

00:08:07.540 You're like, hey, man, I'm out here.

00:08:08.800 I'm, you know, with family, I'm doing this.

00:08:10.540 And it doesn't even have to be about saying, all right, next year I'm going to be like

00:08:13.740 top 10% of my age group.

00:08:15.160 I'm going to be up.

00:08:16.040 Nah, sometimes it's just saying, hey, you know what?

00:08:17.860 Maybe if I find a way to just incorporate a little bit of intelligent running into my

00:08:22.780 program, I can, you know, keep going out and doing these things and say, Hey man, yeah, I gave it a

00:08:26.880 shot. Yeah. I felt good about it. And I think that's really, it doesn't have to be about pursuing

00:08:31.180 elite performance in these other things. Sometimes just saying like, yeah, I want to go out with the

00:08:35.220 family and do this. That sounds cool. I'm curious whenever you are dealing with clients who come

00:08:40.740 from, let's say just a strength background, what are the biggest challenges that they have in

00:08:46.580 starting like, okay, I'm going to start running five K's, you know, marathon. You know, I think

00:08:51.800 sometimes the one of the biggest challenges of course is body type because you know you typically

00:08:56.080 a lot of lifters not only do they tend to be a little bit bigger than the average runner

00:08:59.840 or a lot bigger than the average runner but you know a lot of lifters over time you've got a lot

00:09:04.800 of what i would call sort of functional tightness and functional different functional ranges of

00:09:09.860 motion as much as i hate that term you know a lot of lifters can be a little bit tighter in the hips

00:09:14.100 sometimes you know ankle mobility men up sometimes the things like uh running efficiency like quick

00:09:20.580 rebound. You know, a lot of things that are developed through plyometrics, some lifters

00:09:23.880 may not have. Some do, certainly. There are some lifters out there who take great pains to do this.

00:09:28.100 But there are a lot of things in your running mechanics that may be slightly off because you

00:09:32.340 spent so long in your career training in certain body positions, training certain muscles, training

00:09:37.820 for maximum strength. So I think a lot of lifters who go to running find running just extremely

00:09:42.500 uncomfortable at first. Their gait doesn't feel natural. Everything gets sore really, really

00:09:47.500 quickly. So one of the biggest things is just getting lifters kind of loose, limber, and feeling

00:09:52.580 good about running. And one of the great things is things like plyometrics are great for runners

00:09:58.140 of all levels. They will just make you a faster, more efficient runner, whatever you do. And a lot

00:10:02.340 of lifters take really well to plyometrics just because you're like, hey, you know, this is

00:10:06.560 explosive power. I can kind of vibe with this. And getting a lot of lifters just into running and

00:10:11.320 having them start doing some plyometrics, they go, oh, wow, you know, this is a good challenge.

00:10:14.860 i feel uncoordinated but i don't feel wildly out of my element and sure enough they immediately

00:10:19.480 start becoming better runners on top of it what about endurance athletes transferring over to

00:10:24.280 strength training like power lifting or something like that or even like power building combining

00:10:28.580 hypertrophy training with it yeah and i think one of the toughest things there is i think lifting

00:10:35.020 inherently it's not that it requires a greater pain tolerance by far i mean you know endurance

00:10:40.260 sports actually do require a greater pain tolerance slash threshold than lifting but

00:10:44.980 lifting is very much about momentary discomfort and second to second aggression being able to

00:10:51.960 attack a lift being able to get that level of dialed aggression and also to deal with that

00:10:57.000 level of kind of full body strain the increase in inter-adominal pressure the sudden axial loading

00:11:02.620 things like that a lot of endurance athletes it's not that they're worse at that than the average

00:11:07.480 person. It's just, I think it's very much a surprise. It's a very different way of approaching

00:11:13.120 exercise. It's a completely different mindset. You know, running is very much about managing

00:11:17.640 discomfort. Running is about breathing and getting in the zone and everything else. And for a lot of

00:11:21.800 them, lifting is an inherently straining activity. And I think getting into that mindset and saying,

00:11:27.780 all right, this is going to require a different way of thinking about exercise and a different

00:11:32.380 way of thinking about effort. That's one of the hardest things. Yeah. It's a different kind of

00:11:36.500 hurt. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like you said, it's a different type of exertion when you lift weights.

00:11:41.640 That's kind of it. Like you're under a heavy squat. You feel the bar on your back, pushing

00:11:45.040 on your neck. You know, you've got that intra-abdominal pressure. You got a little

00:11:48.760 to that strain in your knees and hips. Like it's a very different sort of thing. And you have to be,

00:11:52.660 you have to be at the mindset for it. Yeah. So I imagine a lot of people who

00:11:56.920 have a focus on one fitness modality. So if they're strength training, doing hypertrophy,

00:12:02.360 they probably have the mindset i want to see progress i want to be able to test myself

00:12:06.520 to see if i'm making progress and so for a strength athlete that's going to be every once

00:12:10.900 in a while you're going to do a one rep max lift all exertion to see okay how am i doing with my

00:12:15.940 strength with an endurance athlete i imagine the same thing they had this focus i want to get better

00:12:19.920 i want to be able to run longer faster and so they're going to do a marathon or 5k and try to

00:12:25.220 beat their best time with hybrid training you're training both of these things at the same time

00:12:30.760 strength and endurance. How do you test to see how you're doing? Are there challenges you set

00:12:37.300 up for yourself? Like, okay, I'm going to deadlift 600 pounds and then immediately afterwards go run

00:12:42.360 a marathon or is it, I mean, what does that look like for you? See, and that's, that's actually a

00:12:48.140 really, really good question because there is a whole subset of hybrid athletes are all about

00:12:51.820 the challenges and you know, there are all these numbered challenges and combinations of events

00:12:56.200 and everything else. And to me, I, you know, my view of hybrid training has always been,

00:12:59.980 yes, you're training for different sports, but you want to train to be capable at any moment.

00:13:04.700 And one of the ways that I personally do a lot of my endurance training, a lot of my lifting

00:13:09.060 training, I will, when I first put together my programmer, first start a new client or start a

00:13:14.160 training cycle, I have a pretty good idea what my one rep maxes are and kind of what my running

00:13:19.300 threshold is. You know, that lactate threshold slash a little bit like the 5K slash 10K pace,

00:13:25.260 somewhere in between there. And I know what those numbers are. And as I put together my program,

00:13:30.740 my workouts for the week or for the month, I'm thinking, okay, you know, this week I'm lifting

00:13:35.700 90% for X number on the bench press, and then 85% of my max for X number repetition, so on and so

00:13:41.920 forth. On the running, I'm going, okay, this week, this workout is three by 10 minutes at 97% of my

00:13:50.020 threshold. Okay, great. And so what I'll do is I'll run those for a couple of weeks. Then what

00:13:54.680 I do is I take that one rep max or threshold number and say, okay, these workouts are getting

00:13:59.100 easy. Let me recalculate all this based on a five pound increase in my one rep max or a five second

00:14:06.660 per mile improvement in my threshold pace. The next week or next two weeks, I run these new

00:14:12.260 numbers. Everything seems good. I'm still getting them done. I'll increase it again. So what happens

00:14:17.440 when you do this, you're not actually retesting your one rep max. What you're doing is you're

00:14:22.500 re-estimating your peak performance and seeing how all of this sub max training matches up to it.

00:14:28.980 And this doesn't sound very exciting, but it's sort of like the thing you realize when,

00:14:32.780 Hey, like I'm doing my old backs for, you know, for a triple. Now my max is clearly better. Or

00:14:38.120 yeah, you're like my, I'm doing, you know, 10 minute intervals at a pace where I could barely

00:14:42.920 run three minutes, you know, a couple months ago. A lot of this type of continuous reevaluation,

00:14:48.060 I'll tell people like set benchmarks for yourself, a specific run, a specific run course, a circuit,

00:14:55.000 a workout, you know, same thing with the lifting, no kind of how a triple feels and how five reps

00:15:00.640 feels. And as you progress, as things get easier, continue to challenge yourself by upping those,

00:15:07.260 you don't ever have to test your max. So that way, when you're finally ready for an event,

00:15:10.740 You can say, cool. All right. Well, you know, my threshold is now this, let me test it. There

00:15:15.720 should be no question in your mind, which you can hit. Now I know a lot of people like to say,

00:15:20.180 oh, well, I like getting benchmarks every couple of weeks, every couple of months. But my thing

00:15:23.620 with benchmarks is they always disrupt the training. And my whole thing is just keep

00:15:28.880 doing quality work as long as you can until you actually need to test it.

00:15:34.380 Yeah. Going for a benchmark does disrupt your training. I've seen that in my own strength

00:15:37.700 training, whenever I do like go for a one rep PR, I'm out for a couple of days. Yeah. The amount

00:15:43.120 of fatigue that you build up in just that one single exertion, it fries you. Yeah. And you

00:15:49.840 know, the thing is it can also be mentally tough because, you know, especially in a, in a hybrid

00:15:53.940 program. And one of the reasons I use this method is because fatigue always masks fitness. The

00:15:58.680 lifting you're doing might make some of your fast runs feel a little bit harder. And, you know,

00:16:02.720 the running you're doing might make your lifting feel a little bit more challenging. So I'm like,

00:16:05.800 Hey, if you're really going to take a test of benchmark and you've really got a peak for it,

00:16:10.920 or you've got a taper for it, you got to pretty much take a whole week off of training for both

00:16:15.180 to let yourself recover. So you can really test an honest benchmark and that gets disruptive.

00:16:20.500 So I'm like, Hey, always just have an ongoing sense of what your performance is. Check your

00:16:26.780 current performance against like benchmark workouts, you know, ones that are sub max,

00:16:31.480 but you know how you perform and you'll always be able to tell where you stand.

00:16:35.040 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.

00:17:02.680 yeah so i mean so it sounds like your approach to hybrid training i mean you can do the challenges

00:17:07.320 that are out there like i'm gonna one right max all the big barbell list and go run a marathon

00:17:11.820 but it sounds like your approach is i'm just gonna do this continuously so i'm like ready for

00:17:15.300 anything exactly exactly because you know the challenges are cool they capture the imagination

00:17:20.680 and all that but at the end of the day like if you're just training for two specific things like

00:17:25.420 that why do them both in one day that's not the best way to get the best performance of each one

00:17:29.760 like do them a couple of weeks apart, go register for a marathon and, you know, sign up for a

00:17:33.900 powerlifting meet three or four weeks later, if you really want to test them, you know, I'm like,

00:17:37.480 do, do something real with it. Because I think a lot of these challenges, you're intentionally

00:17:41.620 making it harder than it has to be by, uh, you know, kind of creating something arbitrary,

00:17:46.620 just be the best lifter you can be and be the best runner you can be and see where that ends up.

00:17:50.860 Well, do you do that? You know, if every year, do you kind of plan out, okay, I'm going to run

00:17:54.340 these events. And then I also want to do, you know, one or two meets a year. Like,

00:17:57.900 you schedule that out for yourself? Yeah, I actually haven't done the last couple of years.

00:18:01.980 I've just been dealing with a lot of their moving a couple of times in the last few years and all

00:18:06.800 that haven't really had the intent to doing it. But this next year, I've definitely got probably

00:18:10.960 planning a powerlifting meet sometime in the late summer, probably do an event in March running

00:18:16.740 events. So yeah, just planning out ones. And for me, the most important thing is my whole thought

00:18:21.600 with training for events, unless there's like one event you really wanted to do for years and years

00:18:25.760 and years. My whole thing is if you need to decide, if you think, okay, what should I train

00:18:30.060 for this year? Think about the kind of person and the kind of athlete and the kind of individual

00:18:35.520 that you'll become while training for it. And if that's what you want to be, then it's a good

00:18:39.700 event. You know, if I'm thinking, all right, I'm going to go train for this, uh, you know,

00:18:43.280 Ironman or whatever, what this is going to mean is, you know, like a lot, a lot of long weekends

00:18:47.740 of this. Here's how my body's going to feel. Here's how my schedule is going to feel. Here's

00:18:50.800 what I'm going to get good at. If I like the way that looks, then it's a good event to sign up

00:18:54.760 for. If I just want something to test myself and I don't like how that training is going to look,

00:18:59.700 then I just should keep training for fun until something comes along that's going to force me

00:19:05.180 to be more of the person that I want to be. I imagine another benefit of doing hybrid training

00:19:10.600 is that doing strength training will probably improve your endurance training and endurance

00:19:16.180 training will improve your strength training. Yeah, that was a huge thing. That was actually

00:19:20.460 going to be the third thing that I mentioned earlier. If you're a lifter, your recovery

00:19:25.240 between lifts and honestly, the amount of density and the amount of productive volume you could do

00:19:30.220 in a training session does have an aerobic component to it. Better aerobic engine, you're

00:19:34.520 going to recover faster between sets. The work later on in a session is going to be higher

00:19:38.660 quality. You could do more dense work, which means you can benefit from more productive work.

00:19:43.560 I tell the story a million times and I might even have told you the story before, but I've always

00:19:48.160 got the example of that one power lifter I worked with who, I mean, strong guy, like 400 kilo dead

00:19:53.720 lift, strong guy. And he was commenting that since he started doing more cardio, he hadn't done

00:19:58.680 cardio before. He was like, you know what, man, I realized today that when I wrap my knees for

00:20:03.840 squats, I'm not winded afterwards. And I think what, what really drove that home was here was

00:20:09.700 a lifter who was a great power lifter and something as simple as like wrapping his knees

00:20:14.360 or even like loading plates and all that was creating so much fatigue that he wasn't able

00:20:18.920 to lift at his potential. You give him a little bit more condition, a little bit cardiovascular

00:20:22.420 endurance, and suddenly his training sessions were more productive. He could do 10 to 15%

00:20:28.020 more productive work by the time he stood on that platform than he could before. That's just going

00:20:32.740 to make him a better lifter. And, you know, same thing on the running side, like, uh,

00:20:37.240 talking to one of my colleagues, he's a ultra marathon runner. And you said, you know what

00:20:40.980 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.

00:20:50.940 My quads didn't get torn up.

00:20:52.620 I felt like I still had power in my legs.

00:20:54.620 I felt like I could actually still accelerate and be a fast runner when I would normally just be shattered.

00:21:02.340 Yeah, that's awesome.

00:21:03.280 I've noticed that since our last conversation about zone two cardio, I started implementing

00:21:08.520 zone two cardio into my programming. So I get two hour long sessions in a week and I definitely

00:21:16.000 noticed an improvement in my strength training sessions. It's like not winded. I could get stuff

00:21:20.220 done. I didn't have to rest as long between sets and it was just a lot more productive.

00:21:25.620 Yeah. That's huge. Yeah. That's huge.

00:21:27.720 So let's talk about hybrid training, but I think to do that, let's talk about each component first.

00:21:32.760 So the strength and the endurance separately, and then we'll look at how you program the

00:21:37.000 two.

00:21:37.680 What does strength training look like for a hybrid athlete, the way you do it?

00:21:44.000 Yeah, so a lot of it is very, very dependent.

00:21:46.440 And my main thing with training, especially hybrid training, is training with intent and

00:21:50.780 realizing that you need to know exactly what you want to stimulate during a session in

00:21:56.220 order to put the session together.

00:21:57.520 So strength training, specifically training to get stronger, I always say strength is

00:22:01.540 a skill.

00:22:01.960 strength training is all about getting stronger at a specific movement so strength training can

00:22:08.020 be more than one thing strength training i you know i use a lot of conjugate cues before you

00:22:12.380 know i've talked about using max effort and dynamic effort and what i also now term skill effort so

00:22:18.000 strength training program for hybrid athlete if their goal is to get stronger in a specific

00:22:22.220 movement isn't just going in and doing like three sets of eight or three sets of ten or anything

00:22:26.500 else usually it's saying okay what aspect of strength in this movement do i want to train

00:22:31.240 today. Say I'm going into bench press. Do I want to do some heavy near max effort bench press? Do

00:22:36.320 I want to do some heavy near max effort and then do some speed work, velocity work, repetitions

00:22:41.060 where I'm focused on high bar speed, full recovery in between or skill work where I'm focused on

00:22:47.060 nothing but bracing and proper form and all that. The reason why I do that is because a workout like

00:22:52.200 that may be very minimally fatiguing. If somebody does dynamic effort slash skill work in their

00:22:57.480 lifting they're not exhausting themselves they're not exhausting their arms they're not reaching

00:23:01.600 muscular failure so strength training is very much about movement specific and working on

00:23:07.540 maximum force production rate of force production and skill in the movement so if you say all right

00:23:12.900 i'm putting together a strength program i'm a hybrid athlete i want to get a really strong

00:23:16.180 bench press and squat you're thinking okay do i need to do endless sets of chest press and endless

00:23:20.860 sets of leg press and no no let me start with my strength day or two days for the week here i'm

00:23:27.100 starting out with some max effort bench. I'm doing a couple of dynamic effort, drop down sets,

00:23:31.060 and that's it for the strength side of things. Maybe I'll then do some hypertrophy work after

00:23:36.140 that, which is a little bit different. That's, you know, picking more isolation movements or

00:23:40.020 externally brace movements, you know, things like machines and the like, and then doing a couple of

00:23:44.220 sets, you know, I abide by the effective reps model and, uh, you know, staying well shy of

00:23:50.100 failure on that. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

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00:28:26.480 And now back to the show.

00:28:28.540 Okay, so basically it sounds like what you're saying is that we shouldn't just go into the

00:28:32.200 gym and lift until we're dead tired.

00:28:33.680 so if your goal as a hybrid athlete is to get stronger on the main barbell lifts for example

00:28:39.020 you need to treat strength as a like a specific skill almost like practicing it as a sport so

00:28:44.620 for the main lifts you might have one workout where you're doing max effort on a lift let's

00:28:48.980 say for example the deadlift you might do a heavy set of three and then then the next workout where

00:28:54.480 you're where you deadlift you're going to do that dynamic effort stuff where the focus is on

00:28:58.200 velocity and the bar speed so you practice the movement in an efficient way and the weight's

00:29:03.800 going to be lower so you're not overly fatiguing yourself so that interferes with your endurance

00:29:08.680 training and even if your primary focus is strength you can always end the strength workout

00:29:12.680 with some hypertrophy work with some machines and dumbbells if you want but then you talk about in

00:29:17.280 the book if your strength isn't your primary goal as a hybrid athlete and you just want to be you

00:29:21.440 know a jacked runner you don't have to do the barbell lifts and you just focus on workouts

00:29:25.300 using machines and dumbbells at higher volume to stimulate hypertrophy. So with that strategy in

00:29:30.260 mind, whenever you're, let's say, programming a hybrid athlete for strength training,

00:29:35.020 what's the split looking like? Are you doing upper-lower split, full body? What does that

00:29:40.180 look like typically? Yeah, I do typically do upper-lower. I think really it comes down to

00:29:44.920 frequency. And for both strength and hypertrophy, stimulating a muscle every three days or so is

00:29:50.060 pretty close to ideal. So that's anywhere between two or three workouts per week. I find with full

00:29:54.920 body, it's a little bit harder to do because with that frequency, you have to do way too much in

00:29:59.240 every single session to hit everything kind of optimally. So I find that too upper, too lower.

00:30:04.460 And as a general, I try to make the emphasis of each one of the upper and each one of the lower

00:30:09.180 a little bit different. So they can be the same basic things. Like your upper could be a push

00:30:13.000 pull, but on one day, if this is just a generic athlete who just wants to get better at everything

00:30:17.600 one day, maybe more strength focused. So what we're doing is we're potentially doing heavier

00:30:21.800 weight fewer reps and then we're doing comparatively lightweight and velocity emphasis and then the

00:30:27.940 next day might be hypertrophy focused instead of the bench press we're going to do a machine

00:30:31.980 chest press or something similar and rather than heavy weight or lightweight quickly we're going

00:30:37.260 to do moderate weight and aim for like one to two reps in reserve you know something like that

00:30:42.940 gotcha how do you go about driving progressive overload in a hybrid strength program so my

00:30:50.120 perspective on progressive overload is that, and I'm sure you probably heard this a million times

00:30:55.200 already, but it's that progressive overload is typically misinterpreted by people as thinking

00:30:59.520 you have to add load every week. And, you know, my contention has always been with progressive

00:31:03.580 overload, that overload refers to the general physical principle that if a stimulus exceeds

00:31:10.060 the body's current capacity, the body will adapt to that stimulus. That's, that's the overload

00:31:15.500 principle. And progressive overload principle just means that as the body gets stronger and

00:31:20.840 fitter and better adapted, that stimulus needs to eventually increase in order to remain adequate

00:31:27.200 to trigger that adaptation. My old thing with progressive overload is let's just say the limits

00:31:32.020 of my potential are right now I can bench 225 for 10. And that to me is kind of the limit of

00:31:37.740 what I can do. So I bench 225 for 10 for three sets or whatever this week. Next week, do I have

00:31:42.380 to change that, there is almost a 0% chance I am now so strong one week later that 225 for 10 for

00:31:49.840 three sets doesn't still represent a great stimulus. So when I'm talking about progressive

00:31:54.600 overload for strength athletes on a hybrid program, remember how I said before, you know,

00:31:59.320 I kind of predict, go back and, you know, predict what their one rent max would be.

00:32:03.680 Let's just say I'm an athlete and I predict my max at 300 pounds and I say, okay,

00:32:08.280 and I can do 225 for 10. I'm just making up numbers right now. And let's just say, all right,

00:32:13.840 now I've done that for a couple of weeks. This still is feeling easy. Let me set my one rep max

00:32:19.360 to 305 and recalculate my percentages based on that. And I'm going to say, okay, well this week

00:32:25.760 I've got 230 for 10. Let me try that because that's the same percentage. 230 for 10 still

00:32:31.360 feels easy. Still feels good. There should be no question. So that's what I'll typically do

00:32:35.340 is say, as long as you're increasing that metric

00:32:39.240 that you're basing your workout percentages on,

00:32:42.580 if you're increasing it steadily,

00:32:43.780 like month to month, you're making progress.

00:32:46.500 It's a little bit the same thing was running

00:32:47.940 and we can talk about that a little bit later.

00:32:49.520 But again, my main thing is

00:32:51.440 as long as those underlying one rep max

00:32:55.100 or underlying peak performance metrics

00:32:56.880 that you're calculating your percentages go on,

00:32:59.180 as long as that's improving, you're improving.

00:33:01.240 It doesn't even have to be at a quick rate.

00:33:03.180 I mean, heck, a lot of lifters would be happy

00:33:04.860 to add 5% to one of their big three, you know, over the course of six months. So, you know,

00:33:10.840 in doing that, I make sure that, you know, every week you might rotate number of repetitions and,

00:33:16.400 you know, percentages and all that, but you're sort of circled around this benchmark that you're

00:33:20.880 increasing every couple of weeks. Yeah. I thought that was interesting. You mentioned that just now

00:33:25.400 and then you talked about this in the book, but with progressive overload with strength training

00:33:29.040 doesn't necessarily mean you have to increase the weight or the rep every single week. Yep.

00:33:33.920 Because I've fallen into that trap where it's like, okay, I got to get, if I did 225 on the

00:33:39.360 bench this week at five reps, then next week I got to do 230. I had this problem earlier this year

00:33:45.620 for about the past, I would say from September through November, I was on this tear. I was doing

00:33:53.160 5-3-1 with my strength training and I was making awesome progress. And I remember it got to the

00:33:58.840 point where towards the end of november i was getting pretty high with the weight on the big

00:34:04.000 lifts and i did my my max lifts for the the one rep thing on the of the five three one and i just

00:34:10.760 it wasted me i had to deload for like two or three weeks yeah because it just destroyed me because

00:34:16.560 every week i was trying to push further and further and further i mean i'll admit i enjoyed

00:34:20.680 it it was great oh yeah but the aftermath of it it's disrupted my training i'm finally getting

00:34:26.440 back to where okay i'm feeling better now i'm starting to build myself back up again and i

00:34:31.260 imagine as a hybrid athlete where you're combining endurance training and all this like you don't

00:34:35.760 want that to happen because it'll just not only disrupt your strength training but it's going to

00:34:39.020 disrupt your endurance training as well exactly you know because that's one of the things i've

00:34:43.300 always maintained is like let's say on any given day you're operating at 94 of your peak potential

00:34:49.160 for example like okay you know i'm going in i'm doing a pretty hard workout i think okay that's

00:34:53.680 a tough workout, it's probably not the hardest I could have pushed. It's hard. It's hard. Don't get

00:34:59.200 me wrong. But you know, like if I was really, if this was like the last workout of my life,

00:35:03.280 I probably could have pushed harder. Now, if I'm hell bent on making progress and I'm like,

00:35:07.900 I'm going to add five pounds to everything next week, I probably could. There's probably enough

00:35:11.960 buffer in there that I could probably push a little bit harder next week, even if my fitness

00:35:16.500 didn't improve. And I see this a lot with newer runners because they're like, all right, you know,

00:35:21.720 every week, I'm just going to try to go a little bit faster on this one course that I do. Now I'm

00:35:25.540 going to try to shave a couple seconds off this loop around my neighborhood. Chances are the main

00:35:29.440 reason they're able to do that so consistently is because they're pushing themselves closer and

00:35:33.600 closer and closer to their limit every single week. They're improving, yeah, but they're probably

00:35:39.080 improving at a slower rate than the numbers seem to be going up. And eventually they hit that limit,

00:35:44.620 they hit that ragged edge, and then they realize they're either not making progress or they start

00:35:48.580 doing things like on the lifting side you know they change their form they cut depth a little

00:35:53.120 bit their bench gets a little bit messier so they can maybe make progress another week or two in the

00:35:57.580 numbers and then they've really hit a wall every workout is a reculine effort everything has gotten

00:36:03.140 worse but they're like all right all right well you know i've hit some maxes i'm not saying that's

00:36:08.020 what you did but i'm saying this is this definitely happens all right let's shift more into endurance

00:36:12.500 talk about it specifically you train people who are running biking they're swimming all sorts of

00:36:17.860 different events, but with endurance, there's different philosophies on how you train for

00:36:22.480 endurance events. A lot of competing theories. One is, you know, most of your stuff just be

00:36:27.380 low intensity. Then maybe a bit is high intensity or no, that's not right. It needs to be medium

00:36:32.960 intensity. What's your approach to endurance training? So do you mind if I ramble a little

00:36:41.700 bit on this one? Because it's kind of, okay. It's, it's all, I mean, it's all over the place.

00:36:46.120 I read about it. I'm like, oh, man, I don't know if I want to run because it sounds complicated.

00:36:50.960 Yeah. And that's honestly one of the most fascinating things is how much of this stuff

00:36:53.460 has been almost misrepresented over the years. So if you look at Seiler's old research in 80-20

00:36:58.820 and all of that and how elite athletes do 80% easy work and 20% hard work, all of that stuff

00:37:05.140 was coming out at the same time as a lot of these coaches and researchers were still trying to define

00:37:09.740 what these zones meant. How do we define zone two? Is it a percentage of heart rate? Is it a

00:37:15.700 percentage of output? Is it that first ventilatory threshold where your rate of breathing picks up

00:37:21.420 and you can't breathe through your nose anymore? Like what is that light? And there are so many

00:37:25.380 different definitions. Same thing with like the zone three to zone four, like your lactate

00:37:30.540 threshold, onset of blood lactate accumulation, VT2, you know, 97, 92% of your VVO2 max. There

00:37:38.540 are so many different definitions for all these delineations that you're kind of like, okay,

00:37:42.340 how do we all even know what we're talking about here because when we analyze elite athlete

00:37:47.760 programs one of the things that really happened and i would say the 2000s is there was this idea

00:37:53.160 among a lot of american trainers especially that higher intensity stuff was king and just going for

00:37:59.800 slow easy jogs was not the way to get your best results personally i found a lot of discussions

00:38:04.880 at the time stem from the fact that if you're a trainer or you are training in a gym telling

00:38:11.080 somebody to go run for two hours is probably not the best way to control their progress.

00:38:14.800 Being able to sit with them through a 15 minute, you know, high intensity interval session

00:38:19.060 is a lot easier.

00:38:20.200 So there's a certain element of, uh, I would say a little bit of bias from some of these

00:38:25.380 governing bodies, at least in the West on what kind of training we have our athletes

00:38:29.340 do, or certainly our gym goers.

00:38:31.260 The other thing is if we get away from this idea that, you know, I think the most important

00:38:36.980 thing is high intensity stuff has its place and high intensity doesn't always mean sprinting high

00:38:43.640 intensity in a lot of these programs means what we would consider like high zone three slash low

00:38:48.680 zone four, like all this work around threshold. What it comes down to at the end of the day is

00:38:53.740 I consider high intensity and low intensity work the way I consider like protein and carbs in a

00:39:00.140 diet, high intensity work, elite athletes do high intensity work until they reach a limit. And then

00:39:06.060 everything else becomes zone two. And that's because they're training 14, 15, 16 hours a week,

00:39:11.760 and they can probably only handle two to three hours of high intensity work before they start

00:39:16.340 breaking down. So to get in all the work that their body can actually adapt to you, like low

00:39:21.720 intensity work is volume dependent. You can do lots of it. It still has positive heart benefits.

00:39:26.880 They're putting in 10 hours of zone two work per week, just because they've hit the limit on how

00:39:32.540 much high-intensity work they can do. It's like saying, okay, if I'm only going to eat 2,000

00:39:38.100 calories a day, I need to make sure I get at least 150 grams of protein. If I eat 7,000 calories a

00:39:44.040 day, I probably don't need to eat 500 grams a day of protein. I'm going to make up all the difference

00:39:49.920 in carbs. That's my approach to high-intensity versus low-intensity training. If you only have

00:39:55.820 45 50 60 minutes a week to do conditioning work it can probably all be higher intensity and that

00:40:02.720 means like you know close to your threshold that means like repeats at your 5k pace not like

00:40:08.740 sprints but you can probably do 45 minutes to an hour of that if you're doing two hours

00:40:14.100 and two hours of high intensity work per week is probably a lot for somebody who is not a huge

00:40:19.200 runner so maybe stick with that hour of high intensity and do an hour of zone two if you've

00:40:23.780 got six hours a week to train and you're like, Hey, I'm also a lifter, but I really, really want

00:40:28.740 to train for this marathon or whatever else you say, okay, an hour of high intensity work you can

00:40:33.460 do when you get a two hours of high intensity work, your lifting sessions start to suffer as

00:40:38.000 well. Cause that's just too much high intensity work on top of the lifting. So you as a hybrid

00:40:42.900 athlete may do an hour of high intensity and five hours of zone too. So my thing is that all of

00:40:49.040 these have their place. You get more bang for your buck with the high intensity, but you also hit a

00:40:53.560 limit on what you could do pretty quickly. So think about what you could do in terms of high

00:40:57.660 intensity. What's the maximum amount you could do and feel good about doing and have all the

00:41:02.800 recipes on too. So what is sort of a generic typical week look like of endurance training

00:41:09.040 for a generic hybrid athlete? Sure. So let's just take a generic hybrid athlete who says,

00:41:14.020 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

00:41:18.580 another 150 to 180 minutes, like, you know, three hours or less, two to three hours to do some

00:41:24.440 additional cardio. I'll typically say, all right, you know what, then you've got three to four days

00:41:29.320 of training. Let's just condense your conditioning into three workouts. You can do, let's say 45

00:41:35.580 minute high intensity intervals on Monday. You can maybe do a slightly shorter session on Wednesday

00:41:41.840 that can be 30 minutes of high intensity with a long zone to cool down. And then on the weekend,

00:41:47.320 you just do another hour and a half of zone two that's it i'll typically say like you know one

00:41:51.700 speed workout if you can handle it one peri threshold workout and one easy workout if you're

00:41:57.060 not into the speed workout you do one threshold workout and two zone two or two threshold workouts

00:42:02.460 and one zone two okay really simple yeah that doesn't seem too bad yeah it's yeah it's and

00:42:08.140 the thing is like those threshold workouts for people will say okay they say well what's a

00:42:11.200 threshold workout i say well what's your 5k pace add 30 seconds to that pace consider that your

00:42:17.420 threshold pace now just do three by eight minutes at that pace and you know jog or walk for two

00:42:24.180 minutes in between okay that's pretty easy great there you go there's your threshold workout that's

00:42:28.040 all you have to do that's 24 minutes of threshold work right there boom done yeah i've learned that

00:42:34.500 that high intensity doesn't have to be as hard as you think it is yeah so i started doing the

00:42:40.620 Norwegian four by four after a strength training session on the salt bike. And when I first started

00:42:46.920 doing it, I was just doing an all out sprint on this thing, just going as hard as I can.

00:42:51.540 And then I was like, Oh my gosh, four minutes. I can't even do this for like a minute. This is

00:42:57.020 crazy. And I have to do this four more times. This is insane. Um, and then I started reading

00:43:01.440 up about it. It's like, no, you dummy. Like it's not an all out sprint on these things. Like 0.99

00:43:04.740 you're going hard, but it's like 90% of your heart rate, which is not that hard. I mean,

00:43:10.440 it's hard, but not as hard as you think it would be. And I, once I started doing it like that,

00:43:14.280 I thought, okay, I could do this for four minutes. And that's exactly it. I always kind of liken it

00:43:19.640 to lifting where, yeah, if you go all out for four minutes, you can do it, but you're probably

00:43:24.040 not going to be able to do another quality interval like that. On the other hand, if you do it the way

00:43:28.560 you approach lifting, if you go to failure on your first set of lifting, you're going to get

00:43:32.340 one set done and the next couple of sets are going to be garbage. So I consider like hard

00:43:37.640 intervals to be like one rep in reserve to two reps in reserve like tough challenging you're

00:43:43.880 pushing yourself but you're leaving a little bit in the tank but so as i say like that's you know

00:43:47.820 that the exact same philosophy between the two is you should be running and lifting with one to two

00:43:53.160 reps in reserve on each set okay so if you're just a generic hybrid athlete you want to strength

00:43:58.360 train to do some endurance training at the same time so that maybe you could do a 5k anytime you

00:44:02.100 want it's going to be what did you say an hour of like low intensity zone two cardio that could be

00:44:07.780 just a slow jog or maybe a ruck or an incline treadmill and then you say 30 to 45 minutes of

00:44:13.720 high intensity work yeah and you know the way the way that can here comes the other debate does that

00:44:19.020 mean 30 to 40 minutes at high intensity or does that mean a 30 to 40 minute long high intensity

00:44:24.340 workout because if you're doing three by eight minutes intervals that's 24 minutes but you've

00:44:29.160 got a 10 minute warmup. You know, you got two minutes in between, you got a five minute

00:44:32.360 cool down. That's a 45 minute workout. I typically mean like 30 to 45 minutes, total high intensity.

00:44:38.240 So that could be two workouts. So Monday, do your three by eight minute intervals. Tuesday,

00:44:44.640 mix it up and go crazy. Do four by six minutes at that same pace. You know, both are 24 minutes

00:44:48.740 and you'll have a warmup and a cool down. And then later in the week, do your hour and a half

00:44:53.200 of zone two. You can do an incline walk. You can do a rock. You can do an easy run, whatever.

00:44:57.700 that's going to get you probably 95% of the results you could possibly ask for.

00:45:03.140 And then you mentioned this earlier when we were talking about how do you drive progress

00:45:06.540 with strength training, but what does that look like for endurance training?

00:45:10.720 So my favorite thing to do is just adjust that threshold.

00:45:14.300 Like my, my thing is say, okay, like if I am predicting that my threshold is like, you

00:45:20.160 know, let's say an eight 30 pace and I'm going to be doing three by eight minutes at an eight

00:45:25.400 pace. Every couple of weeks, I can just drop that by a second or two. That's all it takes.

00:45:31.480 Okay. Just a second or two. And I can even give myself a range. Usually I give myself a range

00:45:35.640 just to allow and I say, okay, I'm doing my thresholds between 820 and 840. And two weeks

00:45:42.000 later, I'm going to be doing it between 818 and 838. And that way I let myself, I give myself a

00:45:47.300 little bit of flexibility week to week. But after two months, my slowest allowable pace is going to

00:45:53.260 be the same as my fastest allowable pace was back then. So I'm still going to get that steady

00:45:59.000 improvement. I'm going to give myself room to kind of fluctuate. If I find myself continuously

00:46:03.900 really struggling to hit the slowest end, I know something was wrong, but that's really all it is.

00:46:08.680 And you're just setting those kind of guardrails on your performance. And that is more than enough

00:46:13.640 to continue to make progress. All right. So that doesn't sound that complicated. No, no. And it

00:46:18.380 could get really technical. Like if I'm doing a complicated program with somebody, I'm adjusting

00:46:21.580 their threshold. I'm looking at all their percentages across, you know, 14 different

00:46:25.600 types of workouts and all of that. But fundamentally, you can make it really, really

00:46:29.640 simple. All right. So let's talk about combining the two, strength and endurance training. And one

00:46:34.300 of the challenges of hybrid training is that you have to be a bit more thoughtful about managing

00:46:39.940 fatigue. So if you're training hard with weights, well, you might not have that oomph you need for

00:46:46.060 your endurance work. Or, you know, the same goes for endurance. If you're training hard, you're

00:46:49.660 running hard and then the weight room and you're like, oh man, I can't get this squat.

00:46:54.000 I loved your section on fatigue because you really get into the weeds of it. We don't have to do that

00:46:58.040 here. But what I thought was interesting is a lot of people, when they think about fatigue,

00:47:01.940 they think there's just one kind of fatigue, but you described there are two main types of fatigue

00:47:06.620 you have to think about as a hybrid athlete. What are those two types of fatigue?

00:47:10.960 So I think we're talking about peripheral versus kind of central and that whole thing.

00:47:15.080 Yeah. So this is really, really interesting. So peripheral fatigue is the fatigue that we all

00:47:18.440 really know about. Sore muscles, you just train legs, you know, you pretty much can't sit down

00:47:23.880 on the toilet going down the stairs, sucks, like all of that. Peripheral fatigue, we're pretty

00:47:27.260 familiar with. And we're pretty familiar, I think, with how peripheral fatigue is going to affect us

00:47:32.020 workout to workout. I just go hammer legs, my sprint workout or my speed workout is going to

00:47:37.020 be garbage. And if I work legs really hard on Friday and trash them, even my like incline ruck

00:47:43.380 on the treadmill is going to feel awful. So we know that's peripheral fatigue. And that's

00:47:47.860 actually the slightly easier one to manage because you go, all right, all I need to do

00:47:52.140 to manage peripheral fatigue is think, if I do this workout today, is this going to hurt my

00:47:57.700 ability not to do the workout tomorrow, but to hit the target objective tomorrow to trigger the

00:48:04.040 appropriate stress? That's the big thing. So am I going to be able to do tomorrow's workout to a

00:48:10.020 level that's going to still force my body to adapt. And that's a pretty low bar actually,

00:48:14.620 because if you're like, okay, yeah, I'm going to, if I, this, this leg workout is going to hit me

00:48:19.700 so hard that I'm probably not going to be able to do all my intervals tomorrow. Well, then probably

00:48:23.840 I should consider rearranging things. If you're like, yeah, I'm going to do all my intervals.

00:48:27.720 They're just going to be really tough. That's fine. Leave them there. So that's peripheral fatigue.

00:48:32.180 The harder one to manage is central fatigue. And central fatigue is so much more about

00:48:37.680 understanding the impact that long-term recovery and the adaptation process has on your actual

00:48:44.200 body's ability to do work. But tell us more about central fatigue. So what is it exactly?

00:48:49.400 Yeah. So central fatigue is actually much more neurological. So the body has a lot of feedback

00:48:54.020 mechanisms. The body has a lot of protective mechanisms. I don't know if anyone's ever heard

00:48:57.800 of Noakes' central governor who's listening here. I'm sure you have, but that was Noakes' whole

00:49:02.320 idea that there's a portion of the brain that limits performance to keep the body safe and

00:49:09.060 that's if you run too hard if you're running at your limit what your brain is doing is telling

00:49:13.500 your muscles okay let's turn down the power a little bit we're running out of energy stores

00:49:18.140 the muscles are accruing too much damage we can't sustain this we're actually going to turn down

00:49:23.640 the maximum throttle we're going to put a brick under the gas pedal here and stop the body from

00:49:29.220 injuring itself. So what's interesting is there's actually a good amount of merit to that, even if

00:49:33.260 there's no central governor. But the nerves, a lot of the sensory nerves and muscles, if they are

00:49:38.860 overly stimulated, they actually can reduce the amount of force and contraptility that the brain

00:49:45.480 can apply to the muscles. And so this is actually something that is actually really notable when

00:49:50.060 you're doing things like recovering from injury. If something feels painful, if you feel pain in

00:49:54.660 a muscle or around a joint or anything else, that pain signal itself actually turns down

00:49:59.980 the output from your motor cortex, from your brain.

00:50:03.240 When you've just done a hard workout, when you're recovering and when your body is sending

00:50:07.720 out all those pro-inflammatory compounds to, you know, break down old tissue, rebuild new

00:50:12.080 tissue and everything else, those pro-inflammatory compounds, even if you don't feel the discomfort

00:50:16.500 because, you know, your brain may not even be registering the discomfort, those nerves

00:50:20.800 are still picking up on the damage, on the inflammation.

00:50:23.660 they're still sending that signal to your brain to reduce its power and what's interesting is that

00:50:30.080 again you may not even feel it so you may go for like let's just say you go for a really long run

00:50:33.820 over the weekend but it's all zone two and you're going yeah you know what my legs are a little bit

00:50:37.340 tight but i've eaten plenty i feel great what you're not feeling is the massive amount of

00:50:41.940 inflammation in your legs at that point and the potent signal that's sending to your brain for

00:50:45.920 the next 48 hours to not produce maximum force in almost any muscle group so if you've got a large

00:50:52.460 amount of central fatigue from either a very long endurance workout, a very high repetition

00:50:58.800 lifting workouts, a lifting workout with a lot of eccentrics, a running workout with a lot of

00:51:04.000 eccentrics, even like hard sprints or downhill sprints or anything else, you may find that for

00:51:08.560 the next 48 hours, your peak strength is limited. What that can mean is if you're doing anything on

00:51:13.800 those days that requires a lot of perfect coordination, you're doing Olympic lifts,

00:51:17.740 you're doing velocity-based work you're doing anything like that you're probably going to

00:51:22.960 suffer and your max effort work is going to suffer too so it's important to consider when you're

00:51:27.820 looking at central fatigue you're thinking okay if i have a workout that is just i know this is

00:51:32.820 just causing a lot of wear and tear for the next 48 hours make sure that you're not scheduling

00:51:37.800 anything that requires maximum force output like hey okay cool if i run long on the weekends then

00:51:44.060 i am not going to start out my week with my quote-unquote strength training i'm just going

00:51:48.160 to do a couple of hypertrophy days because hypertrophy days it's not as important i build

00:51:52.280 coordination it's not no i'm just doing repetitions i'm going to do all my explosive strength skill

00:51:57.880 proficiency work later in the week when i have less central fatigue and if you did like a one

00:52:03.100 rep max a heavy lift session like you wouldn't want to do sprint work for your cardio the next

00:52:08.260 day possibly yeah exactly because there's also a huge amount of like neurological psychological

00:52:12.980 fatigue from that kind of stuff as well you do a heavy one rem max that is a lot of trauma that is

00:52:17.320 a lot of a lot of resources your brain and body are expending at that moment so it is it's very

00:52:23.120 much saying okay even if mentally and physically i don't feel that bad i have to take into account

00:52:28.940 that there are probably other factors there that are reducing my performance that i can't see

00:52:32.880 and this goes back to that idea that you said fatigue mask fitness right i think people have

00:52:38.400 experienced that whenever i've had this happen to me in fact this happened to me a couple about a

00:52:42.520 month ago. So I did a really heavy deadlift. I think it was 585, 575 for a single rep. And then

00:52:50.720 the next week I was scheduled to do five reps at some other weight. I think it was like 475,

00:52:58.000 485. I can't remember what it was, but I couldn't even get the bar off the ground

00:53:01.540 because what had happened, because not only had I done a single rep max on that deadlift,

00:53:06.280 but I'd done like a bench press and then a shoulder press. And so I imagine I just kind

00:53:10.560 of fried my CNS and my CNS is like, no, you're not doing this.

00:53:14.260 You need to take a break.

00:53:15.780 And it's fascinating because one of the things that can happen is when you do a one rep max,

00:53:19.440 I guarantee nobody's form is perfect.

00:53:21.620 And that doesn't mean that they're injuring themselves, but there could be so many microscopic

00:53:26.760 areas where certain muscle groups have just been overtaxed.

00:53:29.980 Certain joints have been overtaxed.

00:53:31.240 Your body at that point is probably dealing with a thousand tiny quote unquote, you know,

00:53:36.940 micro injuries at that point.

00:53:38.920 And you may not even feel it.

00:53:40.560 But then the next time you go to lift, as soon as you pick up the bar, all of those

00:53:44.700 little micro injuries and everything else are sending these pain signals to your brain.

00:53:48.800 And what's happening is that that initial spike of power that you're used to to get

00:53:52.640 that bar moving, it's just not there.

00:53:55.300 Yeah.

00:53:55.740 So you pull and you're like, yeah.

00:53:57.180 Well, I was going to say, that's what was crazy.

00:53:58.500 So when I did that, when I went into that five rep on the deadlift, I was like, I'm

00:54:02.540 feeling good.

00:54:03.320 I'm awesome.

00:54:03.920 And I get the bar.

00:54:04.860 I'm like, and I just bent the bar.

00:54:06.920 I'm like, no, it's not happening.

00:54:08.440 It's yeah.

00:54:09.100 It's crazy how that happens too.

00:54:10.220 And that's, 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? There's, 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.

00:54:37.600 And it's all just kind of subconscious and it's just that, that lack of central drive and it's

00:54:43.600 killer and it can be so discouraging. And that's why I'm like, the more aware you are of central

00:54:48.360 fatigue, the less likely you are to make really bad training decisions. If you have a single bad

00:54:53.980 session. All right. So knowing this idea of central fatigue and peripheral fatigue tells like, how do

00:54:58.820 you, I mean, we kind of talked about a little bit, let's get more into detail and kind of lay it out

00:55:01.860 clearly for people. How do you program strength and endurance work so they don't interfere with

00:55:06.360 the training of the other. Yeah. So the main thing is, like I said, it's, there's a little

00:55:11.300 bit of this consolidation of stressors approach that I talk about in the book. Consolidation

00:55:14.920 of stressors is basically saying the way I think about it is a little bit of what I just talked

00:55:19.220 about. Like if I do this workout today, what training stimuli can I still trigger if I'm

00:55:25.720 still recovering from this workout? So if I do a really long run today, if I'm looking at my

00:55:30.220 program and go really long run on Sunday, what lifting sessions can I still do on Monday and

00:55:35.100 Tuesday that I know I can benefit from. That's probably going to be hypertrophy work. And so

00:55:39.660 I'm going, okay, so weekends I have my long run, Monday and Tuesday are my upper and lower body

00:55:44.660 hypertrophy days. Okay, cool. Well, if I do a lower body hypertrophy session, I'm probably

00:55:49.740 not going to be able to do some like explosive, uh, explosive running afterwards. So I do my

00:55:56.340 long run Sunday. Do I want to do upper body on Monday and then lower body and a run on Tuesday?

00:56:03.480 no no no how about i do a run on sunday i could even say hey maybe i'll lift lower body on monday

00:56:09.920 sounds crazy right well no my legs are still probably going to be a little bit sore but i

00:56:14.240 can probably still do three sets of eight to ten on leg press with sore legs because that's just

00:56:19.980 that i am not relying on my legs feeling fresh to be able to trigger the target adaptation

00:56:24.640 then tuesday i do my upper body hypertrophy work and maybe even then maybe i can do a little bit

00:56:31.000 of tempo work or, you know, even an easy run. Then I do my speed work, my speed session on

00:56:36.320 Wednesday. Then I do now on Thursday, like, Hey, you know what? My legs recovered. Central fatigue

00:56:41.940 is nearly gone. I'm going to do my leg strength and explosive power workout on Thursday. There's

00:56:47.160 not a lot of central fatigue from that. So Friday I could do upper body strength and explosive work

00:56:51.880 and maybe my tempo run take Saturday off Sunday back to the long run. There you go. It seems almost

00:56:58.400 kind of counterintuitive because you're like, I'm doing legs on the, you know, but that's the way

00:57:02.120 you think about it. Yeah. That's interesting with hybrid training. Do you have your athletes,

00:57:07.740 you know, do deloads, like take breaks from the training or are you just kind of, no,

00:57:12.760 as long as things cruising and you're feeling good, you can keep going.

00:57:16.720 Yeah. Usually if I do a deload, it's because there's a burning need to do a deload is something

00:57:21.100 is actually really overreached. So one of the things I use to test for central fatigue is I'll

00:57:25.100 just do a basic broad jump test so monday or whatever day you know starts the week starts

00:57:29.900 the cycle have them do either five or seven broad jumps you know drop the highest and lowest average

00:57:34.120 the rest that's a pretty good description of how well their muscular strength and maximum force

00:57:39.060 production is going also check their resting heart rate things like that all of that seems good i

00:57:43.340 think okay great you know they're they're still recovering well if they get pretty poor performance

00:57:48.260 the rest of the week i tend to sort of reduce everything reduce the intensity of everything by

00:57:52.880 about 10%. It's not a full deload, but it's a little bit of this. If your program is well

00:57:58.280 constructed, you should never be pushing and blowing past their thresholds. You should be

00:58:02.840 just pushing on it and creating a little bit of pressure on their thresholds, on what they can

00:58:08.520 recover from. So if you back off 10%, you relieve that pressure, you give them a week of a little

00:58:13.140 bit easier, and they should be ready again to push the next week. One of the things I try to do,

00:58:18.060 especially by saying, be aware of central fatigue and things like that, is so you don't immediately

00:58:21.640 have to think, oh, wow, I'm smoked. Let me do a deload. If I have a day and like, I've had those

00:58:26.300 same things where a deadlift session, I come in and I'm warming up and I'm like, all right,

00:58:30.060 still a hundred pounds off my max. And I pull this thing and it feels like it's barely moving.

00:58:34.580 And I'm like, wow, this is a, I'm, I'm, I'm supposed to do a hundred pounds more than this.

00:58:38.420 And this thing is like 10 out of 10 effort. I know. Okay. You know what? I'm not going to quit.

00:58:43.340 I'm not going to give myself a deload. I'm just going to reduce the intensity of my accessories

00:58:47.040 by about 10%, have the next two or three lifting sessions be about 10% easier, maybe take one round

00:58:52.880 off my interval run tomorrow and see how I'm feeling by the weekend and retest weight for

00:58:57.920 next week. That's really all you need to do most of the time. Well, going back to that idea of like,

00:59:02.080 you can't really rely on your feelings, how you feel. I've had instances where I felt like

00:59:08.640 complete garbage. I was just tired, didn't sleep well. I was like, oh man, this gym session is 0.90

00:59:13.080 gonna suck and i go down there and i'm like man the bar is fast like i could pull this easily yeah

00:59:19.220 and i hit a pr yeah but then you have those moments like i said earlier it's like oh man i'm 0.94

00:59:23.480 feeling good i'm gonna go down there bar doesn't come off the floor and i think maybe those instances

00:59:28.020 where i was feeling not great like i'm feeling tired like i didn't have any central nervous

00:59:32.320 fatigue even though it felt like i did yep and so i was able to perform well yeah the human body's

00:59:37.200 weird it's it's really weird man like you like you said you could do all the tests to be like

00:59:40.800 well physically i'm performing great i feel like absolute garbage but physically i'm performing

00:59:45.660 great and you know we say well okay you should probably still consider taking it easy eventually

00:59:50.900 but it is true that you know kind of understanding all these things and they do they stop you from

00:59:56.640 making bad decisions they stop you from saying oh maybe i just need a whole week off right in reality

01:00:00.900 yeah your sleep's probably not great yeah you're probably tired yeah getting more sleep is a

01:00:05.160 priority but but you know that already it's not the training that's wearing you down it's everything

01:00:10.140 else. And the training is such a small part of everything that's stressing you out. Don't throw

01:00:14.600 the baby out with the bathwater. Keep the training, maybe reduce it by 5% or 10% and work on everything

01:00:20.120 else. And by the next week, you'll be right back to it. What does recovery look like for a hybrid

01:00:24.580 athlete? Any special considerations there? Honestly, the main thing I see for hybrid

01:00:30.280 athlete, you're talking to so many different potential stressors that you really want to

01:00:34.540 avoid a lot of the more aggressive types of recovery. And I talk a lot about how things

01:00:38.680 like ice baths and all that can be potentially maladaptive. You know, just because if you're a

01:00:43.960 hybrid athlete, you're relying so much on, you know, really rapid adaptation and adaptation

01:00:50.020 could be a little bit more subtle. So anything like ice baths or heavy use of NSAIDs or anything

01:00:54.420 like that, that could diminish the inflammation response, the pro-inflammatory response is going

01:00:59.020 to make you adapt more slowly. For a lot of individuals who do hybrid programs, I say really

01:01:04.280 the most important thing in recovery is first of all, compression devices are great. Focus on

01:01:10.380 things like your circulation, focus on things like not, you know, not letting your muscles get too

01:01:15.760 tight. I always say like the best thing for recovery, if you work a desk job, get up every

01:01:19.980 hour and walk for two to three minutes, whatever you're doing, keep moving a little bit, keep

01:01:25.220 steady caloric intakes. I am very, very much about if you're a hybrid athlete, never train

01:01:32.040 starved. And there are a lot of people who are things like advocates of faster training and so

01:01:35.880 on and so forth. I think you could do that a little bit. I think there's some positive research,

01:01:38.980 positive adaptations on that. But if you're training multiple modalities and you're always

01:01:43.000 dealing with background level of fatigue, avoiding a relative energy deficit is really important. So

01:01:48.660 yeah, little things, stay moving, keep moving, stay mobile, and honestly feed to fuel your workouts.

01:01:56.100 And since you generally have less recovery time between sessions, feeding to fuel your workouts

01:02:00.380 becomes really important. So what's the general time commitment for hybrid training, just for

01:02:04.360 a general athlete? I mean, is it possible for a busy dad to do this? Oh yeah, absolutely. You

01:02:10.200 know, cause if you're doing a conventional hybrid program, let's just say you're a busy dad. You're

01:02:14.000 like, well, you know what, man, I've got 45 minutes a day to devote to myself, maybe five

01:02:18.920 days a week and weekends. Maybe if I get up early, I can get in the 30 minute run before the family

01:02:23.440 gets going. That's plenty. You do one upper body workout. You know, you could do an upper body

01:02:28.920 hypertrophy, a lower body hypertrophy, and a full body strength workout. That's going to get you a

01:02:34.100 lot of good results. And then you say, I have three cardio sessions. One day I'm going to do,

01:02:38.800 you know, a 40 minute interval session. The next day I'm going to do a 30 minute interval session.

01:02:43.040 And then I'm going to try to do 40 minutes of zone two when I first wake up early on a Saturday,

01:02:47.040 or I'm going to do something like take the family for a walk and I'm going to put 55 pounds on my

01:02:52.140 back and whichever kid wants to be carried at that time. And boom, there we go. That is enough.

01:02:57.780 because right there, as long as you're training with intent, as long as you're like, man,

01:03:01.000 I'm not just doing curls for the sake of doing curls. I'm doing deliberate exercises here. I'm

01:03:05.560 deliberately training to get stronger. I'm focusing on quality of movement. I've got this conditioning

01:03:10.380 so I can do more density workouts in my training. You can get it done because that minimum effective

01:03:15.500 dose, as long as it's targeted, is probably less than you think. And then after that, once you get

01:03:20.680 that going, sign up for a 5K. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Challenge the family to one too. It's

01:03:26.060 even better. Well, Alex, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more

01:03:29.620 about the book and your work? Yeah. So my Instagram account is usually the best place

01:03:33.820 to find me. It's just alex.viata. The Complete Human Performance is my website and the book,

01:03:39.240 The Ultimate Hybrid Athlete is, I think it's pretty much everywhere. It's on Amazon. It's

01:03:43.080 on Barnes and Noble. There's a Kindle version. We should be able to find it. So those are probably

01:03:47.120 the best resources. Fantastic. Well, Alex Viata, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

01:03:50.620 Excellent, man. Thank you very much. My guest today was Alex Viata. He's the author of the

01:03:55.380 book, The Hybrid Athlete. It's available on amazon.com. You can learn more information about

01:03:58.940 his work at his website, completehumanperformance.com. Also check out our show notes at

01:04:02.680 aom.is slash hybridathlete, where you find links to resources when we delve deeper into this topic.

01:04:14.420 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. If you haven't done so already,

01:04:18.060 I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us your viewing up a podcast or Spotify.

01:04:21.440 It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing

01:04:25.360 the show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it.

01:04:28.640 As always, thank you for your continued support.

01:04:30.540 Until next time, this is Brett McKay.

01:04:31.880 Remind us how to listen to my podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - January 06, 2026

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

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