How to Create a Hybrid Training Program
If you’re a hybrid athlete or aspire to train like one, then knowing the basics of creating a hybrid training program is crucial.
It will allow you to create programs specific to your goals, and allow you to know whether a program is good or not if you outsource your programming to a coach.
To explain all the details and nuance of creating top 1%, “optimal” hybrid training programs would involve an ocean of knowledge that would be impractical to include in one article.
The purpose of this article is not to go super deep into any one avenue.
The aim of this article is to lay out some of the basic points you need to think about and get you going in the right direction.
I do offer a few articles that offer deeper dives into specific hybrid goals. If interested, here are some you may like:
I also have a number of articles that go deep into specific topics within hybrid programming. Some of my more popular ones include:
To stay updated on future work like these, and to get practical training & nutrition tips every week for free, consider joining my newsletter here.
#1: Get specific about what you’re training for
Training for “muscle and endurance” won’t be as effective.
Both of those can mean numerous different things.
For the hybrid athlete, getting specific is better than being general.
Are you training powerlifting? Olympic lifting? Hypertrophy (muscle growth)?
Are you training for a 5k? half marathon? triathlon?
Hyrox? Spartan race?
The nature of hybrid training is that you are already training two aspects of fitness that don’t directly support one another.
So, the more specific you can get into each one, the more effective you’re likely to be.
This doesn’t mean that you need to pick one discipline from each category and stick with it for the rest of your life.
Rather, just each individual program you write should be specific.
For instance, you could run a 16-week program where you train for a 10k run and for general muscle growth.
Afterwards, you could run a 16-week program where you train for a triathlon and powerlifting.
The time spent training for a 10k will benefit the triathlon training and the time spent building muscle will benefit the powerlifting, it just gets a bit messier when you try to combine all four (or more).
As a final note on this, you don’t need to actually sign up for any races, events, or competitions (although, doing so can be fun).
Rather, my point in saying this is that you should have some specific directionality in your training.
#2: Identify how many sessions per week your schedule allows
This is an important step in the creation of a program for any goal, but it often gets overlooked.
There are two different thought processes you should apply when thinking through this.
First, identify what the maximum number of sessions are per week that you can reasonably commit to; even on your busier weeks.
Then, identify the maximum number of sessions per weeks that you would be willing to do on a good week when the amount of time you can dedicate toward training is abundant.
Understand that these will yield different answers, which will have an impact on how you approach your programming.
For instance, let’s say that when life gets crazy you can commit to getting 5 sessions in per week, and when life isn’t crazy you can get 7 sessions in per week.
You could allocate your key movements & trainings to the 5 days that are guaranteed, and perform most of your accessory movements in the 2 extra sessions.
As I hope you can imagine, this could look like 1000 different things depending on your life, goals, etc.
Nevertheless, identifying how much time you can guarantee is available versus how much time will be available depending on the week is a crucial step in the process.
#3: Set your resistance training structure
In other words, this means deciding what your “split” is.
Resistance training is a term that should be used to encompass strength training, power training, plyometric training, etc.
There are many ways to split your resistance training up. Not all of which are appropriate for hybrid programs (in my opinion).
The first thing to know here is that if the total amount of work done for a muscle in a week is the same, it does not seem to matter greatly how many times per week it is trained. [1]
In other words, if you are doing 8 sets for your chest in a week, it does not seem to matter if that is split up into 1, 2, or 3 sessions throughout the week.
The point of me bringing this up is to say that you have a lot of freedom with how you structure things.
That said, for practical purposes, some structures work better than others.
In a true hybrid program, around half of your training won’t be strength training itself.
So, a split that is more flexible for when life happens is generally more conducive for long term results.
What does this mean in practice?
Splits such as your typical “bro” split (chest day, back day, etc.) or a push, pull, legs split typically isn’t ideal; in my opinion at least.
For instance, imagine you allocate all of your chest volume to one day (ie chest day). Say life happens (and life will happen) and you need to miss this session. In such an instance, you would have missed all of your weekly volume for chest that week.
For this reason, I would advise you to choose higher frequency splits instead.
The most common that I use with clients are upper body & lower body splits, full body workouts, or some mix between the two.
For example, say your plan called for three full body workouts in a week. Say each workout had 3 sets for chest, totalling 9 sets for the week.
Again, let’s say life happened and you had to miss a session. Therefore, your week consisted of 6 sets for chest instead of 9.
While 9 sets might promote better growth, 6 is still enough to elicit progress. [2] So, even though this may not be a common occurrence (depending on your lifestyle), you never end up really losing any time.
#4: Set your resistance training intensity & volume
Intensity of resistance training can be defined as how close to failure a set is taken
Failure = the point in which you can no longer physically perform any further reps
For instance, a set that is taken 1 rep shy of failure is more intense than a set taken 5 reps shy of failure
For a set to be stimulating enough to yield results, it must be taken at least 3 reps shy of failure. [3]
Typically, you’ll see the same gains by going 3 reps shy of failure than if you go all the way to failure.
This concept can be used to your advantage. Taking a set all the way to true failure is significantly more fatiguing than going just 2-3 reps shy.
This intensity target will ring true for strength training as well as hypertrophy training.
Volume is defined as the number of sets per week taken to this specific intensity.
Before we continue, it’s worth pointing out some notable differences between training for muscle growth (hypertrophy) and training for strength.
The first difference of note is the general mindset you should have for each. When training for muscle growth, you are training muscles. When training for strength, you are training movements.
The second difference of note is that there are significant volume differences between the two; where as strength training seems to require much less volume than hypertrophy training.
Now, I explain the new research on resistance training volume in greater detail here.
For now, I’ll give you the cliff-notes:
Strength gains can be seen with as little as 1 set per week. Strength gains improve with higher volume up to ~5 sets per week.
Hypertrophy gains can be seen with as little as 4 sets per week. Hypertrophy gains improve with higher volume up to ~30-40 sets per week. However, there is a great rate of diminishing return the higher volume you go.
With that said, you have another fitness variable you seek to increase and your time isn’t unlimited.
With strength training, this doesn’t seem to be a problem. For hypertrophy training, my recommendation is as follows.
Start on the low end or near the minimum effective dose. Something like 4-6 sets per muscle group per week.
Over time, slowly increase this number. Monitor how you feel in your training and day-to-day.
Eventually, you will experience noticeably small increase in growth despite doing more work; or you will reach a point where you simply are maxing out the time you have available.
This is where you can calibrate things to your specific needs.
As a quick side note: plyometric training, power training, and other forms of resistance training all require different approaches.
However, strength training will undoubtedly make up the majority of your training. Therefore, other forms of resistance training will be left out of this article.
#5: Endurance exercise selection
In accordance with tip #1, you should pick a specific endurance event/modality that you aim to train for.
You don’t need to sign up for a race, but there should be some specific direction to your training.
As such, the majority of the endurance exercise you do should be the specific modality you are training for.
If time allows, you’ll benefit from a minority of your training to be general, aerobic building work.
An example of this would be 30-60 minutes of zone 2 cardio on an assault bike. Or, this could be 20 minutes of incline treadmill walking followed by 20 minutes of easy swimming.
The idea here is to accumulate volume using a full-body, non-impact modality. Doing this will do wonders for developing your cardiovascular system specifically throughout your entire body, and may help to reduce risk of overuse injury.
If the endurance goal you selected was general aerobic development, then all of your endurance sessions may be similar to the one above.
#6: Set your endurance training volume and intensity
Endurance training volume can be defined as the total amount of work done per week.
How you define “work” varies greatly on the conditioning your doing and your overall endurance goal. If you’re talking about zone 2 cardio (described below), then you may measure work in terms of time. If you’re working to build up to a specific run distance, then you may measure work in terms of miles.
Endurance training intensity is most commonly measured by heart rate. However, heart-rate based training can be a tricky thing to get right.
Different heart rate zones and different maximum heart rates will correspond to different measures of difficulty based on what modality you’re using (SkiErg, cycling, swimming, running, etc.).
For instance, with running, your heart has to pump a high amount of blood to your lower AND upper body (your upper body works as a counter-balance in good running form).
In cycling, there is virtually zero upper body involvement, so your heart ONLY has to pump blood to the lower body.
As a result, the same intensity level felt by your legs will correspond to two different heart rates between these two exercises.
If you are cycling and you tried to get your heart rate to what a running zone 2 is, then you’ll smoke your legs when you did not mean to.
Plus, measuring your maximum heart rate based off of a formula is usually a bit off; you need a true max heart rate test to get an accurate measure.
What is my point in saying all of this?
Heart rate can be very useful when it’s used right. When it isn’t used right, it can be near useless.
Plus, simply using subjective effort as a guide is much more practical and often works just as well.
Different levels of subjective effort could be broken down into three categories: easy work (approx. 50-75% max HR), moderate work (approx. 75-85% max HR), and hard work (85-95% max HR).
Note: even if you only use subjective effort to guide your training, you should absolutely still track your heart rate over time. That is, your heart rate during training and at rest.
Much more can be said on the topic of heart-rate based training. To keep from delving into the weeds too much, I’ll end the discussion here.
For most endurance goals, a simple framework that will work for most people goes as follows:
approximately 50-75% of your training should be easy intensity
approximately 15-25% of your training should be moderate intensity
approximately 5-10% of your training should be high intensity
Again, these are not numbers you need to follow to a tee. Everyone and every goal is different.
What can be said with certainty is that each intensity (easy, moderate, or hard) is just as valuable as the other. There is significant overlap between training at each intensity, but there do also exist unique adaptations to each intensity. [4]
#7: Putting everything together
When it comes to creating hybrid programs, proper load & fatigue management is the name of the game.
To properly delve into this topic requires an article itself, and is beyond the scope of this particular article (I do have one in the works; to get updated as to when it is published, join my newsletter here).
However, I’ll give you some of the more practical bullet points that you can use today. [5]
A muscle should be given at least 48 hours in after it is trained intensely before it is trained intensely again
Being trained intensely could refer to high intensity conditioning, strength training, or power training
After performing any form of high intensity or max effort conditioning, you should wait 48 hours before doing any sort of intense training again
An example of this would be true high intensity interval training; such 2 minutes at 5/10 effort, 2 minutes at 10/10 effort, repeated 5x
This form of training is the most stressful to your system at large; which is why allowing yourself 48 hours before training anything intensely again is wise
short- to moderate-distance, low intensity training can be programmed wherever you want to program it
A short or moderate distance easy run can be done the day before or after a leg strength workout
A short or moderate distance easy swim can be done the day before or after an upper body strength workout
After long-distance endurance work, about 24 hours should be given to the system before training again
This sort of training tends to deplete fuel stores more than any other; giving yourself this time to replenish properly can help your performance long-term
Conclusion
These 7 steps encompass the basic tenets of almost all effective hybrid training programs.
There’s much more that can be covered, but that would require delving into specific strength & endurance goals.
If you’d like help with your hybrid programming, you are welcome to contact me at info@FitnessSimplified.org.
If you have any one-off questions, I encourage you to comment below!
