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 explain all the details and nuance of creating top 1% hybrid training programs would involve an ocean of knowledge that would be impractical to include in one article.
As such, the aim of of this article is to lay out the basic components that apply to all hybrid programs.
#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?
NOTE: I do have an article explaining how to build general strength, muscle & endurance simultaneously. If interested, go here.
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.
As a final note on this, you don’t need to actually sign up for any races, events, or competitions.
Rather, my point in saying this is that you should have some specific directionality in your training.
Related: The Hybrid Triathlete: the Master Guide to Training
#2: Identify how many sessions per week your schedule allows
For hybrid training, there’s a specific reason why this is important.
It will determine whether or not you combine or separate your strength & endurance sessions.
If your schedule allows for 5-7 training days per week:
I recommend you separate your strength and endurance training.
If your schedule allows for 1-3 training days per week:
I recommend you combine your strength and endurance training.
If your schedule allows for 4 training days per week:
It could go either way.
If you know for a fact you will be able to make all 4 training days, then you should separate them.
If it’s possible that life will happen and you’ll have to miss a session here or there, you should combine them.
#3: Set your resistance training structure
In a hybrid program, the resistance training portion refers to any activities done to increase strength, power or muscle mass.
As far as what '“split” you use, I’d only recommend either an upper/lower body split or use full body workouts.
If you’ve read any of my work before, you’re probably aware that it doesn’t matter how you split up your workouts if the total weekly volume done is the same.
In other words, If you’re doing 10 sets of chest per week, it doesn’t really matter if those 10 sets are split up across 2 or 3 sessions. [source]
So, whether you choose an upper/lower split or full body workouts just comes down to the logistics of your schedule and how many sessions per week you have available to train.
Nevertheless, these two workout splits tend to make the most sense for hybrid athletes because they make fatigue much more predictable & easier to manage, which is half the battle of hybrid training.
#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
Volume of resistance training can be defined as # of sets per week that are taken close to failure.
For a set to be stimulating enough to yield results, it must be taken at least 3 reps shy of failure. [source]
For a muscle to experience enough of this stimulus to improve, you generally need ~6-15 sets per week depending on what your current fitness level is.
Furthermore, volume & intensity have an inverse relationship.
For instance, the higher volume you perform, the harder it will be to take each set to true failure & vice versa.
There is ongoing debate among experts as to what’s “optimal,” training to failure with lower volume or going 3 reps shy of failure with higher volume.
However, for hybrid athletes, the answer is clear; in my opinion.
Because we have an entire other fitness variable to improve, your time is best spent performing lower volume and higher intensity.
In general, it’s best to maximize the productiveness & efficiency of your time spent training as a hybrid athlete, which is what this strategy will do for you.
Plus, it often leads to less fatigue which will help maintain performance on your endurance sessions.
#5: Endurance exercise selection
In accordance with tip #1, you should pick a specific endurance event/measure 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.
#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, 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 intesnity is most commonly measured by heart rate, using the following points of measure:
Max heart rate = 208 - (0.7 * age)
zone 1 = 50-60% max HR
zone 2 = 60-70% max HR
zone 3 = 70-80% max HR
zone 4 = 80-90% max HR
zone 5 = 90-100% max HR
However, this measure of intensity is far from perfect.
Different heart rates will correspond to different measures of difficulty based on what modality you’re using (SkiErg, cycling, swimming, running, etc.). 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.
As a result, most people find it easier splitting their cardio into three subjective categories: easy work (zones 1-2), moderate work (zones 3-4), and hard work (zone 5).
For most goals, you’ll find the most benefit by doing 60-80% of your work at an easy intensity, and 20-40% of your work at a moderate to hard intensity.
Most of your cardiovascular gains will be made by accumulating higher volumes, which is what the easy work lets you do.
However, it’s much harder to progress the easy work if you never do any of the hard work.
The reason you keep the hard work to a minimum is that it is the most fatiguing type of exercise you’ll have in the week. Pushing the volume too hard here will limit the volume you can sustain elsewhere.
Conclusion
These 6 tips 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!
