The Beginner’s Guide to Hybrid Athlete Training
So, you want to train as a hybrid athlete, but you’re not sure how to start.
This is a common place people find themselves in. Developing an effective hybrid program can be more complex than creating programs for other goals.
Nevertheless, I strongly argue that everyone needs some degree of “hybrid” in their training regimen; if you’ve read or watched any of my other work, you may have noticed this trend.
Thus, my goal with article is to lay out the fundamentals that beginners to hybrid training need to know so that you can hit the ground running (pun intended).
To be clear: this article is intended for people who are new to fitness overall and are interested in getting involved with hybrid training.
Furthermore, this article is written to be the last article you’ll need to read to get started with full confidence.
Table of contents
What actually is hybrid training?
Frequency: how many days per week should you train?
What should your strength training look like?
What should your endurance training look like?
Putting it all together
What actually is hybrid training?
As with most things that become buzz words, the true meaning of hybrid training has gotten fuzzy.
Without clearly defining the topic at hand, it would be impossible for this to be a productive article.
Alex viada, founder of Complete Human Performance and widely considered the inventor of the hybrid athlete, provides the best definition as it seems to me.
He claims that a hybrid athlete is someone who attempts to actively improve two disciplines of fitness that don’t directly support one another.
What does this mean?
Well, imagine someone who wants to do bodybuilding and powerlifting. These are both forms of strength training; just slightly different versions of it. Therefore, you can say that these would directly support one another.
Now take someone who wants to build muscle and improve their running. There’s plenty of indirect benefits these can have on one another, but there are no direct benefits.
One of the cool things about hybrid training is that it allows variety in your training over time. Some examples of what a hybrid athlete might do include:
Olympic weight lifting and 5k
Powerlifting and triathlon
General muscle building and distance running
Or any other similar combination
So, with that definition out of the way, let’s talk about how to get started with hybrid training as a beginner.
Frequency: how many days should you train per week?
A common misconception of hybrid training is that it requires super high training volumes, but this is not the case; especially for beginners.
If you’re new in this endeavor, your best bet is going to be two, three or four days of training per week.
If you decide on two or three days per week, then you would be best off by performing training sessions that are half strength/muscle focused and half conditioning focused.
In other words something to the likes of 20-30 minutes of strength training followed by 20-30 minutes of conditioning.
If you decide on four days per week, then you have a choice.
You could perform three sessions of combined strength + conditioning and one conditioning only session, or you could perform two strength sessions and two conditioning sessions.
Neither of these configurations of a four day per week schedule is better than the other; so it is largely up to your preference.
You especially have this flexibility to choose in the early stages of training.
So… how do you decide what you should do?
The answer is NOT to choose the most number of days you could get done on an ideal week.
Rather, it’s best to choose the number of days you could reasonably commit to on a busier week.
There’s a big advantage to be had in having some consistency and familiarity in your week to week training.
First, a component to your performance in any movement is your skill and proficiency with the movement. If you repeatedly perform the same (or similar) movements each week, then progressing the actual load or dose of the movement becomes easier.
Second, one of the biggest drivers of soreness is novelty. If you do different things every week, you’ll constantly be sorer than you need to be. Conversely, if you use familiarity to reduce soreness, then you’ll find yourself able to push harder in your training sessions.
By choosing the number of training days per week that you could commit to on a busier week, you provide yourself a higher guarantee of attaining these benefits of familiarity.
What should your strength training look like?
My recommendation to most people, but especially beginners, is to use full body workouts.
Simply put, full body workouts are ones in which the entirety of your body is trained.
This does not mean you need to hammer every body part in every training session. Rather, it means that all body parts receive some sort of stimulus in a session.
I find it almost impossible to give great advice without knowing more of your specific details.
Nevertheless, a framework that will work for most people reading this is the following:
1-2 upper body movements
1-2 lower body movements
1 core movement
1 accessory movement
Within this framework there are certain combinations that will be more productive than others.
An easy example is doing a upper body push and a pull instead of two upper body pushes.
So, the following are some more details into each of these four categories.
Upper body movements
As mentioned previously, viewing the upper body movements as pushes and pulls is an effective way to ensure you’re hitting multiple muscle groups.
Across the different workouts you do in a week, you should vary the angles in which you pull or push weight.
Also, you should aim to have at a pull and/or a push in each workout; not two of both categories.
Examples of pushing exercises:
Examples of pulling exercises:
Lower body movements
For the lower body, there are four categories of movement to note:
Squat (or lunge) patterns
Hinge (deadlift) patterns
Knee extension (leg extension)
Knee flexion (leg curl)
It can certainly get fancier than this, but getting fancy isn’t needed whilst in the beginner stage.
Your best bet would be to:
Have one workout where a squat pattern and leg curl are performed
Have one workout where a deadlift and leg extension are performed
[If you are performing three strength sessions a week] have a workout where another squat pattern and another hinge pattern (deadlift) are performed
Examples of squat patterns:
Examples of hinge patterns:
Examples of knee extension exercises:
Reverse nordics (click here for an easier version)
Examples of knee flexion exercises:
Core movements
Despite popular belief, the “core” is more than just your abdominals.
Most commonly, the core refers to the muscles that are responsible for moving the trunk.
Specifically:
Spinal flexion (your spine bending forward)
Spinal extension (your spine bending backward)
Lateral spinal flexion (your spine bending side ways)
Spinal rotation
There are a multitude of muscles that contribute to these movements. Thinking of training your core in regard to these four movements will ensure you train all of the relevant muscles.
Examples of training spinal flexion:
Examples of training spinal extension:
In the majority of cases, especially beginners, training spinal extension isn’t a worthwhile use of your time.
Movements such as deadlift patterns, squat patterns, overhead pressing, etc. will demand a good amount of spinal extension in order to be properly executed.
Thus, the spine extensors will be sufficiently trained there, and performing more direct work is unlikely to be the best use of your time.
Examples of training lateral flexion:
Examples of training spinal rotation:
Accessory movements
For our purposes, we may define “accessory movements” as any movement that does fit well into any of the aforementioned buckets.
This means that hundreds of different exercises may fit into this category. The primary rationale behind adding this category is to give you the freedom to work any other areas you desire.
This could entail training your arms, forearms, calves, hip flexors, or anything else you’d like.
Due to the extremely wide variety of paths this could take, I won’t go into detail on this for the purposes of this article.
How many sets of each should you do?
In your first week following a program, you could do just one hard set (after warm-ups) to get yourself into the swing of things.
On your second week, you could begin performing 2 hard sets per exercise. For many beginners, this is plenty. At least for the first 4-6 weeks.
So, what does a “hard set” mean?
Simply put, any set that required ~7-9/10 effort. Or, any set in which you still had 1-3 reps left in the tank.
Within this framework, it does not necessarily matter how many reps you perform. What matters is the level of effort.
This concept is true for beginners and advanced trainees alike. [source]
What should your endurance training look like?
Some of the fundamental differences between endurance and strength activities are the intensity and duration of movement.
In strength training, you perform work at an intensity that normally causes fatigue between ~15-30 seconds.
In endurance training, the work you perform may last anywhere from 10 minutes to any duration longer.
Another main difference is what you aspect of your body you are training.
With strength training, you are training the structural and mechanical capabilities of your body.
With endurance training, you’re building a better engine. You’re improving your body’s ability to turn oxygen and nutrients into fuel.
With this being the case, there are many different exercises you could choose to develop this aspect of your fitness:
Running
Swimming
Cycling
Rowing
AirDyne
SkiErgs
etc.
When you’re just getting started, it won’t matter too much which one you pick. What is more important is that you pick the modality that appeals the most to you.
As we previously mentioned, the biggest considerations here are duration and intensity.
A good starting point duration wise would be to choose one of the aforementioned modalities and perform continuous work for ~20-30 minutes.
These 20-30 minutes should be performed at a ~zone 2 intensity. Simply put, zone 2 can be described as the intensity in which you could still speak a 10-word sentence without gasping for air; but if you pushed any harder you would not be able to.
The concept of zone 2 can certainly get fancier, but there’s no need for such fanciness in the beginning stages. If you’re interested, though, here is an article explaining zone 2 more deeply.
Another consideration is that it is worthwhile sticking with the same modality of endurance training in all your workouts in the week.
There is a skill component to every exercise, and if you become skillful at one you’ll be better able to develop the physiological adaptations you’re after.
Putting it all together
Assuming we’re taking the structure of 20-30 minutes of strength training followed 20-30 minutes of endurance training, an example session could look like this:
Russian Twists superset Dumbbell Side Raises
20 minutes of rowing @ zone 2
This workout could be paired with:
Crunches superset with Calf Raises
20 minutes of rowing @ zone 2
This would vary greatly depending on your specific situation, but hopefully this gives you the idea.
If you are doing two workouts per week, you could perform these two workouts for 4-6 weeks and then change things up.
You might notice I didn’t include a warm up…
This does not mean I am recommending you don’t warm up.
Rather, I have another article that explains how to do so better.
To get it, click here.
Conclusion
If you are a beginner, then I think you are making the right choice by taking a hybrid approach.
No matter what your long term goals are, you need a base level of strength and endurance.
If you have any questions about what has been covered or any question left unanswered, I encourage you to comment below or email me directly at info@fitnesssimplified.org
