The Hybrid Triathlete: The Master Guide to Training
Navigating triathlon training as a hybrid athlete can get tricky.
With three different disciplines of endurance, multiple muscle groups to train, and limited time in the week: it can seem impossible to sort out.
At the same time, triathlon can be a very alluring sport for this interested in hybrid training.
If you’re like most people who strive to be hybrid athletes, you’re probably someone who likes to dip their toes in a little bit of everything (pun intended).
Nevertheless, to be successful at hybrid triathlete training, you need a good strategy in place.
So, this article will lay out the best practices and principles you need to see good results.
To be clear: this article covers the simultaneous pursuit of triathlon + general muscle building.
This article is best suited to those of intermediate to advanced training age.
If you consider yourself more of a beginner, I recommend starting with the following:
Related: The Beginner’s Guide to Hybrid Athlete Training
That said, let’s start.
Table of contents
What you need to train each week
How many days per week should you train
What should your training routine (split) look like?
What should your strength training look like?
What should your plyometric training look like?
What should your anaerobic conditioning look like?
Triathlon specifics
Tapering
What you need to train each week:
Listed out, your training will consist of:
Swimming
Biking
Running
Strength training of all major muscle groups through a full range of motion
Anaerobic energy system development (high intensity conditioning)
Plyometric training
This can certainly seem like a lot to juggle, but there are certain aspects of good program writing that can make this seem less intimidating.
First, it will be in your best interest to utilize bricks in your training.
A “brick” characterizes a training session where you perform one modality within triathlon immediately after another.
The easiest example of this is performing a run right after finishing a bike.
Not only does this help to make your training more time efficient by training two disciplines in one session, but it makes your training more specific to what you’ll experience in a race.
The run in a triathlon is not done on fresh legs, so training your body to run when your legs are already a little tired from a bike ride is a good practice.
Second, the anaerobic conditioning, strength training, and plyometric training can also be grouped together in the same session if need be.
Anaerobic conditioning refers to conditioning in which you reach near fatigue within ~4 minutes or so. The way your body produces and utilizes energy here is different than in longer distance work; so it gets its own category of training. For more detail, click here.
Plyometric training is a form of training commonly used to improve running economy. In other words, it helps you become “springier” with each step. For more details, click here.
Furthermore, the amount of anaerobic conditioning and plyometric training you need to receive their benefits is very small.
So, it’s less about spending large amounts of time doing them, and more about programming them properly.
How many days per week do you need to train?
Because the sort of hybrid program we are talking about involves triathlon, I recommend training either 5, 6, or 7 days per week; with 6 or 7 days per week being better than 5.
4 days per week of training might be enough if you weren’t taking a hybrid approach, but for these goals it would be insufficient.
It is commonly said for events such as triathlon that you are there either to compete in the race or complete the race.
If your intention with triathlon is to complete the race alone, then whichever number of days you’d prefer is acceptable (5, 6, or 7).
If you desire to try to put up a good time- that is, not just complete the race but give it a high effort- then 5 days per week may be insufficient.
It’s worth noting that there is nothing better or worse about choosing whether or not you want to compete in the race or just complete the race.
Building the endurance to just complete a triathlon while building muscle mass is still a noteworthy accomplishment at the end of the day.
Nevertheless, bringing up the decision of either completing the race or competing in the race is important because it affects how you structure your training.
How long should the program last?
The answer to this varies depending on the distance your pursuing and your current level of fitness.
If we’re talking about a sprint triathlon, the minimum that I am going to recommend to you is 12 weeks of training and 2 weeks of tapering, 14 weeks total. A longer time horizon is usually best, though.
As a rule of thumb, increase the minimum number of training weeks the longer the distance you pursue or the lower your current cardiovascular fitness level.
What should your training routine (split) look like?
From a bird’s eye view, there are two principles to keep in mind for any hybrid triathlete program:
1) If possible, avoid training a muscle intensely two days in a row
Using the list above, “high intensity” work would involve strength training, anaerobic conditioning, and plyometric training.
“Low intensity” work involves any all long, slow, distance type of work; or really anything that doesn’t cause you to huff-and-puff.
In other words, you could perform an easy run or bike the day before or after a leg strength training workout; but you probably shouldn’t do high intensity interval running the day after or before you strength train your legs.
The same can be said about swimming. If it is low intensity swimming, you can do it the day before or after strength training your upper body. If it is a high intensity swim, you’d be best off allowing 48 hours of time in between.
2) Your program should progressively increase its endurance focus as race day approaches
If you are 16 weeks away from race day, your program might be half strength and half endurance focused; or even have more effort dedicated to strength training.
If you are 4-8 weeks out from race day, your program should have more effort dedicated to endurance.
Over the course of an entire program, your net effort might be about 50/50.
However, following this progressive increase in an endurance focus allows you to ensure it is at its peak come race day.
For example’s sake, a basic template for a 6 day routine could be the following:
Monday: plyometric training, full body strength, and anaerobic conditioning
Tuesday: 30 minute easy cycle + 30 minute easy treadmill run
Wednesday: full body strength
Thursday: 30 minute easy cycle + 30 minute easy swim
Friday: full body strength
Saturday: Outdoor run
Sunday: rest
As you approach race day, you could either turn Sunday into a low intensity conditioning day or you could turn the Wednesday full body strength session into an endurance day.
Neither is “correct,” it just depends on your preference and situation.
If you decide to follow a 5 day routine, you could perform three strength sessions + two endurance sessions when race day is far away.
As race day approaches, you could swap this and perform two strength sessions + three endurance sessions.
If you want to train 7 days per week throughout the entirety of your training program, a sample phased progression could look like the following:
Phase 1:
Monday: lower body strength
Tuesday: upper body strength
Wednesday: 20 minute easy cycle + 20 minute easy treadmill run + 20 minute easy swim
Thursday: lower body strength
Friday: upper body strength
Saturday: outdoor run
Sunday: 20 minute easy cycle + 20 minute easy treadmill run + 20 minute easy swim
Phase 2:
Monday: plyometric, full body strength, and anaerobic conditioning
Tuesday: 30 minute easy cycle + 30 minute easy treadmill run
Wednesday: full body strength
Thursday: 30 minute easy cycle + 30 minute easy swim
Friday: full body strength
Saturday: outdoor ride + outdoor run
Sunday: swim
Phase 3:
Monday: plyometric, full body strength, and anaerobic conditioning
Tuesday: 20 minute easy indoor cycle + 20 minute easy treadmill run + 20 minute easy swim
Wednesday: outdoor run
Thursday: full body strength
Friday: 20 minute easy indoor cycle + 20 minute easy treadmill run + 20 minute easy swim
Saturday: outdoor ride + outdoor run
Sunday: swim
It’s worth noting: 5-day or 6-day programs will be phased also; it was just easier to illustrate the differences between phases in a 7-day program by writing it all out.
What should your strength training look like?
A common mistake I see many people make is trying to make their strength training too specific to the endurance side of their training.
In other words, your strength training should not perfectly resemble running but with weight.
Truthfully, your strength training should not look too dissimilar to how it would look if you were not also endurance training.
You just need to orient it in a way that takes into account the fact that you are endurance training.
This section will cover the keys to designing the strength training portion of your program in line with this.
Strength training structure
With total weekly training volume equated, it makes little difference how you split up your strength workouts in a week. [source]
In other words, if you did all of your quadriceps volume in one day or spread out through three days in a week, you’d likely build the same amount of muscle long term.
However, this doesn’t mean there aren’t advantages or disadvantages to different training schedules.
Looking at the example schedules previously listed out, you’ll notice none of them included a “push/pull/legs” split or the traditional “bro” split.
One of the reasons for this is that life will happen throughout the course of a program.
There will be days where you need to miss a workout.
Imagine if you had a “chest” day in your program and that’s the workout you had to miss.
You would lose 100% of the volume for your chest for that week. Not good. You need more flexibility.
This is why full body workouts work best for most; although an upper/lower split can also be done if desired.
Another example of higher frequency is that your fatigue is better dispersed throughout the week.
For instance, it isn’t in your best interest to crush your legs by giving them all their weekly volume in a single session, as this may needlessly inhibit your training ability in subsequent days.
Exercise selection
When it comes to choosing exercises for building muscle, all are not created equal.
The most important point worth considering is how deep of a stretch an exercise can place your muscles in.
Numerous studies have now shown that training muscles at longer muscle lengths (more stretched positions) is superior to those that train your muscles at shorter muscle lengths (more contracted positions). [source, source]
The most obvious example of this is seated versus lying leg curls. In a volume-equated study, seated leg curls were shown to build more muscle than lying leg curls; because they stretch your hamstrings more through the rep. [source]
Another consideration on this front is being intentional about taking each rep you do through a full range of motion. Shying away from the stretched position will leave gains on the table.
This isn’t to say you should never use movements that have a more shortened-position emphasis, but a good rule-of-thumb is to make most of your exercises emphasize a more stretched position.
Another noteworthy benefit is that such exercises can double up as your mobility training.
Meaning: if you choose exercises that emphasize a stretched position and train with a full range of motion, you will not need to perform any mobility drills on top of what you are already doing.
Research has shown that strength training through full ranges of motion induces improvement in mobility and range of motion just as good, if not better, than stretching.
Volume & intensity
Another consideration is applying the “minimal dose” of strength training needed to make good progress; and training with high intensity within that small dose.
What does this mean?
It means doing the least number of sets per muscle per week in order to make good progress and taking those sets close to failure (1-3 reps shy of failure). [source]
For most people, this number is somewhere between 6-10 sets per muscle group per week.
For example’s sake, let’s say you’re performing three full body workouts per week and want to do 6 sets for your chest in a week.
You could do two sets flat dumbbell bench press in your Monday workout, two sets of incline dumbbell bench press in your Wednesday workout, and two sets of dips in your Friday workout.
Taking these sets to 1-3 reps shy of being physically incapable of doing more with good form (failure) would be appropriate.
To combine this with the previous recommendation, this is another good reason to prioritize movements that emphasize the stretched position of your muscles.
If you’re utilizing lower volume protocols, then it is in your advantage to choose the movements that give you the best bang for you buck.
Time management strategies
Even if you’re someone who loves to train, it’s worth utilizing techniques that allow you to accomplish more in less time.
At the end of the day, you don’t have unlimited time; and we have two fitness variables we’re trying to build to a high level.
The two time management strategies most worth considering are proper supersets and dropsets.
A superset is when you alternate back and forth between two movements that are either opposite to one another or have no overlapping muscles. [source]
The benefit here is that you can rest ~1:30 in between sets instead of ~3:00 between sets as you would need to for straight sets of an exercise.
The key here is alternating between movements that do not overlap.
For instance, a superset between lunges and seated leg curls would make sense; but a superset between bench press and push-ups would not.
Dropsets can also be a very effective tool in your tool belt, especially as a hybrid training deploying a low-volume, high-intensity strength training regimen. [source]
A typical structure is to perform reps on an exercise until muscular failure, reduce the load by ~30%, and then continue on performing reps.
There’s some evidence to say that this truly can give you the benefit of two sets in one.
What should your plyometric training look like?
Plyometric training is a form of exercise that is not given nearly enough attention; in my humble opinion.
If you are unsure what they are, read this article, as it explains more deeply than I will here.
My most common recommendation is to start 1-2 of your workouts in a week with 2-3 sets of a plyometric exercise.
The rationale behind this is that it is an attempt to gain most of the benefits to be had from them while allowing most of your training time to be left for strength training.
The most common plyometric exercises that I have clients perform are intensive pogos and repeated vertical jumps.
There are fancier variations of those two you can implement over time for further benefit; however, if you just focused on those you would still see notable benefits.
What should your anaerobic conditioning look like?
What determines if something will develop your anaerobic energy systems is not what the actual exercise is that you are doing.
Rather, what matters more is the intensity and duration of which the exercise is performed.
For the specific energy system that we are seeking to train here, you need to perform work in which you get near fatigue within ~1-4 minutes.
Now, the exact form this takes will vary depending on how far out you are from race day.
If you are 12 weeks out from race day, this might just be one all-out bout of work for 4 minutes at the end of one of your strength workouts.
If you are in the peaking phase of your program, you might dedicate an entire session to this where you perform high intensity intervals going in and out of this intensity. An example of that would be 2 minutes @ 8/10 effort, 2 minutes @ 4 /10 effort, repeated for 5-7 rounds.
In general, this is going to be the most fatiguing of all the training you do and require the most recover; so it’s generally best practice to only perform this once per week.
I mentioned previously that your exercise selection isn’t the most important consideration for anaerobic conditioning, but that doesn’t mean you can pick anything you want.
Weight training circuits, for example, would be a terrible choice because the high mechanical tension would inhibit your ability to sufficiently stress this energy system.
Instead, better options include:
AirDyne
Concept 2 Rowing
SkiErg
Running
Cycling
Swimming
Triathlon specifics
For the purposes of this article, we’ll only discuss the approaches to triathlon training specific to a hybrid program.
Program design for triathlon in general is a much deeper subject; one that would make this article needlessly long and I will save for future work.
Like I mentioned earlier in this article, you should consider bricks your best friend.
As a reminder, a brick is when you perform more than one modality of triathlon in a single session; usually immediately following one another.
An example would be performing a run immediately after an outdoor bike ride.
Not only will this help you to ensure that you can hit each portion of the race at least 2x/week, but it can make your training a bit more specific to what you will encounter in the real thing.
An easy way to view the types of training sessions you’ll perform is using the three following structures:
Zone 2 volume accumulation
Focus on increasing distance, irregardless of time to complete (distance focus)
Focus on completing a given distance in less time (speed focus)
Zone 2
Pretty much every good aerobic training program will have some session dedicated toward accumulating volume at zone 2.
For a full-depth breakdown of what zone 2 is, click here.
Zone 2 training entails performing steady-state work at a specific intensity.
Ideally, it’s purpose is for you to train right below 100% of your lactate threshold. In other words, right before the transition from aerobic work to anaerobic work.
To know with certainty what heart rate corresponds to zone 2 for you, you would need to perform a lactate threshold test and a maximum heart rate test.
If you are in the pursuit of an IronMan, doing so is probably in your best bet.
If you are pursuing shorter distances, there are two “good enough” strategies you can use to estimate zone 2.
The first is to simply take 60-70% of your age predicted maximum heart rate; usually using 220-your age to predict your max heart rate.
Another method is to use the talk test. In zone 2, you should be able to utter a 10-word sentence without completely gasping for air, but if you pushed any harder you would not be able to.
The idea behind zone 2 is that it is intense enough to elicit cardiovascular adaptation, but not so intense that it requires a great deal of recovery.
In most cases, volume is simply measured in terms of time spent training at zone 2.
You may progress this by increasing the duration of work you perform at zone 2 over time, but oftentimes doing so may not even be necessary. The reason for this is that the following to training types will require progression.
Distance focus, irregardless of time
As the name implies, the idea behind these sessions is increasing the distance covered; not paying attention to how long it takes you to complete the distance.
The utility of these sessions is improving tolerance for a certain distance before trying to improve performance at a distance.
For instance, imagine you are keen on doing an olympic distance triathlon, but you currently cannot run 6 miles straight; which certainly means you couldn’t do so after an 800 m swim and a 20 mile bike.
In week 1 of a training block you would perform however many miles you could comfortably perform.
Each week, you will progress the distance slightly until you reach your goal distance.
As you progress the distance each week, it is likely your pace will decrease slightly. For instance, if you ran 3 miles at a 9:00/mile pace one week, you might run 4 miles at a 10:00/mile pace the next week.
This style of training can also be done using bricks of training.
For instance, say one of your bricks in the week was an outdoor bike followed by an outdoor run.
You could increase the distance each week on the bike while maintaining the same distance on the run. After a few weeks, you could maintain the distance on the bike and increase the distance on the run.
Complete a given distance in a faster time (speed focus)
Using the previous training session example, imagine you built tolerance to whatever distance you were aiming at building tolerance to.
What you might do next is work on completing that distance in less time, without increasing distance.
For most people, this order tends to make the most sense. However, you can go back and forth between speed focus and distance focus; or have one of each sessions in a training block.
Similar to distance focused sessions, this can also be done in a brick.
Say your brick is an outdoor bike followed by an outdoor run.
Something you could do is work to increase the distance on the bike while leaving the run to be a distance focus. Once you reach a target speed, you could maintain that speed and apply a speed focus to the run portion.
How to utilize these types of trainings
Depending on your current fitness level, where you are in the program, and the overall program structure; the triathlon training portion of your program might look something like the following:
1-2 zone 2 sessions per week
One of the following configurations:
two distance focused sessions
one distance focused session and one speed focused session
two speed focused sessions
If you are far out from race day or have lower aerobic fitness, then you might err on the side of two zone 2 sessions instead of one each week.
Throughout the beginning and middle of your training program, distance focused sessions might make up the majority of your training.
Toward the end of your training program, speed focused sessions will likely begin to replace the distance focused sessions.
However, this is all highly variable depending on what distance of race you are pursuing. What a sprint triathlon calls for is vastly different than what an IronMan calls for.
Tapering
When you are doing any event, whether it’s a powerlifting meet or a triathlon, you need to taper.
As you perform your training program, you do not walk around at full preparedness, or full fitness in other words.
Tapering refers to a period of time after a training program but before race day in which you attempt to facilitate maximum recovery, maximum glycogen (carbohydrate) stores, and maximum fitness overall. [source]
From a training perspective, there are a few ways you can go about this.
One tactic that many use is to simply cut training volume by 50%. As you may imagine, half of your training volume would be much less fatiguing than 100% of it. Oftentimes this comes with complete cessation of training in the few days prior to the race. This is my preferred strategy due to its simplicity.
Another tactic is a progressive decline in volume, although the nature of this depends greatly on the distance at hand.
The duration of this decrease in training volume usually ends up being 1-2 weeks prior to race day.
From a dietary perspective, a key focus of a taper is to increase carbohydrate intake.
Again, the reason for this is for you to have completely full carbohydrate stores on race day.
A good target range, for most people, is somewhere between 6-12 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram body mass per day.
To reiterate: the importance of tapering cannot be understated.
It is a mandatory part of your hybrid triathlete training program.
Conclusion
I recognize that this article has great generality to it, but I hope it stimulated some helpful thought processes in you.
If you have any questions, I encourage you to comment below and I will answer at my earliest availability.
If you want your programming taken care of, consider inquiring about 1:1 coaching.
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