There are a lot of articles on mixing endurance training with lifting. Most of them suck. There are literally no good articles on combining endurance training with functional fitness style training. If you like endurance work, and hitting a metcon, you are pretty much out of luck, until now. This article is going to review the current body of research behind effective endurance programming, and discuss how to add it into a functional fitness program.
The purpose of this article is to help you understand the basic scientific principles that go into creating an effective endurance program for functional fitness athletes. This article will focus specifically on running as it is the most common endurance training method.
We will discuss the research behind endurance training and talk about how to integrate it into a coherent program. I will also be releasing my own program shortly, that will be based on these principles. Without further ado, let’s discuss the basics behind endurance programming, and more specifically running
Endurance Programming Principles
- Energy systems work concurrently not sequentially.
- Elite endurance athletes, and amateurs benefit from very different programming.
- Lower body strength and hypertrophy are affected by running.
- Upper body strength and size is not affected by running.
- Interval training is key for endurance improvement.
Energy Systems and Endurance Training
Many athletes are at least vaguely familiar with the concept of different energy systems in their body. There are three energy systems: Phosphagen (PCr), Glycolytic (anaerobic), Oxidative (aerobic). Phosphagen or phosphocreatine (PCr) is for short intense movements, lasting less than 10 seconds. The glycolytic system is anaerobic in nature, and generally lasts 10 seconds to 7 minutes. The oxidative system is aerobic, and something that can be maintained from 7 minutes on.
To really improve your performance you need to balance your energy systems for the work that is required. Obviously, weight lifters and sprinters can get away with relatively little aerobic capacity. Where as marathoners don’t need a highly developed PCr system. However, functional fitness athletes, cannot neglect any of these systems, and here’s why.
In this image we can see that even in the 400m sprint, an event lasting under one minute, the body is still providing your muscles with 43% of the required oxygen from the aerobic energy system. At 800m, two thirds of the oxygen is being supplied by the aerobic system. It only goes up from there.
As I stated above, your energy systems work concurrently not sequentially. Even though you will run out of PCr reserves in around 10 seconds, it is still providing some energy along with your anaerobic and aerobic energy systems. For functional fitness athletes, these systems switch off quickly. Take this WOD for example.
5 Rounds for Time
Run 400m
15 Deadlifts 225/155lbs
This WOD would be powered primarily by your aerobic energy system, with support from the PCr, and anaerobic systems. However, once you finished the run, and started on your deadlifts, your PCr system would immediately produce the majority of energy for the lifts. This type of energy system switching isn’t required in many (monostructural) sports, and is something that functional fitness athletes must train.
Professional and Amateur Programming
Mixing these two types of programs is one of the most common mistakes I see. I’ve done it, and you’ve done it. Here’s what I mean. You see something Matt Fraser does online, and you say you should try that, slightly modified of course. Unfortunately, just because top athletes are doing something doesn’t mean it is actually beneficial for amateurs.
Research indicates that top level endurance athletes benefit from polarized training methods, where most of their work is done at an easy pace, and about 10-15% is maximal effort. Consequently, there is a large body of evidence that shows that sprint interval training is most effective for less gifted athletes. In this style training up to 30% of their work is hard intervals at max effort.
These are somewhat broad generalizations, but there are some practical considerations here. A top level endurance athlete might run 100 miles or more per week. In their training they are extremely polarized, with less than 15 miles of hard intervals. If you or I tried running this much, we would injure ourselves, without a doubt. These top level athletes put in these miles because they already have very efficient energy systems, and they are actually developing their running economy.
Running economy is simply the speed at which you can run for a given amount of oxygen usage. There are numerous studies that show that easy paced running does improve running economy in athletes of all levels. Strength training also improves running economy as well, to a lesser extent
Creating an Endurance Program for Functional Athletes
When creating a running program for functional fitness, we need to determine our goals first. Are we working on our mile time or perhaps a marathon? Obviously, those two disparate goals require different training methods.
Remember, there will always be some trade offs when creating a program. You probably won’t PR your marathon time and set a new deadlift record! That doesn’t mean that you can’t keep your deadlift strength while improving your running.
If you want to learn all the details of creating your own custom program, then this ebook is for you!
Research indicates that a few hard sessions seems to be more beneficial than many smaller sessions throughout the week. This is good news for functional fitness athletes, as we don’t just have to worry about endurance training. We need to lift as well!
I reviewed one study that actually compared polarized training to functional fitness and endurance training combined. The combined training program did slightly worse than polarized training, but they spent two thirds less time training because they didn’t do many easy miles.
In that study, the combined group performed functional fitness WODs three days per week, and ran three days per week. It was a five days per week split with one day of WOD and run both. This is actually a very good split and one we will be modeling our program after with a few modifications.
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Functional Fitness and Running Template
Research indicates that a combination of training sessions best improves the running ability for functional fitness athletes. In my experience, a five day per week template is doable for hard training athletes. Four days per week is the minimum, and six days per week is an absolute maximum.
So far we have learned that all but the most gifted runners, need to focus their efforts on hard interval training, with slightly less emphasis on racking up huge mileage. We would also benefit from mixing our session up to ensure even energy system development. Check out the graphic below to see how we might structure such a program.
You can see that there are three pure running workouts, with one day of overlap. Each running workout has a different emphasis, but no energy system is completely neglected in any workout. Likewise, we have not forgotten our heavy lifting as we will see some running benefit from this, and some improvement in running economy specifically.
The real challenge of mixing an endurance protocol with functional fitness training is reducing the impact that running has on lower body strength, and hypertrophy. Check out this graphic for an overview on mixing strength training with cardio. If you want even more details read this article on the subject.
This infographic is written for lifters trying to maintain as much muscle and strength as possible, where as our goal with this program is to improve our endurance first, and then maintain muscle and strength. There is no way around slowing lower body gains with heavy endurance training.
Notice I say slowing gains, not eliminating them. You can still build an impressive physique, as well as strength, while working on your endurance. Remember you can be a doctor and a lawyer, but it is going to take longer!
Final Thoughts
This has already been a lengthy article so I will leave you with a few final thoughts. Every style of programming is an exercise in tradeoffs. You need to determine what you are willing to sacrifice to attain your goals. It is crucially important that you think of reaching your goals in a serial fashion. Just like in school, you don’t start third grade thinking of what topic your PhD thesis will be on.
The art of programming is sequencing your goals so they feed most efficiently together, and allow you to reach your long term goals as soon as possible. This takes some time, but luckily I will be providing a program where I will provide a solid endurance oriented program for runners who also do functional fitness. Stay tuned for that, and get out there and start training!
If an endurance program isn’t for you right now, and you are more interested in gaining muscle mass then check out this ebook!
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Excellent article. I appreciate how there isn’t a magical way to get significantly better in all areas simultaneously. There are trade offs. I had never seen the Boullosa article. Thanks for sharing that.
Thanks for the kind words. Glad you liked it!