If you’re reading this then you’re looking for the ultimate hybrid athlete training split. You’re in luck. Researchers have finally realized that there are thousands of hybrid athletes, looking to increase their strength, and cardiovascular performance. Because of this, we’re finally starting to see some well thought out research that answers the most common questions that plague hybrid athletes. In this article we’ll review how to structure a research based hybrid training program, as well as the ideal training volumes for beginner, intermediate, and advanced hybrid athletes. Keep reading for all the details.
Before we get to the details of designing the ultimate hybrid athlete training split, we first need to define what a hybrid athlete is. After all, that term can mean many different things to many different people. This is the official definition that I use for athletes that follow the hybrid approach.
Hybrid Athlete Definition
Hybrid Athlete – athlete who seeks to improve their power output, across common movement patterns, in short, medium, and long time durations.
Like many things in life, this definition might seem overly simplistic. However, it’s concise for a reason. You must be able to clearly define your goals, in order to achieve them.
This simple definition accounts for the hybrid athletes necessity to build full body strength. Strength is a requisite for high power output in short time durations. It also accounts for the aerobic base training needed to increase Zone 2 power output in long durations. In short, it accounts for every type of training a hybrid athlete needs to build overall strength, muscle, and killer cardiovascular fitness.
Now that we have a simple definition of the hybrid athlete. Let’s review some key points that are becoming increasingly clear in recent hybrid training research.
The Hybrid Blueprint Research: Key Points
- Managing the Exercise Interference Effect is Critical
- Total Volume Distribution is the Foundation
- Specific Training Goals Require Different Volume Limitations
- Progressive Overload is Mandatory
- Aim for the Minimal Effective Dose
These are the core concepts that will allow you to organize a great hybrid athlete training plan. They are what I use to put together my hybrid training programs, and they’ve been quite successful. If you want to check out my most popular hybrid program you’ll find it below. You can also find more details on that plan here.
Now that we have a good definition, and some key concepts, let’s dig into this new research to see how we can better design the ultimate hybrid athlete training split.
Hybrid Athlete Training Split Research
Broadly speaking we know that all hybrid athletes will engage in some blend of training styles, between endurance training, and some form of strength training, or weight lifting. This raises many questions like how should we combine them for best results? How much training volume builds our overall power output?
I’ve structured this section to answer these common questions. I’ve also linked to the most recent research that will allow you to dive to a more granular level, than we’ll discuss here. Without further ado, let’s get to our first question.
How do you limit the “interference effect” when combining lifting and cardio?
If you’re new to hybrid training, the interference effect is the term used when one type of training interferes physiologically with improvements in the other type of training. Most commonly this is used to refer to impaired strength or muscle gain, when performing cardiovascular training.
Decades ago this was considered a serious phenomena, as research showed that high endurance training volume, paired with weight training, limited the amount of strength and muscle gained. While it’s reasonable to conclude that doing both types of traditional training limits your ability in both, it’s a little more nuanced than that.
Further research indicates that this interference effect is greatly reduced, or even eliminated when smart programming is implemented. This is contingent upon a number of factors, however, there are some good research backed guidelines that we can use to limit the interference effect.
Rules to Limit the Interference Effect
- Separate strength training from endurance workouts by 6-24 hours
- If performing both in the same gym session, lift first then cardio
- Upper body muscles are less effected by cardio training
- Hard lower body lifting is best kept 24 hours or more from hard endurance work
It’s important to highlight that these rules are designed to limit your endurance training’s effects on the full body lifts. They are not designed to increase you endurance training performance as fast as possible. As you’ll see, the further you read, hybrid training is all about picking your primary goal, and accepting some reduced efficiency in other specific areas.
Now let’s talk about how to combine cardio and strength training. If you like this kind of research based fitness content, then you should join our email list below. I’ll email you some free fitness guides, and you’ll get the latest articles sent just as soon as they’re released.
What is the best way to combine cardio and strength training?
This research review on optimizing concurrent training programs gives us some great advice for combining cardio and strength training in the weight room. As we saw in the section above, this is done to limit the interference effect. In this section we’ll cover how to combine these two training methods for your specific goals.
The general idea is that as the duration, frequency, and intensity of endurance training increases, you’re less able to improve in muscle mass and strength gain. Notice I don’t say, can’t improve at all.
The research shows that you start to see small interference effects with 2 sessions per week. You tend to get moderate effects at 3 sessions, and great effects after that. The infographic below illustrates this point.
As a practical matter, for athletes that want to maximize strength and hypertrophy, they should limit cardio to 2 sessions per week, with 30-45 minutes per session being ideal. You can do one Zone 2 session (long run), and one harder interval session. You could also start both sessions with Zone 2, and do a few hard intervals at the end. Either way, this is enough to maintain your cardiovascular performance.
If you’re prioritizing your endurance work then you need to limit your resistance training volume to the minimal effective dose. This research review highlights that you can maintain and even improve maximum strength one rep maxes with 1-3 hard sets of 6-12 reps, per week, for specific muscle groups.
This leaves you with 4-5 endurance training sessions per week to really build your engine. We’ll discuss the ideal mix of high heart rate intervals and Zone 2 work later on. Next, let’s cover how much you actually need to lift for muscle building and strength, as a hybrid athlete.
How much weight lifting volume do I need to build muscle and strength?
This is one area that even elite athletes and coaches mess up all the time. We’ve all done huge volume workout splits, that leave you sore for a week. This is counterproductive, and will certainly impact your ability to build strength, muscle, and endurance.
If you read my article on High Volume vs. Low Volume strength training you’ll know that there is quite a large range that athletes can benefit from. It’s clear that beginner and intermediate athletes need 40-60 hard reps per session, per muscle group. Moreover, they generally should hit these major muscle groups twice per week.
It’s also clear that more experienced athletes can benefit from up to 30+ sets per muscle group per week. It’s important to note that this for pure resistance training athletes. Hybrid athletes would almost certainly be overtrained at these very high training volumes.
As a coach, I recommend new athletes aim for 40 hard reps per muscle group per week. This can be done in one session or two sessions for each muscle group. Intermediates should aim for the 60 rep mark, done across two strength training sessions per week.
Advanced hybrid athletes can go above 60 reps per muscle group, with a practical ceiling of around 100 hard reps per session. Of note, this is for advanced athletes looking to build muscle mass primarily. Do not do 100 reps at 80% plus of your one rep max! Check out this chart below for more info on strength specific lifting volume.
For hybrid athletes that really want to prioritize strength, you should use this chart I made based off of Soviet weight lifting coach Alexander Prilepin’s research. The percentages are of your one rep max, and the number of sets are listed in each section. The colored bars are the total reps within this range.
Since most strength training athletes spend their time at 80% or more of their one rep max, you can see that 20-30 reps at these levels is all you can realistically handle. With the ideal amount being towards the yellow and green side.
For an intermediate hybrid athlete looking to gain strength and then add some volume for mass you could do something simple like bench press 3×5 at 80%. This gives gives you 15 hard reps. You can then do 45 more hard reps at a lower volume for your shoulders, triceps, and chest. Something like 3×15 weighted dips is effective and time efficient.
Next we’ll cover how much endurance training volume is best for most hybrid athletes.
What is the ideal endurance training volume for a Hybrid Athlete?
As we alluded to above, this is highly goal dependent. If you’re training to maximize your endurance performance your training plan will look much different than if you’re training to maximize your muscle mass. In this section we’ll cover the range of endurance training volumes.
For hybrid athletes looking to do the minimum amount of endurance work, while focusing on their lifting, you can likely get away with less than a half an hour a week of hard work. Research shows that a 4×4 protocol done twice per week can increase VO2 max, and mitochondrial function.
Conversely, if you’re looking for maximum training volume you’re probably around 10-15 hours per week of pure endurance training. Of note 80% of that is Zone 2 or below. That’s 12 hours of relatively easy training, with 3 hours of anaerobic work.
It’s important to note that this a realistic limit for a near professional endurance athlete. Hybrid athletes looking to maximize their training time are going to find the sweet spot at 10 hours or under. As a coach I generally don’t think you need that much training per week. You’re looking at marginal gains after 6 hours or so.
This means our practical training range is between 30 minutes of hard intervals, all the way 6-10 hours of Zone 2 plus training.
If you want a very challenging hybrid athlete program, based on this research then check this out. You can find more details about it here as well.
What is the best mix of Zone 2 and hard endurance interval training?
The important thing to remember when planning endurance training is the 80/20 rule. It states that 80 percent of your training should be Zone 2 or below (active recovery), with 20% being in Zones 3,4,and 5. As we saw above 30 minutes at Zone 5 in the 4×4 protocol is all the benefit you really need. While there is some evidence that really fit athletes can handle more hard intervals, that doesn’t mean you should.
This interesting study from MTI demonstrated that 3 hours of easy running per week was enough Zone 2 work to build mitochondrial density and function. If you’re new to the importance of Zone 2 training then check out this detailed guide.
I tend to think that 2-3 hours a week of Zone 2 work is ideal for most hybrid athletes. I like to layer functional fitness WODs on top of that, as it has a dual purpose of supporting muscle growth, and building stamina. On top of that, we should plan for 30 minutes of max effort work.
This means our training week might look like this: 3-4 lifting sessions per week (with WODs), 2 x 1 hour Zone 2 cardio sessions, 2 x 16 min high-intensity interval training HIIT sessions. This amount of volume is enough for wide variety of athletes, and fits into a normal schedule, leaving 1-2 rest days per week.
Now let’s wrap this hybrid athlete training split article up.
Hybrid Athlete Training Split: Final Thoughts
The most important thing I can relay to you is that a Hybrid athlete is always looking to cut away the non essential. You cannot focus on everything at once. I can’t tell you how many times someone messages me, asking how to combine two very high volume programs for the ultimate super duper hybrid athlete training program. I’m forced to tell them that it just doesn’t work that way. You need at least one full rest day per week after all!
Any professional athlete has their training season planned out. They focus on their weaknesses, and have months where the work towards very specific fitness goals. This is the way you need to go about your training.
Think of your training plan in years, and your specific goal in quarters. Three months is the perfect amount of time to really improve one facet of your hybrid fitness, while maintaining your overall performance in others.
Don’t forget to check out some of my hybrid athlete training programs to fast track your fitness, and drop your email below. Now get out there and get training.
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