Hybrid Training - Hack Your Health and Fitness!

A new year, a new fitness trend. This one however, is one that should stick around! Hybrid training is indeed a hot topic, and for good reason. Since the inception of the fitness craze in the early 1970s (putting aside of course that there is evidence that humans have been engaged in fitness activities for over 4000 years), society has been led to believe that you must pick one form of exercise and dabbling in multiple forms is a recipe for failure. On the contrary, recent research and literature would indicate that this is simply not the case and in fact, engaging in multiple forms of exercise not only improves overall health and fitness but may even potentiate gains across all activities when done correctly. Still not a believer? Let me break down why getting in a morning jog won’t put your biceps in the proverbial catabolic danger zone and how you can utilize hybrid training to improve health, fitness, athletic performance and numerous other facets of your life! Here are three reasons you NEED to be doing a hybrid training protocol.

1. Endurance Training Enhances Muscle Gain

If you have been engaged in bodybuilding for any length time, you’re sure to have come across the longstanding dogma that taking part in various forms of endurance training will absolutely erode and negate potential muscle gain. Indeed, this makes sense in principle. Endurance training is inherently catabolic, that is, endurance training breaks down the body’s energy stores in order to sustain the activity. Because energy demands can be vastly higher during endurance training versus a weight training session, your body can tear through glycogen stores, then onto fat stores and finally breaking down muscle tissue, if necessary. As a bodybuilder or someone interested in enhancing muscle growth and tissue, this is BAD. Despite this, there are also several other processes occurring or that are activated by endurance activity.

A systematic review by Murach and Bagley (2016) 1 aimed to examine the existing literature related to concurrent resistance and endurance training to determine if an interference exists. The conclusion of this review was in fact, the existing literature does not seem to demonstrate that a negative interference exists and engaging in both types of activities may even augment muscle gain. You heard that correctly! Adding in additional cardio may even assist you in achieving your musclebound goals. This runs completely counter to the perpetuated belief that regularly engaging in endurance activity will have an inhibitory or negative impact on muscle growth.

I should note however, another systematic review conducted by Lundberg et al. (2022)2 took this concept a step further and investigated impacts of concurrent endurance and strength training (i.e. engaging within these activities within the same session) and found that this may have a small but measurable negative effect on muscle fiber hypertrophy. This effect was found to be particularly higher when running versus cycling.

Therefore, when designing a well-rounded training protocol, one would be wise to structure the program in a way that allows for a separation of endurance training and strength training, ideally on separate days. This allows for maximizing muscular growth while simultaneously reaping the benefits of cardiovascular training.

“BUT WHAT ABOUT ME, I TRAIN TWICE A DAY??” Hey, I get it! So do I. Luckily, you can still effectively engage in resistance and endurance training provided you adequately separate these sessions within the same day. A widely accepted degree of separation is roughly 6-hours between activity, which means you can safely get in a morning run, cycle, swim (pick your poison) and a lifting session in during the evening, or vice versa.

2. Reduced Rates of Injury & Improved Running Economy

This one is the kicker for me. Are you a runner who has been sidelined by an injury in the past? Multiple times? Want a simple intervention you can utilize to dramatically decrease your chances of injury in the future? Your answer lies in a well-designed resistance training program! A meta-analysis by Lauersen et al. (2014)2 investigated the effects of physical exercise interventions on the rates of sports-related injuries and the results were telling. Strength training proved to be a statistically relevant and highly effective means of reducing sports-related injuries in individuals across a wide array of populations. Similarly, proprioceptive training (i.e. training that improves our ability to sense movement and where our body is within our environment), had less significant but still modest effects on injury prevention. If you are unfamiliar with proprioceptive training, think activities that involve a great degree of balance and you are on the right track however, this is a topic for another time. Interestingly, stretching did not have a significant impact on reduced rates of injury although this is becoming relatively common knowledge within the fitness community; again, a topic for another time.

Furthermore, a review by Suc et al. (2022)4 determined that lower body resistance training effectively improved running economy (essentially, how efficient you are at running) and pointed to a reduction in the risk of various types of lower body injuries with a demand for more research in this regard in order for application to the general public.

The caveat with the above is that a strength training program should be designed in order to complement and enhance other types of activities if the goal is injury prevention. For example, if I am a runner, I would benefit mostly from a strength training program that strengthens the muscles, joints and ligaments that are primarily going to be used in running biomechanics. Similarly, if I am a baseball pitcher or a swimmer, I would benefit most from a program that strengthens different types of muscles than that of a runner. Strength training should be targeted towards the intended outcome.

Worthy of mentioning as well is that combining both resistance training and endurance, or other sport-related activities improperly can increase the risk of overtraining and thus, increase the risk of injury. We don’t want this. Therefore, a strength training program must be well-designed to complement our other physical activities and include periodization (i.e. manipulation of training variables such as sets, reps, intensity, days of training etc.) to avoid overtraining.

3. Burns a Ton of Calories

Also of particular interest is the sheer immense number of calories that can be burned when you combine different types of training modalities. If I am regularly lifting 4-5 days per week and I slowly add in 3-4 days of running or more, there is an evident acceleration in fat loss. Undoubtedly, when both of these activities are being implemented simultaneously at peak levels, I simply can’t eat enough without substantial effort to keep fat on. Maybe it’s time to toss away the old saying “you can’t out-train a bad diet”. I respectively disagree. When used in combination, resistance and endurance training can be a double-edged sword in the quest for fat loss.

It's long been proven that resistance training and increasing one’s muscle tissue can result in increases in resting metabolism. To that end, a review by Wayne L. Westcott (2012)5 beautifully entitled “Resistance Training is Medicine” demonstrated that just 10-weeks of resistance training may result in increases in resting metabolic rate of up to 7%. For the typical person that’s about 100 – 150 calories a day or 700 – 1050 calories per week while doing absolutely nothing. Not to mention the calories that are burned during resistance training alone which can amount to 200 – 400 calories per hour depending on bodyweight and training intensity. Therefore, an individual can expend massive amounts of calories with just resistance training alone. But this is where it gets even better.

Calorie expenditure during sustained endurance training is generally higher than resistance training with expected expenditure between 700 – 900 calories per hour for running, dependent on bodyweight. That is a WHOLE lot more calories than the estimate above of 200 – 400 per hour for resistance training. There is a significant issue here, however. The way in which the body adapts to endurance activity is by becoming a more efficient machine; that is, to burn less calories to move farther, longer etc.

The majority of scientific literature in this area does not point to an increase in resting metabolic rate with an endurance training protocol and there is some evidence to argue that endurance training results in a decrease in metabolic rate. This is a point stressed by renowned personal trainer Sal Di Stefano is his book “The Resistance Training Revolution”6 (which is excellent, by the way). The book systematically breaks down how your body can burn less calories overtime with an endurance training only program and calls for a no-cardio protocol in order to achieve your weight loss goals.

While I do not carry the same anti-cardio convictions as Stefano seems to convey, I agree with the logic and can’t deny the science. We can, however, effectively fight this effect. This is where resistance training comes in. By combining the metabolic effects of resistance training with the enormous number of calories burnt during sustained endurance exercise you have effectively turned yourself into a calorie burning machine.

Let’s do some math. I am a 150lb male who lifts 4 times per week and runs 3 times per week. My weight training sessions last about 1-hour each and would be considered vigorous. My running sessions last anywhere from 1-hour to a 2.5-hour long run once per week at peak activity levels but let’s call it 3 x 1-hour running sessions to be conservative. With the aforementioned calorie expenditure estimates, I am burning roughly 3700 calories per week (whoop whoop we’ve hit our healthy weight loss goal of 1lb per week; if you know, you know), BUT we’ve also altered our resting metabolic rate. The above estimate was a 7% increase in resting metabolic rate or roughly 700 – 1050 calories per week (for the average person). Now we are talking 4200 to 4750 calories per week. That is a ton of calories and that is just for average activity levels for an average person. If you have increased activity levels beyond the example above (I know I often do) and an above average metabolic rate, you are seriously going to have to work to keep weight on. This puts you in a really good position to be super flexible with your diet, enjoy food as you wish and still maintain a solid physique! Obviously, if you are aiming to put on weight and stay lean, you need to balance these activities in favor of slowly adding lean muscle tissue (i.e. maybe don’t run for 4-hours total per week). Balance.

In summary, hybrid training represents a new era in health and fitness. As opposed to being solely invested in one training modality or another, I see individuals becoming interested in utilizing multiple types of training. The benefits of doing so cannot be overstated. Although limited, I have highlighted above a few of my personal top reasons for becoming a hybrid athlete (only stopping short for fear of writing a small novel versus an article); those being: the synergistic effects of endurance training on muscle gain, injury prevention and improved biomechanics and the ability to burn massive amount of calories keeping myself lean and an ideal bodyweight while giving me the freedom to eat how I choose. Truly though, I believe training as a hybrid athlete is about becoming the all-around healthiest individual you can be. Using multiple modes of training, you can increase strength, increase endurance, increase speed and increase power and carry these benefits over into everyday life, maximizing both your overall health and general fitness.

REFERENCES

1. Murach, K.A., Bagley, J.R. Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy with Concurrent Exercise Training: Contrary Evidence for an Interference Effect. Sports Med 46, 1029–1039 (2016).

2. Lundberg TR, Feuerbacher JF, Sünkeler M, Schumann M. The Effects of Concurrent Aerobic and Strength Training on Muscle Fiber Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Med. 2022 Oct;52(10):2391-2403. doi: 10.1007/s40279-022-01688-x. Epub 2022 Apr 27. PMID: 35476184; PMCID: PMC9474354.

3. Lauersen JB, Bertelsen DM, Andersen LB. The effectiveness of exercise interventions to prevent sports injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. British Journal of Sports Medicine 2014;48:871-877.

4. Šuc A, Šarko P, Pleša J, Kozinc Ž. Resistance Exercise for Improving Running Economy and Running Biomechanics and Decreasing Running-Related Injury Risk: A Narrative Review. Sports. 2022; 10(7):98.

5. Westcott WL. Resistance training is medicine: effects of strength training on health. Curr Sports Med Rep. 2012 Jul-Aug;11(4):209-16. doi: 10.1249/JSR.0b013e31825dabb8. PMID: 22777332.

6. Stefano S.D. The Resistance Training Revolution: The No-Cardio Way to Burn Fat and Age-Proof Your Body--In Only 60 Minutes a Week. Hachette Books; 2021.