Hybrid Athlete Training Program Checklist

Welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast with Jerred Moon! Hybrid training, also known as concurrent training, combines strength and endurance in a single program, giving athletes the best of both worlds. In this episode, Jerred shares a checklist for anyone looking to dive into hybrid training, with tips backed by research and his years of experience. Here’s a breakdown of what to look for in a quality hybrid program to ensure you’re hitting both strength and endurance goals without overdoing it.

1. Set Your Primary Goal: Athleticism or Aesthetics?

The first step is knowing whether you’re training for performance or appearance. Aesthetics-based programs focus on how you look, often incorporating bodybuilding-style exercises, while athleticism-based programs emphasize power, speed, and functional strength. Deciding which to prioritize will shape your approach to training and help you pick the right exercises, rep schemes, and workout intensity.

2. Avoid “Monkey See, Monkey Do” Programs

Beware of programs that simply copy someone else's workout routine. These often lack the necessary structure to meet your individual goals and don’t consider your current fitness level. Instead, look for a program designed to adapt to your personal needs, one that’s built on solid training principles rather than imitation.

3. Stick to Science-Backed Concurrent Training Principles

Science offers several guidelines to make hybrid training effective without causing interference between strength and endurance:

• Exercise Order: To prioritize strength, start with strength exercises before moving to endurance. If endurance is the focus, feel free to mix it up.
• Recovery: Allow 6-24 hours between strength and endurance sessions to minimize fatigue.
• Volume and Intensity: Use moderate to heavy loads for strength gains and high-intensity aerobic exercises like VO2 max training for endurance.
• Exercise Selection: Include multi-joint exercises such as squats and deadlifts to target major muscle groups while enhancing strength and endurance.

4. Monitor Fatigue and Adaptation

Regularly assess how your body is responding. If you notice a decrease in performance, it might be time to adjust by increasing recovery periods or reducing workout volume. Keeping tabs on your progress ensures that your training is challenging yet sustainable.

5. Consider Age and Training Experience

Concurrent training can benefit both younger and older athletes, but experience matters. Young athletes can train with minimal interference between strength and endurance, whereas older athletes should be cautious about balancing these components, particularly if they have specific performance goals.

6. Use Periodization and Core Strength

Implement periodization by alternating phases of high volume with high intensity, which will keep your training fresh and prevent burnout. Prioritize core strengthening exercises, as a strong core supports everything from lifting to running.

Final Thoughts

Hybrid training requires a thoughtful approach. By following this checklist, you’ll set yourself up for success without risking burnout or injury. If you want a reliable, science-based hybrid program that covers all these points, check out Garage Gym Athlete for a well-rounded approach to building both strength and endurance.

Garage Gym Athlete Workout Of The Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: 

All right, let's go over a hybrid training checklist. If you are into this training or looking to get into this training. What does the science say? And what is my experience? Say, as someone who's been doing concurrent training for a very long time. About what you should be looking at and for in programs that are claiming to be hybrid in nature. This is the garage gym athlete podcast.

I'm Jerred Moon, and I'm going to do two things first, I'm going to quickly go over kind of what I think you should be looking at in terms of goal setting goals for a hybrid program, just in my experience for myself and working with a lot of athletes, and then I'll go over kind of the. A systematic review, a checklist on concurrent training.

So concurrent training and hybrid training are one in the same. They're just two different terms for basically the same thing. And so I'll go over a systematic review that covered all of these All of these things. So first. You need to know if you're doing. If you're shooting for athleticism or aesthetics. And you might be thinking that they're the same thing. But they're not necessarily the same thing. Because aesthetics means how you look.

You can look really good. But not be very athletic. I mean, that's like, that's a bodybuilder, right? Like a bodybuilder looks great. But they're not very athletic. And athletes normally look pretty good, but sometimes they don't. I mean, they don't look as cut or as lean as like a bodybuilder. So you kind of have to know what you're getting into.

Are you more aesthetics? So will we be following. A bodybuilding style split in your hybrid outfit training with like running or is it athleticism? So there's a lot of power based movement, strength based movement, trying to get you to stronger.

Plyometrics things of those natures, that would be more of an athleticism style hybrid or concurrent training program.

So know which one you're getting into. So if you see more bodybuilding, just know you're, you're going, you're not necessarily becoming as bad-ass athlete. You're just. That's more Iowa. I want to look good and you know, be able to perform somewhat in my endurance, nothing wrong with either. Okay.

Just making sure you know, which one's, which. And kind of the sub category that is strength or hypertrophy just re really pay attention to the sets and reps. So if it's hypertrophy, you'd be, you know, a lot of isolation exercises. Moderate to high repetitions and then strength is going to be heavy loads, right?

Heavy to moderate loads. Typically you'll be operating off of some percentage of your wonder at max. And that's a big indicator and the difference for me right there. So if I was following a bodybuilding program and a strength program, or if I saw each and a bodybuilder had programmed at the squat and a powerlifter had programmed the squats, what I'd probably see the bodybuilder do is the bodybuilder would be like, yeah, hit three sets of 10 on the back squat, make it challenging. The powerlifter would be like three sets of eight at 70% of your one-rep max. You see how that's just different.

That's just different. A way of operating and programming because the bodybuilder only cares about a certain stimulus. And the power lifter is going to care about a certain, certain strength level, level, and power output. The another big thing to look out for is the programming. Is it monkey? See monkey do. I, I th I say, avoid these programs at all costs. So monkey see monkey, see monkey do program is. Someone who's generally incredibly fit and they look really good.

And then they're like, Hey, here's what I do. And they put their programming out online and they say, you could follow it to. For a nominal fee per month. That's great, but you're not then, and they're not taking into account any of your needs or even a general training principles and foundations. What they're doing is what's worked for them.

So it's, in my opinion, when people put, put out programs like that, it's great to study and learn from because they've obviously achieved a lot, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's a great program for you to follow because your starting point could be completely different. And typically these people have a huge base of some other dose of training.

Like they were a. A runner before, and then they added strength training, where they were a huge strength athlete. Then they started running. And so they have this phenomenal base that they don't really tell you about. They just tell you what they're doing now, and that doesn't help you achieve your goals any faster. And then lastly, make sure that the program itself is following scientific, concurrent training based principles.

So I'm going to go over those real fast here. And so these are straight from a systematic review. Several different studies I pulled here. So if you want to see them. You're like, ah, put your money where your mouth is, where where's this study, where all these systematic reviews you're talking about.

Go to garage. matthew.com. Go to the blog, check out the show notes and you can click on the links for any of these. So the first thing is training goals clearly defined whether your primary goal is to improve strength or endurance or both, and know which one you want to improve most because the order of exercise matters. If you are trying, if sh if strength gains are your priority. Then you want to perform strength exercises before endurance training. If it's in the same session. And that is to maximize lower body strength gains specifically. Now if endurance is the primary goal goal. The science says that order may be less important, but you want to ensure that there's a balance to avoid fatigue buildup, because I know. I kind of say always do shrink first. Unless, unless you're like training specifically for like a half marathon marathon, something like that, then maybe do your endurance first or split the days. Because I think if you were to go run seven miles, 15 miles today or whatever, and then come back. And then do back squats.

I think that you're putting your self in a compromising position on those back squats, just because of the fatigue level. Next is recovery between sessions. So you need to make sure you schedule sufficient recovery between strength and endurance sessions. The literature says between six and 24 hours between the two sessions to minimize interference effects, especially in athletes with advanced training status.

So if you are an advanced athlete, you've been training for many, many years, you actually want to break them up. So typically it's going to be a am session PM session or. You switched days, Monday is endurance. Tuesday is strength, so on and so forth. And that's what the science says. Now training volume and intensity. Strength training.

You want to incorporate heavy and moderate loads to improve one rep max without impairing endurance capacity. So the more you focus on strength, the less you have to worry about them. The interference effect. So one effecting the other. But if you're going for hypertrophy, it. It matters a little bit more.

So hypertrophy being that muscle building. And endurance training focus on. High intensity, a moderate to high intensity aerobic work like VO two max training to enhance your cardiovascular endurance while balancing fatigue.

Exercise selection is also important. You want to prioritize multi-joint exercises like squats and deadlifts for strength sessions to target both upper body and lower body effectively. And then you want to include sports specific exercises. If you're training for endurance. Like running economy to improve performance metrics like VO two max in running efficiency. Next monitor fatigue and adaptation. So track performance in both strength and Durance domains regularly to ensure neither ours is significantly impaired. And if they are, if you see that you're going back. You're making backwards progress in either strength or endurance, adjust your recovery times.

Okay. That's the biggest thing that you can do. Is rest more, do less volume. Those are the two things that you, if you are not seeing progress, those are the changes that you need to make.

Age and experience considerations. Now, if you train younger athletes or you have younger athletes, like I have young boys who I train. The literature is pretty awesome. There's a study that came out in 2022 and it says concurrent training can lead to significant improvements in both strength and endurance with minimal interference.

And this is what I've seen in my boys. They do strength. Straight concurrent training with me. And I do this because I, they see such rapid results and they will for a long time. But this is the, in my opinion, the ideal way to train, not only human being, but younger athletes. Now for older, more experienced athletes, you should be a little bit more cautious of the interference effect.

I don't think that it's a huge deal for like the average garage gym athlete. But if you are. You know, chasing a specific performance target, you will want to think about it. And then the last two periodization is one to make sure that the program is implementing periodization. So alternating periods of high volume. In high intensity. To ensure continuous progress and to reduce, you know, your overall monotony of the programming. And consider taking breaks. Just de-load weeks or switching up the training every couple of weeks, every cycle or whatever. And then the last thing, this is very easy to avoid, very easy to avoid in lead out of the program.

Make sure their score. Strengthening exercises in the program. Because it's going to be very important in having a strong core for dead lifting for back squat, for running for everything. But sometimes. You run short on time and concurrent training program. And the first thing to go for a lot of athletes is any kind of poor training. So make sure that you do not forget that.

Now, if you're taking all these considerations into account and you're looking through other hybrid athlete or concurrent training programs and you're okay. Kind of know what I want to do. I kind of know my goals and I'm like, I'm making sure the program I want to follow is going to check all these boxes.

I can help you out a lot. And you can just go to garage, mouthy.com, where we are hitting most, everything on this checklist. Cause we've been doing concurrent training for probably the longest in the industry. And it's basically all we do. So if you want to see what that looks. Like go to garage, gym, athlete.com and sign up for free trial.

We would love to have you for all of our athletes hitting concurrent training on a daily basis. We really appreciate it. Remember if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.