The type of training that you complete will be heavily dependent on what your goals are. Whether your goals are to not be in pain, run a half marathon, squat 2x body weight, or just to feel good, your training will reflect this.
For a lot of us training one quality is usually more than enough, but what if I told you that you can essentially become superhuman by training more than one quality at once. If I told you that you were able to combine being strong and fit rather than one or the other, you’d think I was joking around.
This is where the concept of concurrent training or ‘being a hybrid athlete’ comes around. This is basically training to be fit and strong at the same time, it is 100% possible to do so, we just need to understand a few things first:
- What is the most important quality that you want to train (Strength? Fitness? Balance? etc…)
- How much time do you have through the week (What can you honestly commit to through the week)
- What do you enjoy doing (What style of training do you enjoy the most)
When looking to balance strength and aerobic training, considering the above factors will really help you understand how to plan this through your week.
Firstly, what we need to understand is your training goals. Lets say its to keep getting as strong as possible, whilst not being so unfit that going up stairs makes you short of breath. Lets say you strength train 4x per week and it looks like this
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| Rest | Gym | Gym | Rest | Gym | Gym | Rest |
So to maintain our strength goals, we would need to make sure your strength training is the aspect you put most of your effort to. This means that in the chance you are needing to do a doubled up session (two sessions in one day) then you would put strength training first and cardio after. This limits the amount of interference that may occur with your strength training from factors like fatigue or any time restrictions.
If we look to begin putting in some aerobic training around what’s outlined above, we can see that the place of best fit would be Sunday as its own session IF there is capacity for it. If we are looking to keep everything in a 4x per week training cycle then we can add the aerobic training to the day with the least amount of things to do. For Example:
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| Rest | Primary Deadlift + Bench | Secondary Squats + Bench | Rest | Primary squat + Tertiary Bench | Primary bench | Rest |
We can see that based on the above example, the day with the least content would be the Saturday session. This session is far enough away from both primary squat and deadlift that we would see the least amount of interruption to the strength program whilst still being able to increase fitness.
So know we know how to place this into a program, how do we prescribe it?
Using the above example, to get the most out of your aerobic training without interrupting your strength training goals we would need to first look at giving something easy. This doesn’t mean sets of 10’s of bulgarians split squats (although that does suck).
Prescription would need to integrate initially some moderate intensity work that is off feet, meaning on a bike or rowing machine. This is the most joint friendly way of integrating some moderate intensity training.
If we are prescribing on the same day I would typically look to program something that is short and sweet with higher intensity. This will give us a similar result in a shorter amount of time.
This would look like:
Assault bike OR Rower 2 sets 7 reps (6 seconds sprinting 10 seconds rest between reps) 3min rest between sets.
All in all we are spending a total time of 8 minutes at most for some good quality lung gains.
If we were looking to spend time on a day separate to our four training days then we can look to prescribe something a bit different and for a little bit longer. This would look to be more in the moderate intensity zone, around 60-70% intensity.
This would look like:
Bike OR Rower 1 set of 10min @ 60-70% intensity OR intervals set at 1min on 90sec off x 5 @ 60-70% intensity
Integrating aerobic training into your program isn’t a difficult thing to do, especially when the benefits of aerobic training outweigh the negatives of not having done any!
If you need help with achieving your goals reach out to our EP team!
