154: What Hybrid Training Is, What It Isn’t, and Why You Should Do It

30:29And it was in a really cool part of East Nashville. It's this old abandoned airstrip, which goes into Shelby Bottoms Park. Someone ran 100 miles. Many people ran 50 miles. Some people ran five miles, but it was just a collection of really incredible people. the exchange, BPN hosting this event. And it was just, it was a really good time to invest into the community. But we were in Nashville from Thursday afternoon until Monday morning.

31:06Nick Bare:I couldn't make it to the gym every day. I made it to the gym a few times while we were there, but based off of our routine and schedule and I flew out to Nashville with the whole family. So I had Steph with me, my wife, our two kids, Charlie, Nico, and my mother-in-law, Kim. Training and getting to the gym wasn't necessarily a priority. One of the things I've had to learn at this chapter in phase of life, family comes before me getting to the gym. And the thing about going to a gym is, one, you have to travel to and from typically. There are hours of operation that you have to work within. If you go to the gym during a really busy time, it might take you much longer to do your workout as opposed to a time that isn't as busy.

32:01This past weekend is a great example of I couldn't make it to the gym to lift weights

32:06Nick Bare:based off of the way my program is set up every day. so I just ran more walked down the front door with my running shoes on layered up based off of the weather conditions it was cold in Nashville this past weekend I wore my gloves, wore my beanie wore a jacket and logged some extra miles was it what I had programmed and scheduled for that week? No but I still got in some great fitness because there's an element of flexibility that you can apply. Now, if I would have been in a hotel or an Airbnb right next to a gym that had 24-7 access and it was a blizzard, it was snowing, I couldn't go outside and run, well, I could have went to the gym more than running.

32:59But this style of training provides you the flexibility based off of life situations and circumstances and travel and even injuries or just flexibility of what you're feeling for that day. If you wake up one morning and you're supposed to hit an upper body strength push workout and you're not really feeling it, but you're feeling like a nice 10 to 12 mile run, go knock out that 10 to 12 mile run. Feed the soul. Listen to your body.

33:33Nick Bare:It allows for auto-regulation and seasons of focus. You know, with hybrid training, your training can be adapted to different goals, different times of the year, seasons of life. You can change things up. You know, in one training block or one quarter or one season, you might want to run more because it's really nice out and more people are running within your community and group of friends, or you want to go rip a fast half marathon or 10K in a couple of weeks or months, you can increase your running volume and maybe reduce your strength training volume and intensity. Or if it's a winner, like in my case right now, and you just wrapped up a big endurance prep, again, like in my case right now, maybe you want to put on some size and bulk up a little bit, put a few LBs on, a few pounds, eat some more food and get really strong, you can do that.

34:39Nick Bare:What I've loved about this hybrid training model over the years is

34:46occasionally I'll set a big fitness school,

34:51Nick Bare:I'll put it on the calendar and I'll go into a big prep like this Ironman that I just wrapped up. That was 18 weeks of dedicated focus of training for a specific goal, being the Ironman triathlon. And just being honest, when I finished the Ironman, I wanted to take a little break from endurance training. I'm still running, but my running volume is much lighter and lower than it was during Ironman prep. but right now in this season, I am so hungry and excited to get back in the gym and strength train. It allows for the flexibility, this holistic approach and view to fitness. Now I wrapped up the Ironman and I took, the race was Sunday.

35:42Monday I took off. Tuesday I was like, I'm going to the gym. I want to throw some weights around. I'm so pumped to just move some iron again. And it felt so good. As weak as I was getting back in the gym and that first one to two weeks was painful in terms of recovery and soreness, felt really good to get back in the gym again. So I'm in a season right now where I love being back in the gym. I'm still running, but running volume is significantly lower. I'm running between 20 and 25 miles a week right now to maintain a base level of aerobic capacity. But the focus right now, the fun right now is within strength, resistance, bodybuilding, hypertrophy style of training.

36:34I also believe that hybrid training is the most optimal, enjoyable, and sustainable because it focuses on health and performance. It's a great balance of performance outcomes and initiatives, but also prioritizes health in terms of optimal recovery, metabolic regulation, hormonal regulation. I think it's just like not only from a performance data point, but also health, wellness data point as well. It is the most balanced. It's the most optimal. It's the most sustainable. And also, hybrid training facilitates a fitness ability that invites community, brotherhood, sisterhood, and relationships, bonding.

37:37Again, going back to being in a very specific focused effort, like this Ironman prep I was

37:45Nick Bare:just in, that was a season of training that provided a lot of silence, a lot of solitude, both powerful, but it's sometimes being lonely. You're alone a lot of times. This morning, I just hit a back training workout here at BP and HQ with Trey. Me and Trey went through about a 90-minute back and biceps workout. We had a conversation the whole workout, talking in between sets. It was a blast. I had so much fun and got a great workout, had a great pump. My back and biceps are torched right now, but we had great conversation during the whole 90 minutes. I have this standard that when I'm in a more holistic approach to fitness, health and performance, truly embodying hybrid, I want to be able to go into the gym and rip a workout with my boys and really throw down and push each other.

38:59but then wake up the next morning and go run 10 miles with those same guys or another group of people. I never want to lose the ability to do either one of those. Now, when I lean in or when you lean into a more specific style of training for a specific goal, you may have more of an unbalanced ability to do one or the other. If you go into a bodybuilding prep, when you're deep into that prep,

39:31Nick Bare:going and running an easy 10 miles with your friends might be challenging. And at the same time, if you're in an Ironman triathlon or a marathon build and you're not strength training much, if your friends ask you to come throw down in the gym, it might be a little bit challenging. But those are during the seasons of training when you have a specific goal, which requires specialized training. hybrid, which can be competitive, but also I think more applicable to lifestyle, something that you can do and practice every day of your life. It facilitates that really strong balance. So my current programming coming off of my Ironman prep, now hybrid training again, And I'll give a sample, but I'll have some caveats to that.

40:28So Monday, five mile run in the morning, which takes me 38, 40 minutes. And then lower body strength in the afternoon. Tuesday, push strength workout. So this is chest, triceps, maybe a little bit of shoulders in there. Wednesday, five mile run in the morning.

40:54Nick Bare:And then a pool strength workout in the afternoon, being back, biceps, maybe some traps for adults. Thursday, lower body strength. Friday, five mile run in the morning. And then shoulders and arms strength in the afternoon. Saturday, long run, which is anywhere from eight to maybe 12 miles and then Sunday off or I repeat. So when I share this, this routine, not every Monday is going to be five mile run, lower body strength. Not every Tuesday is push strength. Not every Wednesday is five mile run, pull strength, so on and so forth. Sometimes instead of taking an off day on Sunday, I'll just start the cycle all over again.

41:54So in this case, instead of taking an off day Sunday,

41:58Nick Bare:I'll do a lower body strength workout on Sunday. And then Monday would be a five mile run and push strength. So I typically don't mess with the running days. I like to run Monday morning, Wednesday morning, Friday morning, and then Saturday. But the strength training days may rotate on a cycle that isn't applicable to what I just shared. Sometimes I switch things up and some weeks, based off of my schedule, what I have going on or just how I feel like training, I'll do a push, pull, lower split. So it's push, pull, lower, repeat. Maybe an off day Sunday, maybe just keep rotating through that push, pull, lower, push, pull, lower.

42:51That's my current programming. I like to hit a lower body twice a week. I like to hit chest once a week, back once a week, shoulders once a week. I hit arms twice a week. Arms are just biceps, triceps, two body parts that can recover pretty quickly. Smaller muscle groups don't get taxed as much. And I find that you can do more frequency on arms. But if you hit chest really hard, you might need a significant amount of time to recover. If you hit back really hard, you might need significant amount of time to recover. But the way that I approach two lower body strength days a week is one of those lower body strength days is focused on quads, quad dominant day.

43:46And the other lower body strength day is a hamstring and glute focused or dominant day. And something that I've been incorporating more recently is the combination or I guess balance of unilateral and bilateral movements when it comes to lower body strength. So bilateral meaning two legs at once, think a leg press or a barbell squat, for example, you're using both legs simultaneously in one movement. unilateral, meaning one leg at a time. This could be Bulgarian split squats. This could be walking barbell or dumbbell lunges. This could be weighted step-ups. But I like to have one day that is quad-focused, one day that is hamstring-glute focused.

44:44I'm barbell squatting once a week, and I do this typically on my quad-dominant day. But I do believe that when most people train lower body strength, the movements they typically select are quad dominant and they're not training hamstring and quad or hamstring and glute exercises enough. So I try to do about a 50-50 split of lower body exercises, 50 % being quad dominant, 50 % being glute and hamstring dominant. Some of my favorite lower body strength movements right now, barbell squat is probably not my favorite movement. I do barbell squats every week, but it's not like for me, the king of lower body exercises.

45:36I love lunges, whether it's barbell or dumbbell. I prefer barbell lunges more than dumbbell lunges just because I feel that I can load more weight and I can keep my back more erect, more straight. So barbell lunges are some of my favorites. Bulgarian split squats, some of my favorites. Romanian deadlifts for hamstring and glute. We recently got a hip thrust machine here at BP &HQ. You don't need a hip thrust machine. You can always just set up a hip thrust station using a bench and a barbell, but hip thrust for glute activation and building, super powerful. I've been doing reverse hyper extensions recently for glutes, hamstrings, posterior chain.

46:36Again, some of my favorite movements, but I also love a traditional leg press and hack squat as well. I love just trashing my legs on a lower body strength day. But I think it's important that if you are incorporating two lower body strength days per week, try to split them up where one day is quad focused and the other day is hamstring and glute focused. Now, when it comes to programming your hybrid training, this is definitely very case by case and individually specific. Some of the questions you got to ask yourself, what are your goals? And your goals might change based off the season, the time of the year, the strength block, what you're trying to improve and build upon.

47:27Do you have a strength focus? Do you have an endurance focus? Do you have a race or a competition coming up that requires more specialized training? Do you have a physique or aesthetic focus? I think about the last two to three years of my training, there's been times where there's a focus on strength. That is the primary focus. I am structuring workouts. I am structuring frequency of how often I'm hitting body parts. I'm structuring

48:04Nick Bare:my complimentary endurance training or running based off of a strength goal. When I'm in a endurance prep or competition prep, my training will reflect that. Same goes for if I'm trying to build my endurance but still incorporating resistance training, strength training, my training will reflect that. And then if I have a physique goal or focus, aesthetic focus, my training will be more hypertrophy focused, maybe a little bit less running, different forms of cardio. But your goals should dictate how your program is set up, 100%. If you want to get faster, if you want to improve your running ability, but you're spending more time in the gym strength training than you are running or any type of endurance activity, building aerobic capacity, it's really hard to say that you're going to build endurance by spending more and more time in the gym.

49:20Resistance training. To build endurance, you probably have to be doing more endurance work. So what are your goals? And that will determine how to set up your program. Another question you have to ask yourself,

49:34Nick Bare:how much time do you have or want to dedicate to training? Do you want to train one hour a day and that's all you have? Well, maybe you do a push-pull leg split where three days a week are dedicated to strength and then you run three days a week. So that's a six day training split where you're doing three strength days and three runs with one off day. It's a great split. You're training one hour a day, six hours a week. That's a hybrid approach. If you want to increase the amount of training and you can't fit it all into one training session or you don't want to, then you might have to take the approach that I take where three days a week I wake up extra early to knock out my five mile run before the family wakes up so I can get more training in and dedicate the afternoon to more strength training.

50:38So it's how much time do you have or do you want to dedicate to training? What is your experience and skill level? You can't just come out of the gates training 10, 12 plus hours a week. You got to start low and slow and build into it. Or you risk injury, overtraining. It's just not the most efficient way to build into volume. So what is your experience? What is your skill level? Some of the questions that

51:18Nick Bare:I receive frequently about hybrid training and how to set up your programming is one, how does putting on size and weight affect running? And I'll just share from some of my personal experience. When I was in my Ironman prep, I'll keep going back to Ironman prep just because it was only a month ago and it's my last applicable specialized fitness prep that I've been in and it was very specialized. It was all endurance, very little strength. I got leaner. I lost a lot of weight. All my training was dedicated to building aerobic capacity, endurance, stamina, speed. Running in that prep felt effortless on many days.

52:17Up into a 22-mile run, feeling effortless, like feeling very, very strong, all 22 miles. Now that I've transitioned back into a hybrid approach, I'm putting size back on, I'm putting mass back on, I'm putting weight back on. My legs feel heavier when I go run based off the two lower body strength days per week. It has definitely affected my running. Even a month being removed from Ironman prep with the changes to my training style, the changes to my weight, changes to some of my size, which is slowly coming back on and rebuilding. Runs just feel different. Legs don't feel as poppy. I feel a little heavier.

53:08Not necessarily sluggish, but not as effortless. So putting on size, putting on weight can and will potentially affect your running. but it just comes with the holistic approach to fitness you know there are ways to truly balance both but I love putting on size and strength I don't lift weights just to be stronger and be fitter but I lift weights

53:46Nick Bare:because I want to put on some size and mass and the diet that I implement into my training facilitates putting on some size and math and mass. One of the other questions I often get is around how to separate hard endurance days or sessions and heavy lifting. And this is why I personally like to separate the two. Now I think back to when I first started hybrid training. This was before having kids. This was before or right after Steph and I got married and we would essentially spend the whole day at BP and HQ. And we'd get here at 6am and we'd be at the office until 6pm, 7pm. We'd work, we'd work out, we'd hang out.

54:44We'd go to dinner with the team, which was just a big old family. And I would do all my training in the afternoon. So we would run first and then we'd go straight into a lift. Sometimes we would run for an hour, seven to eight miles. And as soon as we got back, we'd drink our pre-workout, get some carbs in and then lift for an hour. So it'd be a two hour training session. that's not necessarily my approach anymore one because i felt like i was sacrificing a lot of my potential in strength training resistance training and in in many cases in many days it's hard to dedicate two plus hours to training when i'm not in you know an ironman prep for example

55:35Nick Bare:So I like separating my endurance efforts, my endurance sessions, and my resistance training sessions by multiple hours. So I personally like to run right when I wake up. I've always been that way. Those are just, for me, the most enjoyable runs. I don't prefer or even enjoy running in the afternoon or the evenings. I like to run as soon as I wake up, get some fuel in me, run, come back to the house, eat breakfast, start the day, work for a few hours, and then strength train a few hours later after my body's recovered. I've had a few meals in me. I've gotten some carbs, rehydrated. So I found in that way of setting up your training, you can hammer in your endurance training.

56:30Nick Bare:You can hammer in your resistance or strength training and you can apply maximal effort by allowing for a few hours in between and multiple meals potentially where the run doesn't sacrifice your effort in your strength training session. now based off of your circumstance situation day timeline work family all these things you might have to do both back to back but if you have the ability to I found personally it is a more effective workout in both domains of fitness to separate the two by a few hours and a few meals potentially. And the last thing that I want to talk about when it comes to hybrid training, I think this is probably the most commonly asked question and something that I've had to learn how to balance and program and implement over the years.

57:34Most commonly asked question, how do you balance lower body strength days with running? and it's going to come with some trial and error, some testing and experience. What I have personally found is my lower body gets hit with DOMS like clockwork. DOMS is delayed onset muscle soreness. So if I hit legs really hard, say on Monday,

58:08Nick Bare:Tuesday morning, I'll wake up and they're heavy. They're a little tired, but they're not overly sore. Come Wednesday, say 48 hours post-exercise, they are more sore than the day prior. That is DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness. So I can anticipate, it doesn't necessarily always change the way that I set up my training, but it's having that awareness and that anticipation of knowing what to expect post certain workouts. So I know if I'm waking up Monday morning and I'm running and I'm waiting a few hours to recover, getting a few meals in me, some carbs, protein, healthy fats. Then when I go in to my strength workout in the afternoon on Monday, I'm feeling good.

59:07Nick Bare:I'm feeling strong. By Wednesday, I have another five mile run in the morning. My legs are going to be heavy. They're in some cases going to feel like center blocks, but I have the realization of knowing, okay, I'm experiencing DOMS right now. They're going to be heavy when I start, but they're probably going to shake out and feel a little fresher towards the end of the run. Again, get some fuel, some nutrition in me, hit a strength training workout later that afternoon, feeling good, feeling strong. And this is another one of the reasons that I like to separate my strength days, lower body strength days, from one being quad dominant to the other being hamstring and glute dominant.

59:54Nick Bare:I like hitting my quad dominant day early in the week and then doing my hamstring glute dominant day later in the week because I found that I can run more efficiently, more comfortably, just better. My long run comes Saturday after a closer hamstring and glute dominant lower body day as opposed to if I hit a quad dominant lower body strength day and then shortly after that, try to go for a long run, it's going to affect me in a more meaningful way. But this is again, the importance of progressive overload. And when you start a new program, you don't want to go zero to 100. You want to slowly increase the training volume and intensity to see how your body adapts to the stimulus and recovers so that you can keep improving upon your fitness and just having the awareness.

1:00:56I mean, even having a notebook that you carry around with you, a training log. They're so old school, but I believe they're so important. Have a training log, writing down your workouts,

1:01:07Nick Bare:and then just a little note after each workout of how you're feeling, or maybe the next day, how you feel from the previous workout. And then you can adjust or modify your endurance training, your running based off of your level of soreness or your ability to recover. In some cases, it might be easier to incorporate a different style of aerobic conditioning other than running based off the level of soreness that you have. if you do a hard lower body strength day and you're super taxed two days after and you have a run that you're supposed to do, but you know that that run might bury you more than it's going to help improve your fitness.

1:01:54Instead of running, hop on a bike or choose an alternate mode of aerobic conditioning that's going to provide the same stimulus, but maybe be less taxing on your muscles, your joints, your lower body. So you can get the aerobic capacity benefits without just burying yourself to make it harder for you to recover. So balancing lower body strength days and running,

1:02:27Nick Bare:in the beginning, you're going to find it's probably challenging. But as you navigate and you test and you learn and you apply, what you're learning, you'll find out what works best for you. How should you space out your lower body strength days? Maybe for you, it's just one lower body strength day a week as opposed to two. And that works better for you. Especially if you're in a season where you're trying to improve your endurance more than your muscle building or strength capacity. Maybe one lower body strength day makes more sense than two for you. so you can then incorporate more running or aerobic conditioning days.

1:03:11But a lot of your programming comes down to what are your goals? What works best for your schedule, routine? How much time do you have or can you commit to training? And then how is your body recovering, improving, developing based off of your individual needs and uniqueness. For some people, certain body parts just respond better than others. Some people have very responsive legs to lower body strength training and they only have to train their lower body once a week. And that stimulus is enough to provide the adaptation for growth, for strength, for everything they need. For some people, more frequency is required.

1:04:05Maybe two hard strength days a week. So it's individual, case by case.

1:04:11Nick Bare:But I wanted to lay out this framework for why I love hybrid athlete training. What it is, what it is not, how the military shaped my approach to training and how I fell in love with, the hybrid method, and then how I set up my program. And as I shared my current programming with you, I adjust that and modify that frequently. But I know that when I'm in this more holistic approach to fitness, hybrid training, and there's not a specific goal that requires specialized training to accompany it, I can be more flexible. I can have weeks where I'm running more and strength training less. I can have weeks where I'm strength training more and running less.

1:05:00Nick Bare:That's the beauty in hybrid training. It's flexible. It's adaptable. It keeps it fun, keeps it engaging. And honestly, I love it. I love every part of it. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. We'll have more hybrid athlete content coming into the new year. Love you guys. Appreciate you. And as always, go on more.