Hybrid training: lifting and running together

Hybrid training means building strength and endurance in the same weeks, and keeping both. The research calls it concurrent training. The short version of what it shows: adding running to lifting costs most people little or nothing in maximal strength or muscle size, and costs a bit of explosive strength, mostly when both are crammed into one session.¹ The details, and what to do about them, are below.

Every article here starts from the primary studies. Effect sizes are quoted as the papers report them, with their confidence intervals and samples, and where the evidence disagrees with itself we say so instead of picking a side. Where we use our own numbers, like the standards the Hybrid Score grades against, they're labelled as ours.

If you want to know where you stand before reading anything, the hybrid athlete standards grade your lifts and your VO2max on the same untrained-to-elite ladder.

Start here#

1. What is a hybrid athlete? A definition you can measure
2. The interference effect: what the meta-analyses show
3. Run before or after lifting? What the studies found
4. How to split a hybrid training week (3 to 6 days)
5. Minimum effective dose: how little keeps strength and engine

Building the week#

• How much lifting do you need when you also run?
• Zone 2 when you also lift
• 80/20 training for hybrid athletes
• Periodizing a hybrid year
• Deload weeks for hybrid athletes

Crossing over#

• Does lifting make you a faster runner?
• Running for lifters

Strength#

• How strong should a runner be?
• Epley vs Brzycki: how accurate is an estimated 1RM?
• RPE, RIR and failure when you also run

Measuring both halves#

• Strength-limited or engine-limited?
• Why the Hybrid Score uses a harmonic mean
• Hybrid training apps compared
• Eight weeks of hybrid training, in numbers

The sources behind the score itself, and which parts are published science and which are our design choices, are on the science page.