The Biggest Mistakes Hybrid Athletes Make

The Biggest Mistakes Hybrid Athletes Make

So, you want to become the best hybrid athlete you can be. You want to lift big, get big, and run fast. But a lot of people are doing it wrong.

In this article, I'm going to go through the most common mistakes I see people make as a coach who coaches over 2,000 people through hybrid training every week.

In this article, we will delve into the science behind hybrid training and explore its benefits, key components, and how to design an effective hybrid training plan for maximum results.

Too Much Intensity

"If I work harder, I'll make more progress." Yes and no.

I absolutely advocate for people to train hard, but if you're wired that way, it's also very easy to do too much and put yourself in the bin.

If we take powerlifting (Squat, Bench and Deadlift) as an example, you don't see elite powerlifters burying themselves every session. A training program is carefully designed to allow for a gradual increase in intensity, with the aim of peaking for a specific week, day, or event.

If an athlete starts a 12-week program and lifts as much as possible from week one, by week four they'll be cooked.

The same applies to running. You don't see professional middle and long-distance runners smashing out race pace, or faster than race pace, efforts in the first couple of weeks of a training block.

This is why having a program with a set timeframe is so important. It takes both volume and intensity into consideration over a period of time to ensure progress is made while minimising the chances of injury or overtraining.

Too Much Volume

More is not better.

This is something I think takes people a long time to understand. The whole point of training is to give your body enough of a stimulus for it to adapt. But if we give it more than it can recover from, we aren't adapting. We're just digging ourselves a bigger hole.

I've been very guilty of this myself, both as a coach and as an athlete. It's easy to think that doing more will produce a better result, but that rarely ends up being the case.

As a hybrid athlete, you're training multiple sports and physical qualities that don't always support one another. If you allocate a lot of volume and intensity towards running, that's less energy and fewer recovery resources you have available for building strength or muscle.

Hybrid training is a balancing act. Throw the kitchen sink at bodybuilding volume or running volume, and it will eventually start to negatively impact everything else you're trying to improve.

No Progression

The easiest way to stunt your progress is by choosing a bunch of random workouts you see online or simply doing whatever you feel like on the day.

If you're a complete beginner, you'll probably make some progress, but only for a short period of time.

Strength, fitness, and muscle are all built through consistency and repetition over months and months of training. If you want to maximise your results, you need to follow a structured plan.

This is even more important with hybrid training because there are so many moving parts. Without structure, it's very easy to end up doing too much of one thing, or too much of everything.

Trying to Bring Everything Up at the Same Time

This links closely with the previous points.

Constantly flip-flopping your training, increasing volume, pushing intensity, or trying to improve everything all at once doesn't equal better gains.

Bringing multiple areas of performance up at the same time is challenging. It's definitely possible, but you're making things much harder for yourself if you don't manage the overall training load.

Instead, it's much more effective to make small but intentional adjustments to volume and intensity throughout the week and across the training phase. That way, overall fatigue stays under control, progress continues, and you're actually in a position to perform when testing week comes around.

How the Hybrid Program Avoids These Mistakes

On the Hybrid Program, we're constantly balancing strength and bodybuilding volume with running and conditioning throughout the training phase, so you don't get to testing week feeling absolutely cooked.

Every phase has a purpose. Some weeks we deliberately push intensity, while other weeks we might pull things back in some areas. Volume is carefully managed across both lifting and running so one doesn't completely compromise the other.

Rather than trying to max out every session, we focus on building momentum week after week. Progressive overload is built into the program, so you're making small improvements consistently instead of chasing random PBs and burning yourself into the ground.

The goal isn't to have one incredible training session. It's to string together months of quality training. That's what produces the best hybrid athletes.

By controlling fatigue, progressing each element at the right time, and balancing all aspects of your training, you can continue building strength, muscle, fitness, and running performance together without constantly feeling run down or having one area hold another back.