How to turn a Strength Athlete into a Hybrid Athlete: Part 1 of 5

Part 1.

Consider the current physiology of your strength athlete - specifically, what they currently have and what they might lack. This initial stage should be all about beginning the process of becoming a more “global” athlete as opposed to their current localised efficiency that they’ve developed through building strength in set movement patterns. Bear in mind that to build more global levels of mitochondria throughout the body, you’re looking at a transformation that is going to take years - so just getting started at an ever developing zone 2 routine is the main way to start.

A strength athlete is someone that we can probably say the following about:

➡️ They have a natural ability to become very efficient in set movement patterns, like a squat, deadlift or bench press. This is due to developing highly localised efficiency in these movements, as well as dense localised mitochondria. Their ability to perform high repetition work in these areas is driven by a combination of movement efficiency as well as the localised energy systems that support the muscle mass for those movements.

➡️ Because of this, they probably have a compromised ability to involuntarily relax their muscle mass in between contractions that allow greater amounts of blood flow to move around the body (like an endurance athlete can) - this probably means they have a natural “limiter” (though not certain) around their ability to maintain well oxygenated tissue at low levels of output, and will likely hit a “threshold” or “lactate” level too early.

➡️ The main intervention to begin moving the strength athlete towards a more “global” level of mitochondria as well as greater density of capillaries to deliver blood to tissue, is to implement some form of cyclical zone 2 training - something that can be performed from anywhere between 4 - 10 hours a week. This could be running if that’s their main aim, but also supplemented with X-trainer, cycling, rowing or ski erg. This also doesn’t need to be continuous but can also be broken into set of 4 - 6 minutes at a time if needed.

This ever developing routine should allow the athlete to comfortably handle anywhere between 4 - 10 hours a week as standard. This could be a set amount of weekly time that develops monthly, or one that increases week on week in a similar way to periodising a running programme, with a build week that goes above their norm, followed by a lower recovery week, and a moderate volume week. This can keep it a bit more interesting than just having a weekly set amount of 10 hours to complete, which can be a bit daunting to a predominantly strength based athlete.