Review: The Hybrid Athlete by Alex Viada

For as long as I've been training, I've attempted to combine both strength training and cardiovascular fitness training -- Mostly with the intent of maximizing my strength and muscle mass while still being able to kick ass at obstacle course races and not be dead from running a mile.

It's always been difficult to do this. The body adapts specifically to the demands placed on it. The adaptations the body undergoes from endurance training differ significantly to the adaptations to training for strength and muscle mass. Endurance adaptations can interfere with and even detract from adaptations to strength training if you don't manage your recovery properly. Done right, however, endurance training can enhance strength training and vice-versa.

I learned about the interference aspect first-hand during cross-country senior year of high school. I entered the season with mediocre running ability, but I was far stronger than most runners. I designed a lifting plan to maintain my strength while training for cross country. I'd be lifting pretty much the same as I was before, but with one less day per week. It worked out fine for the first several weeks, until the volume of running 5 times a week at practice caught up with me. My strength in squats started to tank hard and my running was suffering from constantly sore legs, so I decided to drop squatting for the rest of the cross-country season. I figured at the time that the running would give my legs sufficient stimulation to keep their strength, and that I wouldn't lose much if anything from my squat if I took a couple of months off.

Well, I was wrong. I didn't realize how much more adapted my quads were becoming to running versus squatting. At the beginning of the season I was squatting 290 and by the end I could only hit 260 and missed 270. I was pretty demoralized by the regression, and while I was able to work my strength back up within a month or two, I'd always rather not lose strength if I can avoid it.

Dropping squats did allow me to focus more on the bench and deadlift, however, and I actually managed to hit pretty big PRs in both during cross country season after I dropped squats. The absence of squatting reduced my overall systemic stress significantly, and since the muscles involved in the bench and deadlift aren't as directly affected by running as those involved in the squat (I think the quads in particular were the issue here), my bench and deadlift didn't suffer significantly from running and thus had a chance to improve.

The point of this article was to be a review, so I should get on with that. But I wanted to give some context here to show how hard it can be to combine two drastically different types of physical training, and how doing it wrong can result in stalled progress or even regression in both.

Since senior year, I've become much better at programming for both strength and endurance simultaneously. I owe this in large part to what I've learned from what Alex Viada has written.

Alex is a competitive powerlifter, triathlete, and ultramarathoner. He has squatted and deadlifted over 700, and benches 400 on a bad day. I believe his mile time is somewhere in the low 4:00 range. On top of it, he's ripped to the freaking bone despite drinking beer daily.

Allegedly the legs of a human being (I'm skeptical, they're clearly lungs)

Alex is a rare case amongst endurance athletes. I have a huge amount of respect for elite endurance athletes and the rigorous training they put themselves through. But the best guys in endurance sports aren't really much to look at from a physique standpoint -- they usually look emaciated. Lean, but not carrying any significant muscle mass. One of the reasons I don't have that much trouble balancing endurance and strength work is that I don't have a ton of mass overall, even though I'm decently muscular. Being 170 lbs is a whole different animal than being 220, like Alex is, or more. At his weight, he has to worry about heavier joint stresses while running and using more energy overall to move his own body mass. This is why it's more efficient to be light as an endurance athlete; you're actually doing less work to move the same distance if you weigh less.

Not your typical endurance cyclist.

Alex started out in powerlifting, and picked up endurance competition later after he got his ass kicked by a 5K and decided he needed to work on that. So he had to start out at a high bodyweight, and it took a lot of trial-and-error to get to where he is today. He's clearly learned a lot throughout this process, and he has a ton of valuable knowledge that's shared in his articles on the website for his company, Complete Human Performance, in his articles on JTS Strength, and most recently in his book, The Hybrid Athlete.

The book is all about concurrently training two dissimilar sports, and focuses on training for strength sports and endurance sports simultaneously. It begins with an explanation of what hybrid training is about, followed by some background information on the relevant physiology that should be understood before reading the rest of the book. The explanations are simple enough that most people shouldn't have any trouble understanding. It focuses on the basics of muscle structure and fiber types, energy systems, and metabolism and how they apply to hybrid training. This section confirmed my suspicion that the calf cramping I experienced during Tough Mudder was due to underconditioning, not lack of hydration/electrolytes.

It then goes right into discussing the considerations that should be taken when programming for both strength and endurance, and how each type of training can both detract from the other if done poorly but also enhance the other if done properly. Nutrition is then discussed, and it's presented very simply and in a way most people should be able to implement easily.

The book then gives a bunch of sample training programs (all of which have been previously used by Alex with clients), and even more sample routines will be released via e-mail to anyone who bought the book. The routines are very good. The only issue with them for me (which is a very minor one) is the format with which he writes them. He uses abbreviations for the names of every exercise, and for some of them it can get confusing and require you to flip back to the key for the abbreviations a lot. This is totally nitpicking though; the content is what really matters and the content is excellent.

For people who bought the book when it first came out, they were given access to a live Q&A webinar with Alex. I took advantage of this myself, and I really have to commend how willing Alex is to share his knowledge and experience.

The book ends with a humorous appendix on beer recommendations (the man loves beer).

Seriously.

The core tenets of Alex Viada's training philosophies are essentially the following:

1. Make your endurance training and your strength training as dissimilar to each other as possible to minimize carryover of stress from one to the other.

2. Adjust volume and intensity throughout the microcycle (your weekly training routine) so that your week begins with high intensity with low volume and ends with lower intensity and higher volume.

3. Eat sufficiently to fuel your training volumes.

4. Cut the "junk miles". Before adding anything to your program, ask yourself whether it will really add value to your training, and whether you can manage the stress that it will add to your program. This is probably the most important point of the book. To do two things at once, you can't put 100% of your energy into either or the other will suffer significantly. Compromises must be made, and you're going to have to learn to be "lazy" with certain things so you don't overwork yourself.

5. Specificity. If you want to be good at something, you need to practice that thing. You're not likely to get much better at running by flipping tires.

One other thing that was really awesome in the book and a nice surprise is a sidebar written by Matt Kroczaleski, AKA Kroc, former marine and elite powerlifter. There are several other interesting sidebars to give some context throughout the book as well.

I highly recommend The Hybrid Athlete to anyone who is interested in being strong, looking good, and having endurance to go with those. There's some really great information in this book, and Alex has a pretty funny writing style that made me laugh out loud a few times. It was easy to read through it in 2 days.

Pick up your copy here.