Can You Build Muscle And Run Faster At The Same Time?

We break down how to keep and build muscle on a hybrid plan while improving aerobic fitness, using recent race lessons, clear training principles, and practical nutrition. We share what to prioritise across the season, how to manage intensity, and why station efficiency changes everything.

• Amsterdam race recap and pacing outcomes
• Compromised work structure and why it translates
• Station efficiency as free speed and recovery
• Doubles versus singles mentality and pacing
• Can you gain muscle on hybrid training
• Managing interference with cardio intensity
• The big three for maintenance: recovery, nutrition, volume
• Protein targets, carb timing, and refuelling
• Heavy lifting, rep ranges, and effort to failure
• Periodising off-season and race prep blocks
• Variety, lateral work, and adherence for progress
• Upcoming UK HIROX events and programming options

Please reach out to either one of us with any questions whatsoever
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Transcript

Race Recap And Training Wins

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back, guys, to the Total Athletic Podcast. This is episode six. Thank you very much to everyone for being patient. We've had a little hiatus for a week or two. I've been off running around a track and pulling sleds and doing all that sort of fun stuff in Amsterdam. And uh yeah, Matt, you went to Manchester, didn't you, for uh for the weekend? Um did indeed, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

For a laugh, didn't actually end up doing any races. Um that's another another story in itself. But yeah. How was Amsterdam?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Yeah, great, good trip. The um the trip was better than the race. Um, no, we had a great time. It was good. It was um it was exactly what we set out to do. We I think we we planned, or I planned for us, I should say. Um, we paced off all of our training and everything for around a 105, and that's exactly what we did. So for me, that was um like a 5% improvement on the on the last high rocks that I did. Um and in terms of it being a from a personal point of view, I I started and finished the the stations and felt felt pretty good. So it was a it was a good um a good test of the programme, a good test of the we we followed uh I I followed the eight-week um tap uh race prep program that we uh put together and Soph did I think three of those sessions a week uh with me and two running sessions a week as well. So um it was her first race, and um I definitely felt the difference in terms of uh the improvements it all across the board. So I think the the last high rocks I did um, or the first high rocks I did, I should say, with Rio, he started and finished all of the stations. Um, and I was still, even though I was in front of him on the runs, he was just jogging behind me and holding, he could have easily gone faster on those runs as well. So I was basically the handbrake on the runs and he was taking the brunt of the stations, whereas this time round, doing it with soap, um, I was taking the brunt of the stations and felt comfortable on the runs. So that was a it was a really good um I suppose it just res let me realize that the program works, which is great. So um you know it you always think or you know that it's gonna work in theory and you know the the science behind it and you you know that it should, but it's always good to see it and feel it in practice as well, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Yeah, yeah, nice. Anything what was easier, what was harder?

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Uh the running was definitely easier. I mean, I uh our average runs uh were 10 or maybe 12 seconds um a K faster than what I did um interviews with with Luke. So we were holding a 440, I think, average or 445 average on that rocks zone app I had a look at um across the across all the the runs. Um but the I think the the biggest thing was the doing some dedicated station work, albeit the stations when we I did it previously weren't um a weakness, it's a very different thing, and we we've discussed this you know privately in terms of your training and your programming. Um doing some compromised work and doing some um IWT work where you're going from a station to a station to a run compromised, how that then translates to the race and the feeling in the race and getting some volume in that way. It feels great doing one set of the stations when you're doing two, three, four sets potentially in a training session, and that third set feels um really hard in training and it feels easier than that in the race. Yeah.

Why Compromised Work Matters

SPEAKER_00 3:56

I think it's a good way to do it, isn't it? It's like we said before. I think there's I think when the whole HIROK stuff started, there were too many people and coaches just programming HIROC stuff all the time. And I personally think it's maybe gone a little bit too much the other way now where a lot of people aren't doing enough of compromise work and station work because they're so dedicated on the running side of it, which of course is such a big thing. But at the same time, if you haven't got it's for me personally, it's not necessarily getting better at the compromise, but it's just having exposure to it so that on race day it doesn't feel different. I think it's a fine line between too much and too little, but the last thing you want is to get so good at running and then get to race day and be like, shh, shit, what's that horrible feeling? So it's just just having exposure once or twice a week to to some form of compromise. But and like you say, when you do a little bit more two stations into a run, three stations into a run, then you get to race day and you go, Oh what? I've only got to do the sleds once. Ah, it's it's quite nice. So it's yeah, I I yeah, I think that's good. But yeah, glad it, glad it went well. So what Cardiff, Cardiff's coming up, isn't it? End of end of April.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah, I think it's the last weekend of April, first weekend of May, isn't it? Maybe bag holidays. Uh yeah, I think potentially looking at doing that, or so I think she's got the bug a little bit, or I think necessarily got the bug, but knows that she could do better. And now, you know, it's like when you do your first race, you don't really know what to expect despite the training and everything else. So I think um, I think in in her mind, um, now that she's had a go and had a feel of it, um thinks I think I think we probably could have done maybe a 103, somewhere between a 103 and a 104 in Amsterdam, if she had been a bit more um complicated to go go go a little bit earlier. Um, and now I think if we do that, whether or not that's Cardiff or potentially do another trip, maybe look maybe look at Helsinki or something like that, where somewhere we we fancy going um and and do another another block of training and see if we can knock a chunk of time up.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

Yeah, I'm excited too. It's like I said to you the other day, I think for you two are athletes, I'd go as far as saying professional athletes. So I'm so intrigued to see how good you get at it when your running improves because station-wise, I can't see many people beating you two. Um so it'll just be a case, and running will get better. You like it's just a case of doing it, isn't it? Just volume over over time. I think the ones that, yeah, it's gonna be exciting. Sub our mixed doubles, here we come.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah, maybe, maybe. I think that's a that's a long way off in terms of getting that.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

There's no maybe, it's happening. I'm telling you now. It's happening.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

I think that the one thing I did, I I I've learned definitely from now doing a handful and doing them in different ways, or albeit all being partner stuff. Um, but having done them in different ways, one where I'm the handbrake on the stations, one where I'm the handbrake on the runs, one where I'm sort of leading on both, um, is obviously you're still you're still doing those stations semi-reserved, right? Because you've got you know what you've got to come, you're pacing those stations. Um, and it definitely does come down, as we've spoken about, it's it's definitely a running race because the better you're running is, the harder you can go on the stations and recover at the pace on the runs as well, to a degree. Um, but there's definitely uh efficiency um issues on the stations that I'm seeing all of the time. I've seen it all three races that I've done, we've spent some time on it working on your stuff. You know, for somebody that's got such a good HIROX time, there's you're leaving 10, 15, 20% efficiency on some of these stations, or were leaving some of that efficiency on the floor. And I think that um improving your efficiency on the stations and your running will make for most people a massive difference rather than necessarily improving the stations, but it's nice to do everything, right? And improve the stations as well, then it's a bonus.

Efficiency On Stations And Running

SPEAKER_00 7:59

No, I agree. I so it's it's such a tough one, Hyrox, because there's just so much. Like you could program me 30 hours a week training, and I'd probably on Sunday go, I could have done a little bit more of this, a little bit more of that. And so it's yeah, there's so much results. Yeah, exactly. So it's it's and I guess that's where off season comes. It's exciting get into a period where you've got like a three, four, five month block of just training, training, training to like you say, it's becoming an amazing runner, but being efficient at stations as opposed to an amazing runner get through the stations. Um, and I think it's the difference I like we said as well with doubles and singles is with doubles, you've you you can't paste, you've just got to grip it and grip it from minute one. Um with singles, you've got to paste it, which is why you see a lot of people with fantastic doubles times and they're shit at singles, or vice versa. You get people who are very good at singles, and you'd go, well, they'd be amazing at doubles, but they haven't quite got that VO2 max to just send it for 10 seconds rest. So it's uh mentality, right? To go like, oh fuck, I've got to go early and stay there, you know. Yeah, no, exactly, exactly. So so yeah, so so I thought today's podcast we'd do something slightly different, and that please, guys, feedback to us. We're gonna waffle less and follow a structure a little bit more. Um, so what I would like to go through today is come away from HyROX for once and talk about hybrid training in general. Um, basically, can you maintain muscle whilst following a hybrid plan? Um, and then to follow on from that, can you build muscle following a hybrid plan? Um, so that's gonna be the main topic, and then I've kind of split this into four different sections. Um so I'm gonna basically start off with the first aspect of it, um, probably give one or two minutes, and then let Mike put me under the table and give his aspect and the science behind it, and then we'll move on to question two, question three, question four, and finish off like that. So I think I thought this would be a really good topic because it's something that a lot of people probably want to know um because hybrid training is becoming so popular, so cool. Um, but at the same time, if you're like me and incredibly vain, you also want to look good. Um, and if you've spent years trying to grow the tiniest bit of muscle that I have, you want to be able to maintain that. Um, and it's something that I've noticed quite a lot is when I I used to have a lot of friends, or I do have a lot of friends that do CrossFit who always used to do rabbellons to me that they've maintained their muscle, if not in some aspects, grown muscle since starting CrossFit when coming away from bodybuilding. And I used to be like, nah, I'm not doing it, I'm not doing it. I'd get too skinny, I'd lose all my muscles, blah, blah, blah. And then high rox came along and I've gone full stand on HIROX. Yes, I've lost 10, 12 kilos, but one thing I'm shocked is from the one or two strength sessions I'm doing a week, how much muscle I have maintained. Um, so the first question is can you grow muscle following a hybrid plan? Um, my quick answer to this is it depends. Uh obviously, but coming away from that is is it optimal? No, I don't think it is optimal. Optimal growing muscle is following a bodybuilding plan, which we won't delve into. But can you grow some form of muscle whilst on a hybrid plan? My opinion on that is yes. My opinion on that, however, is it's very limited if you've got a background where you've spent long periods of time doing bodybuilding training, because at the end of the day, following a hybrid plan where you are running, doing long bouts of cardio, we know that is catabolic and it's not doesn't put you in an optimal state to build muscle. However, I've come away in the last six months and realized the actual the amount of stimulus you need within a week to just maintain muscle is a lot less than you think, even to the point of a few pressed ups to RPE or seven or eight a few times a week, would probably maintain the majority of your chest muscles. Uh, whereas before I thought I needed 20 steps of bench, chest pressed, cable flies, and dips to maintain my muscle in a week. Um, so yeah, so I'll stop there. So my my answer is yes, you can. Is it optimal? No. Mike, over to you.

unknown 12:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

So keep it short because we've also got three more questions after this.

Doubles Vs Singles: Pacing And Mindset

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Um what I'll do is is caveat this with a slightly longer part that's probably going to answer or go into all four of those pieces. Um, is that we we need to understand exactly what a hybrid training is, right? So hybrid training is a relatively loose term that gets thrown around to any and to anyone now that does anything that's crossfit-y, that's not crossfit, that's that's running, or some form of aerobic work, or some sort of fitness work, as well as some strength and conditioning work, well, some strength or hypertrophy. I always call it hypertrophy because it's always used to hypertrophy um training. Um and actually the science around um pure aerobic work, and by which I mean um improving your aerobic base and hypertrophy and even strength training, there's not as much interference as what people thought and what even sports scientists thought maybe five, 10, 15 years ago. Um the the interference effect is actually limited on strength gains, but certainly um muscular size gains. Um it the the the main interference you find is in maximal power, things like jump height, things like throwing speed, things like um explosive power, where you'll find that that that there is a detriment. You're looking at sort of 20 to 30 percent detriment in in those realms of training. Um but if you are purely looking for um aesthetics and improving muscle size, um, you can definitely grow muscle while in improving your aerobic fitness. Uh, as you said, it's not necessarily optimal, um, but it's definitely achievable. Um and that just comes down to understanding, as we've spoken about on previous podcasts, is your your recovery. Um, as long as you're recovering from that um hypertrophy work or that strength work, you can get stronger and fitter at the same time as well, aerobically fitter at the same time. But you just need to make sure that you're recovering from those aspects of training. And a rope purely aerobic um training can actually help with recovery, um, help with blood flow, can help with everything else. But it's a matter of understanding, and this is the big nuance on this is intensity. Now, what you can't do is intense cardiovascular work, things like VO2 max training, things like lactate threshold training at high intensities, and expect then to massively increase muscle mass or massively increase strength. Because what you're doing is you're taking away recoverability because you're trying you have to recover from those intense sessions. What you can do is um lots of low or mid medium to low intensity cardio, which will help increase your aerobic fitness, which helps increase your potential for lactate threshold and your potential for VO2 max. Um, and this is exactly what I do with my CrossFit athletes in off-season. We do a lot of pure strength. Um, to start with, we'll do some hypertrophy work where we'll do maybe three, four, five, six weeks of hypertrophy to um improve your connective tissue strength, your tensile strength, a little bit of muscular size to increase the potential to get strong. We'll then do a strength block for anywhere between six and twenty, four weeks, depending on what that person's doing and what that season looks like. But during that strength block um and uh and hypertrophy block, we'll do a lot of cardio, pure cardio. So things like row, bike, ski, less so on the running side of things from the CrossFit point of view, because there is, as we've spoken about before, more recovery and more uh eccentric load going into the running side of things. But if you are a quote unquote hybrid athlete and doing a lot of running, somebody like yourself that's a very efficient and very good runner, you could do zone two running, no problem, and still get bigger legs and still get stronger legs. Um so yeah, the answer is you can definitely gain muscle, you can definitely maintain muscle while following a quote-unquote hybrid program. Um, but it's understanding the intensity and the frequency of that cardio work. Um, I'd say cardio work loosely because actually it becomes more hit work or lactate work or threshold work or whatever. If if you're looking at doing that side of things where you're looking to improve performance in something like a a race or performance in something like crossfit and intensity, then the the strength and the uh the muscle size, the amount of recovery you can dedicate to those things start to decrease. So yeah, it is it is not optimal if you're looking at intense training, uh intense um aerobic work. That's counterintuitive, intense aerobic work, you know what I mean. You're doing intense uh fitness sessions, um, where yeah, I think if you're if you're dedicating a bit of time and you can concurrent training has been around for a long time and and CrossFit has proven this, you see some pretty yoked CrossFitters, right? They're doing a lot of um a lot of this work, they're doing a lot of aerobic work, but you need to periodise it correctly to get the maximum result.

Setting Today’s Agenda: Hybrid Training

Can You Build Muscle On Hybrid?

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Yeah, brilliant. I um yeah, I won't delve into that anymore because I think that's a good a good answer. Um number two, what are the most important factors to maintain muscle whilst following a hybrid plan? Um when I think of this, I I straight away see for three. Number one is recovery. Um as it is for everything, recovery is the number one drug in the world. I if you are hitting your hybrid plan hard seven days a week, twice a day, you are constantly in a catabolic state, no matter how many calories you are eating. So your body is gonna have no other choice than eat to weigh that muscle to live. Um, so recovery, whether that be sleep, whether that be rest, um, is is number one. Uh number two for me personally is the biggest one, which is nutrition. I love food. And when people ask me how I've maintained any form of muscle doing the training that I do now, I sing and dance about the amount of food you need to eat. The food, if you are eating in a calorie deficit whilst following any form of hybrid plan where you've got large volumes of cardio, you will lose every single bit of muscle you have straight away, no matter how many strength sessions you're doing a week. I, for someone like me, with the volume I'm doing, I'm eating between probably averaged four and a half thousand calories a day. Um, and I'm probably just holding on to any muscle that I've got. I think people, we see so much online about diets, etc., etc., and fuel it. I I think people severely, severely undereat um when following hybrid plans. So that's number two for me. I think if you can, you need to be at minimum eating at maintenance, but I would be urging most people to be in a some form of slight surplus to be maintaining muscle if they want to grow muscle, then quite a large surplus. And you see bodybuilders doing not a second of cardio a week and they're eating 7,000 calories a day, then you probably need to be eating quite a lot of food if you're also chucking in five, six hours of cardio a week. So that's number two. Um, and number three for me is you need the volume and the frequency of some form of strength training to give your muscles a reason to stay there. If you don't do any weights whatsoever, your body has no demand and no need to maintain that muscle. So it will get rid of it straight away because it weighs more than fat and we'll probably likely think, hmm, let's get rid of it. So just doing some form of trainings for your muscles to go, oh, I'll I'll hang around actually, because if I stay that that weight session, so but how much volume and frequency you need is something that I've probably changed my thoughts on over the last year. I I now see one, two strength sessions a week as enough. And by strength sessions, I don't mean heavy, I mean just enough to stimulate that muscle to grow, whether that be a round of press-ups or some dumbbell presses for your chest. As long as you're doing something throughout that week, personally, I feel that is enough stimulation to maintain that muscle as long as you are balancing that with enough food and enough recovery. Um, so yeah, they're my free recovery, nutrition, uh, and like. Enough volume and frequency. Over to you.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Yeah, I think I would tie in your first two, recovery and nutrition, into the same boat. Yeah. Because nutrition is recovery. If you're not eating enough, you're not going to recover. It's relatively simple. I would disagree slightly in what you said when you said if you're eating at a deficit, you will lose muscle mass. That's not necessarily the case. Now there's caveats to that is in terms of how much protein you're eating, right? So you can you can maintain muscle in a calorie deficit, but you can't you grow, it's very, very hard to grow muscle.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Maybe I'll counteract that quickly by saying again, it depends. It depends always on your training volume.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, but yeah, I think the the big part of that to touch on as well from the nutrition point of view, when we're talking about um hypertrophy and strength gains, but more so on the hypertrophy side of things is protein. So you need to be consuming enough protein to um to fuel muscle gain, right? So the building blocks, the amino acids, your essential amino acids, um, leucine specifically, um, is massively important to growing muscle and maintaining muscle tissue. The other thing that I would say is that it's an awful lot easier to maintain muscle than it is to grow muscle. Yeah, um, it's uh a lot easier to maintain strength than it is to gain strength. Um, so these things are the reason that you see off seasons in sports because people spend those two, three, four, five, six months, depending on whatever sport they're doing and what their that season looks like, getting as strong as possible. And then in season, they tend to maintain as much as they can and get a little bit weaker so that they can start again from a better starting point next season and so on and so forth. Um, you very rarely get stronger in season, get bigger in season. It's about maintaining as much as you can when the performance, and that's touching on the last answer that I gave you when the intensity and everything else starts to come up, um, because you can't dedicate that that time um and that recovery to muscles, uh, protein synthesis. Um, so yeah, I agree nutrition is massive recovery is the the key, and nutrition is probably the key to that, other than sleep, which is um another massive part of recovery, which gets overlooked and and um under um the importance of it gets sort of underestimated as well. Um when when you go into the volume of training, I would add to that my three would be recovery, which includes nutrition and sleep. Um volume, I completely agree with you on that. There's there's different levels of volume for growing muscle and for maintaining muscle. And then intensity again, as we talked about from the cardiovascular side of things, it's intensity in terms of the weight uh lifting, the protein synthesis side of things to grow muscle. You need to have relatively high intensity. So you need to lift relatively heavy to stimulate muscle growth. So when people think about muscle growth, again, I'm talking about growth rather than maintenance. The reason that your body increases muscle mass is because it's being stimulated to, which means it's it's being pushed to do something that it feels uncomfortable doing. And your body then reacts by going, How can I make that easier in the future? It doesn't know that you're doing dumbbell presses. It might think that you're running away from a saber-tooth tiger. And it thinks, fuck me, I put a tide if I do yeah, I need to be able to do that better next time.

Interference Myth And Cardio Intensity

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Or I'm fighting a how you're doing that sort of movement when you but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

I'm wrestling a bear or whatever it is, yeah. And it's thinking, fight or flight, it's thinking, okay, well, I'm if I'm gonna have to do this more regularly, um, then I need to throw some muscle down to make this easier and make it more efficient. And as you said, rightly so, carrying muscle mass is inefficient because um it burns more calories carrying muscle mass. Well, people turn around and go, Oh, what I weigh. Yeah, but you've got how much of that is muscle mass because muscle is muscle is heavier than fat, which is true. Um, it's also less efficient to carry around. So what we're what we're looking at is you need to stimulate those muscles to grow. So to do that, you need to lift heavy. Um, and this is something that I think um gets the mark gets missed quite a lot because there's the whole the oh, you need to be doing eight to twelve reps for hypertrophy, and and then you know you need to be doing uh one to five reps for strength work. But if you do seven or six or seven reps, you're doing nothing. Like it's not doing anything.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Don't go to the gym, mate.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Yeah, don't even bother you. I go, oh, somebody does sets of seven. Christ, what are they actually doing? They don't know what it's.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

I think there's actually, isn't it? There's research now that up to 30 reps. You can do sets of up to 30 and and still have just as much of a hypertrophy effect as if you were doing the the eight to twelve rep range as everyone's told to do.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Yeah, and it'll again it depends on the stimulus, right? So it depends on how heavy those reps are. So what that means, you need to be taking those three the higher the rep range you you're looking at further to failure. Taking it closer to failure. Yeah. Um, whereas the lower the rep range you're looking at, you can stay a slightly further away from it. It makes sense, right? If I'm doing a five, five reps at my six rep max, I'm 20% away from failure because I could have done an extra rep. Whereas if I'm doing 30 reps, I'd need to be doing that at like my 31 rep max um to be that far away from failure. So it's it's um it's a hard thing to um to quantify. But the reality is, I think, and this is this is how I I'll be programming for you, other than things with small muscle groups or muscle groups where we want to prioritize strength endurance. So we do a lot of high volume calf work, for example, um, lots of tib work, lots of um pogos, lots of you know, bounding and that side of things. Um, we might do some mid-volume um on specific movements that we're gonna see, things like single leg work and lunges, because yes, we want to get stronger in those movements, but we also need to appreciate that we need to be efficient in them because we're gonna have to do a hundred of them in a race. Um, but actually, what I see people not doing enough of is heavy work. Um, and to to get stronger, um, and again, looking at going back to my original point, like what is hybrid training? Is it looking good or is it performing well? Because if it's performing well, strength is as important as hypertrophy. Um, and they're not necessarily one and the same. You can be strong without you'll stroke get stronger without growing much more muscle mass, you'll tend to you know see some muscle gain, size gain when you increase strength, but you're not training specifically for that. Um and I think if you as a rule of thumb look at it as a muscle group, um, and you train that muscle group three times a week, with not three to five times a week, but three times a week in what we're doing, because you're looking at improving other things as well. Um, three to five sets of three to five reps, then you're not gonna go far wrong. You're gonna get stronger, probably, certainly maintain strength, uh, and probably gain a little bit of muscle mass as well, as long as you're eating winner.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

I'll um probably probably skip the next question because that kind of was it in terms of how many times a week and how many sets you need to do. And I I I completely agree with that. I think two things I want to quickly cover myself because um was number one on that note was it also depends on your your style of training. So, for example, for myself who's doing high rocks, where it's very leg focused, I personally think I could do a couple of split squats and a couple of squats a week and literally one or two sets and probably maintain my muscle because I'm doing so many sled pushes, wall balls, lunges, that I'm getting so much, I'm probably getting more quad stimulus and more quad volume than I did when I was an out and out bodybuilder. However, when it looks at, oh, I don't really need my chest and arms too much for this spot, but I wouldn't mind maintaining that muscle. I do do a little bit more steps, for example, I may hit six to nine steps of chest a week. Not that I need to, but just from an aesthetic point of view to maintain that muscle. Um, number two, one thing that you touched on, which I probably skipped to myself, which I probably forgot about because I am, is protein when we look at the nutrition side of it. I am the research on how much of protein you need is I'm not a scientist. I think people should be eating a lot more protein than what a lot of people say. Um is that because I've come from a background of working in a supplement shop and working in that space where it's all about protein, but I personally think you can't go wrong with almost overeating on protein. I know people see that as a waste because what happens to protein that does it convert to carbs, is it just wasted by the body? I think because it's got such a metabolic effect on the body and it's so beneficial for so many aspects, I personally would rather be overeating my protein. Um I to the point where I probably touch between 250 to 300 grams of protein a day. Um that's not all from chicken and eggs. That's if I was that's from like byproducts of oats and stuff. But if I was looking at purely from eggs, protein shakes, chicken, whatever, it's probably still around about 200 grams a day. Um yeah, I would say nutrition, what I said, but in particular, high protein um is very important.

What Maintains Muscle: The Big Three

SPEAKER_01 32:25

So yeah, my my next to touch on that we rub the next one. Sorry, yeah, I agree on that. In terms of the the protein side of things, I've always prescribed upper end of um of what um is being uh scientifically shown to maintain or grow muscle mass for exactly that purpose, because it is it I liken it to a condom, right? I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Um so it's like, yeah, get get the protein, and then if you're not going to use it, great. But if you you need it and it's not there, then it's not there. Exactly. So yeah, I totally agree with that. And then, you know, before we turn this into a full nutrition seminar, but from a performance point of view, again, when we look at stepping into the periodization side of things, when we're going in season and certainly where we're going into race mode, you know, three days out from races and stuff, then carbs are way more important than protein.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

Yeah, that's a very good point.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

So you need to fuel your sessions as well. So, you know, we know we know that from you know, without it becoming a high rock specific, with what you're doing, it's a very glycolytic sport where with from what phosphit is very glycolytic as well. So you need muscle glycogen, you need that to recover as well. And it's a part of a reason why, you know, the recovery shakes that I developed back in the day were two to one carbs to protein, because people are like, well, you know, I can't have can't have carbs. No, post-training, that's exactly what you need, is you know, 30 odd grams of protein, 60 odd grams of carbs is going to do you a lot better than just 30 odd grams of protein. So um, yeah, I think it's it's looking, it's as we always say, it's not necessarily, and it depends, but it's looking at what what phase of training you're in, what your goals are, what's important to you, what your priorities are. Um, and something I'll I'll I'll caveat and go back on again as well, is what if your if your priorities are gaining or maintaining muscle while improving a bit of fitness, then I would always do your your muscle building training first. If your priorities are getting fitter, then I would do your cardio first and your lifting later. Yeah. It's prioritizing your training the same as you prioritise your nutrition and prioritizing based on your goal.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Yeah, no, I completely agree. Um, and then but yeah, before we move on to the last question, I think when we spoke about the actual how much you need to maintain them, but I think when I when I'm doing my weight sessions now and I look at them now compared to when I was training to grow muscle, I simplify it in terms of if you're looking to build muscle, as you said, or if you're looking at an RPE scale of one to ten, you need to be taking those steps to eight, nine. If you're following a Dorian Yates approach, 10 out of 10 to grow muscle. And that's what I used to do. Every step without fail to failure, everything. And I look at it now in terms of I'm not looking to maintain to grow muscle, I'm looking to maintain. And the only difference I make now is if before I could have maybe hit 10 reps to absolute failure, I'm probably doing six or seven reps now. Uh, the reason being I know that's enough to maintain the muscle, but also the training I'm doing now, if I was to do a nine out of ten, that would have a severe impact on maybe the high rock session I had the next day or the running session I had today. So it's just it simply is a it's that's me personally that the biggest difference between building and maintaining whilst following a hybrid plan.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

And that'd be like you exactly what just we just said, right? Is that what we're doing at the moment, because you know you're you're running in two weeks, I stumble? Uh 10, yeah, two weeks yesterday. It's uh 13 days. Um so at the moment, we're not looking at getting stronger, we're not looking at increasing muscle mass, we're not even really caring about maintaining muscle mass other than from a uh a vanity and um aesthetic point of view. What we're caring about is purely performance-based, right? But when we um see we the world we when you qualify for worlds um or worlds is over and we've got a good three-month off season, then we'll probably sacrifice those um hierox sessions to build some strength, to build some potentially muscle mass, but not necessarily, but more so strength, um, to help increase your potential for performance and do exactly what I said in the first answer is we'll look at getting as strong as we possibly can efficiently without increasing body weights, you know, as as much as possible, while building um an aerobic base as much as possible. And we'll take down the intensity on those um those fitness sessions to facilitate that and then start to ramp that fitness back up. And what you'll find is the first two or three weeks of ramping that fitness back up, you'll hate me and try and find a new coach because you'll go, Fuck me, this hasn't worked. I'm the most unfit person I've ever been in my entire life. And then week four comes around and you're smashing personal vests that you never thought you could because you've increased that potential because the neurobic base has increased and you're stronger. Um, and that's something that um most people don't ever do. So they're constantly just doing this. Yeah. For anyone that's not watching this, that's me just wiggling my finger up and down and undulating rather than um stepping up a ladder and doing this. Okay, so what we're looking to do is is increase your potential um and then um realize that potential, then recover, increase your potential, realize that potential. So what you're doing is that starting point um becomes higher each time. And your overall fitness or your overall strength level is say you start at rung one, and at the moment you're at rung one. Well, that would be exciting because we've got loads to do. Um, but then throughout this season, we're trying to maintain run one as much as we can, and then you start the off-season at rung one and we get you up to run two, and then maintain rung two for as long as we can. Then we start the off-season and get you up to rung three and maintain that for as long as we can. And you might drop down half a step during the season, but you're still starting half a step higher than we did last season. Yeah, brilliant.

Protein Targets And Fuel Timing

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Brilliant. Um, and then I guess to round it off, I know we touched upon it at the beginning, but I just thought we could round off the question is after all we've spoken about, is following a hybrid plan optimal or good for building muscle? Um, my short short answer to that is I genuinely believe it is, if the end goal isn't to be the best CrossFitter or the best hierarchy. If your goal is to be going to the CrossFit games or to win hierarchs, then no, you're not going to build muscle optimally following a hybrid or following a hierarchical CrossFit plan. If, however, your goal is to follow a hybrid plan to just get fitter and build muscle, I, from my experience, I genuinely believe there are times where it is more beneficial than following an old school push-pull leg routine. Because, like you touched on in the past, there are so many elements of cardio which actually help with hypertrophy recovery, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that's actually been spoken about a lot more in the bodybuilding space, where it's not a case of just training legs, training arms, training chest, it's a case of not just doing cardio to lose that for your next bodybuilding show. It's doing cardio every day for number one recovery, number two for cardiovascular work and endurance, because if you can do an hour on the cross trainer or run, whatever that is, when you've then got a 30 rep chest press or a triple drop set, whatever it may be, you've built some form of muscular endurance to perform those steps. So yeah, my short answer to that is if the goal isn't specifically for a hybrid event or sport, and you're just doing this to get fitter in to get more muscular, then yes, I do believe a hybrid plan is optimal for muscle growth. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:32

I think yeah, I think the uh there's a couple of uh different aspects to that, right? And I think one of the reasons that CrossFit became so so popular, and and now Hyrux is so popular, and hybrid training has become this massive buzzword. Um, is because it works. It's because it's it's a very, very good way to improve across the board most aspects, and I say most because it's not all, uh, most aspects of physique and fitness. You can get stronger, you can get fitter, and you can get um more muscle mass um or leaner. Um, not necessarily the same thing, but you could do or you could do both, and then you're you're looking at much better aesthetically because you've decreased body fat and increased muscle mass. You can do all of those things following a hybrid program, you can do all of those things following a cross-strict program, you can do all of those things uh following uh a HIROX program, but each one of those have uh are on a slightly sliding scale, right? So the the more quote unquote hybrid plan might focus more on um hypertrophy, the the crossfit plan might focus more on strength, and the high rox plan might focus more on uh aerobic fitness, but there's aspects of all of those things to all three, right? And um I think you know, even you know, when I I program for rugby players or jujitsu players or um uh footballers, in the off-season, that is the time to add variance and to bring in broader aspects of fitness. Um, and you'll you'll again you'll see this when we do our first full off-season together. We'll do a lot of lateral work because if you don't do any lateral work in high rocks, everything is very linear um through sagittal plane. What is lateral work? I wouldn't know. Imagine doing a skater squat, jumping from side to side. No, I know.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

What I'm saying is like I never I would you are going to be blown away.

Volume, Intensity, And Rep Ranges

SPEAKER_01 42:36

Yeah, and no, and CrossFitters don't do it either, right? But it what what happens when you do something that you've never done before? You see beginner games, you see improvements, right? And if you are improving in a plane that you very rarely train, there is so often a carryover when you then go back to the planes that you were training. Um, so what I'm saying is that there is times and places for being broad with your approach to fitness, to strength, to um muscle growth, and there's times to get specific. And that's the whole the whole theory behind periodization. So if you're if you're exactly agreeing with what you're saying, if you're training for a sport, you're training to be the best possible HIROXer. For probably six months of the year, you're not doing muscle growth um work, you're not doing anything lateral, you're not doing anything other than um focusing on improving your performance in that specific realm. And that's the reason that the eight-week training block that followed leading into HIROX was very HIROX specific. You did mainly the stations that you're seeing and running. We didn't go outside of those realms too much because in those eight weeks, we're focusing on improving those things. And when you look at the 12 week, uh sorry, the um the high rox rolling plan that we do, there's a lot more there. Variance there because it's not specific for a race, it's to get you better across the board, but then you could race at any point along the way. So you'll see things like sandbags and devil's press and fox jumps and all of these things that will carry over to high rocks without being specific. And there's two reasons for that. One that I just touched on, and the second is variety. Because you what you don't want to do is ring fence yourself and do the same exercises over and over again. Um, from uh firstly from uh an adaptation point of view, but secondly from uh a boredom point of view, at the end of the day, the best training program that you can possibly do is the one you're gonna stick to. Yeah. And I'm talking sort of converted here when I'm talking to you. If I told you to fucking eat white dog poo and do toe curls, and that would make you a uh a 56-minute high roxer, you'd probably do it. But as a general pop, 95% or 98 or 99% of the population aren't gonna do that. So you need to give them something that they're gonna stick to, which means they need to firstly enjoy it, secondly, see improvement, and thirdly, not get bored. Um, so and that and that's that there's aspects to that in in all sports as well. There's a reason that at the end of the season for rugby, you'll have two, three, four weeks off. Um, because you just need to reset and just go, cool. I'm I I don't want to see a rugby ball for a couple of months.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Yeah, brilliant. No, I completely agree. And I think that's a good way to to round it off. Like I say, I hope that's a helpful podcast. I know that everyone listening is probably down a similar route, um, and it's kind of nice to come away from the whole competing side of it and talk about something which deep down we all love, which is uh building a bit of muscle. Um so yeah, I think we will stop there. Um, like I said, we've got what we got now to Cardiff High Rocks is coming up last week of April. We've got a London High Roxy uh end of March, and Glasgow is the 12th to the 15th of March. So there's lots of UK events coming up. Um, like I say, we've got our tap programming for whether that be 8, 10, 12 week or individual plans. So by all means, please reach out to either one of us um any questions whatsoever. Um and yeah, I will finish there if you want to round off Mike. Uh and we will we're all back in the country now, so we'll have another podcast out next week. Um and yeah, speech all soon.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

Yeah, just going back to the with the podcast, guys. We we as always we really appreciate the feedback and the questions you guys are sending us and you know all of that side of things. We are gonna start doing some some guests as well, so you're not just getting bored of listening to us two all of the time. Um, whether or not that be Matt talking to a guest or me talking to a guest or all three of us, um, it'll depend on schedules. But we um yeah, we're gonna get a couple of guests on here, and we are still planning on doing the seminar series as well. Um, now that we're back in the country, as we said, we should get the ball rolling and certainly believe going to get one a week out, but potentially we're going to increase the frequency slightly because we obviously you all want to hear more of it.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

Exactly. And any ideas, please let us know. Please let us know. Um, not that we haven't already got a million ideas. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Do the like, share, subscribe, thing, whatever. Yeah, all of that. And um, yeah, thanks for listening, guys.