Mid Season Review: 3 Key Learnings For Hybrid Training

Hello and welcome to The Progress Theory where we discuss how to implement scientific principles to optimise human performance. I am Dr Phil Price and in today's episode, we have the season 5 review where I will be reflecting on the last 5 episodes of the Progress Theory and pull together what key scientific principles or training ideas have really stood out to me and led me to implement them into my own training. I like these episodes as they highlight the key aim of this podcast: discussing the science and correctly implementing new ideas into your training programme or your everyday life. This season on hybrid training has been amazing and it’s made me realise just how much I enjoy podcasting. This season has allowed me to really delve deep into a training topic that I’m really passionate about and not only has it changed my ideas towards training but has identified areas that we don’t fully understand and that need further research. Hopefully, I can answer these questions through student and collaborative projects at St Mary’s University. If you have any ideas of your own please do not hesitate to contact me. You never know where these hybrid ideas may lead.

Which of the season episodes has been your favourite so far? We started off with a group of episodes focusing on hybrid training with great athletes such as Daryl Green and Fergus Crawley, and looked into the concurrent training research with Dr Matt Lee. Then we focused on strength with Dr Pak, Coach Mike Tuscherer and GB weightlifter Sarah Davies. Then we went for endurance with Professor Louis Passfield, Mindset with Dr Carla Meijen, training intensity distribution with The Conditioning Consultant Nathan Heaney, and finally S&C for swimmers with Andy Elkins. All amazing episodes, each one giving practical advice while explaining the science behind their methods. I’m going to cheat and say I don’t have a favourite episode as each episode has played a significant role in my development as a scientist, athlete and coach, and they’ve all provided info on the book I’m writing (more on that later). However, I’m still going to pose the question to you, which has been your favourite episode? Let us know on instagram @theprogresstheory  

But before we get to the show I want to thank our sponsors, who the show would not be possible without.

I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to my production partner, KULT Media. 

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Thank you to HMN24 – fuelling human potential and optimising everyday human performance and well-being. 

First of all – HMN24 is not a sports supplement company. I’ve seen sport supplements be used as a method to improve performance in the gym and at a certain sport. However, these supplements, like a pre-workout, are often used on top of a lifestyle which does not provide the foundation needed for optimal performance. There’s no point taking pre-workout supplements if your sleep, hydration, and nutrition is an unstructured mess. I’m convinced that a large percentage of injuries are often caused, not because training was poor, but because a poor lifestyle foundation increased the athlete’s susceptibility to injury. Sports supplements are often used to plaster the cracks in poor lifestyle habits, which only causes more future problems. 

And this is where HMN24 is different. The product range at HMN24 not only helps improve your foundation; it optimises it. The HMN24 products are designed to fit around your circadian rhythms, from the moment you wake up, to key moments in the day when you need optimal focus, to getting the best sleep at night, there’s a product to optimise each phase of the day.

I can’t recommend enough the “live on form’ pack, consisting of the products Rise, flow and pre-sleep. Rise is for the morning and is my absolute favourite. It tastes amazing. Rise contains caffeine for increased morning alertness (though not a huge amount of caffeine, which is sooo much better for avoiding gastro-intestinal distress), electrolytes from coconut and watermelon powder to increase hydration after the previous night’s sleep, and B-vitamins, to ensure you ready to win the morning. I’m not a fan of long-winded morning routines. I wake up, have my Rise with ice, and get straight to writing, and I’ve seen such an improvement in getting into deep work.

By the time 2pm comes around the effects of caffeine from Rise has worn off, but I don’t want to take more caffeine because that’s going to interrupt getting to sleep later on. This is where Flow is perfect. It’s a caffeine-free nootropic, perfect for improving alertness and concentration during that mid-afternoon slump. And finally, I take pre-sleep just before bed, which is a comprehensive night-time complex, formulated to help support well-being and fortify the body against the fatigue and stress that come with leading a performance-driven lifestyle. 

I can’t recommend these products enough they are a game changer for human performance. And also, while you’re at their website hmn24.com check out there plant protein, which is incredible for smoothies post-training, and their website includes articles and an awesome podcast for those wanting to learn more about human performance. You can even check out the episode I did with them, I thoroughly enjoyed that chat I had with Phi Learney, Co-founder of HMN24, and it has led to an awesome collaboration with HMN24 supporting The Progress Theory. If you want a 10% discount on all HMN24 products either head to their website via the links in the Instagram bios of @theProgresstheory or my personal Instagram @drphilprice or use the code PHILPRICE at checkout.

Right, for my reflection. First of all, I really enjoyed discussing hybrid programming with Fergus Crawley. A great guy, athlete, all-round top bloke. I really agreed with how he incorporates his hybrid challenges into his overall programming. Lots of athletes will train up to a challenge and then recover the following week, usually in some form of deload. Now, this is a fine approach but do we need to do this for every big challenge? Can’t these challenges be viewed as part of a long-term training programme? Fergus talks about consolidating stressors, working to develop specific adaptations which transfer to hybrid performance rather than working specifically to a sport. This, to me, makes quite a lot of sense for a hybrid athlete, especially as the hybrid challenge often changes. For example, one year you may be training for a functional fitness competition, and the next you're working to improve your powerlifting total while training for a half iron man distance triathlon. You can either view this as training for two separate sports in two separate years, or you’re training to get both stronger and fitter over the 2 years and you're just displaying this strength and fitness in two different ways. Your training may end up slightly more generic, only becoming more sports-specific nearer the challenge or competition as you learn to apply your strength and fitness in different training modalities. This stops us training for a challenge and then thinking…what’s next. The challenges just become a part of your main long-term goals i.e to get as strong and fit as possible. It stops the weeks of misguided and directionless training after these events, which you label a deload. If you’re a good athlete you should be able to recover pretty quickly, so the hybrid challenge or event you choose to do should form part of a larger training programme, not act as a peak.

OK, second reflection. I enjoyed discussing collecting data and understanding our athletes with powerlifting coach Mike Tuchscherer. In our episode, we discussed how long you’d programme a training block for and how different athletes react to training differently. For example, I may programme a double in the back squat at an RPE of 8 for 8 weeks in one of the sessions. Each week is the same but the loads may be different as the athlete progresses. Athlete 1 may increase their load each week quite linearly, reaching a plateau of sorts around weeks 7 & 8. Athlete 2 may plateau at week 2, and continue the programme until suddenly around week 6 or 7 see a sudden surge in loads lifted. These two athletes had the same programme but clearly progressed very differently. Should we know how athletes progress like this to help inform future programming decisions? This is where Mike and I discussed the importance of tracking data and monitoring training loads as much as possible. Most of it may seem unnecessary and doesn’t lead you to make any immediate decisions as a coach, but having all this data tells a story of how your athlete reacts to different training programmes and stimuli. Say you had an athlete that responds differently to the bench press compared to the back squat? How are you going to know this? You can only know this by monitoring their training and allowing data collected to tell this story about the athlete. Their training past should give clues on what their training future should look like.

Finally, for all those interested in mindset out there, I wanted to discuss motivation and my episode with Sports Psychologist Dr Carla Meijen. In the episode, we discussed the factors which can influence psychological endurance performance: motivation, duration, pain and pacing. All of these offer a different dimension to reflect on your mindset towards endurance performance, but motivation stuck out to me. I think this is because, to me, motivation seems to come and go. At times you can be super motivated and everything is going well, and then something happens in everyday life and motivation is completely rocked. I also think this is why people like listening to podcasts on mindset because it gives them motivation. So how can we maintain motivation? Well, Carla discussed the difference between quality over quantity. If motivation can be so easy to come by but doesn’t last very long, maybe we should be more reflective and understand where our true motivations come from. Motivation should be focused on what satisfies you most and what you believe is going to make you a better person. More internally focused motivations seem to be more sustainable. Enjoying the process of self-development is a more sustainable motivation than wanting to train because you saw someone on social media train and you feel you need to compete with them. Internal over external. Now, this may seem obvious and nothing you haven’t heard before, but Carla describes how we need to be more aware and reflective to ensure we are fueled by good, sustainable motivations and not poor unsustainable motivations. We need to be better at being aware of when poor motivations might be driving us forward as that could have negative consequences long-term.

So I end my reflection on the first half of season 5 of the Progress theory by highlighting the importance of reflection. I really hope these episodes have helped inform your ideas for your own hybrid training. Please keep a lookout over the coming months for information I shall be releasing about the book I am writing on Hybrid training. I’m currently getting as many ideas down on paper as possible and I hope to be completing some hybrid challenges of my own which I’ll also be documenting in the book. I'm just waiting for a confirmation and then I’ll be able to reveal much more. Let’s just say I hope to do something that I’ve never been able to do before and the last time I tried it I ended up needing ACL surgery. The aim is to release the book for Christmas as it’ll be the perfect gift for anyone who’s into hybrid training and human performance.

Before I go a huge thank you to our Sponsors HMN24 and the Strength Coach Nause. If you’re serious about Hybrid training check the links in our Instagram account for money off supplements and training programmes. And also, our producers Kult Media, this podcast wouldn’t be possible without them. If you want to start your own podcast and need help head to @kult.media and send them a message.

That’s it, go and train and we’ll see you in the next episode

For all our other episodes and to get in touch, please visit www.theprogresstheory.com.

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