Well, boys. The clock struck 7:30pm Tuesday night as I got out of the car to have dinner with friends, and I realized it was 12 hours till this lands in your inbox and I hadn’t started this week’s newsletter yet. 😬 

I blame traveling for work. But at least I got in a beautiful hike with some coworkers! I’ll even throw in a personal pic for you, which I haven’t done in awhile.

Anyway, if this week’s newsletter has MTI’s first known typo or grammatical error, I trust you’ll forgive me. Let’s try to hit publish before midnight and still get a full night’s sleep, shall we?

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The Hybrid Athlete

This week’s topic revisits a former concept that I haven’t touched on in awhile, but return to frequently in my personal life as well as in Move to Improve messaging. Revisit one of my faves, “Outlift a runner, outrun a lifter,” for a refresher.

The idea of the hybrid athlete is that of a person whose training consists of multiple modalities—typically including both strength/resistance training as well as cardiovascular/endurance training, if not more on top of those.

The concept itself isn’t new. If you were anywhere at all in the 2010s, you’re probably at least vaguely familiar with CrossFit. While there were certainly forays into cross-modality training prior to the 21st century, CrossFit was probably our most recent generation’s introduction to hybrid training. Check out last week’s podcast homework for a deeper dive.

• There’s a reason CrossFit Games champions were crowned “Fittest on Earth.” They were absolute machines of cardiovascular capacity, then could turn around and deadlift twice their bodyweight for reps. Truly taking both aspects to the extreme.

• Were they the fastest in the world? No. Were they the strongest in the world? No. But could they do both exceptionally well? Heck yeah.

So that’s the concept of the hybrid athlete that once again is coming back to the popular online fitness sphere, only slightly rebranded yet again.

Why go hybrid?

Just like with cars, hybrid is so back, baby. Popular fitness influencers (a couple favorites being Ian Fonz and Nick Bare) are helping bring back the “trend” in a new light. They’re known for looking incredible, lifting heavy, then running far—fast.

Who doesn’t want that? It’s fun, exciting, sexy, enticing. Turns out it’s great for more than just your follower count; it’s incredible for your health, too.

Study after study has pointed to the numerous health benefits of exercise. Let’s stack four imaginary people next to each other. One does no training, one does only weights, one does only cardio, and the last does both.

• The completely sedentary person is obviously going to be in the worst health shape and will have much higher risk of diseases and premature death compared to the others.

• The lifter and the cardio-only person will both be much better off than the sedentary person, but they will still lack some vital aspects. The cardio person is likely under-muscled and weaker than they should be. The lifter is probably not in great cardiovascular shape. Each one is missing out on tons of benefits.

• But the person who does both? Unstoppable. Adequately muscled, proportionately strong, and a has great cardiorespiratory engine. They will have the lowest risk for disease, disability, and premature death of all four. Their internal health is almost assuredly the most robust.

And it really doesn’t take much! You don’t need to be a CrossFit champion to be a healthy hybrid athlete. Research shows that just by getting out of the bottom quintile (20%) of a fitness category, you see tremendous improvements in health and decreases in disease risk. These effects are compounded if true for cardio and strength/muscle.

Just by going from the least fit to ~not-as-unfit~, you’ll be leaps and bounds healthier than you were.

If Hannah Montana can have the best of both worlds, you can, too!

Make hybrid training your norm

Will hybrid training make you the absolute fastest or absolute strongest or most muscular? No, but I kinda doubt that’s what you’re going for. Being a hybrid athlete is a long, slow game, but it’s ultimately the game that produces the best healthspan.

If you are training for sport or competition, then yes, there is value in specificity. You will improve most in what you train the most.

• If you only train for cardio, you may see initial bumps in strength, but over time, you can actually lose strength and muscle mass.

• If you only resistance train, your heart health will be nowhere near ideal, and you’ll be leaving a lot of health and vitality on the table fitness-wise.

• If you’re working toward a specific goal such as a marathon or a new bench press PR, you can bias training toward that while still maintaining baseline fitness in the other aspect by giving it a smaller proportion of time.

• And if you’re willing to see a little slower progress and put in the time and effort, you can certainly improve both muscle mass/strength and cardiorespiratory fitness over time.

I recently hit both a mile time PR and a bench press PR. While I won’t share the numbers here (because neither is that impressive on their own), it is encouraging that both are the best they’ve ever been, and that it happened concurrently.

While a decent proportion of the population can probably attain one of the numbers I put up, there’s probably a significantly smaller subset who can do both.

Though it took longer than if I was laser-focused on just one of the goals, this approach has allowed me to vastly improve my overall health and fitness on my journey to being the fittest I’ve ever been. I’m in no rush to make quick progress on either of them, and I love the variety my training provides, so I’m happy! The only remaining ingredient is consistency. 🗝️ 

✅ Take Action

Every newsletter's Take Action section will invite you to take small steps to improve your health. Recognizing that we all have different capabilities, I'll offer three different levels of action you can choose to take.

Level 1: Start with just once a week, tapping into two different types of exercise. Give me two days a week doing two different modalities, and you’re definitely already out of that bottom 20%.

Level 2: Pick some goals on a semi-long time horizon for both cardio fitness and strength. Chip away at them as you hybrid train.

Level 3: Looking to not only outrun a lifter and outlift a runner, but to outrun and outlift both?? It’s going to take time, but putting in the work over years can get you there. You’ll be the absolute healthiest internally with this approach!

This newsletter is brought to you by… me!

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✍️ Drew's Picks:

• Savor: Just one pick this week. “Commodified memories” by Money with Katie. Don’t do it for the ‘gram. Live in the moment and savor this one precious life. Capture memories if you want, but don’t live behind your screen. A great reminder for me. 💓 

We did it! Andy Grammer’s got a new song out by the time you’re reading this, so that’s probably what’s playing in my ears today. What’s in yours? Hit reply and let me know. And don’t forget to forward this newsletter to someone you love. Peace!

Keep moving,

Drew

The content in Move to Improve is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. It is always a good idea to consult with a trusted health professional before making any major lifestyle changes that could have a significant impact on your health. This is not a medical resource, and any opinions and articles are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional. Please think critically and take what I say with a grain of salt (aka don’t sue me).