Rise Of The Hybrid Athlete

Perhaps I have been running long enough. Crossing 25 years of participation in running this year certainly has provided a lengthy enough timeline to witness some trends. One of the more interesting ones to me has been athletes using running as more than just a means to an end. I first started noticing this through my coaching. The background of people reaching out to hire me started skewing more towards people that I would consider as having alternative backgrounds. In fact, I had a former Division I offensive lineman reach out for help in preparing for an ultramarathon. Recently, Mark Bell, who is known in the world of powerlifting due to his massive total of 2,628 lbs, for which he squatted 1,080 lbs, bench pressed 854 lbs, and deadlifted 766 lbs, decided he wanted to start training more specifically for road races. He is currently working on a half marathon training plan, but has already unlocked the marathon distance. Mark is the literal version of the 2014 Go Daddy Super Bowl commercial where 100s of bodybuilders were filmed running through the streets.

What does this mean for running? Along with the growth in the sport in general, this brings in a group of people who likely have different needs. People with backgrounds that have resulted in development in areas that are unspecific to what optimizes endurance performance. For someone like Mark, this likely means a heightened importance on low intensity volume. This is already the large majority of an endurance plan, but for Mark it is likely a weakness relative to the more traditional endurance athlete. This is paired with someone who likely has strengths on the opposite end of the spectrum, and has spent years if not decades improving those strengths at the expense of what makes a well developed runner. As a coach, this can be a shift. Someone who comes to me from an ultramarathon background likely has a massive foundation of low intensity work in place. The low intensity window of their intensity spectrum may be so big you can hardly see the windows that make up the moderate and hard intensities. Mark is an extreme, but his global fitness picture may be the exact opposite. 

While working with Mark, and others like him, there are also some big assets they bring to the table while learning how to prepare. As a coach, one of my top goals with a client is to establish a high degree of sensitivity to how specific workout intensities feel. A finely tuned machine to perceived effort. This is important because intensity is fixed, whereas pace is a moving target. Couple this with live heart rate being a messier gauge as you add variables and move up the intensity spectrum, and you begin to see the value of truly understanding perceived effort. When this is understood, it means I could send someone out for a workout only using a watch to guide duration, because they know exactly how the target intensity should feel (disclaimer: I love the watch data for post workout analysis). Mark has an incredible sense of effort. He knows exactly when he has crossed the top end of what we are targeting and exactly when to stop a workout to maximize the workload without negatively encroaching on the next session. If I over or under program for Mark, he can easily tell and signal the need to adjust. I suspect this is due to his extensive work in other sports where recognizing load management, fatigue, and proper training frequency is important and not dissimilar to endurance.

Mark is just one example. There are lots of individuals coming from a wide range of backgrounds that often fall more between the extremes of someone like Mark and myself. One of my goals ending 2023 and into 2024 is to have individuals like this on my podcast and dive into their experiences, their why, and really dive into what attracts people to running. I am learning a lot from watching individuals like this enter the sport and look forward to continuing. 

If interested, I recently released a podcast episode with Jeremy Miller who fits the hybrid model perfectly. In fact, the second half of this year alone Jeremy PR’d in the marathon (2:44 at Chicago), completed his first flat/looped 100km, and ended the year with running a sub five minute mile and deadlift 500 lbs on the same day.