There are two qualities that create the foundation of a kick-ass, active lifestyle: strength and endurance. Strength makes a body resilient and gives you the juice to power through. Endurance provides the energy to keep you moving.
The question is, can you train for both of them at the same time?
Well, does a one-legged duck swim in a circle? (It sure as heck does.)
While we can build strength and endurance at the same time, how to do it might surprise you.
What Doesn’t Work
With the popularity of training approaches such as CrossFit and OrangeTheory Fitness, many folks believe that building strength and endurance requires a bunch of high-heart rate training with weights thrown into the mix. You know, those kinds of workouts that make you pray for air while farting blood. I’ve got great news for you. You can save your prayers, and your colon, those workouts are actually detrimental to building strength and endurance at the same time.
What Actually Works
Picture a spectrum. On the left end of the spectrum is moderate to heavy strength training. On the right side of the spectrum is sustained-effort endurance training. In the middle are those prayer prompting workouts mentioned above. To build strength and endurance you have to mostly train at each end of the spectrum, consistently strength training while also consistently doing sustained-effort endurance training.
Training in the middle ground often stresses your body out too much so that you can’t effectively recover. It might feel good at first, and you might make some initial progress, but you’ll soon burn out because your body just can’t sustain those kinds of efforts. They also don’t allow you to use enough weight to build strength, and the constant high-intensity intervals destroy the “machinery” that you need for endurance (capillary density, mitochondrial density, etc.)
Strength and endurance are mostly structural and neurological adaptations. When it comes to strength, that means building muscle while also creating stronger connections between the peripheral nervous system and the muscles. For endurance, it means more of the machinery mentioned in the previous paragraph, while also training the heart and lungs to distribute oxygen efficiently. In both cases, it’s training the brain to “understand” that this is how it manages each of those kinds of demands.
What to Do
Train them both, duh. 😀
Seriously, to concurrently build strength and endurance 80% to 90% of your training should focus on moderate to heavy strength training and sustained effort conditioning with your heart rate somewhere between 60% to 70% of your max heart rate. (If you don’t know your max heart rate, 60% to 70% is somewhere between being able to breathe easily through your nose and being able to breathe in through our nose and out through your mouth while training.) You can fill in the other 10% to 20% of your training with high-intensity interval training.
Another Big Consideration
Movement quality also matters. If you’re not moving well, you’ll have a harder time building strength and endurance because your body is inefficient. You’re also more likely to get hurt while training. So, focus on moving well as much as you’re focusing on building strength and endurance.
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