What Makes The ULTIMATE HYBRID ATHLETE and How To Become One | Mind Pump 2585

hybrid athlete this is trending right now today's episode we're going to talk about how you can become a hybrid athlete yourself what does the training look like to get yourself proficient in all the physical pursuits that'll make you a badass let's go oh I love social media yeah I know does that mean we have to be slightly the new the new hot thing it's like the buzz the it's a buzz word going on right now the ultimate hybrid athlete yeah well what happened was I was out talking with our editors and I said "Hey what's uh what's trending right now in the fitness space because they're all in it all the time." They said "Hybrid athlete." And so uh I I thought it would be good and by the way this is not new the term may be trending but the concept is not new at all it's an old concept um I mean we've written workout programs specifically for people who have this kind of a goal but I think we should kind of define what what it means what is a hybrid athlete um this really is somebody that is able to kind of do it all so they're strong they've got endurance and stamina good agility or mobility they're functional they they're well-rounded I guess would be the best way to put it right well before back in the day um for Olympic athletes wasn't this like the the first depiction of a real Olympic athlete was the the kind of athlete that could kind of do everything pretty good not like it excel in just one area but almost all of the events what a great point i think look good feel good move good strong i mean that's what comes to mind to me right away it's just like that you you kind of check all the boxes you look good you feel good you move good and you're strong yeah no that's good justin brought up a good point you know the the Olympics um a really long time ago what they used to believe the ideal athlete was for whatever sport in the in the in the Olympics was somebody who was kind of well-rounded and then eventually they they realized this is not what was best for shot put was not what was best for swimming or best for running so now you have athletes that are um specializ Yeah specialized in one thing and built to do well in one thing they look like a shot putter looks very different than a long-distance runner looks very different than you know a swimmer um but a hybrid athlete is somebody that kind of can do it all now isn't the best at each one of them so that's key a hybrid athlete isn't the they're not going to have their max endurance they're not going to have their potential for max strength or their potential for max agility because if you just focus on one thing you'll get a lot of that thing but you'll actually lose a lot of the other things out a hybrid athlete is somebody that's like "Look I want I don't I don't need to have my max strength or my max endurance or my max agility but I'd like to have a good amount of each one i'd like to be able to be well balanced." And I think it's trending because people identify with that i think they identify with what that may look or feel like yeah i I think this is a great conversation because leave it to the internet to bastardize something like this and and really it's it's a little um it's a bit nuanced because you have goals and I don't want to say they conflict with each other but don't necessarily uh complement each other it's important to understand how to train for each attribute that you want and I think what happens what I mean by the internet's bastardized it is I think they've kind of thrown it all into one basket and feel like just if you do it all you'll get it all once like this melding of all and you might get a little bit of results that way like if you if you trained like all those all at one time in a workout um sure you're going to get some of a little bit there there's definitely a better way to do this if you want all those attributes that you defined when we started this there's a very clear way to go after those and to obtain all of them and it actually doesn't look like doing them all at once and I think that's the mistake is that people think oh you just do all those mistake that's the biggest mistake uh so you think to yourself like well I want strength endurance agility and functionality so today I'm going to do all those things all at once and what ends up happening is you get kind of none of all of them uh you might get endurance you actually might get endurance if you do everything all at once but you're not going to get strength you're not going to get agility or power functionality kind of a smaller degree like the the the mistake people make is they combine everything all in one workout uh what you want to do is you want to train specifically for each attribute um on its own so you know one day is going to be strength training strength training needs to be strength training if I make strength training if I try to meld it with anything else it's not strength training it's not strength training anymore no it changes the definition of it completely if I do strength training to and I'm like you know I want to also have endurance so what I'm going to do is have no rest in between sets and go from exercise to exercise to exercise it's just endurance training i've actually lost uh all the strength if I'm trying to do um power and I'm also trying to combine that with uh you know endurance it just becomes endurance and I lose the power so what you want in endurance if I'm trying to get endurance from strength training then I'm going to not I'm not it's not going to work strength training is for strength endurance training is for endurance agility training is for agility and so on and so a routine when you look at a good routine one that's effective by the way the best athletes in the world that are looking for multiple physical attributes that's how they train when you're an athlete and you're training for strength it looks like traditional strength training when you're training for endurance it is traditional endurance training so what you need to do is break it up during your week and then that's going to give you best the best results with Well that's how you train if you're being coached by the right people i mean we just had our good friend Stan Effording in and I mean he had the opportunity to train Jon Jones and actually a lot of these professional athletes that don't have the best coaches don't get this and so don't be fooled because you see somebody famous uh or that's a pro alete that you see mixing all these workouts together and it seems to be working for them because they're a pro athlete so you think "Oh I'm going to go do that same thing." I think that's part of the mistake and and we've had the opportunity to talk to a lot of elite coaches that specialize in sports or help specific athletes out and I'd say the most common thing that they all have found is like this this you know where these athletes are doing it all at once and they're then they have to try and communicate to them like listen we're going to focus on one thing right here and get really good at it we're not going to do all of this in this workout that doesn't make sense and it's tempting for the athlete cuz they're they're going to want to then hire other coaches like on top of that one coach so they get their strength coach but then right after their strength coach they're going to go work with their skills coach then they're going to work with their endurance coach all on the same day uh and it just it it ends up muddying the actual attributes that you're trying to acquire yeah and another reason why this is confusing is if you play a sport if you're thinking of yourself as an athlete because you play a particular sport what you're probably thinking right now is well I'm when I'm playing my sport I'm using all of them so if I'm if I'm playing a game I'm using strength agil agility and endurance why don't I trade all of them at the same time you'll actually get more strength more endurance more agility by training them separately and then you practice your sport that's how you practice bringing them together so in other words you've got your different instruments in a symphony that practice on their own and they play together at the same time allow these attributes to work together when you're practicing your sport but when you train each attribute you do them individually and a lot of people understand that in fact really bad workout programming that is for hybrid athletes here's how you know it's really bad workout program that's what it looks like it looks like deadlifts and then run and then jump and then pull-ups and then it's like okay this is terrible programming that's not how you train for those attributes even if you want all those attributes the other mistake that they make is uh that they do too much mhm because if I look at just a strength training routine it's going to look like this many days a week if I look at just an endurance routine it's going to look like this many days a week if I look at just a mobility or agility or functional training routine it's going to be this many days a week so what people do is then they just add them on top of each other so like okay man strength training oh yeah I know this great pushpull legs routine that I do so it's you know it's it's four days a week or or six days a week even and then oh running oh yeah you know endurance you know marathon runners they run you know 10 miles every day so now I'm going to run 10 miles a day on top of it and then oh yeah you need to do pio training and you need to do functional training well that looks like three days a week so I'm going to do that on top of it overtrain in fact people who try to become hybrid athletes o overtrain at a higher rate than almost anybody else because they don't realize that that you're still dealing with the fact that you need to be able to recover such a tendency for them to just want to uh add and compile that into the workout instead of separating it out and blocking it out so you actually have a chance to really learn and your body needs that opportunity to learn um that that particular attribute to to its fullest degree to then really incorporate it in for the overall so the one thing I I I think the smart way to approach it too is like yeah skill training is something um you know you do want to still maintain you want to maintain that ability uh to perform your skill but there's a way to segment it out so we're not convoluting the workout today's program giveaway is the super bundle if you want to win leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it subscribe to this channel turn on notifications we'll let you know in the comments section also because of this episode Maps Performance Maps Performance Advanced and Maps 15 Performance are half off just go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code hybrid 50 for the discount back to the show i'm so glad you said that so if you're listening to this cuz you want to be a hybrid athlete through workouts that's not as important but if you're trying to become a hybrid athlete because you have a specific sport that you play you need to have that segmented out to practice your sport because that's the most important thing you could get very fit but lose some of the skill of your sport and actually perform uh much worse in fact we have a program called Mass Performance Advanced uh the advanced part really is the fact that we allowed for that skills training for specific athletes but you may be just listening to this and saying "Well it's not really that I want to play a specific sport i just want to have all these fitness i just want to be able to do a lot of things i just want to be able to do a lot of things." In which case it's not uh you know um as important but you should be able to if you if you go about a program and you're that person you're describing if you don't have a very specific sport you just want to get good at all this you should be able to measure all that before you go through good programming and see your endurance improve your mile time improve your 40-yard dash improve your strength and your main lifts go up you should look better feel your movement should be better like if you go about this right all those attributes should come along for that and you shouldn't just see oh I I got a little bit better at this or a little bit better that all of it should come up measurable yeah yeah and measurable if programmed correctly yeah it's a good point it's important to track all of those because what you can also get caught up caught up with especially you know we said earlier that people do too much all at once and overtrain is that they don't track their progress they just track their their tolerance it's like yeah I can do all these workouts but meanwhile they're not really gaining any performance i you know I would see this with clients that I would train who did um you know high level competition so like I I the ones I specifically remember were my triathletes and these were uh these were not you know these were people who were in their 30s they were you know business professionals but they had time on their hands they had money to devote to personal training they took their nutrition seriously they had done marathons before and and you know qualified for things like the Boston all that stuff and like I want to do a triathlete and you know triathlon is no joke and I remember you know the first time I trained somebody who was a legit triathlete who then wanted to do a halfiron man and then eventually wanted to do an iron man he came to me and he's like um you know I don't do any strength training i just do the cycling the running you know the swimming um here are my times i've done it before but I know strength training is important i want to incorporate it and it took me it took me a few months to titrate it down to an appropriate dose because the amount of training that he did was so high what it turned into was literally he would come in twice a week one day a week was strength training it was like three or four lifts one day a week was mobility that's what it turned into the intensity was moderate and then we saw improvements but it took me so long to figure out how to titrate because I kept it like "Oh my god we're overdoing it we're overdoing it we're overdoing it i got to keep scaling it back." And then eventually it turned into like I said three four lifts of moder intensity with mobility work well the hardest part is their their tolerance is so high yes um even your your average person is guilty of this we talk about all the time of people overreaching and gauging their workout by what they can tolerate or they can handle and just the average person does too much of that many times you take an athlete who's been trained to have mental toughness and push through and not give up and man the it's their their tolerance level is so much hard it's really hard to communicate to them and get them to understand is like this i know this seems like way less and you can do way more this is the appropriate dose by the way I do want to say for people listening right now we are going to give you a workout like we're going to break this down as we continue going what this week would look like uh if this was a goal of yours but you know before we get to that uh you know another mistake that we need to talk about that hybrid athleteminded fitness enthusiasts make is they don't fuel properly with diet yes now this looks like two different things in my experience one is they're just they're just not eating properly okay that's a common one but the other one is that they know how to eat properly for endurance or they know how to eat properly for aesthetics and they never train for all of it and then they don't understand so I'll give you a good example of that okay so we'll get to the overall better diet but I'll I'll give you an example what I'm talking about i've trained people who did mainly strength training and trained for aesthetics and they knew how to go low carb to get the abs to look shredded but then they switched to hybrid style training where they cut back some strength training incorporate endurance and they crash and I'm looking at their diets i'm like you're eating 120 grams of carbs a day that's not going to that works when you're just strength training and you want to look shredded yeah that's not going to work now that you're running and swimming and trying to improve your stamina um and then on the flip side I've had endurance athletes who are eating you know 80 grams of protein a day and then they incorporate some strength training i'm like you got to bump that protein way up if you want to build the strength that you're looking for so you have to fuel properly and what it looks like is a a more balanced diet it's not extreme in one direction uh or the other i think this is the uh look good attribute that screws people up right i think the if all you cared about was you know endurance strength moving well uh that those pursuits I think you'd be okay but it's a lot of times this also attracts a person who's like "And I want to look good." So they go deficit and and and they're going into this and they're like they know they got some body fat lean shredded they don't look the way they want to look yet they know they got to lose some body fat they do want that very athletic look to them and so that's kind of in the back of their head and in their head it's like well I need to cut out all this food or cut out these things I shouldn't be doing and so they do that while simultaneously doing all these other things and what ends up happening is they end up hindering all of it and they don't get the aesthetics they want either so they don't fuel their body properly you don't get the benefits from all the strength training you're surviving yes and so that's probably I'd say one of the biggest mistakes made for these uh these clients that want this type of a look feel and performance is because they attach the look piece also and many times when you sign up for this or you want to do this you're not quite where you are you want to be aesthetically and so that tends to drive your nutrition really the only kind of training where you could successfully diet or eat for aesthetics only is a strength trainingbased model uh it looks more like bodybuilding this is where you could really play with the diet to really achieve the aesthetics you're looking for if you're training for athletic pursuits you're going to look better if you fuel yourself for better athletic pursuits not for aesthetics okay so let me put the let me let me say it differently you're trying to become a better hybrid athlete fuel your body to improve your performance you'll look better then if you fuel your body to get shredded or an aesthetic look while training this way that'll just lead to disaster your goal is to perform at your best like that's your ultimate goal and that'll make you look yeah and that'll give you the look as a byproduct but yeah it is misleading because if they're coming in with that idea I want to look this way then they start manipulating their calorie that's what happens i that's another type of client I had where I've had clients who they understood bodybuilding or strength training style training they would lift you know four days a week they would they would manipulate their diet and carb cycle and back load and front load and and they knew how to make themselves look a particular way for summer and then they are like you know what I want to try this sport or I want to try training in a more balanced way and they continued with their dietary strategy they had before trying to accomplish a look and their performance suffered and they also lost muscle and just and I the conversation I had like look stop eating for looks start eating for performance because that's what we're training for and then we're going to get more of the look that you're looking for and it's Exactly i'm reminded of our conversation with Rob Wolf and how he was a part of CrossFit and how they were doing paleo and they just they were not consuming barely any carbs at all and so it was just left and right like athletes were just kind of dropping and bonking and and so they had to really make a big adjustment for that hey sorry to interrupt look I have a free guide that teaches you how to lose fat in three steps just three steps that will burn the most amount of body fat help keep it off this guide is totally free we're giving it to everybody right now if you want it click on the link at the top of the description below all right back to the show yeah 100% all right so let's get to what this kind of routine would look like now we we created a very balanced routine you could modify this to be more strength focused more endurance focused whatever if you do that that means you got to take away from one of the others okay so uh and we did create this uh considering that you're relatively fit and healthy if you're new this is going to be might be a little bit uh too much um uh so let's start with the first day so we're going to we're going to break this down like day one day two day three day four day five whatever so this is what it would look like day one you're focusing on strength you're not focused on anything else but strength that's all you're doing on day one now what does this look like very basic you're doing four lifts about two to three sets each all compound compound lifts we're not doing you know we're not going to be doing you know you know isolation exercises bodybuilding style workout we're not trying to you know serious rest periods we're not trying to sculpt and shape the body uh what you're trying to do is get stronger with core foundational compound type lifts i picked five reps because it's less taxing on the body than 15 or 20 reps and we want to maintain some of that ability to recover for the rest of the week we're trying to train for strength now the question is what four lifts i mean you got your barbell squat you've got your bench press your overhead press your row that's a good four combo or you could do a deadlift you could do another overhead press another incline basically compound lifts that hit the entire body is kind of what we're looking uh at training and I would always start with the more challenging lift now or the one that you want the most return from because some of these people are hybrid athletes and are going to be looking for also still somewhat of a look uh if you lack lower body start with your squats for sure um if you have an incredible lower body but you lack upper body start with your overhead press or your barbell row or your bench press that's how I would do that with because it's a hybrid athlete because we're not uh looking for just strength and like it's like what what do you want well I'm trying to shape you into this look too well I'm just going to whatever whatever the priority is as far as the look that's how I'm going to prioritize the exercise that's how I would do it the intensity is like 75% okay so you're going to do five reps with a weight that you could probably do eight reps with seven or eight reps and you're going to rest about 2 to 3 minutes in between sets that's what this looks like for me what this will probably look like is a barbell squat three sets of that five reps then I'm going to move to uh my bench press then I'm going to move to a row then I'm going to move to an overhead press and that's the workout that's I love this is because it's so uh contrary to what you would see uh probably most hybrid athletes uh put putting together in terms of their structure of you know it's going to be usually going to be 15 12 to 15 reps it's going to be circuit style and so yeah that's just common what we and way more stuff like this is what if if you trust this process if you trust what we do if you just do this with the other things you're doing you are going to be strong mobile functional you're going to get all of it you really it doesn't you don't need that much and if you've been listening to the show long enough you've heard how little you need to lift weights in order to build muscle this is plenty to do that when I was doing when I was training in jiu-jitsu at my highest level three four days a week this is how I lifted i go to the gym do three four lifts done and that was it and it was great and before that I was doing too much a little effective yeah I was doing too much all right so day two it's a good idea to follow up strength with mobility uh I now there's lots of different mobility movements and things you can work on i wanted to make this simple now of course it could be much more individualized and it can be programmed in a way to where you've got more targeted areas but the world's greatest stretch is got to be one of the best general kind of mobility movements and I like it in a like you're walking and stepping and taking and and moving through the whole you're not going to get a lot of stretches where you get that T-spine rotation mobility and you're also comboing that with hip uh mobility in combination with that and it's also I love that it too you can you can have movement with it so a lot of the mobility exercises I love to do on on grass and you know because this is kind of like you know appeals more to the athlete so they can get out there on the the field and produce this i mean I love that movement that would that probably be in there or if if the idea of us putting this episode together is give somebody a really good general idea that could go do this on their own right let's say they're not they're not following one of our programs uh then I probably would and and I'm sticking to giving them great free advice i'd probably prescribe the Prime Pro webinar that I did i think that because basically it's a it's about 50 minute 45 minutes 50 minutes long uh but I I take you from head to toe so you and it's basically my favorite mobility movements for every major joint in the body and so if you wanted something very specific but yet detailed that you would it would cover everything I think that would also be a great direction right so so with this though it's world's greatest stretch then you can finish off with static stretching this entire session should take you around 30 minutes so give or take about 30 minutes mobility that's your mobility workout day three you take it off uh this is your rest day day four is now functionality um I love this now again we're going general here because I can get much more specific with who I'm working with uh but uh I love the sled for functionality i love the sled and and because you can go I could push it I could pull it and I can go laterally and I've done a like huge uh functionality work on my lower body uh with that go ahead two it really brings you up on your forefoot um and so hybrid athletes too they consider they're going to be running and doing a lot more endurance and so to strengthen your forefoot I think is really another like hidden gem with with the sled uh in the mechanics there too driving it and getting better at sprinting uh so there's a lot of crossover that plus it's concentric so we're not putting a lot of you know excessive amounts of damage to recover from i mean I think uh 30 minutes of push pull drag lateral i mean if you just moderate intensity yeah not you're not trying to kill it or crush it but a nice 30 minute moderate intensity of the the push pull drag and then lateral movement in there is would be a great complement to what you're doing and for the the a hybrid athlete that wants a little bit of everything you're going to get that from this and what's beautiful about that is it is another form of strength training but it doesn't do as much damage as weight training does so you're going to reap the benefits of some more a little bit more strength training without adding a bunch more damage it's really going to be bolstering the the stability uh of your joints is what we're looking for with this and then the last day day five is endurance and here's where you pick your form of endurance training running swimming biking you want it to be at a moderate to high level for about 20 to 30 minutes so you want to kind of push yourself you're not trying to kill yourself but you are trying to push it and get that heart rate up uh during that workout for about good 20 to 30 minutes and then the next two days are off you take two days off and then you repeat the cycle with this general workout we put together what you should see are nice progressions in your strength and endurance those are the two things you could probably measure the most is that you're able to run swim or bike faster or further and you're able to lift more with those uh core four lifts and that's how you know you're doing it right is you see a little bit of progression each one i always liked you know not giving myself a time like so if I'm going to swim bike uh run any of those things I'm not even going to give myself the first time a time i'm going to give myself a time that I need to hit or a distance I need to hit i'm just going to go for the 30 minutes push myself see where I land and then every time I I come back a little bit yeah try and beat it a little bit it doesn't take much you you shave you know 20 30 seconds off each time you come back to that row or come back to that run or come back to that swim it's not that crazy to to shave that and before you know it you've shaved minutes or or distance you've added um on that time and you'll see major improvement like that just little increments like that every single time you revisit that run row or swim coaches and trainers we will teach you how to build your business we've been doing this for decades and we're authentic we don't lie we don't tell you fake stuff go to mindpumpfitnesscoaching.com check out our course by the way it's nationally recognized back to the show we have some questions the first one is what does a hybrid athlete look like now this is the real reason why I think it's going viral is because they paint a picture of an hybrid athlete that looks kind of like somebody who just does strength training and eats for aesthetics it's like they're kind of muscular but the truth is a real hybrid athlete looks like someone who moves well and performs well that's what they look like as far as body fat percentage and all that stuff is concerned here's what the data shows uh best performance for men for male athletes body fat percentage probably sits around 12 to 15% body fat yeah you say low teens so it's not the like you know 8% that we like to see on on social media we have now of course those like high level pro athletes that are just genetic anomalies that look like that but most people are going to be at their best performance ma male about 12 to 15% women you're looking at you know probably 19 to 24% body fat is what you're going to probably look like if you're eating healthy and doing all this but really a hybrid athlete looks like someone that can kind of kind of do all of it they just move really well yeah i mean to me that's how I think I would answer because a lot of the stuff that we see is all gimmicky marketing stuff uh a very unique person you're going to look nothing like them cuz you're nothing like them in the to start with so I I would put it back on the client and be like this you're going to look like the healthiest fittest strongest best looking version of you i mean if you train this way you eat correctly like we're talking about you will move better than you ever moved you'll probably look better than you ever looked you'll be stronger than you ever did you'll have the endurance better you'll have all those things that you want and it'll be the best version of you but all depending on your body type will long muscle bellies short muscle bellies do you show abs at a lower percent a higher percent all those things are going to be different to the individual i want to attain a specific look and sculpt my body is this the best way to train no no no if you want to shape and sculpt then you want to like building you're just going to strength training diet like that's the way to train to look a specific way this style of training hybrid training for someone who also wants to look good but really they want to move well they want to be able to do it all which I totally get i totally get that there's It feels really good in the times in my life when I felt like this you know it feels better to be able to move well than it is to look a particular way just to be quite honest the look part is cool i guess you take your shirt off whatever but to be able to move you know and and go you know play a a game and go run and go high into whatever you want have just kind of be well balanced that feels really really good yeah if you're in good balance and you're strength training and you're also moving around like an athlete like your body is going to you know benefit from that and so it's it you know the overall look of that is going to be it's it's a good look you look athletic but I think with the the misconception is that we're we're getting portrayed a lot of these like really muscular athletes as like this is the hybrid athlete and it's it's just misleading is all you remember when they did the uh did you remember the the Reggie Bush when he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated you know we we highlight them as like these like how do we do genetic anomalies yeah it's like did you just people I mean there's certain people that he could do he just do push-ups eat whatever he wants and do whatever and he looks like I mean and probably hardly ever weightlifted and then still looks like that so it's like you got you can't go off of what social media or the marketing is is telling you're going to look like but if you do if you care just about a look and sculpting that's bodybuilding i mean there's programs for that there's a way to diet for that unique to somebody who wants to do it all if you say you want it all I want to look good i want to feel good i want to move good i want to be strong well there's other factors now that that come into play and every there's you got to give a little bit like you're not going to be you're not going to look like Mr olympia and then also be able to run a mile really well and swim really good something's got to give how can I train like a hybrid athlete with minimal time you know uh in the past I would have been like "Oh I don't know what that looks like." But I know very clearly what that looks like now we actually wrote a program called Max 15 performance what it looks like is a little bit every day it looks like 15 minutes of working out every day strength training or mobility or some endurance work that's it you're just doing a little bit uh every day uh again we wrote a program specifically around this so rather than just doing four days a week like we just said you're training more like six days a week but it's very short get the right dose and that's what we have written down well look at what we we just we just recommended only an hour four major lifts basically an hour of lifting one day of major lifting you know and then maybe some sled work if you just divide that over six days broken up in smaller I mean 15 very similar very very similar yeah so by the way we have uh programs that are specific to this we have maps performance uh which is uh really about developing the the kind of performance that we're talking about in this episode then we have maps performance advanced which allows for you to insert your sport or your particular skill that you that you do so you can incorporate that in your routine and then we have mass 15 performance which is you have minimal time but you like to train like we're talking about like a hybrid athlete so performance performance advanced 15 maps 15 performance because of this episode every single one of the ones I just mentioned is going to be half off you can find all of them at maps per uh mapsfitness products.com use the code hybrid50 for the 50% off discount all right I know you like that episode if you did check this one out how strong should you be ever wonder if you're actually strong or at least compared to people like yourself today's episode we're going to talk about that and we're going to help you determine how strong you should be and also talk about the steps to getting strong as fast as possible in fact we're going to talk about the fastest way to get bigger and stronger all at the same time keep Adam up at night i Yes it does actually and I know that you wrote a really complex episode here but I think Justin's metric has been the