Transcript
0:01 Let's talk about one of my favorite workouts that is underutilized because of a big misconception. And that is combo workouts. What are combo workouts? It's when you combine two different styles of workouts. Traditionally, when we look at workouts, we do what I'd call straight repeats. You go 8 by 800 at 5K pace, 10 by 400 at mile pace, or you know, 5 miles at threshold pace. It's all in one zone or one intensity. And it's targeted towards something. Those have a really important purpose.
0:39 But what we often lack is something that we did a lot more of in the '40s, '50s, and '60s is combining those different intensities. So, doing things like a 20-minute threshold run followed by some hill repeats, or doing some hill repeats then a a Rubik's fartlek, or going and doing some longer repeats and then some short 200s on the track to sharpen up. And the reason we kind of threw these away is during the '80s and '90s and into the 2000s, we had this idea of an interference effect. Meaning, if I'm going to train my lactate threshold, I need to focus on my lactate threshold.
1:23 And if I do anything that goes a little bit beyond, introducing some lactate or acidosis in between it, it screws everything up. It poisons the mitochondria. What we now know is that idea was overblown. It was, you know, a legitimate hypothesis at that point. And it actually came out of some of the early research on the interference effect in strength training and endurance training. Which basically said, "Hey, when you combine these two, you lose some of the adaptations. You don't get as strong of a signal. And in the '80s and '90s, there was some research that showed this. But more recent work on the strength and endurance shows that the basically the interference effect was overblown.
2:10 Okay, when we combine some endurance work and some strength training for the vast majority of people, unless you're a very early novice again, according to much of the research we don't have to worry about it in terms of muscle strength gains or hypertrophy. The one place where we see a small effect is when we're looking at explosive training combined with strength training or endurance work, is we see a little bit of an interference effect, but not a huge one.
2:41 The one that matters at the elite side, right? Or the serious amateur side, but for most people probably doesn't. And in fact, some research shows the interference effect decreases as you get into the more highly trained individuals. Again, the point is, is there a little bit of that in strength and endurance? Of course. But it was way overblown, and it isn't something that we should worry about too much. The research, although it's young on combining different styles of endurance training work, high intensity stuff, intervals, threshold, easy stuff also has kind of had a similar path here. Early on, some of the molecular signaling pathways, basically the signaling pathways that say like, "Hey, adapt in some way.
3:32 Make more mitochondria, you know, get stronger." All these things. Increase protein synthesis. Our old-school idea, again, based on early studies, was that there is essentially like an on-off switch to degree, right? You do some stuff that activates mTOR and it turns off AMPK, meaning, in simplistic terms, like the strength adaptation turns off the, you know, our endurance adaptation, or, you know, vice versa to a degree.
4:04 And that largely has gone by the wayside. Not entirely, but for the most part, where modern signaling pathway studies tell us that it's really freaking complex. And there's a lot of overlap. So, if I do 400-m repeats fast and a 10-mi tempo, there's overlap there in terms of signaling pathways. And that overlap doesn't necessarily have an interference effect, okay? Sure, does it shift adaptation slightly, but there's not this big on-off switch that that occurs.
4:41 If we still got some endurance stuff in there, you're still going to adapt to the endurance stuff, even if we go from, you know, a 30-minute threshold into cranking some 200s. That doesn't negate it or interfere to a large impact. In fact, some research, although not exactly on combining one after the other, some research shows that the fatiguing effect of doing something like a threshold run and then going into something a little bit faster, has a amplifying effect because you're doing that faster work in a depleted state. This is the idea that Canova talks about all the time, and where he says, "Hey, on some of your longer workouts, the first half of it is just to get you tired enough to, like, get a better effect of going faster in the back half of that that workout." And this is why you see some of Canova's long runs, where they'll do the first half, you know, steady, or, you know, at a moderately steady pace, and then start doing some high intensity in terms of, you know, marathon pace, half marathon pace, etc. in the back half is to take advantage of that fatiguing effect.
5:52 Okay, long story short here, the interference effect is overblown. Okay? Again, still lots of research to do, but we can see the science pointing that direction and more importantly, we can see the real world experience. The old school idea of "Don't combine, don't mix." overblown. Okay? So, when should we combine? So, this is really important. Here's how I think of combo workouts, okay? It's really good in a couple of different situations.
6:23 One is they are great for transitioning. What do I mean by that? After you've come off of a base period where you've done lots of easy and strides and maybe started doing some high-end aerobic work, they're great for transitioning into faster work or a little bit more intense higher-end aerobic work. What do I mean by this? If you've built up where you're saying, "Hey, I've done 25, 30 minutes worth of threshold work, split up, doesn't matter."
6:52 And you're saying, "Okay, I I need to add a little bit more stuff. Maybe I need to press that threshold a little bit by going over and pulling it up a little bit." Now, you can do something like 20, 25 minutes of threshold plus 2 by 5 minutes at 15k or 10k pace, basically a pace you can maintain for 30 to 45 minutes, and you're going to press the lactate up a little bit and get a little bit further out of adaptation without negating the aerobic stuff that you got, the high-end aerobic stuff, and you're preparing the body to transition for those 6 by mile at 10k pace or whatever have you. It's like a bridge workout.
7:32 Another place where combo workouts work really well are kind of this mixture of developing and maintaining. So, where you want to keep developing a quality, but get in enough maintenance work where you don't forget it. What do I mean by this? Can I use the example of threshold plus some faster work? If we say, "Hey, during our base or pre-competition phase, I'm still kind of hammering out that threshold stuff.
8:03 That's what I That's what matters, but I don't want to go months or weeks or what have you without touching on some fast stuff to kind of maintain that." What you can do is again do 25 minutes split up of threshold work, and then do some short hill sprints. Again, they're going to be in a fatigue state, so not running quite max out, but what you're doing is now you're training your body to remember to recruit some fast-twitch fibers as in a fatigue state, which can be beneficial, especially for training the kick kick and development of that. But, you're recruiting some fast-twitch fibers at the end of the workout and saying, "Hey, remember me? We got to run fast still."
8:42 And it serves as a great kind of, you know, you you lose what you don't activate and you don't train, and you're getting a little bit of that maintenance. So, maybe 25 minutes plus, you know, 4 by 10-second hill sprints with long recovery in between. You can actually reverse this and do hill sprints first and then some aerobic stuff. And what this does is it allows you to activate some fast-twitch muscle fibers or some intermediate fibers and then force your body to kind of like deal with and train cuz those are pathways are activated, you're used to it, you're recruiting them, to deal with and train a little bit more aerobically. And you got a little bit of lactate into the system. So, one thing I love to do is do like, you know, 5 to 6 by short hill sprints. Again, they're short. You're not going to throw in a lot of lactate or fatigue, but you're activating fast-twitch fibers, you're in a fresh state, and then you take a couple minutes rest, and then you do an aerobic fartlek. Maybe, you know, 8 by 2 minutes on, 1 minute off, or something like that at half marathon pace.
9:46 And what you've done is now you're kind of forcing the body, okay, we've we've recruited fast-twitch fibers, we've thrown just a tiny little bit of lactate in it. We're now going to be high-end aerobic, like get used to utilizing some of that lactate as a fuel, and forcing your fibers to kind of recruit a little bit differently than in a fresh state, and train aerobically in that that site. So, again, what you're doing here is getting a little bit of maintenance and development at the same time. We can also do this away from the hills.
10:16 Bowerman used to love adding on some 200s, four to eight to 10, depending on the athlete, of 200s at 3K down to mile pace at the end of something longer. Why? You're teaching the turnover in a little fatigue state, and you're getting a little bit of that maintenance. The other place where I love to do this is for the amateur, especially, is what I'd call small spices of specific work. So, often amateurs kind of suck at handling a lot of intense work. Why? Cuz they don't have a huge foundation. And there's a higher risk load to it.
10:54 Meaning, if we go down to the track and we do 10 by 400, or 20 by 200, or whatever have you, that's a really demanding session, both biomechanically and physiologically, because you're going to dig yourself into a hole. And you can dig your yourself into a hole and not be able to come out of that, both from the injury standpoint and a kind of like fatigue overtraining standpoint. So, what do you do? You still want to race fast, right? You still want to prepare the body to do it.
11:26 Well, instead, you say, "Hey, I'm going to do a little bit of small spices of this work to prepare, to get me some race pace or faster than race pace training so my body has a little bit of it but not so much where I'm I'm taking a risk. So again, how could you do this? You could do 20 minutes at threshold or 6 by K at at 10 mile pace or something like that where it's aerobic. 6 to 8 by K where it's completely aerobic. Get that aerobic stimulus, okay? Then take some rest, you know, 3 to 5 minutes jog around for a couple laps.
12:01 And then go and say, "Hey, I'm going to do some 200s at 3K pace." Yeah, not a ton. You can do four to eight. Or you could say, "Hey, I'm going to do some 400s at 5K pace." And just get used to it a little bit here. >> >> And all you're doing here is the fatigue isn't the point in the 5K pace or the 3K pace or the mile pace or what have you. It's we want to turn over a little bit.
12:25 We're letting the pre-fatigue of the aerobic stuff make us a little bit fatigued, but we're not pressing that bound. So we're getting a little bit of turnover in some fatigue standpoint. We're not going to drive lactate that high because we're only doing a handful of these instead of a full-blown workout. So it's a little bit lower risk. And you get some good bang for your buck and all of a sudden in your body is used to running at race pace or faster than race pace. So you get some of that that boost, okay?
12:56 You can also do this a slight variation of this is what I call blend workouts where instead of combo where it's like attack this then attack this and we can kind of blend them together. That's a little bit more advanced technique that I like for bringing the two sides together and what you're actually doing here is you're playing with muscle fiber recruitment and like throwing some lactate into the system and going a little bit slower. So things like five sets of a K at 15k pace or 10k pace and then a 300 at 5k pace down to 3k pace or something like that. So, you're shifting the paces back and forth here. It's a little bit different effect than a combo workout here. but over time what I like to do is bring these together. So, sometimes I might do in that example we might do 5 by K at 10k pace and 200 at mile or 3k pace and then bring it together where I'm now doing K at 10k pace and 300 or 400 at 5k pace, right? And you're bridging it up together so it blends towards specificity while still getting some of that kind of like back and forth where we're dealing with fatigue a little bit and change of pace. Different style workout, but still it gives you that kind of combo effect to a degree. All right. So, I've given you a a lot here. I want to end with some examples and practical points. When would I use this stuff?
14:34 Late base period into the pre-competition phase when we're looking at at transitioning and maintaining. And if we're saying, "Hey, I want to do small spices of faster work." I'd use that during the competition phase, the last 6 to 8 weeks of a training cycle where we're getting ready for competition. Where I'm an amateur and saying either I'm transitioning the faster work or I'm saying, "Hey, the full-blown faster workouts are a little bit outside of my wrist tolerance here.
15:02 So, I'm going to do these combo stuff." What you're combining, generally I like to go in the two different directions. Something high-end aerobic. Now, that could be sub-threshold, threshold, or even a little bit faster 15k to 10k pace stuff. But basically aerobic with something on other end of that spectrum. How fast depends what the goal of the session is. I might combine it with some hill sprints if I want to get some good specific strength and fast twitch fiber recruitment in there. But mostly I'll probably combine it with something that's like mile pace, 3K pace, 5K pace, depending on what I'm preparing for.
15:43 Preparing for a faster race, I'm going to need to do something shorter and faster. Preparing for a slightly longer race and I'm just using this as speed maintenance, often I'll do something a little bit longer and slower, 400s at 5K pace, for example, or 600s at 8K pace, or something like that. As far as the split, depends on the goals, but generally if you're trying to still build one thing, like that aerobic side, I'd use it as about 75 to 80% of what a traditional workout, a straight workout in that is. So, if you're doing you're up to 30 minutes at threshold, I'll do like 20 to 25 minutes at threshold. And then the second half is like, you know, a watered down version of a specific workout, meaning again, a 25% of a workout. So, if I'm used to doing 10 by 400, you know, I might do maybe a little bit more, but three to four by 400. if I'm doing it's a little more than 25%, but you want to get a little bit of a bang for your buck out of there. If I'm doing 200s, I'll generally do, you know, anywhere between four and eight, depending on again, what I'm combining and how fast I'm running.
16:58 But it's like a small set snippet of it. Almost like if we were breaking into a workout, we're doing like what's the first set of that workout? That's how I look at it. That's combo workouts. Hopefully that helps demystify some of these ideas. Again, it's not set in stone. I'm not saying don't ever do straight repeats. They're really good for attacking a specific stimulus, but we also have these other tools at our disposal to give us a little bit more adaptation, to give us a little bit more bang for our buck in maintaining both qualities, and to sharpen up without a high high risk tolerance. And finally, to use fatigue to boost the secondary adaptation without doing too many of them. So, there you go. As always, like, subscribe, share. Thanks for listening. Thanks for for supporting the channel. It's the no BS place for performance, endurance training, and everything in between. Thanks, everybody.