Following orders: make concurrent training work for you

Of all the athletic events, it’s decathletes who are generally accepted to be the best all-rounders, excelling in feats of both strength endurance. Yes, it’s true that a world-class decathlete would not outperform a world class endurance athlete who trains only for endurance, or a strength athlete who trains only for strength. But what makes decathletes special is their ability to master both strength and endurance events, which as we will see shortly, is physiologically very challenging!

The concurrent training effect

To simultaneously develop high levels of both strength and endurance requires that you must train both for strength and endurance and that is where athletes inevitably come up against the roadblock effect of ‘concurrent training’. As many experienced athletes and coaches will testify, if you train for endurance and strength together, the improvements in performance you will experience will be slower/smaller than if you train for one alone. This phenomenon is called the ‘concurrent training effect’.

For example, as figure 1 shows, training for strength alone leads to greater strength gains than when the same amount of strength training is combined with endurance training (ie training for both strength and endurance). In short, endurance training can ‘interfere’ with the physiological adaptations needed to build strength⁽¹⁾. (NB: for an excellent and in-depth discussion of the differing training adaptations needed to build strength and endurance, and how they can interfere with each other, this paper is highly recommended.)

Figure 1: Concurrent training effect of endurance on strength