Strength or endurance- which comes first in a mixed session?

There are very few athletes who train exclusively in the realms of strength or endurance. Almost all athletes will need some combination of the two, even if one element is included in very small amounts throughout the training process. 

Concurrent training

Performing both strength and endurance training in one session is known as concurrent training. Unfortunately, performing strength training and endurance training at the same time may negatively interfere with one another. This is known as the ‘concurrent training effect’. Intuitively, this makes sense; one style of training is pushing the body to create as much force and use as much energy as possible in as little time as possible, while the other style of training is pushing the body to use force and create energy as efficiently as possible for as long as possible. By performing both at the same time, you’re effectively asking the body to meet opposite demands.

This reality has been appreciated since athletes first began ‘training’, and it has led to various strategies aimed at minimizing the concurrent training effect. These include changing the timing, intensity, volume, and mode of training. It has been studied scientifically in various forms for over 40 years, with these parameters being the focus. Initially, studies examined the impact of endurance and strength training performed on separate days. This research demonstrated that including both types of training did result in some compromise, even when performed on separate days. However, the effects were not consistent or always present. It appeared that there was some nuance to the situation.

Time limitations

To make the challenge of implementing concurrent training even more difficult, almost all athletes are limited in time. Many don’t have time to perform training every day, let alone perform multiple training sessions per day. As a result, many athletes are not performing concurrent training on a separate day or daily basis, but within a single training session! While the research on alternating day concurrent training provides valuable insight, it doesn’t provide concrete guidance for those individuals that are required to perform strength and endurance training on the same day. 

In recent years, researchers have begun to investigate the impact of the sequence of strength and endurance carried on the same day.  As with performing concurrent training on separate days, the results have been somewhat inconsistent, depending on the specific protocols, the subjects, and the design of the study. To provide some clarity about the impact of concurrent training sequence on strength and endurance adaptations, a new study by Chinese researchers has analyzed all the relevant data to provide insights as to how athletes and coaches can best navigate this problem⁽¹⁾.