Hello and welcome to The Progress Theory where we discuss how to implement scientific principles to optimise human performance. On today’s episode we have S&C coach and performance nutritionist at Omnia Performance, Jonny Pain.
Training as a generalist or hybrid training has become very popular in recent years. More people don’t want to just train for a specific sport; they want to be good at multiple sports, to be really strong yet also have the ability to run a marathon. Jonny has been coaching athletes training multiple disciplines for the last 15 years and has recently set up Omnia Performance where he provides coaching and programming for the concurrent development of strength and endurance. In this episode, we discuss the true meaning of hybrid training, how training for strength and endurance can co-exist, and how to structure your training week to ensure peak performance and maximum recovery.
In this episode, we discuss:
- 2:22 - An introduction to Jonny Pain and Omnia Performance
- 6:40 - The History of Omnia Performance
- 10:41 - Working with Alex Viada
- 12:48 - The growth of Hybrid Training
- 23:16 - Hybrid training for big challenges like the Celtman
- 26:40 - consolidation of stressors over a microcycle
- 32:13 - understand non-training stressors for programming
- 36:28- How Omnia Performance Auto-regulate their programming
- 40:42 - How to contact Omnia Performance
- 42:16 - Jonny’s experience with Project Vertical
Final Thoughts
Thank you to Jonny for coming onto The Progress Theory and talking about his work with Omnia Performance and his ideas around hybrid training. Hybrid training is getting more popular as people are starting to see that with an appropriate training programme we don’t necessarily have to be excellent in only one training domain.
I just wanted to provide some final thoughts on key areas which really stood out to me.
Firstly, I enjoyed hearing his ideas around what a hybrid athlete is. To me, it seemed like his definition of a hybrid athlete wasn’t necessarily someone that was great at everything. It’s borne out of an understanding that developing multiple qualities is essential to enhance the training you're trying to specialise in. IT seems counterintuitive to only train in one domain as having a base layer of multiple physical qualities actually improves performance in your speciality.
Secondly, I like his auto-regulated microcycle approach to programming. When juggling so many variables it is essential to know how the athlete is feeling very regularly. This type of training needs a very close working relationship between coach and athlete as it is hard to predict in advance how the athlete is going to react to so many stressors. So how can you programme that far ahead? You need a rough guide in your head of the direction you want to go and the training needed to get there, but how you get there has to be heavily auto-regulated based on the athlete
Anyways I hope you enjoyed this episode and it has sparked some ideas on what challenge you will take on. Could you train strength and ultra endurance concurrently? I think, with the right coaching and programming, you’ll be surprised what you can achieve. But first, check out Omnia Performance, all the links from the show are below.
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@theprogresstheory
@drphilprice
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Explore these Resources or Items Mentioned in the Show
Omnia Performance
Fergus Crawley
Fergus Crawley Youtube
Alex Viada
Complete Human Performance
Jonny’s Articles on Complete Human performance
Training peaks
Project vertical
Project vertical documentary
TalismanTriathlon
The Celtman
Mentioned in this episode:
The Science of Hybrid Training
It was originally thought that you could not effectively train for both strength and endurance at the same time because they required different adaptations which were not compatible with each other. It was claimed that ‘an interference effect’, blunted the adaptations for strength if you simultaneously trained for endurance.
However, recent developments in sports which require both strength and endurance have really challenged this idea, with hybrid athletes producing impressive performances in both strength and endurance sports together. This had led scientists, coaches, and athletes to rethink what is humanly possible and suggests the interference effect is not as influential as originally thought.
But what is a hybrid athlete? What is the ‘interference effect’? And how can we maximize our training to improve at the same time our strength and endurance performance?
In this book, Dr Phil Price provides insight into the misconceptions surrounding strength and endurance training by distilling the past 50 years of research and drawing on the conversations he had with great scientists, coaches, and athletes on The Progress Theory podcast. This book is essential reading for hybrid athletes and coaches who are looking to understand the key training variables and their effect on the simultaneous development of strength and endurance performance.
Book
