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Why Endurance Athletes Are Swapping Extra Miles for Heavy Lifting (and Why It Works)

By Tom Ward Men's Journal

Updated May 22, 2026 5:35 PM

For Justin Nucum, a hybrid athlete and the founder of Hardkour Performance in Buena Park, California, absolutely nothing on earth beats the grueling, lung-burning, soul-crushing intensity of a workout that demands you be both a powerhouse and a marathoner simultaneously.

"Just imagine, you need to be strong to lift the weight, fast to run to the next station, and have the endurance to sustain these hard efforts [for] a long duration of time," he says of workouts like DEKA Fit and HYROX.

Nucum is part of a growing roster of amateur athletes subscribing to the hybrid way, where workouts designed to get you sweating, lifting, and questioning your life choices are exploding in popularity. In short, if you really want to challenge your entire body in a functional way, hybrid training is the gold standard.

But can you really serve two masters and be genuinely good at both running and lifting? If you are trying to survive your first half-marathon, can picking up a barbell actually help you smash a personal record, or is packing on muscle just going to act as an anchor that hinders your performance down the road?

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What is Hybrid Training?

Hybrid training is exactly what it sounds like. It's a way of working out that combines multiple modalities, typically strength and endurance, to build a more complete athlete. In the last decade, it's become de rigueur, with clubs like CrossFit and HYROX pushing hybrid training to the forefront of our consciousness, with workouts designed to challenge the entire system: muscular, cardiovascular, and neurological.

"The body doesn't operate in isolation, so training shouldn't either," says Laura Ruthnum-Anderson, a hybrid athlete and head of training at CaveFit, adding that hybrid training develops strength, aerobic capacity, power, and movement quality all at once.

"You're not just asking ‘how far can I run?', but also ‘how well can I move, produce force, and sustain output under fatigue?' That's where it becomes powerful," she says.

Can Hybrid Training Benefit My Running?

"There was a time when runners hated the gym," says Terrence Mahon, running coach at CORE, who draws on decades of experience coaching Olympic medallists, British Athletics, and Team USA. "They would do an extra-long run just to avoid leg day. Now that's all changed."

In 2026, Mahon says that runners now understand the need for more well-rounded training and are embracing gym work both for its hormonal stimulus and its ability to recruit more muscle fibers when they run. It seems to work.

"Without question, my running has improved as I've gotten stronger," says Ruthnum-Anderson. "The biggest shift is understanding that the most powerful runners are the most robust ones."

According to Mahon's own observations, isometric training improves tendon stiffness and plyometric training improves a runner's biomechanical efficiency (aka running economy). Which is fantastic news for runners. But that's not all. A 2022 study published in AHA Journals looked at five different training modalities and their impact on cardio fitness and concluded that hybrid training was the second most effective method for improving cardiometabolic health-related outcomes. In other words, hybrid training is better than both jogging and weight training for keeping your heart and lungs in shape.

There's a real-life precedent, too. Not quite satisfied with his HYROX times, Elite 15 athlete Jake Dearden took time away to focus on running super-fast marathons. When he returned, his HYROX time had improved.

"I realised that running was my weakness during HYROX competitions and I wanted to get quicker," Dearden explains. But it was a double-edged sword, with Dearden bowing out of the 2025 World Championships mid-race due to a running related-injury. Like anything, the key is to not overdo it.

That injury forced Dearden to change how he balances his schedule when preparing for a race, leading him to adopt a much more flexible routine. When he was running more, he'd drop his five times a week strength training sessions down to two or three to accommodate the new stimulus demands. It wasn't an all-or-nothing approach; when you're running well again, you can then readjust your training accordingly.

How Might Hybrid Training Hamper My Running?

As Dearden's experience shows, hybrid training isn't a guaranteed win for your 10K time. Nor is running a guaranteed boon to your hybrid ambitions. Carl James, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sports and Health Sciences at Hong Kong Baptist University, has some concerns.

"Hybrid training doesn't always promote optimal running form, especially when a lot of running is performed under fatigue," he says. This makes sense, especially for competitions like HYROX, which require a 1km (0.62 mile) run in between eight rounds of exercises like sled pushes and rows. It stands to reason that running form drops off as the competition progresses.

For Dr Nicolas Berger, senior lecturer and expert in exercise physiology at Teesside University, UK, balancing running with weight training is all about balancing competing demands.

"Running performance is largely about efficiency, repeated submaximal output, and keeping energy cost as low as possible," he says. Whereas hybrid training often focuses on increased muscle mass and high levels of neuromuscular fatigue. This can cause issues in multiple ways, with more muscle mass negatively impacting running economy because you have more mass to carry, and high-impact work like sled pushes leaving residual fatigue that impacts running quality.

Most importantly, Berger says that strength and endurance adaptations don't always align, and that high volumes of either can blunt the other if not properly managed. "Hybrid training often means more total stress," he says. "If recovery isn't scaled with that, performance in both areas can stagnate."

How Should I Recover to Maximize Running Benefits?

If there's one thing as big as hybrid training in 2026, it's recovery. And it's about time it's getting its dues.

"The smartest runners understand that you get stronger from how well you recover," says Mahon. Whatever your goals, post-training recovery begins with rehydrating the body, along with recovery shakes to add much-needed protein and carbs. From there, you might opt for using the sauna to aid in detoxing the body, red light therapy for mitochondrial stimulation, or cold therapy to help reduce inflammation.

"Heat can also be used as a recovery tool in its own right," says Mahon. "Moving a session indoors and turning up the room temperature decouples heart rate from pace and power, giving the legs a much-needed mechanical break."

For Nucum, supplementation with creatine, BCAA, electrolytes, and anti-inflammatory products is vital for safeguarding your legs. "I also love sports massages, foam rolling, massage guns, and compression boots," he adds. Finally, he says that whether you're training for a half-marathon or a HYROX, sleep is "underrated and overlooked."

What's a Short Hybrid Workout That Will Improve My Running?

Overall, hybrid training can be great for your running ability. But, get in too deep, and you risk injury and burnout. If you want to get the benefits of a hybrid approach without going all-in, our expert coaches have some workouts for you to try. These shouldn't replace your running sessions or your gym sessions. Instead, they're designed as low-impact ways to blend the two, maximising results without over-straining your system.

Five-Round Fatigue Builder

First up, Ruthnum-Anderson's five-round workout is designed to build unilateral strength and quality running under accumulated fatigue:

400-meter run (at 10km pace)
10 dumbbell clean and presses
10 (each side) dumbbell walking lunges
10 butterfly situps

If you can complete all five rounds, good on you. If not, work up to it, remembering to take plenty of time to focus on recovery afterwards.

18-Minute AMRAP Engine

Nucum's AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) workout, below, lasts 18minutes. Like Ruthnum-Anderson's, you should try incorporating this into your routine no more than once per week:

500-meter run
150-meter row/ski
12 dumbbell thrusters
8 burpees

Follow one or both of these protocols and your running ability and overall strength should soon see the benefits–without you needing to become addicted to HYROX in the process.

This story was originally published by Men's Journal on May 22, 2026, where it first appeared in the Health & Fitness section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

This story was originally published May 22, 2026 at 4:19 PM.