Episode 16: You Shouldn’t Train Every Lift the Same (Especially If You Run)

A common mistake people make in the gym is applying the same training rules to every lift.

But not all exercises respond the same way to training — especially if you're also trying to run.

In this episode of the Lift Heavy Run Fast Podcast, we break down why compound movements and isolation exercises should be trained differently, and how understanding this can make hybrid training far more effective.

We discuss:

• Why people mistakenly apply the same programming rules to every lift
• Why compound lifts often respond better to moderate loads and higher exposure
• The role of technique practice and skill development in movements like squats, deadlifts and bench press
• Why constantly pushing compound lifts to failure can create unnecessary fatigue
• How fatigue from lifting can directly impact your running performance
• Why isolation exercises often respond well to higher intensity and lower volume
• How 1–2 hard sets on isolation exercises can be an efficient stimulus with minimal fatigue cost
• How to structure strength training so it supports your running rather than interfering with it

If you're trying to balance running and lifting, understanding how different exercises respond to training can help you manage fatigue, improve performance, and get better results from both.

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Lift Heavy, Run Fast Podcast Intro

Transcript

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What's up, hybrids? Welcome back to episode 16 of the Lift Heavy Run Fast podcast. I am your coach. I always say that I'm not your coach, but if you want me to be, I can be. I am your host, hybrid coach Mike, and today we are talking about something called that is not what it's called. We are talking about why all lifts should not be trained the same. And I'm gonna elaborate a little bit more on this now and what I'm talking about. First of all, the weather's cooling down here in Sydney, a little bit update on my life, not that you guys care. Weather's cooling down a little bit here in Sydney, which has made running a lot easier. I am still on the on the game train in terms of training for Project 300 sub-90, where I plan on being the first person, I believe ever, if I'm wrong, someone prove me wrong, to deadlift 300 kilos and go straight into a sub-90 minute half marathon back to back. Training has been going good, weight is down. I'm gonna give a better update in the next couple episodes, but just letting everyone know that I'm okay, not that anyone cares, and things are heading in the right direction. In terms of all of my clients, everyone right now is doing well. I've got a shit ton of people getting ready for the hawker half marathon coming up. I have a couple dudes doing the Sydney Trail half marathon this weekend, which is actually a night race, which is gonna be really interesting. Bring your head torches, which is I did this same race last year in December, but I didn't do it at night, I did it during the day, and that was hard enough as it is. Doing it at night will be a fucking nightmare. Although it will be much cooler. I did it on about a 40 degree Celsius day, so that was hell for me. But anyway, otherwise, couple people doing that, couple people doing the Husky half marathon marathon run Huskinson in two weeks, which is going to be down south in New South Wales South Coast, and then we've got the Newcastle half marathon two weeks after that, and then we've got the Hocker half marathon two weeks after that. So fucking races coming out of our ass right now. We are well and truly in the thick of race season. It's all happening on all fronts for everyone, including myself. And the main goal right now is basically to get everyone as ready as we can and get everyone as ready as possible. Um, so my own training's been going pretty hard, and so have all my athletes. So I'm really happy with all of them. And honestly, all of my athletes right now have been sticking to the plan like crazy. Um, everyone is really locked in right now, and I get really G'd up when all of my guys are locked in, guys and girls. I'm just doing the one thing here. When all of my athletes are locked in right now, guys and girls, and it just makes everything so much easier. So I'm just happy everyone's locked in. When my athletes are locked in, it makes me more locked in. So I'm like, I feel like I need to do that for them. So I I love it. Anyway, why all lifts should not be trained the same? And let me give a little bit of a rundown here. Compound movements and isolation movements are two very different things when it comes to training them. And I'm not trying to gatekeep and say you shouldn't do these the same way, but there are some ways that I believe get better results than others in terms of training these two types of movements. Compound movement, for example, is something like squat bench, deadlift, overhead press, and whatnot. Isolation movement, we're looking at things like the bicep curl, quad extension, hamstring curl, anything that isolates one muscle group primarily. And there's a couple reasons why I think they should be trained a little bit differently. When it comes to compound movements, what I find that works well, particularly if you are trying to get stronger, and I'm gonna say stronger specifically here, because this is something that I apply to my hybrids that are trying to get strong, or my power lifters that I still train when they're trying to get strong, compound movements are often skill-based. So, a compound movement generally means you need to do it often, you need to be good at it, you need to have a high level of technical proficiency in order to get stronger at it. If your technique is shit, you're probably not gonna get very far. On the flip side, right, a shit form on a bicep curl honestly doesn't fucking matter. You're probably gonna get some stimulus in your bicep and it's probably gonna do what it needs to do. But if you are trying to lift as much load as possible the best way possible, technique is extremely important and it it's it is important in isolation movements, but I reckon it is way more important in the context of compound movements because you're lifting generally in so much more load, and the goal if you are a strength athlete is to lift more load, so you need to have a high level of technical proficiency, which will then allow you to lift that weight more efficiently and better and allow you to train it more often. So, one of the things I think with compound movements, and this is something that I've been applying to my own training as I try to deadlift 300 kilos and I am running a fuckload right now as well. With compound movements, I think a little bit lower on the RPE scale, or for those that don't understand RPE, a 10 out of 10 is like I cannot lift any heavier, uh, and a one out of 10 is like I can do this every day in terms of intensity, basically, or difficulty. So I think most compound movements can be trained anywhere between the five to eight range, five to nine range, um, and you can get really good gains by having them at somewhat of a lower intensity. A lower intensity allows you to also train the technical proficiency of the movement, practice the skill, practice the technique, but it also allows you to build up a little bit more volume, and doing that also allows you to improve your technique. Technique is really important for compound movements. In addition to that, when you go heavier, your technique tends to break down under fatigue, which isn't a bad thing. It is absolutely necessary sometimes. I am not saying you should never lift with high intensity on compound movements. I just think the majority of your training when it comes to compound movements should be at lower intensities. And then there should be periods, maybe a couple weeks or one week at a time, where you're going really hard and hitting those higher difficulties, higher RPEs with compound movements. The reason why is you can I I never recommend not doing any high intensity stuff is because your technique, when it's really heavy, might look different to when it's slightly lighter. So you're not gonna truly know when your technique breaks down or what problems there are in your technique until you are under fatigue or under a load that causes those technical issues to surface. So there is gonna be a time and place you should absolutely lift those higher intensities, higher RPEs. I'm talking maxing out nine tens, but it shouldn't be the majority of your training. The majority of your training, in my opinion, should be at those lower ranges. Somewhere around the six to eight mark is always perfect, and that's honestly where I hang around. The last two times I've deadlifted 300, I have not lifted anything above an RPE 8 or a difficulty eight out of 10, whatever you want to use for those that aren't aware, in training. And what that meant was is that I always was able to recover, I was always able to back up my sessions, I was always I was always able to add a little bit more weight each week. And I went in and actually lifted 300 both times quite comfortably. And honestly, if you would have asked me on that day, I probably could have lifted more, but I only needed to do what I needed to do. So, in saying that, you do not need to lift heavy all the time in order to get stronger, particularly with compound movements. The other benefit of lifting slightly lower in terms of intensity means you can do a few more sets, which if you're someone that's shit, uh not good at the movement, you can just practice the technique that a little bit more. It's gonna be really hard to practice the technique of a movement if you're fucking maxing it out every set back to back. By the third or second set, you're gonna be cooked. It's not going anywhere. Other than that, when it comes to uh, I am also gonna link all of this back to running, by the way. So bear with me for those that don't give a fuck about lifting. When it comes to isolation movements, particularly exercises like the bicep curl or you know, training arms, smaller muscle groups, side delts, rear delts, fucking go hard. The muscle group is so small, and particularly if you're using something like a machine where your technique is fixed anyway, you can't really deviate all that much, just go hard and fucking thrash it. Do one or two really hard sets and move on. But go in and go really hard. You can almost go to failure, in my opinion, when it comes to isolation movements. If you're doing a six-week block, go to failure five out of the six weeks. For biceps, go to failure five out of the six weeks, have one week where you go easy and have then fucking thrash them for the next five or six weeks again. You honestly aren't gonna do all that much damage by doing that, if any. So I recommend giving it a crack and having a good go. The reason why fatigue cost is much lower and also the muscle will pretty much recover much faster because they're usually smaller when you're doing isolation movements. When you're doing some exercises that may inhibit your ability to complete compound movements, though, if you're doing thrashing your uh hamstrings and it's then inhibiting your ability to deadlift a day or two later, consider maybe doing everything slightly less. But for the most part, I think most people can thrash their isolation movements, especially if they are on a machine, because it's quite fixed. Now, how does this link with running? When it links with running, the reason why is doing heavy compound movements will cause a lot of fatigue, and that fatigue can inhibit your ability to run. So keep in mind if you are doing a compound movement, you do not want it to inhibit your ability to run, particularly on a squat, squat, or deadlift. If they're inhibiting your ability to run because of the amount of fatigue you've done, you've got to run the day after or the days after that, and you've thrashed yourself doing really high RPE or high volume work, it can be quite hard to back up your runs and hit the pace targets you need to do, or hit the volume target of kilometers you're supposed to, because you just feel so much more tired and heavy. On the flip side, when it comes to isolation movements, the same concept applies where if you're really sore, you're gonna find it much harder to run. But I think in most cases you don't get that central fatigue, which is like that nervous system fatigue with that feeling of being run down, so you're normally able to back it up regardless. So you might have sore hamstrings and it can make you feel a little bit slower, or if your quads are really sore, you might feel a little bit slower next time you run, which is completely understandable. But I find after a good warm-up you can get yourself going. The the key thing is with when you're doing compound movements, particularly like heavy squats, bench deadlifts, those kind of things, you get that central nervous fatigue or that central fatigue. And I'm the majority of people here, this doesn't apply to, by the way. I'm just talking like in very I'm talking probably beyond most people that are listening to this. But when you're an intermediate to advanced athlete, you really got to take into account fatigue. For most beginners though, just go in and don't worry about how much central fatigue you're experiencing. But for someone, for example, at my level, it's very real when I'm trying to deadlift 250 kilos plus. I'm fucking run down for days after that, and then I've got to run on the Saturday, Sunday, Monday after that. So I need to consider where I'm putting that intensity and volume for those heavy deadlifts and heavy squats, for example. But when it comes to isolation exercises, myself included, I think you can get away with just doing what you need to do, do one or two hard sets. If you're always too sore to run, drop the volume even lower, and you should be right to do your runs after that. I digress a little bit there, but for the most part, that is what I believe about training isolation movements and compound movements as a hybrid and just in general. Isolation movements go hard, do one or two hard sets. Compound movements, especially if your goal is to get stronger, don't do too many do hard sets, really hard sets, once every few weeks. Keep the majority of your training in that six to eight RPE range or lower difficulty range, it'll allow you to practice their technique. And obviously, I think one of the most important things is as always is manage the load that you're doing. If you find you're always fatigued, you may need to manage your loads better, and you may need to structure your training week in such a way so these things don't fuck with your runs and whatnot. Other than that, that is another episode, episode 16 of Lift Heavy Run Fast Podcast. Tune in next week. Make sure you guys like it, share it with your grandmother, do all that stuff. And if you want coaching, you know where to find it. Chat soon.