Episode 19: How To Stay Jacked, While Getting Faster

Trying to get faster without losing size? Or stay jacked while adding running into your week?

This is where most people get it wrong.

In this episode, we break down exactly how to structure your training so you can build strength, maintain muscle, and actually improve your running — without burning out or looking like a completely different person in 8 weeks.

We cover:

- Why dropping lifting frequency is a mistake
- The truth about HYROX-style “circuit” workouts
- The ideal rep ranges for hybrid athletes
- How unnecessary volume is killing your progress
- Exercise selection that actually transfers
- How to eat to stay lean, strong, and perform

If you’re trying to lift heavy and run fast, this is the balance you’ve been looking for.

LINKS

Online Coaching:

https://forms.gle/93WBonsKzkcjiHz57

Programs (5K / 10K / 21K):

https://liftheavyrunfast.myshopify.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/hybridcoachmike/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@hybridcoachmike

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@HybridCoachMike

Podcast (Spotify):

https://open.spotify.com/show/1RBMi9U6tJECkkdpW54B7N

Lift Heavy, Run Fast Podcast Intro

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

What's going on, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Lift Heavy Run Fast Podcast. I'm your host, Hybrid Coach Mike, and today we are going to be talking about how to stay jacked while getting faster. This is episode 19. If you haven't listened to the other episodes, go back, listen to some of those. You can find them on YouTube or on Spotify or wherever you're listening to these. There's plenty of good info in there. Today we're going to be discussing how to stay jacked while getting faster, which is something I help a lot of people do, both men and women, because many people who start running or increase their running or get quite good at running realize that they're not really that jacked anymore. And often they find they become uh lifters who found running and then just became runners who lift. So they pivoted from being quite strong and jacked in the lifting world to now only running and basically just doing a little bit of weights but not really having much muscle on their frame. Today we're going to be talking about how to kind of resolve that issue and to be a little bit more tank, a little bit more jacked, and some pros and cons and all that kind of stuff as to why or why you wouldn't want to do that. But anyway, let's dive in. So, first of all, uh this is another day of recording for me. So I'm going to be recording a few episodes. I've just got back from a trip overseas to New Zealand where I was for two weeks, which is an awesome place. If you haven't been before, go there, it's awesome. And if you're someone who loves to run, go there because it's a great place to run. Uh and also just it's beautiful. We were in the South Island, particularly near Queenstown and around there. Then, right before we left though, I did have a half marathon. I had the Huskinson half marathon that I raced in. Um, I finished with an hour 32. I still have to get my YouTube video up about that, but pretty happy with the time. I think it was like an hour 31 or something, hour 32. I don't know. Anyway, pretty happy with that time. I did not peak for the event. I literally had like a normal training week and then just went in and raced. Um, I tried out a new pair of shoes on the day. The weather was pretty much excellent, spot on for racing, uh, nice and cool in the morning, not too hot. Um, I tried out new shoes. I did I ran in the um Alpha Flies, I believe they are, the new the Nike race shoes, which uh I found were a little bit more bouncy compared to the MetaSpeed Sky Paris Asics that I previously had. I did love my Asics, they fit excellent and they felt wonderful. Nothing wrong with those shoes, but I do find that the Nike Alpha Flies had a little bit more bounce uh to them, and I did feel a little bit quicker in those comparatively. Again, the the change the difference is probably my uh again, the difference is probably minor, but I did notice it, so I felt pretty good on the day. Um, I I probably could have done a little bit better with my pacing. I think I went a little bit too fast uh in the beginning, which I tend to do sometimes, but overall for going into a race with pretty much a normal training week and training block in the lead up, and then just continuing my training afterwards, like I didn't even race uh when I went overseas, I just continued running the whole time. I was pretty happy with how it went. I ended up weighing 88 kilos on the day, and I think I did relatively well overall. Um, there were some very fast people there though, amazing runners. Shoutouts to everyone that was there. Uh a couple dudes gave like saw me and said hi or while we're running ran past and waved um and shouted my name. So that was nice. It's good to see that I'm getting recognized a little bit, but also if you guys listen to this, thank you, and hello to all of you, and hello back because I didn't get a chance to say it properly at that time. Um, for anyone that ever listens to this or watches any of my content uh on Instagram or whatever, if you ever see me in public at races, which you probably will because I do do a lot of them, or if I'm there with my clients, please don't be shy, come up and say hi. Um, I love to have a chat, which many of you do, and and it's awesome. But anyway, how to stay jacked while getting faster. So, in terms of getting jacked, obviously, you know, in the world of bodybuilding, it's pretty easy. Take steroids. Nah, joking. So basically, what I tend to work with, or what I tend to see, is that people start from a lifting background and then they pivot towards doing a little bit more running. Cardio kind of envelops their life uh somewhat in that point because they find it a little bit more social, a little bit more fun, and they find they lose a lot of muscle. And unfortunately, being a little bit slimmer, skinnier, lower body fat as well, and lower muscle mass in some cases is very efficient and very good to be a fast runner because it means your body does not need to deliver as much oxygen to where it needs to go. Basically, the muscles require oxygen in order to keep working, and if there is less muscle, that means there's less oxygen needed, and the body is able to deliver more oxygen to these muscles, but because they're smaller, you get basically fitter because of it. Okay, so the demand is lower, is what I'm trying to say here. The demand for oxygen is lower in in relation to the supply. Whereas when you have a lot of muscle and you're a lot bigger, um, your demand might outweigh the supply, which is where you get fatigue from basically. But essentially, some of the best runners in the world are all very skinny and it and it obviously makes sense as to why. It just makes them more efficient. They also run heaps, so they're burning a shit ton of calories, so it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense for them to uh prioritize weight training at all, anyway. Uh, they probably do some, and most of them will do uh maybe one or two gym sessions per week to kind of keep everything uh grooved, but they're not training to gain size because it's not going to be benefiting their primary sport or performance, which is running faster. Nonetheless, here's some things you can do in order to stay jacked while getting faster. And if you are getting faster and you find you're getting fitter, awesome, keep going, don't stop, keep pumping it out. Just make sure you obviously don't lose your jackedness or muscle uh in doing so. And here's some strategies you can do. So, one of the things I recommend people do, and a lot of the people, this is this probably applies more to those that are in the beginner intermediate stages, but you should keep your lifting frequency pretty high. I recommend at least lifting three times a week if you want to be actually jacked. Um, if you're lifting once or twice a week, don't expect to be jacked. It the amount of work you could literally do in those one or two sessions is insufficient in order to either build muscle in most cases, unless you are a very, very, very, very low-level beginner. Um, but even then, when you're running, you're making it a lot harder on yourself anyway, in order to grow. So you really want to make sure you have at least three, in my opinion, weight training sessions in your program in order to make sure you keep muscle, and if you need to build muscle, build muscle as well. And what you do in those weight training sessions will obviously depend on your goals, whether your goal is strength or just muscle gain or whatever it is, or you want to do a mixture of both, which is what many people do, but you then need to evaluate how that is then going to impact your running performance or your unrunning performance is going to impact your gym sessions. So that then leads me on to my next thing. You probably are going to need to prioritize one goal at a time, particularly if your goal is getting jacked or maintaining your jackedness or muscle size. So if you are trying to gain muscle, I highly recommend you don't prioritize trying to get faster. I recommend you maybe just maintain your running for that period of time, maybe doing two to three runs a week instead of three or four or five or whatever it is you're doing currently in your schedule, and do a little bit more uh running training, uh sorry, weight training in order to put more energy towards that so your body is able to grow faster and quicker. It's just more efficient doing more work in the gym as opposed to trying to balance the both. So if you want to get more jacked, focus on the gym stuff. If you're trying to simply maintain your size, three sessions a week is plenty. But in those three sections, in those three sessions, you need to make sure you're efficient at what you do. You go in, you hit every muscle group, and you hit it hard. I generally recommend starting, you know, at a six out of ten and then building your way up over four, five, six weeks, whatever, to like nine or ten out of tens in terms of difficulty or RPE as to what you're doing in the gym. So the weight training sessions should be efficient, but they should be hard. Again, the goal is to make sure that it doesn't impact your running performance too much that you can't run. But if you're trying to maintain your size while you are getting faster, you really want to make sure that what you're doing in the gym is quite condensed but hard, and it's getting enough of a stimulus to at least maintain the muscle size that you have, or build a little bit if you are doing enough volume usually and eating correctly and all that kind of stuff. So if there's an area you want to work on, you generally want to do that quite frequently. So if you're trying to grow your chest, you don't want to just do it once a week. You want to do all of your muscle groups in most cases in a hybrid program. I reckon this is the number one thing everyone should be doing. They should be doing all of their muscle groups more than once a week. I recommend two to three times a week. And those gym sessions should be two to three full-body gym sessions per week. The only caveat here that I will say is that maybe you're not doing legs every session. Because legs are such a big maybe you're not doing legs every session. Because legs are such a big muscle group, you can get away with maybe two sessions per week instead and having them grow. The other thing to keep in mind is that because you're using your legs so much at the same time as you're running, it's unrealistic to assume that they're gonna grow as fast as everywhere else, although they although they might, depending on how you respond. But realistically, you're not gonna be able to do a hell of a lot of volume in the gym and run at the same time in terms of uh what you need to do with your legs. The reason why is that if you want to get faster, or if you are getting faster, you're not gonna be able to do that if your legs are always fucked from what you've done in the gym. So your gym volume in terms of leg training or your leg training in terms of uh volume uh in the gym will be maybe six to nine sets uh per workout, maybe even less, depending on how fatigued you are. For me, for example, right now I will do four sets or five sets for quads in total per week, and that is across exercises like squats or Bulgarian split squats or lunges, they're my main three in rotation because I don't really have access to machines, and then for hamstrings and glutes, I might do six to eight sets per week, roughly. So, in total, my legs are being hit with maybe 14 sets at most, at most per week. So it's usually less than that, but that's kind of where it will be at most. When I have a race coming up, like I do in the next two to three weeks. Right now I'm dropping that down even lower. I'm doing like five sets in total for my quads, hamstrings, and glutes. So all of them are getting five sets each, and next week it's probably gonna go down to four, and the week of the race it's probably gonna go down to three. None, basically, actually. The week of the race, I won't do any legs whatsoever. So, again, something to consider the amount of volume you do in the gym is gonna impact your running. Make sure you don't do too much. But if you do want to grow your legs, you will need to do a little bit more, so you may need to accept the fact that you might need to prioritize just getting bigger in the gym and it and understand that you might not be able to run as fast or be as fresh on your legs when you need to run. Other than that, don't do high rock style workouts, they're bullshit. Uh, you don't need to do a high-rock style workout unless you're training for high rocks or you just love that style of training, which is fair enough if you do. But if you think that you can go from a you know a bodybuilding focused or strength focused program to now doing uh high rock style workouts and maintain your size, you're wrong. The reps are too high, the volume is too sorry, not the reps are too high, the intensity is too low, although it feels hard, it's more of a cardio workout than it is an effective weight training stimulus. Um, and honestly, there's usually not much direction to them in terms of how to stimulate muscle growth. That's not the goal of those what types of training sessions. So if you're someone who thinks a kind of higher style workout is gonna make you look jacked, I hate to say it, you're wrong. It's gonna maybe help you improve your cardio fitness, but it's definitely not gonna make you jacked. So if you want to gain muscle and look jacked, you need to do a proper weight training session, not a high-rock style workout. And a proper weight training session is pretty vanilla, nothing crazy. You know, for example, I'll run you through one of mine or someone that I've given someone. Like, I'll start with say bench press, three sets of five. Maybe I'll do squats after that, three sets of five, then I'll do some bent over rows, then I might do some shoulders, then I might do uh a hamstring exercise like hamstring curls, and then I might finish off with some arms and abs. That's my whole workout. It's just a very normal workout. There's nothing special about it in particular, but what I'm doing is my exer exercise selection is on point in terms of what I'm trying to do and what I'm trying to achieve, and then also I make sure I hit those exercises hard so I get enough of a stimulus out of them, although the volume or a stimulus out of them, although the volume is quite low overall, comparatively to like a bodybuilding program where you're doing maybe you know 10 to maybe 10 or so sets per muscle group in a workout or something. So basically the point is you just got to train like somewhat, like a bodybuilder, sometimes, and that kind of or like a strength athlete sometimes. Uh don't go doing high-rock style stuff all the time because it's not gonna help you build muscle at all. The other thing is I think most people can stick to the five to ten rep range. Um we don't need to be doing sets of 20 on like squats or front squats, although it might seem hard by the time you grind out the reps, uh, which are the effective reps that are probably gonna cause muscle growth, you're you have such a cardiovascular uh you've accumulated so much cardiovascular fatigue that it might be your cardiovascular fitness that is limiting you, not the actual muscle fatigue or the muscle being um yeah, the muscle being fatigued that is gonna be limiting you, which is therefore causing the growth. It might be your cardiovascular system, which is a separate thing altogether, but weight training shouldn't be used for uh developing your cardio, in my opinion, and nor should sets of 20 on something like a front squat or a thruster be considered an effective stimulus for muscle gain. If you're gonna do if you're gonna do a weight training exercise to grow muscle, stick between the five to ten rep range for exercises like you know, squats, that pull down, all that kind of stuff. The effective reps are normally the last four to five, the ones where you're really grinding it out, and that's what you want to do. You want to have reps that you can really grind it out and fatigue the muscle, not have your fitness be the thing that is limiting you. The only caveat to that one I will say is that sometimes on things like arms or smaller muscle groups, uh like if I'm isolating a muscle group, like arms, uh quads, even sometimes, or calves, shoulders if I'm doing like side raises, any of rear delts, those exercises I'm like, you know what, whatever, just go to failure. And if you hit 20 reps on a particular weight, just do it. Who cares? The reason why is that that muscle group is probably not gonna cause that much cardiovascular fatigue that it's gonna limit you uh in terms of your ability to fatigue the muscle before that. So you will generally find because that muscle group is so small, the amount of oxygen or whatever it needs in order to keep you going during that set is not gonna be the limiting factor. You might actually be able to fatigue the muscle even though you're doing higher reps. Um, and I do that sometimes with like triceps on the tricep push down machine. If I feel like on the last set, I'm like, fuck it, I'm just gonna see how many I can get because I can and I just want to just push it out. I will, and sometimes I might get an extra five reps than what I thought, and it means one, I should have gone heavier on the previous sets, but two, I've done 15 reps now and I've got a mad pump. Um, and I definitely fatigue the muscle because the muscle is cooked, and my cardio fatigue isn't what limited me because the muscle group is so small that my lungs were able to withstand or meet the capacity that that that muscle needed in order for me to finish the set. Next thing, use machines and isolations work and isolation exercises, they're excellent. Don't be shy from them. I know a lot of hybrids refuse to use things like you know isolation machines or like you know, your bicep curl machines, your chest press machines, whatever. If you have access to them at your gym and your goal is building muscle or being jacked, use those machines every now and then. I still recommend doing the heavy barbell stuff and all that kind of stuff if your goal is to get stronger, but if your goal is purely to get jacked and just look fitter and look more muscular, isolation exercises are the way to go. They're the things that give you the deeper stretch, they're the things that recruit a lot of muscle fibers when isolating a muscle, and frankly, they don't cause that much fatigue, so you can do a lot more of them if you can't, if you wanted to. Something like a chest press machine isn't gonna roast you as much as something like a flat barbell bench press or something like um I don't know what you know, leg machines there are. Some of them are gonna cook you, but they're not gonna cook you as much as like a heavy barbell squat is where you've got to load a bar up on your back. So sometimes doing a machine is excellent for that where it's gonna allow you to isolate whatever muscles you're trying to work and blast them and get a good stimulus for growth without the need of heavy, you know, uh fatiguing exercises that fatigue other muscle groups, like you know, compound movements like deadlifts, barbell squats, front squats, whatever it is you're you're you're using. Other than that, next thing eat high protein consistently. You should be eating high protein all the time. I like to keep my athletes in the upper range of anywhere between 1.6 to 1.8, up to as high as 2.4 uh grams per kilogram of body weight. It's really up to you where you're at. If you're in a cut, you should be on that higher end. If you're not in a cut, you can kind of sit somewhere in the middle or even on that lower if you're in a surplus, you can sit somewhere in that lower end. But you know, if you're trying to maintain your your size, I highly recommend you stick to at least two times your body weight and protein uh per day. It just prevents muscle wastage. And I generally find that yeah, it just prevents muscle wastage. And I find you will have enough macros in you will have enough carbs in your diet, even with that macro split to be able to fuel your workout. So it's not going to take away from your ability to you know you uh have successful or or good workouts because you're not diminishing your carbs at that point by by eating like that. I find it's very sustainable all year round almost. Last thing, uh, you may want to eat slightly more uh on your running days. So if you're doing bigger runs, particularly on days we're doing 10k plus uh or more, 10 kilometers plus, sometimes 15, whatever it is, or if you're someone who like me, if I'm going to do 60k a week and I'm running or more, 60 plus kilometers per week, and I'm running four days a week, like I have been. Right now I'm running five, but in most of my prep I've been running four kilometers uh four days per week. Those runs were at a minimum most of the time, you know, 13 kilometers at at a time, going up to as high as 25 kilometers at a time. So those days you're burning quite a lot of energy. It's a good idea to have a little bit more protein, a little bit more calories on those days as well, just so your body isn't in a massive deficit and therefore having to eat the muscle. The other thing you want to do is also if you do are doing those really big runs, uh, which are in excess of an hour, highly recommend having some carbs on you, lollies, gels, whatever it is that you use, uh, because you want to be using carbs for energy the majority of the time. You don't want to be dipping into you know other things like your protein stores, which is therefore gonna then diminish your body's ability to recover and your muscle mass over a longer period of time if you're done for frequently. Anyway, that is how to stay jacked while getting faster. There's a ton of other ways to be honest, but these are the ones that just popped in my head and I thought I'd mention right now. If you need help staying jacked while getting faster, I have online coaching spots available. All you have to do is hit me up on Instagram or click the link wherever you are that's in the description down below. Reach out to me and I'll be happy to help. As always, like, comment, subscribe, do all that other stuff that you gotta do wherever you're listening. Thanks for your support. I'll see you guys next time.