![]() By the halfway point of the famous Hickson study, he estimates that the strength-training group was burning 2,000 calories per week in their training while the concurrent training group was burning 6,000 calories per week. Instead, according to Baar, one of the leaders in applying molecular biology to study training adaptations, the key point may be more straightforward. In humans, though, it doesn’t seem to be that simple. This has been the prevailing picture for the past decade or so, based on cell culture and rodent experiments. AMPK can inhibit mTOR, so endurance training blocks muscle growth from strength training. Endurance training activates a protein called AMPK that (though a different signaling cascade) produces endurance adaptations like increased mitochondrial mass. One explanation of the interference effect goes something like this: Resistance training activates a protein called mTOR that (through a cascade of molecular signals) results in bigger muscles. (Though all those factors probably play some role.) Instead there seems to be some underlying conflict between strength and endurance adaptations. Hickson’s results offered evidence that the “skinny endurance athlete” phenomenon isn’t only because endurance athletes can’t be bothered to do strength training, are too tired to do it right, or are genetically wired to have no muscle. And from a health perspective, recreational endurance athletes like me often struggle to put on and maintain muscle while racking up miles. The challenge is far more acute in sports like rowing, which involve huge endurance-training volumes but also require as much muscle mass as you can muster. Instead, according to Brown, the roughly three hours a week Brownlee spends in the gym are mainly focused on building durability, so that he can survive the 30-plus hours he spends swimming, biking, and running. It’s worth noting that a top triathlete like Alistair Brownlee isn’t necessary concerned with packing on muscle-in fact, that could be a negative. Initially the concurrent group gains strength, but after a while the results start to tail off and even reverse. Here’s what the strength changes in the three groups looked like (from a graph redrawn by University of California Davis researcher Keith Baar in this paper): (Courtesy Sports Medicine) After ten weeks of seriously intense endurance training, strength training, or both, the verdict was that strength training didn’t hinder endurance gains but endurance training did hinder strength gains. ![]() The classic study on concurrent strength and endurance training was published by Robert Hickson in 1980. To get the best of both worlds, you have to take a closer look at the molecular signals involved in strength and endurance training-and figure out how to maximize both at the same time. But the practical reality of combining endurance and strength training has always been trickier than the theory, thanks in part to an apparent “interference effect” between the two workout types. Of course, endurance coaches have been preaching the benefits of strength since athletes wore togas. ![]() Instead both gave the same answer: strength training. The answers had nothing to do with wearable tech or secret workouts. I asked the coaches to name the single biggest change in elite triathlon training in 2017 compared with a decade earlier. The moment that lingered in my mind after a recent triathlon-science conference came from a panel discussion with “gold-medal coaches,” including Iñaki Arenal, head of the Spanish high-performance team, and Malcolm Brown, coach of the Olympic-medal-winning Brownlee brothers.
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