Why strength training is the priority

Hybrid training has become massively popular over the last few years, and I completely understand why. Being able to lift heavy, run well and look good at the same time is something most people would sign up for. The problem is that social media has convinced a lot of people they can maximise all those things at once, when that’s just not how training works. Within your first year or two of training, you can easily push all modalities at once due to newbie gains. But once you actually can train hard enough to illicit a serious recovery demand, things change a bit.

If your main goal is building a physique, then strength training and hypertrophy need to be the priority. That doesn't mean avoiding cardio or pretending endurance work has no place, but it does mean accepting that every type of training comes with a recovery cost. Your body doesn't separate fatigue into neat little boxes. A hard interval session still takes something out of you, just like a heavy squat session does. At some point, if you're trying to do too much of everything, you're simply asking your body to recover from more work than it realistically can.

That's why so many people end up spinning their wheels. They'll lift four or five times a week, run three times, throw in a Hyrox session at the weekend and wonder why they're not getting stronger or putting on muscle. It's not because the programme is terrible; it's because they're spreading themselves too thin. Training only works if you can recover from it. And if you’re too fried to perform your quality sessions at a suitable intensity, you won’t improve

People often point to the big names in the hybrid world as proof that you can have it all. What they forget is how most of those athletes got there. They didn't build those physiques while running huge mileage every week. They spent years getting strong and adding muscle before increasing the amount of endurance work they were doing. By that point they weren't trying to build their physique anymore—they were maintaining it. That's a massive difference. Maintaining muscle requires far less volume than building it, which frees up recovery that can then be put towards running, cycling or conditioning without sacrificing years of progress in the gym.

This is also why, after your first year or so of proper training, you have to start periodising your training. It's a word that gets overcomplicated, but all it really means is having a focus. You spend a block prioritising one quality while doing enough work to maintain the others. Maybe that means spending four months trying to build as much strength and muscle as possible before shifting your attention towards a race or Hyrox event. Then, once that's over, the focus swings back again. Every successful athlete does some version of this because trying to push every quality at the same time eventually catches up with you.

Another thing people don't appreciate is just how different the timelines are for building endurance compared with building strength. I could take someone who's never run before and have them complete a half marathon within a few months with sensible training. It wouldn't be pretty, but they'd finish. Getting that same person to squat 140kg is a completely different story. For most people that's measured in years, not months. The same applies to building an impressive physique. Muscle is slow to earn and quick to lose, which is exactly why it deserves your attention first if looking better is your main objective.

None of this is me saying you shouldn't run or that hybrid training is a bad idea. I enjoy it myself, and I think there's huge value in being fit as well as strong. My point is simply that if you're trying to build a physique, you need to earn the right to become more of an endurance athlete later on. Build the muscle first, get properly strong, then start increasing your conditioning once you've got something worth maintaining. You'll make better progress, recover better and probably enjoy your training a lot more than if you spend years trying to be average at everything instead of very good at one thing.