Concurrent Training And The Interference Effect - Dr Matt Lee

The Progress Theory

Hello and welcome to The Progress Theory where we discuss how to implement scientific principles to optimise human performance. I’m Dr Phil Price and on today’s episode we have Dr Matt Lee, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Health and Sport, at Victoria University in Melbourne.

It was originally thought that you couldn't develop strength and endurance simultaneously due to something called the interference effect. Certain molecular, hormonal and neuromuscular adaptations occur which may limit your strength training progress if you also do a large amount of endurance work, for example. However, it’s not as simple as that, and there are many factors, like training intensity and recovery time between sessions, which we can manipulate to minimise the interference effect. Dr Matt Lee specialises in concurrent training research and in this episode we discuss how the interference effect was discovered, what training factors can blunt adaptations, and what you can do to train strength and endurance simultaneously.

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As always, follow The Progress Theory on Instagram and Youtube, head to our website theprogresstheory.com, and check out all of our other episodes. So here is, Dr Matt Lee ...

In this episode, we discuss:

• 1:30 - Introduction
• 9:18 - What is concurrent training and the interference effect? The work of Robert Hickson
• 15:32 - The interference effect on different strength parameters
• 19:44 - Neuromuscular and molecular effects
• 27:57 - How the research supports the amazing feats of hybrid training seen today
• 33:54 - The effect of previous training on the interference effect
• 42:34 - Effect of volume and frequency on the interference effect
• 49:32 - minimum dose to minimise the interference effect

Final Thoughts

Thank you to Matt for coming onto The Progress Theory and talking about his research on concurrent training and the interference effect. It was awesome to get an understanding around where the misconceptions of the interference effect have come from and dive into the literature to show that this effect may not be as prominent as history tells us.

I just wanted to provide some final thoughts on key areas which really stood out to me.

Firstly, Matt’s discussion around the molecular responses to specific training and our training history really made me think. If the molecular response to training decreases as we become more familiar with that training, surely training regularly at both strength and endurance disciplines would reduce the molecular responses and reduce the severity of the interference effect? Does this mean that with an appropriate hybrid training programme the interference effect, if there is one, should decrease over time?

And secondly, Matt highlighted that a training frequency of 3 sessions a week is enough to create improvement but doesn’t increase the volume to such an extent that it could increase the chance of the interference effect? So, as an example, If we trained strength 3 times a week and endurance 3 times a week, all on separate days, the interference effect should barely exist. You’re training enough and getting sufficient rest in between sessions for the interference effect to not affect training at all.

Anyways I hope you enjoyed this episode and it allowed you to start thinking about your hybrid programming. If you want further information on this topic I definitely recommend checking out Matt’s research, we’ve created a link for it in the show notes. If you enjoyed the show It would be awesome if you could leave us a review and share this episode on your insta story. Feed that algorithm to help the show grow. We’ll see you in the next one.

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Explore these Resources or Items Mentioned in the Show

Matt Lee Google scholar profile

Jonny Pain episode

Professor Hickson paper

Dr Vernon Coffey study

Dr Tom Jones study

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Mentioned in this episode:

The Science of Hybrid Training

It was originally thought that you could not effectively train for both strength and endurance at the same time because they required different adaptations which were not compatible with each other. It was claimed that ‘an interference effect’, blunted the adaptations for strength if you simultaneously trained for endurance. However, recent developments in sports which require both strength and endurance have really challenged this idea, with hybrid athletes producing impressive performances in both strength and endurance sports together. This had led scientists, coaches, and athletes to rethink what is humanly possible and suggests the interference effect is not as influential as originally thought. But what is a hybrid athlete? What is the ‘interference effect’? And how can we maximize our training to improve at the same time our strength and endurance performance? In this book, Dr Phil Price provides insight into the misconceptions surrounding strength and endurance training by distilling the past 50 years of research and drawing on the conversations he had with great scientists, coaches, and athletes on The Progress Theory podcast. This book is essential reading for hybrid athletes and coaches who are looking to understand the key training variables and their effect on the simultaneous development of strength and endurance performance.

Book