When you tell a former athlete who is now a recruit preparing for various military training opportunities that they need to do both heavy weightlifting and more cardio, it hits hard for many. Typically, depending on the recruit’s athletic history, one (strength or cardio) is very likely a weakness and the other a strength. For instance, strength athletes may be weak in muscle stamina and cardio endurance. Endurance athletes may be weak in strength and power.
Here is a question commonly asked by athletes seeking to join the military:
Stew, I’m trying to get my ruck times down for selection, but every time I increase my mileage, my squat and deadlift numbers plummet. Am I doomed to lose my strength? Thanks, Rob.
It’s the ultimate tactical fitness training paradox. Losing strength to gain cardio capacity or losing speed of running time to add mass and strength. However, you just need to be good at both strength and endurance. You do not need to push the 1RM (1-rep max) numbers and running times of a specialized athlete. Being “good at everything” is the basic definition of becoming a tactical athlete.
Still, the answer isn’t to drop one for the other. It’s learning to budget your training, so your cardio complements your strength rather than hindering it. We call this periodization training. Think of it as the difference between in-season and off-season training when you were competing as an athlete. These are just different cycles that you need to add to turn a weakness into less of a weakness and maybe even a newfound strength.
This is where the “interference effect” matters. Concurrent training — building strength and endurance in the same cycle — can cause a lack of progress in both when sessions are poorly placed, especially when long or hard endurance work is stacked too close to heavy lower-body lifting. Often, those who do this get frustrated as neither improves significantly. However, maintaining one while progressing with the other is completely doable, but you must be willing to drop your 1RM for a cycle if you are a strength athlete and reduce your total miles per week if you are a long-distance runner. Creating a block periodization cycle is helpful when needing to improve over a cycle or two.
Tactical Fitness Rewards Balance
The goal is not to become a competitive powerlifter or an elite endurance specialist but to become good across strength, power, speed, agility, work capacity, endurance (rucking, running, swimming), mobility and recovery. There are multiple ways to accomplish these goals. I have been using a method I call seasonal tactical fitness periodization for over 30 years with great results, turning lifters into runners/ruckers and runners into lifters/ruckers. Using this method, each season of the year has a different primary goal to improve and a secondary goal to maintain. There are lift cycles with cardio and cardio/calisthenics cycles with lifting spread throughout the year. We do this by focusing on a weakness to improve while maintaining our strength (not trying to improve both at the same time).
Cardio Does Not Ruin Strength
The biggest issue is fatigue, depleted fuel and competing recovery demands. If the priority of the day is heavy squats, deadlifts, cleans or weighted carries, do not bury that session under a hard run or ruck immediately before it. When possible, separate heavy lifts and rucks by at least 6 hours, and use 24 hours when the lift is heavy, the ruck is long, or if you are still building a foundation of durability. Fueling and sleep are key: Enter key strength sessions with carbohydrates available; take in protein across the day; and avoid turning every endurance session into a low-fuel grind. Top off the day with restorative sleep, our No. 1 recovery tool.
Rucking can also serve as a Zone 2 cardio builder rather than just another gut-check event. Done correctly, an easy ruck should feel conversational, controlled and repeatable, not like a selection simulation every weekend. For strength-biased athletes, this provides the heart and lungs with a steady aerobic stimulus without the pounding that comes from adding too much running too soon. For endurance-biased athletes, it provides low-skill load carriage practice while gradually strengthening the feet, calves, hips, trunk and upper back.
If the pace is truly easy and the load is appropriate, a ruck can even support leg recovery by increasing blood flow, encouraging easy movement, and building tissue tolerance without adding excessive soreness.
In the end, tactical fitness is about closing gaps within the elements of fitness. The strength athlete needs enough endurance to move for time under load; the endurance athlete needs enough strength to carry, climb, drag, lift and absorb the impact of the weight. The best program develops both without chasing elite specialization in either direction. Use heavy lifting to maintain and build the foundation. Use rucking and Zone 2 work to build the cardio engine.
Separate hard sessions when possible, fuel the work, stay hydrated, and progress load progressively. The tactical athlete’s standard is simple: Be good enough at everything so that no single weakness causes the mission, test or team effort to fall apart. Check out the Military.com Fitness Section for more ideas on tactical fitness training.
Read the full article here
