Paul Laursen (00:00)
I was going to win Ironman and I was going to do it by training the hardest and I was going to train the longest. And of course it didn't work right. And it doesn't work for anyone. So you got to train smarter and then cross-training is kind of part of that overall intelligence that you're adding to your program. And, and it kind of comes back to it's a whole lot more enjoyable.
when you do have this.
Paul Warloski (00:46)
Hello and welcome to the Athletes Compass podcast, where we navigate training, fitness, and health for everyday athletes. Today on the Athletes Compass, we are diving deep into something that research shows can improve your aerobic endurance, cut your injury risk dramatically, and keep you mentally fresh while everyone else burns out. It sounds like caffeine. No, no, it's not. This is something that might just be the missing piece in your training puzzle.
Marjaana Rakai (01:07)
You
Paul Laursen (01:07)
Yeah.
Paul Warloski (01:12)
We're talking about cross training and no, we're not talking about throwing in a casual bike ride or swim when you feel like it. We're talking about strategic science-based cross training that actually makes you faster, stronger, and more resilient in your sport. From rowing machines to cross country skiing, from swimming pools to elliptical machines, these aren't just recovery tools.
they're performance multipliers that research proves can directly transfer to your cycling, running, or triathlon performance. First of all, thanks to Kimber for suggesting this topic. Once I started digging into the research, a lot of questions popped up. And the first one is not really a question, it's kind of a statement. I'm gonna suggest that strength training shouldn't really be considered cross training. That's my statement, and we're gonna debate it at first.
Since it's a kind of, look at it as an integral part of endurance training. ⁓ It's not sport specific, obviously, but I just think it's so important that it's part of the deal. What do we think? Let's just start off with that discussion.
Marjaana Rakai (02:17)
Yeah, absolutely. Like strength training is not cross training. I agree.
Paul Laursen (02:18)
you
Well, that's a good question. mean, I think it's semantics at the end of the day, for me, it's bread and butter. the science is so clear that you need, ⁓ you know, strength training in your endurance program, but it's, it hasn't always been that way. So for example, I'm writing, I'm contributing to Tim Noakes' Lore of running ⁓ book, right? In the fifth edition. And look, he does not have, he hardly has any strength training mentioned.
And that book was published in 2004, but we're 2025 now, right? So we're 20 years on. And it's just well known now that strength training is part of an effective program. And we know why it works too, right? So you can say you have a certain VO2 level that you can run at, right? Certain amount of oxygen uptake, you just clearly run at that, but then...
the economy, how economical you actually will be is completely influenced by the stretch sorting cycle in the muscle. how it kind of like, know, MJ and I would love to kind of call it pop. Like how's your pop factor today, right? Well, your pop factor will go up if you're doing strength training. ⁓ So that's a big one. And that's why, whether you want to include it ⁓ as cross training or not,
It's kind of semantics. ⁓ Doesn't matter to me, but it needs to be part of your program if you want to optimize.
Paul Warloski (03:44)
I just got off the phone with a, a gentleman who does a lot of brevets, know, those 400 or 600, 800 K rides. know, Paul, you're familiar with this with your ride across America kind of thing, but he was thinking a strength training program was just doing some leg work. it's like, no, you need to stabilize your whole upper body because you're on a bike for, 15, 16 hours straight.
So that needs to be part of what you do just to be able to make sure that you can finish the ride. MJ, you're a big proponent of strength training too. Do you consider that part of cross training? mean, how do you look at it?
Marjaana Rakai (04:23)
No, I think it should be in the weekly program as one of the cornerstones for any endurance athlete, any athlete, but especially as you get older or like you do long distance events. ⁓ Some of the reasons that Prof already mentioned. ⁓
Yeah, it's not cross training to me.
Paul Warloski (04:51)
Yeah, yeah, all right. So the idea of, you know, when does the principle of specificity trump the benefits of cross training and when does it not? You know, so if we're in base versus race phase or the off season, when should that specificity be the determining factor?
Paul Laursen (05:11)
Well, you you need to have some level of specificity, right, in your training. There's no question about it. and I know, you know, ⁓ MJ's doing the, with the Norseman the huge event, right? And she's really got to think about what all the key pinch points are going to be in that race when she's backing the truck back to, reverse engineering her training as she moves towards that.
And there's a lot of elements in that race, right? And she's got to develop the neuromuscular strength to handle those various different elements. And whatever you are targeting, you've got to be kind of the same thing. And so for example, I'll go back to my daughter and she's a swimmer. ⁓ She's ⁓ 15, she does a butterfly and freestyle. And ⁓ amazingly, she's like,
third in the province for all high school kids. And she does two swims a week. And that's unheard of. If you know swimmers, they're notorious for doing these, you know, training 13 times a week, morning, morning afternoon, right? Big K's. And she's done it on two swims, two one hour swims a week. And, ⁓ and, but you see behind me here, if you're on YouTube, you see the gym. So she's in the gym as well. so the specific, ⁓ elements of the gym is she's doing pull-ups. All right. So you think about the fly.
pull up, right? So she's very good at doing various different markers of the pull up. there's, and the other interesting ⁓ element of this too, some of the, she's also looking at the club records on the wall and she's targeting those club records all time. And the person that she is targeting,
is a wound up being a Canadian representative in cross-country skiing. And MJ will tell us that cross-country skiing and the poling is also excellent for the, if she's gonna be fly or freestyle. There's like, just think about all of the neuromuscular contractions and targeting that you're getting in that whole upper body as you're going through the whole poling. I've watched cross-country skiing, it's amazingly.
challenging from that whole perspective. ⁓ So yeah, my two cents long-winded, but.
Marjaana Rakai (07:36)
I mean, the closer you get to your race, the more specific training you want to do. say you have a triathlon in June, you don't want to go on a
let's say ski trip in May, right? ⁓ You want to keep that specific training towards your race goal. But if you think about like athlete development, you want to have that.
broad base as you develop for your daughter, for example, or for my kids. I've wanted to give them ⁓ different experiences from different sports so that they develop this general athletic ability. Now, what happens when they pick their sport or when we get older and just keep doing the same old, same old? I think it's...
wonderful to live somewhere like Wisconsin, where you have actually seasons. or Revelstoke, where you can ski for a months and do these different things. Cause it naturally gives you opportunity to do other things than just swim, bike, run, right? If you're a triathlete or for example, runner as you age and you always keep running and running and running.
It is I, I would almost say that.
most runners would benefit from taking two, three months ⁓ break from running and just do cross training. Not just mentally, but giving those running legs a little bit of a break. And that's what I miss like living in Texas is that I never get to take that long break. But when I was a skier in North Finland, we would run during the summer , bike
⁓ hike and roller ski. And then, you know, I barely ran at all during the winter. So it gave me the, break from pounding of pavement or whatnot.
Paul Laursen (09:54)
Well, I just thought, in the last episode, we introduced the AI coach that we now have as a tool for all of us. I was like, this is challenging question a little bit. So I thought, well, why don't we ask the AI coach to see what it thinks, right? So it says, Kimber, that's an excellent nuanced question. Here's how to navigate specificity versus cross-training throughout the year. During the base and general preparation phase, cross-training is highly valuable.
and allows you to accumulate that aerobic volume, strengthen supporting muscles, reduce monotony, lower injury risk, and continue through mild niggles or continue training through mild niggles after heavy sports specific sessions. Sports like cycling, swimming, cross-country skiing, rowing, strength training, support endurance and general strength and robustness contributing to broad foundational fitness.
without the repetitive load of your primary sport. So I think that's pretty good, good, good info. And then of course, during the, you know, the more the, both the build and the pre-competition, won't go, it's very extensive, right? But it's saying now there's, there's more, you know, here's the phase where specificity trumps the cross trainings, kind of what MJ was saying, or the closer to race day, the more beneficial it becomes to focus, ⁓ you know, limited training time and recovery on your actual, or.
Paul Warloski (10:53)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Laursen (11:16)
it becomes important to focus on the actual sport or the event. So I think that's pretty much kind of common sense. So in summary, early, use more cross training. Late, shift majority ⁓ to sport specific training as the event nears.
Paul Warloski (11:34)
So
the AI coach partially answered my question that I was going to pose was, what is the value of doing, I mean, are we getting value aerobically, anaerobically, muscularly, physiologically, from doing cross training? Is rowing, for instance, going to help me with my cycling?
Paul Laursen (11:57)
Yeah, yeah, I think it says, yeah, well, it says use it. Use cross training judiciously for recovery injury prevention or maintaining condition conditioning if direct training isn't possible. So say, you know, in the context you just said for the rowing for cycling, if you were traveling, Paul, and you went to the your local hotel and there wasn't a bike there, but there was a rowing machine, do a, you know, do a rowing
rowing erg session would be fantastic. And certainly you can always use that for various conditions. So certainly in the rowing context, I've given this story before about Mahe Drysdale, the ⁓ two time Olympic gold medalists, both the London and the Rio games, he trained 50 % on the bike because he could not train on the rowing erg because he had a back.
issue from an accident on water and he won the Olympics using 51 % cycling. So yeah, there's sort of a time and a place and a context where cross training really, and especially cycling in the context of some of these other sports. Neil Vanderpool is another great example, right? We know the Neil Vanderpool story. This is the Olympic world record holder in 5,000 and 10,000 meters.
Paul Warloski (13:16)
I was just going to bring him up, you know.
Paul Laursen (13:23)
⁓ speed skating. And he also, just like Mahe, he used around 50 % of his training ⁓ in cycling. And again, that's anti the sort of specificity, but it's supplementing. And of course it makes sense from a scientific standpoint, because he's trying to add mitochondria to the muscle bed in the quadriceps. ⁓
Whereas with, know, it's, you know, I'm not a speed skater, but I'm a cross country skater. And it gets very difficult to hold. You can imagine it gets very difficult to hold those positions and those high torques, high tensions for the same sort of length of time that you could do the same sort of cycling work, right? Where this guy was notorious for doing eight hour, eight to 10 hour bike rides and then hiit sessions accordingly. So anyways, a lot of nuance there.
Marjaana Rakai (14:19)
⁓
Another nuanced ⁓ answer is the more technical your sport is, like swimming or cross-country skiing, the more you want to keep that specific training around at some level, at least throughout the year, right? Because you don't want that technique, like swimming is so much about the feel in the water.
and skiing as well, especially if you haven't learned it as a kid. ⁓ It's so technical that you don't want to lose that. So you want to kind of like keep it going year round or you face that you need to spend a lot of time getting that technique back.
Paul Laursen (15:01)
Yeah.
So true, so true. I learned so much from my daughter just talking to her about her performances and whatnot and just her own intelligence and insight as it kind of comes through and she really helps to educate me but she says that just how much she gets out of sculling and technical work and that you know it's really like she knows that the the feel she develops in the water and the the high level of sculling
Marjaana Rakai (15:23)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Laursen (15:33)
and technique work that they do is just so instrumental to her being able to grab water and pull it through, right, and get that purchase ultimately on the water. So again, yeah, great point, MJ.
Paul Warloski (15:43)
you with that.
Paul Laursen (15:44)
Well, for
me, for ⁓ my cycling, I get almost this recruitment factor out of it. So if I add some decent level of squats ⁓ into my strength training routine, I almost feel this transfer when I'm doing the HIIT sessions that you run on Velocity MJ, where you're doing 30, 30s or whatever. I feel like I can just grind that a little bit extra. And I've got a little bit more reserve, I sort of feel as well.
Marjaana Rakai (16:03)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Laursen (16:11)
So I sort of feel that transfer. I don't know, but that's what I feel.
Marjaana Rakai (16:15)
Yeah, for sure.
Paul Warloski (16:18)
So I've got a, you know, to Marjaana's point, you know, I've got an athlete, Craig, who, um, is on Athletica as well. And he's training for an ultra in New Zealand in February. And the program has him doing a lot of volume, you know, running, but he's 60 years old and, that's adding up. we've been shifting some of those sessions to either runs or to their walks or bike rides.
just to build the extra volume and make sure that he gets some of that adaptation, but without all the training stress. Do you think that there's a minimum effective dose of specificity that somebody has to hang on to? ⁓
keep their skills, to keep their adaptations going.
Paul Laursen (17:13)
Yeah, definitely. There's some level, but where that is, we, yeah, I just, hard to know. It's so interesting. having this talk with Tim Noakes actually, cause we're trying to, he's wondering the question, like how, you if you want to do a sub three hour marathon, what is the minimal, you know, amount of K's that you need a week, right? And he was thinking, he was thinking it was up in around 120. And then I showed him the HIIT science chapter.
Paul Warloski (17:17)
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (17:41)
for running that was written by Jamie Stanley. Jamie Stanley talks about his ⁓ own personal case study where he did a 232 marathon on 80 kilometers a week. Of course, it was very specific, right? When he did those 80 kilometers, a lot of it was very targeted strength training work, cross training with cycling.
And then also HIIT training, of course, that was very targeted and specific. So I think whatever your context and what you're targeting, and again, I could not, I was just blown away with the speed of my daughter in the, sorry to keep going back to that, but just like with her fly, two swims a week and she's going, she went 31.1 for a 50 fly, right? At 15 years of age.
Paul Warloski (18:27)
Mm.
Paul Laursen (18:39)
And so she's moving real quick off two a week, off two sessions a week. That's just really weird, right?
Paul Warloski (18:42)
Yeah.
Marjaana Rakai (18:49)
minimum
effective dose.
Paul Laursen (18:51)
Yeah, minimum dose, yeah.
Paul Warloski (18:52)
Yeah.
Marjaana Rakai (18:54)
Like why grind out those 13 times in the pool when you're 15 if you can do it with less? I mean...
Paul Laursen (19:02)
Yeah, think of the freshness and the health
that you get back as an individual when you're when you're doing that, right? So it's different mindset.
Marjaana Rakai (19:06)
Enjoy.
Paul Warloski (19:09)
Do you think that she, your daughter, just to continue on with her, had to learn a certain amount of skill? Because, you know, butterfly is such a high skill movement ⁓ that she had to learn the skills in order to be able to train as little as she does.
Paul Laursen (19:31)
absolutely. And it's kind of the sculling, right? But she's a sharp cookie, so she's learning fast. And let's be honest, she's also very gifted too, right? You look at her and she has the swimmer body. She's just got these long limbs and like a summer Macintosh that's a famous Canadian swimmer, those who don't know. She kind of shaped like her, so she's long and she's getting good... ⁓
Paul Warloski (19:32)
Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Laursen (19:58)
You know, ⁓ she's like, she goes through the water like a pencil. So her hydrodynamics are really, you know, good relative to who she is. But then of course she puts all of the, all the other sort of stuff in place. So she's yeah, like the technique, like you said, and then, but then she's also in the gym too. So she's got strength and then she grabs that purchase with that. So yeah, it all makes sense.
Paul Warloski (20:18)
Yeah. Yeah. So what markers show that cross training is adding fitness rather than just swapping fatigue, know, like HRV or RPE or max power pace, you know, what can we look at?
Paul Laursen (20:35)
Performance and feel, I would think. I think if it's working, you will know intuitively that it feels better. And all these kind of, it's kind of wishy-washy, know, but it's like, and look in your sessions, look in ⁓ your key sessions, have a look at those, and you should see some level of transfer, and it might not happen overnight.
Paul Warloski (20:36)
Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Laursen (21:03)
but look over consecutive weeks and you should start to see a little bit of a nudge in your numbers. And this is kind of what I was going where I'm seeing the squats transfer a little bit to my HIIT sessions on the bike.
Marjaana Rakai (21:18)
Yeah, for sure. I keep thinking like ⁓ cross training and injury prevention. ⁓ We know strength training, obviously, we're not talking about strength training as cross training, as we started with the podcast, but doing other things and the minimum dose, it's really hard to say because it depends on the person, right? But I'm just thinking, you know,
If you can keep yourself injury free, like that's the most important thing as an athlete, stay injury free, stay healthy. ⁓ If you enjoy doing cross training, say for example, you enjoy playing a basketball with your kids or whatever, ⁓ you enjoy going for a swim as a cyclist.
Paul Warloski (21:52)
Mm-hmm.
Marjaana Rakai (22:15)
or you really enjoy cross-country skiing during the winter and you live somewhere, if you're lucky enough, you live somewhere where there's cross-country skiing. I don't think you should think too much about how many times you do the alternative training. Go and do it because time flies by, life is short. If you enjoy doing another sport, go do it and don't like...
Paul Warloski (22:42)
Mm-hmm.
Marjaana Rakai (22:45)
you know, worry too much about how much you're doing it, because it's always so good for you, regardless. And if that helps you to stay injury free, enjoy the sport, and, and you know, like, not take it too seriously. That's just positive, right? Just go do it.
Paul Laursen (23:08)
Those are wise words MJ. Where'd you get that from?
Paul Warloski (23:08)
That's
Paul Laursen (23:10)
That was awesome.
Paul Warloski (23:10)
so, so well said. mean, think that's kind of the point right there is, you know, cross training is valuable, but it's also something if you like to do it, it's beneficial. It's going to help you. And, and, and if it especially helps clear your mind. ⁓ do you think that there can be technique carryovers, you know, between the different
Marjaana Rakai (23:22)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Paul Warloski (23:32)
death disciplines. instance, one of my athletes is training for the Berkey, the cross country ski race. His time on roller skis is limited and on skis because we haven't had snow yet. ⁓ But I'm having him run, do side lunges and curtsy lunges and bounding plyometrics. Do think that that kind of thing helps?
Marjaana Rakai (23:51)
Fantastic. Yeah, totally. Think about the profile on Berkey. The hills are not super long, but it just keeps going. 50k, it's just really the last, what is it? 10k, it's flat. But you have to get to that last 10k. Anything that helps your athlete to
Paul Warloski (23:53)
Yeah.
They're relentless.
Marjaana Rakai (24:21)
lift their body up those hills repeatedly. I would say like, you know, strength training. ⁓ Is he doing classic or skate? Yeah, so exactly. those side to side hops and lunges and all that is super good. And then add some 30 30s.
Paul Warloski (24:32)
game.
Yeah, we do that. Yeah. Yeah. Just to keep his heart and, and hopefully, you know, he'll get out on the roller skis too, but you know, and then his weekends are cycling. um, what do you think would be some good kind of go-to pairings for cross training for, you know, rowing for cycling or skiing for runners? mean, what, what do you think would be good?
for different disciplines, like for triathlon, know, for swimming. Let's try that. What would be good for that? You're going to say skiing for everything, aren't you?
Marjaana Rakai (25:15)
Skiing. Cross-country skiing. Yeah. I mean,
cross-country skiing is like the best thing for anything.
Paul Warloski (25:23)
It is.
Paul Laursen (25:26)
Yeah, totally. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. And again, only because ⁓ we know the local cross-country skiers hold the records for swimming here in Revelstoke. They're on the board and it's a perfect transfer. I've seen it here.
Marjaana Rakai (25:44)
Well, yeah, guess because
you're using your entire body, right? Like you get all that physiological benefits of using your whole body. So when you go to any other sport after that, it's a walk in the park.
Paul Laursen (25:48)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, for
sure.
Marjaana Rakai (26:02)
I would say if your cross training has the element of risk and injury, then you might want to keep it limited. I mean, like you don't want to get injured cross training, especially if you're close to your race.
Paul Warloski (26:19)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. I feel like we have kind of touched the surface of cross-training in this episode in terms of we've identified that it's, there's a value in it. We've identified what the value is. We've identified that if you enjoy another sport or another activity to do it because it's, it's good for us. is there a point at which we're doing too much cross-training?
and not enough of our sport. And again, how do we know? Or does that still come back to that minimal effective dose?
Paul Laursen (27:05)
I think it does. Yeah. We probably don't know how low you can go yet. So it's, uh, you know, it's, it's up to the individual to, and it's, it's, it is going to be likely very individual too. Right. So, yeah. Um, you know, that being said, there was a recent, you know, there's actually today, there was a new paper that came out, uh, by Øyvind Sandbakk and the Norwegian group. And it was talking about the performance factors that went.
Paul Warloski (27:06)
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (27:33)
into I think it was at least 50 gold medalists ⁓ in the Norwegian ski organization and it was really this ⁓ over time from junior to senior, there's ⁓ continual progression of sport specific training in terms of the volume and the duration. So we cannot, we can't argue that at the highest level that ⁓ cross country skiing volume
will increase year after year in these Olympians. They're handling more and more, but it's not an overnight thing. You don't go out and start skiing the largest amount on day one when you're 15 year old. That's not wise and you're gonna fall by the wayside, but you add on intelligently year after year to that.
So yeah, I think it's up to every individual. So there's certain specific sports where maybe the rule doesn't apply, but then we've talked about the swimming example, where traditionally we think that we have to swim 30, 40K in a week, which just incredible amounts, but that's not necessarily the case. this is...
This was the story that's really emerging. So the guy's name is Kyle Chalmers, and he's an Aussie, and he's a multi-gold medalist. And he's being trained by Jamie Stanley, who's the same HIIT science author I was saying in the marathon and also the cycling chapter. And ⁓ Jamie is just going the completely opposite approach.
And Kyle is saying publicly just how he can't believe how different he's training. He's training kind of more like a cross training and like a triathlete and ⁓ loving his training again. was almost retired, but then he met Jamie and it reversed his, he found his love again for the sport. And now he's hitting personal bests over all of his Olympic golds that he was hitting before. So it can rejuvenate.
Paul Warloski (29:25)
Hmm.
Paul Laursen (29:44)
an athlete. ⁓ yeah, think we don't know necessarily just how good it can be.
Paul Warloski (29:52)
So how do we want to end this episode? So Marjaana has talked about the value of doing something that you love.
Paul, you just talked about the value of bringing back some joy with the cross training. What else can we add to this?
Paul Laursen (30:11)
Yeah, well, think, I mean, that is, that general theme that, ⁓ both MJ and I express around that joy is, and that is, it's, it's almost kind of coming, coming back to balance is that the cross training is, is the, opener to achieving your balance in life. Whereas traditionally all of us, ⁓ type a individuals, we are, we're going in one direction. We're doing one sport.
We're all notoriously and it's like the, top ones do the most and they do. That's how I started, right? I was, I was going to win Ironman and I was going to do it by training the hardest and I was going to train the longest. And of course it didn't work right. And it doesn't work for anyone. So you got to train smarter and then cross-training is kind of part of that overall intelligence that you're adding to your program. And, and it kind of comes back to it's a whole lot more enjoyable.
when you do have this. So think that's the, to me that's the general gist.
Paul Warloski (31:14)
I think that's what we can hang our hats on is that we don't lose anything. We still gain fitness. We still maintain fitness and we have a lot of fun doing things, especially like, like I'm, I can't wait for the snow to start coming so we can go ski. ⁓ but there are other ways of.
doing cross training besides cross country skiing. There's a lot of things you can do in the gym, in the pool, out on the trail running in the fall. It's a beautiful time of year to try something different.
Paul Laursen (31:50)
Yeah. Can I add one more thing, Paul? It's just like, and this is just coming to me as we're talking and it comes back to the joy, but we've talked before about heart rate variability and lots of different episodes. And we've talked about how you only adapt when your HIV is balanced or increasing in general, right? And ⁓ Alan Cousins has a great tweet where he talks about that. it's, so it's again, it just that it brings that balance and it probably brings your autonomic balance.
Paul Warloski (31:52)
Please do.
Mm-hmm.
Paul Laursen (32:17)
So it enables you to, ⁓ when you're training, you're actually going to adapt to that training. it's a joy, joy is something we should all be seeking. We should only be training as part of, something that is going to give us, bring us joy, bring us energy in our lives and we'll adapt accordingly if we have that. So yeah, just, just thinking on the fly. I've really enjoyed this episode. ⁓ Yeah, really cool.
Paul Warloski (32:44)
Yeah. Well, thank you for listening today to the Athletes Compass podcast. Take a moment now, subscribe, share, and let's keep navigating this endurance adventure together. Improve your endurance training with the science-based training platform, Athletica, and join the conversation at the Athletica Forum. For Marjaana Rakai and Dr. Paul Laursen I'm Paul Warlowski, and this has been the Athletes Compass podcast. Thank you so much for listening