Running News Daily

Running Legend Ryan Hall Shared a Look at His 'Hybrid Athlete' Training Plan

The former Olympian's workout combines resistance training and cardio.

Ryan Hall might be best known as the Olympic long distance runner who broke records for his time in the marathon and half marathon (and holds onto that half marathon record to this day), but he has undergone a dramatic body transformation since retiring as a pro athlete. He has packed on an impressive amount of muscle—and strength—without compromising on his famous speed, and now undertakes physical challenges which require both strength and stamina.

This is reflected in the way he now approaches training. In a recent video on his Instagram, Hall shared what an average day looks like for him, and described his self-designed program as a "hybrid athlete" workout.

"First an hour run with @sarahall3 in beautiful Crested Butte," he wrote in the caption. "Straight into chest day. Finally starting to get some strength back post-op. First time doing 3 sets of 1 at 3 hundee plus seven more sets of heavy negatives at 315 followed by reps at 225."

Striking that balance between strength training and cardio has been a learning experience for Hall. "It's kind of hard, honestly, cause I like going out for little 30 minute easy runs. But even with that three times a week, for me, my body just will get rid of muscle," he told Men's Health.

"Or it'll be really hard to add muscle even if I'm eating a ton of calories. So I definitely have the marathon runner genetics, the hard gainer genetics, and I have to kind of fight through that with some kind of intuitive, outside of the box training that I found has worked for me."