Weekly Blog 18: How to Train for Strength While Preparing for a Fitness Test

If you're in the military, law enforcement, firefighting, or any other physically demanding profession, there's a good chance you have two goals that don't always seem to play nicely together:

You want to be strong, and you want to be fit.

You want to put more weight on the bar, build muscle, and become harder to break.

But you also need to run, perform calisthenics, carry equipment, move quickly, and pass whatever fitness test your job throws at you. The good news? You don't have to choose.

You just have to stop treating strength training and conditioning like they're competing goals.

The key is learning how to organize your training so that each quality supports the other instead of constantly beating you into the ground.

The Problem With Training for Everything at Once

One of the biggest mistakes I see is trying to make every training session accomplish everything. This is often referred to as combination training; it can work for a little while for novice athletes. Don't expect long-term success with this, though.

For example, A lifter will do a heavy squat workout, followed by a brutal conditioning circuit, then decide they need to add some extra running because their fitness test is coming up.

Three days later, their legs are still smoked. Then their deadlift sucks. Then they feel like they're getting weaker. So, they add even more work because they assume they aren't training hard enough. Sound familiar?

And now we're officially in the cycle of doing more while getting less. The problem isn't effort. The problem is organization. Strength, aerobic capacity, anaerobic conditioning, muscular endurance, speed, and sport-specific skills all require training. But that doesn't mean you need to hammer every quality every day. You need to determine what matters most in that particular "season," then build the rest of your training around it.

Strength Should Still Be the Foundation

If you're preparing for a fitness test, don't abandon strength training. Strength gives you a bigger gas tank. If you become stronger, movements that once required a significant percentage of your maximal strength become easier.

Think about push-ups. If you can increase your bench press, you will likely get better at push-ups. This one won't be a direct correlation, obviously; there is more that goes into it than maximal strength output. But strength is a great base; no one I know of has gotten benched for being too strong. Can you imagine? "No! Don't put him on the offensive line! He is too strong!" Said no one ever.

But being stronger can give you a bigger foundation to build your fitness on. That's why I don't recommend turning your strength program into an endless circuit of light weights and high repetitions just because you have a test coming up. Keep lifting. Just learn how to manage the total workload.

You Don't Need to Max Out Every Quality

This is where concurrent training gets interesting. You can improve multiple physical qualities at the same time, but your ability to recover isn't unlimited, unfortunately.

If you're trying to set a squat PR, run five days a week, perform high-volume calisthenics, add multiple HIIT sessions, and maintain a massive lifting volume, eventually something is going to give. Usually, it's recovery. So, instead of asking: “How much training can I possibly tolerate?”

Ask: “What is the minimum effective amount of training I need to keep improving each quality?”

That's a much better question. Maybe you only need two quality runs per week. Maybe you need one interval session and one longer aerobic session. Maybe your lifting program only needs three or four primary sessions. Maybe your test-specific work can be incorporated into your conditioning instead of becoming another entire workout.

More isn't automatically better. "It is vain to do with more what can be done with less." -William of Occam.

Separate the Training Sessions

One of the easiest ways to improve your programming is to stop stacking your hardest lower-body sessions on top of each other. Heavy squats followed by hard intervals followed by heavy deadlifts followed by another hard run is a great way to make your legs feel like garbage. Whenever your schedule allows, give your hardest lower-body stressors some room to breathe.

For example:

Monday: Lower-body strength

Tuesday: Upper-body strength and easy conditioning

Wednesday: Running intervals

Thursday: Lower-body strength

Friday: Upper-body strength and test-specific conditioning

Saturday: Easy aerobic work or recovery

Sunday: Rest

That's only one example. Your schedule, training age, test requirements, and recovery capacity should determine the exact setup.

The point is that you don't need to randomly throw everything into every day.

What If You Only Have Three Days to Train?

You can still make progress.

You might use:

Day 1: Full-body strength and short conditioning

Day 2: Running and test-specific work

Day 3: Full-body strength and conditioning

Then use walking, easy aerobic work, or short bouts of calisthenics throughout the week as your schedule allows. You don't need a six-day training split to become stronger and fitter. You need consistency, intelligent programming, and enough recovery to actually adapt to the work you're doing.

Train Like an Athlete, Not a Collection of Separate Goals

If you're preparing for a fitness test while also trying to build strength, don't think of yourself as a lifter who occasionally runs. And don't think of yourself as a runner who occasionally lifts.

Train like an athlete who needs both. Break your training up into different phases. Push one aspect of your performance while everything else is on that minimum effective dose. Then, when it is time, you swap your training around to push a different aspect of performance.

Train for the demands. Build the capacity. And make your training work for the life you're actually living.

Ready to Build a Training Plan That Does Both?

If you're active duty, a veteran, or simply someone with a demanding schedule who wants to get stronger and fitter without living in the gym, that's exactly what Gladiator Strength is built around. You don't need another random workout program.

You need a system that fits your schedule, your goals, your fitness requirements, and your life.

Join our team.