Last week, I wrote about how training needs to be specific to your goal, how your body adapts to the exact demands you place on it, and why chasing everything at once is one of the most reliable ways to move forward very slowly. (Check that out here if you missed it.)
And while that’s true, I am still someone who simultaneously wants to get stronger and grow muscle while also getting faster and improving my aerobic fitness.
The answer to today's question is a little more nuanced than just yes or no.
Before I get into this one, I’m handing over to Matt, co-writer and Head of Coaching at OneCoach. Because this piece is built around one of his clients, and the approach Matt took when that client came to him with a goal that, on paper, looked completely unrealistic.
“I have a client who wants to take on a challenge where he will complete a powerlifting competition on the same day as running a marathon. And he doesn’t just want to do them, he wants to do them well. A big goal! While one focus is the fastest way to achieve a goal, sometimes in life we do want to do more, so the programming becomes complex - but there is a way to do it.”
Which, if you’ve read last week’s piece, you’ll know sounds like everything we said not to do. Two goals, two completely opposing stimuli, maximum interference.
And yet. There’s a way to make it work. It just looks very different from what most people imagine when they say they want to “do it all.”
The Good News: You Can Progress in Multiple Goals, But…
You can make progress in more than one direction at the same time, and a lot of people do. But how much progress, and how fast, depends almost entirely on where you are in your training and how realistic you’re willing to be about expectations.
If you’re earlier in your training journey, the body responds pretty broadly to new stimuli. You can get stronger, build muscle and improve your cardiovascular fitness all at once, simply because everything is a new challenge and the body adapts to most of it. This is sometimes called “newbie gains,” and it’s a genuinely exciting phase to be in (even if nobody tells you it’s happening at the time).
The further along you get, the more specific the adaptations need to be, the signals need to be clearer, and the interference between competing stimuli becomes more real and more significant.
The key is what you’re expecting from it. If you’re training for two things at once, progress in each direction will be slower than if you’d focused on one.
That’s not a problem; it’s just the trade-off, and as long as you go into it knowing that, you can still move forward on both. The mistake is expecting the same results you’d get from complete focus, and then feeling like something has gone wrong when you don’t get them.
When Focus Matters Most
If you have a specific goal that needs a significant jump, this is where narrowing in really pays off.
Adding meaningful muscle mass, hitting a new strength benchmark, training for a marathon, or making a real shift in body composition all require a clear signal over a sustained period. The more you dilute that signal by adding competing demands, the slower the adaptation comes.
There’s also something else to consider: when you commit properly to a specific goal, other things will temporarily step back, and that’s supposed to happen. If you’re in a heavy strength phase, your cardio fitness might take a small dip. If you’re in a hypertrophy phase, you might not look as lean for a while. And that's okay! It’s the trade-off for making real progress in the thing that matters most to you right now.
And it’s not always adaptations that are competing. Sometimes we have to compromise in other areas of life. If you want to run a marathon, you’ve got to get those long runs in, which can be very difficult to do if you are also prioritising working 12 hours a day.
Choosing a focus doesn’t mean dropping everything else. It means advancing one thing while keeping a base of the others ticking over. You keep moving. You keep doing some cardio. You just stop trying to peak everything at the same time.
And if you Really Want to do it all
Back to Matt’s client.
The solution isn’t to train for both the lifting competition and the marathon at the exact same time. Instead, the approach is to use phases wisely, giving each goal a proper window of focus while the other one goes into maintenance, alternating the stimulus rather than stacking it.
“Phase One: Movement Quality. We started by refining the movement patterns my client will be using during the competition to minimise any interference from injury as well as maximise skill and efficiency. That means that his body can handle the volume and intensity that will be required to hit the end goal.
Phase Two: Load Tolerance. Here, I looked across the goal training period at what his body needs to be able to respond positively to the training. That meant gradually increasing the volume and intensity across the movement patterns we worked through in the first phase. I paid attention to where I can get the most bang for my buck. Can I increase three major lifts (squat, deadlift and chest press) and improve the body's resilience for running with smart exercise choices? Where can I find and maximise overlap?
Phase Three: Peak Strength. This is where overlap ends, and we need to get more specific with our focus. The goal for phase three is building strength, aiming to take his strength above his target total on competition day. We then chose a distance for the run that still tests him but is manageable. Running is not our focus.
Phase Four: Peak Running. In the last phase, I’ll be trying to maintain as much of the strength built in phase three as possible, while peaking the running and hitting the distance needed for the marathon. I hope that if we do that well, the dip we see in his maximal strength will be an amount that still leaves him in a great place for the competition, because we overachieved during the strength phase, allowing for a drop off while running became a focus”
This is an extreme example, and perhaps the goal isn’t one that most of us will ever strive for. But it paints the picture well: chasing multiple goals is possible, but it requires thought and planning.
So, Can you Chase Multiple Goals at Once?
You can. But with caveats.
The more competing stimuli, the slower the progress is in each. As you can see, it is possible to get pretty strong and pretty fit at the same time. But Matt’s client will neither be as fit nor as strong as he could be if he worked on each goal separately.
Let’s say his client also wanted to be lean and fast; now we have four competing stimuli. And not only is that going to slow progress down, but at some point, something is going to tip/crash/burn. Now throw a load of real life in the mix too; you’re in a calorie deficit, trying to neurologically adapt to being strong and explosive, dedicating a huge chunk of time to running, working 40 hours a week, all while raising a kid, something in the system is going to give.
Best case scenario, progress is slow.
Worst case scenario, everything implodes.
Plenty of people chase multiple goals and get somewhere with all of them. But the ones who do it well aren’t doing it by accident. They have a plan that’s clear about the priority at each stage, and they’ve made peace with the trade-offs before they start.
The difference between spinning your wheels and actually moving forward isn’t always about doing more. Sometimes it’s just about being clearer on what you’re doing, why, and when.
And if that's the bit that feels hard to figure out on your own, that's exactly what a coach is there for. It's difficult to hold the bigger picture when you're in the middle of living it. A coach can see what you can't, and help you draw the line before you hit it. Enquire here.
Three Questions to Ask Yourself
We’ll leave you with three questions to ask yourself, rather than just “can I do everything?”. These are worth taking a moment with before you decide.
- Is it worth chasing multiple goals right now, or would you get further by going one at a time?
- Do you have a priority focus right now? The marathons, the HYROXs, the lifting competitions - will you be more satisfied with your result if you made it your main priority and let other things take a step back?
- Have you weighed your goals up against areas you won’t gain in? What are you also saying no to? The clearer you can get on that trade-off before you start, the more confident you’ll feel in the direction you’ve chosen.
TL;DR
(Too long, didn’t read)
- If you want to make progress in more than one area at the same time, you can, especially earlier in your training. Just expect slower progress in each direction, and go in knowing that’s the trade-off rather than a sign something’s wrong.
- If you have a specific goal that needs a significant jump, narrowing your focus will get you there faster. Other things can be maintained, not actively progressed, while you do.
- If you want to genuinely compete at two things, use phases. Give each goal a proper window of focus and let the other go into maintenance. You’ll arrive at both in better shape than if you’d tried to build both simultaneously.
- Choosing a focus doesn’t mean abandoning everything else. It means advancing one thing while keeping a base of others ticking over.
- The most useful questions aren’t “can I do both?” They’re: is it worth it right now, what’s my actual priority, and what am I willing to let move a bit more slowly for a while?
- A plan that’s clear on the trade-offs will always beat one that tries to avoid making them.
Now, it’s your turn.
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