Reminder; Intelligent, Balanced Training Is the Only Way to Stay Active for Decades — Not Just a Season
If you’ve spent any time in the fitness world, you’ve probably noticed a pattern. Many gyms or influencers will hyperfocus on one very specific training modality and blast you with it using language that suggests it’s the magic pill.
Every few years, a single quality of fitness gets elevated as the solution:
Max strength
High-intensity conditioning
Endurance-only training
Mobility-only training
“Functional” training (whatever that means this year)
Each of these has value. None of them are sufficient on their own.
For active adults — especially those balancing demanding careers, family life, and a deep love for outdoor sports — chasing a single answer usually leads to frustration, plateaus, or injury. Getting too specific on things done in the gym can often only make you better at the gym. It’s not because they aren’t working hard enough. It’s because true fitness is about systems working together, not just about training one or the other.
At Revo Training Center, RevoFit exists to solve that problem.
Not with shortcuts. Not with novelty. But with well-rounded, science-influenced training that’s been tested on hundreds of real people in our Missoula community — skiers, runners, bikers, hikers, parents, professionals — who want to stay capable year after year.
This is what that actually looks like.
The RevoFit Philosophy: Train the Whole System
RevoFit is built around a simple but often ignored truth:
Strength, conditioning, and endurance don’t compete — they complement each other when trained correctly.
Your body is not just muscles. It’s not just a heart and lungs. It’s not just “engine” or “chassis.”
It’s a coordinated system of:
Musculoskeletal strength and tissue capacity & resilience
Nervous system output and control
Energy systems that must work together, not in isolation (Think bodybuilders vs. field athletes)
Movement skill under fatigue
The ability to recover, adapt, and repeat effort – Work capacity.
Most programs fail not because they lack effort — but because they lack balance, sequencing, and intent.
RevoFit uses a three-day structure to address that system intelligently while allowing you to enjoy your favorite activities outside the gym concurrently.
Day 1: Strength — Eccentrics, Progressive Overload, & Contrast Training
Strength training is foundational. But strength done poorly — or chased for its own sake — is where many active adults get into trouble.
On Day 1, we focus on building usable strength, not just lifting heavier weights at the cost of movement quality outside of the gym or in your everyday life..
Why slow eccentrics and controlled strength matter
You’ll notice an emphasis on:
Slow, yielding eccentrics
Postural integrity under load
Single-leg and unilateral work
Anti-rotation and controlled rotation
This isn’t about making exercises “harder for the sake of hard.” It’s about building tissue resilience, improving force absorption, and increasing your ability to control your center of mass through space — something gravity will demand whether you’re skiing, running, hiking, or simply aging well.
Strength training is primarily anaerobic and neurologically demanding. It stresses:
The central nervous system
Muscles and connective tissue
Coordination and motor control
That’s exactly why we don’t pile conditioning stress on top of it the same day. For many people, you will get better results and feel better day to day if we split up these different demands and stimuli. There is context for that style of training, but it’s more advanced and extremely specific.
Why We Pair Strength with Explosive Work – Contrast Training
You’ll also see strength paired with jumps, bounds, and lateral movements.
This contrast:
Improves power output
Reinforces athletic movement patterns – Your body and brain immediately start implementing better movement patterns when paired with the chosen exercises such as squats
Teaches your body to express strength dynamically, not just statically
For most of our members and any kind of outdoor athlete, athletic demands aren’t akin to the ability to produce force once like powerlifting or olympic lifting. It’s the ability to produce, absorb, and redirect force repeatedly, in multiple directions, with coordination and rhythm.
That matters far more for real life and mountain sports than a single max lift ever will. At best, max lifts are tests that we can work around or discern in other ways without the risk.
Simplified takeaway: Day 1 builds the strength and tissue capacity that protects your joints, improves posture, and gives you the raw material for performance — without unnecessarily draining your energy for the rest of the week.
Day 2: Metabolic Training — Power Endurance
Metabolic training gets misunderstood more than almost anything else in fitness.
Done poorly, it becomes:
Random fatigue
Sloppy movement
Ego-driven pacing
“Crushed for the sake of being crushed”
That’s not what we’re after.
What HICT-Style Training Actually Does
High-Intensity Continuous Training (HICT), when programmed correctly, develops power endurance — the ability to repeat strong, explosive movements under controlled fatigue.
This is critical for:
Long ski days
Sustained climbs
Technical descents
Any sport where you don’t get perfect rest between efforts
Physiologically, this style of training:
Improves mitochondrial density
Enhances hormonal stress regulation
Trains your body to manage fatigue more efficiently rather than panic under it
That last point matters more than most people realize — especially after 35.
One of the earliest fitness qualities we lose as we age is the ability to stay powerful when tired. Or just stay explosive in general. HICT addresses that directly, without wrecking recovery.
You’ll notice we cue:
Powerful reps, not rushed reps
Heart rate management
Staying aerobic while doing meaningful work
It’s important to emphasize that this isn’t suffering for the sake of it. It’s intentional work under the keen eye of trained coaches to ensure you get the adaptations you want. This training leads to huge benefits in everyday life.
Simplified takeaway: Day 2 trains your ability to work hard and stay efficient all the way down to a cellular level — improving performance, resilience, and recovery rather than just leaving you sore and depleted.
Day 3: Conditioning — Lactic Power, Efficiency, and Mental Skills
Conditioning day is often where programs go off the rails.
More isn’t necessarily better. Harder often isn’t smarter. And fatigue alone doesn’t guarantee adaptation. In fact, it could be inhibiting it.
What Lactic Intervals Actually Train
Lactic power intervals — popularized and refined in endurance and performance coaching circles — target the glycolytic energy system.
These intervals:
Improve your ability to tolerate and clear metabolic byproducts
Increase enzymes involved in anaerobic glycolysis – helping you stay explosive for longer
Raise your ceiling for high-output efforts – They give you a better top-end
But here’s the key: the rest is necessary.
You cannot rush these adaptations. If rest periods are cut short, your ability to perform at the necessary effort drops, and the stimulus changes.
That’s why we insist on:
Maximal effort during work intervals
Full recovery between reps
Heart rate returning to baseline before repeating
This approach builds top-end performance without frying your nervous system or ruining your movement quality. Or your weekend.
Conditioning Is Also Mental Training
These sessions aren’t just physical.
They train:
Focus under discomfort
Breathing mechanics & posture
Pacing awareness
Task orientation instead of emotional spiraling
You’re not learning how to “suffer.” That’s just exposure: A core value of ours. You’re learning how to stay organized when things get hard — a skill that transfers directly to sport and life.
We finish with deliberate cooldowns to:
Downregulate stress and improve hormonal response
Restore breathing mechanics
Reinforce posture and recovery before you walk out the door.
Simplified takeaway: Day 3 improves cardiovascular capacity, efficiency under fatigue, and mental composure — without unnecessary wear and tear.
The Weekend Question: “Will I Still Have Energy to Ski?”
Yes. By design. So you have no excuse to skip conditioning day =)
One of the most overlooked failures of generic training programs is that they compete with your life instead of supporting it. Many gyms want the gym to be your sport to keep you coming in like crossfit or Hyrox.
RevoFit is intentionally structured so that:
Strength stress is separated from metabolic stress
Conditioning is challenging but recoverable
You’re not chronically sore or neurologically fried
Our programming is meticulously designed over the course of the week and built so you can:
Bounce back quickly depending on your goals
Feel athletic on the weekends
Ski hard, ride hard, or run long for your adventures
We want your training to enhance your outdoor life, not replace it.
Why This Works for Missoula Athletes
Missoula isn’t a one-season town.
People here:
Ski in the winter
Run and bike in the summer
Hike, hunt, climb, paddle, and play year-round
RevoFit isn’t built around trends. It’s built around durability, repeatability, and long-term capability by coaches who are doing the same things, and have coached hundreds of others to do the same.
The Bottom Line: Intelligent Hard Work
This program isn’t easy. But it is intentional.
You’ll work hard — with a coach by your side every step of the way. You’ll be challenged — without being broken. Become antifragile. You’ll build fitness that lasts longer than a phase, a season, or a headline.
That’s what intelligent training looks like. And that’s what RevoFit is built to deliver.
As we wrap up 2025, I’m reflecting not only on the growth we’ve experienced this year as a team, but how far our Revo community has come in the last 8 years.
Wow.
We are so grateful for all of you for the hard work you put in every day. Missoulians are a hardy bunch — rain, snow, or sunshine — we like to work hard and play hard. We couldn’t be more proud to work with each of you.
Thank you for trusting us with your training. Thank you for showing up, even when you don’t want to. And thank you for inspiring us to be the best we possibly can be.
That is our mission as we roll into 2026: To be the best coaching center in Montana. Along with a theme of agency — but more on that in a bit.
Reflecting on Our Year
First, a bit of reflection about our year — as we grow, I find my attention (along with Callie’s) being pulled more and more to the business side. But our main purpose is and always has been to provide the best coaching in Missoula.
This year, Coaches Bobby and Mariah stepped into leadership roles, and I couldn’t be more proud of their growth.
Bobby is now aiding Callie with our Member’s experience, a role in which he is obviously excelling. On top of being a truly elite coach, his communication skills, happy vibes, and steady presence have been a wonder for our whole team.
Mariah is helping me (Mike) with our growth as a sales lead and communication center for all new members. She works as hard as anyone I know — juggling copious hours of coaching, extensive learning about our complex concepts, and now crushing it in her new role.
Both Bobby and Mariah balance these new roles on top of coaching in the trenches a great deal, and they deserve all the credit in the world.
Welcoming New Pros
This year we also added a new, very welcome addition to our team: Coach Nate.
Nate fits our culture perfectly — he has an insatiable work ethic, a deep knowledge base, a keen coaching eye, and is eager to keep learning. He’s already crushing it with our adults and is only just getting started coaching the youth athletes in our community.
Keep your eyes on Nate — he’s going to have a huge 2026.
A Thank You to Our Engine
I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout out and thank our rock, Callie.
She continues to set the standard as the best trainer in Missoula, all while handling the duties of an extremely busy General Manager. We all lean on her immensely.
I was thrilled this year when she was able to join me in shadowing a mentor’s gym in Seattle. It’s important to both of us to keep learning from the best so we can bring it back here. We have lots to bring into the fold this year, and I couldn’t ask for a better partner in crime.
I’m very proud of our team, their hard work, and their continued development. I know we will continue to hone our practice and mission to provide the best coaching experience in Missoula — not just because of continued education or courses we’re taking — but because of the grit and diligence each of our team members demonstrate every day.
So Long 2025, Welcome 2026
Before we tie a bow on 2025 and our 8th (!) year in business, I figured I’d contribute to the end-of-year blurbs that are filling your emails and social media these days.
I have written out 8 Fitness Industry Observations after 8 years of gym ownership and almost 15 years of coaching.
This list isn’t designed to be hot takes or drive traffic — probably quite the contrary. They’re foundational beliefs and observations that we’ve been practicing or observing and have felt reinforcement with this year. I believe they will transcend “fitness trends” as we all sift through the rubbish that is the fitness social media machine.
At this point in my career, I’ve seen a lot of trends come and go. I’m now seeing some come back around — and there are some I’m happy to see go.
Without further ado, here they are.
1. Well-Rounded Programming Is King
I believe the days of “You just need HIIT / STRENGTH / CARDIO / CROSSFIT / HYROX / CYCLING / RUNNING / PILATES / ETC” are over.
People on social media or gyms that are just learning about marketing may still push this kind of dogmatic or oversimplified language on consumers. But the science and readily available information are really clear:
Everybody is better served with programming that includes strength training, metabolic training, and aerobic development — preferably not all squeezed into one workout.
2. Mobility Is Neural, Not Local Tissue-Based
Mobility is far more about your body and brain learning how to move actively through a full range of motion than trying to stretch local tissue into oblivion.
Contrary to popular belief, I am not opposed to stretching. It can be very useful to open up space for someone to move into.
However, if you do not follow up light, dynamic stretching with moving through the range of motion, you may be diminishing your body’s ability to use those muscles or joints by over-stretching — not improving your mobility.
If a muscle is chronically tight, that is usually for a reason. Often it means your body is overcompensating because it doesn’t trust other muscles, systems, or patterns.
And yes — breathwork helps you control your autonomic nervous system (fight-or-flight mode) and has a profound effect on mobility.
3. Coaching Far Transcends Exercises & Programs
For over 5 years I’ve been traveling the country to observe and learn from the best coaches and facilities, and one thing always stands out: their coaching eye in action.
As a team, we preach and believe in Coaching First — coaching the person in front of you, not dogma, trends, or what someone screaming on the internet says.
This year was a huge milestone as we hosted one of the best coaches in the world, Mike Robertson, for a seminar on programming and coaching. In the past, we’ve hosted others such as the Postural Restoration Institute, and I’m thrilled to tease that we’ll be hosting multiple courses and seminars in 2026.
Both of our programs — RevoFit and MTStrong Semi-Private Training — offer different approaches depending on your needs. And both will be even better in 2026.
At the risk of sounding jaded, I see too many young trainers reselling someone else’s programs and believing they can learn everything from YouTube. Going forward, we’re committed to in-person experience and exposure so our coaches can bring a deep toolbox to our community.
4. Experience Matters
The older I get, the more this stands out.
Experienced coaches provide far more than demonstrations or cheerleading — they communicate what you should feel, what matters, and how to adjust based on context.
Everyone should squat — but not everyone should back squat. If you’re looking to get stronger but you’ve been dealing with chronic lower back pain or just got through giving birth, back squats are probably a bad idea. A great coach understands when and how to modify movements based on injury history, life stage, and goals.
For this point, I considered switching out experience with exposure. Early on in my Revo journey, it was easy to stay in our own walls and get complacent with our methods. But seeking exposure is important to me in the gym and out in the world — whether that be seeking to ski big lines or learn from great gyms and mentors around the country — this principle and action provides perspective.
Much of our team will be travelling to learn in 2026, and I’m excited to bring that growth back to Missoula.
5. If You’re Over 35, You Need More Plyometrics & Speed Work
I say this from experience.
There were times I rushed strength work and ignored speed and plyometrics — and it caught up with me. Reintroducing them has dramatically improved how I feel, recover, and perform.
Plyometrics can be micro-dosed throughout the week. Simple, effective work before sessions builds reactivity, pliability, and resilience — qualities we naturally lose with age.
As mountain athletes, this matters. Nobody in our circles wants to be more rigid or slow – The dosage is the key.
6. We See Far More People Undernourished Than Overtrained
Recovery strategies are important — but many people struggle because they simply aren’t eating enough or planning intelligently.
Running or biking daily, strength training, and adult life require protein, carbs, fats, sleep, and down-regulation.
If this sounds familiar, you may not need less training — you may need a better plan. Better habits, adjusting your workout schedule, and eating/sleeping enough can do wonders for your wellbeing.
7. Abs Are Made in the Kitchen
I know, this one is obvious. But personally, I have swung back to the importance of nutrition knowledge for the everyday person and the benefits of macro tracking.
I constantly hear from folks that they “definitely eat enough” and then proceed to complain about nagging aches and pains from their favorite activities or the gym. That’s like never putting fuel in your vehicle and wondering why it’s always breaking down.
Tracking provides clarity and reference points — even if it’s not forever. Personally, it helps me avoid under-fueling early and over-eating later.
An experienced nutrition coach isn’t about dieting or echoing to “just eat more protein” — it’s about developing skills and habits that last.
8. Perimenopausal & Menopausal Women Are Being Targeted by Predatory Marketing
Here’s the only point I have that I think may ruffle some feathers.
There is a lot of noise, fear-based messaging, and dogma being sold.
It’s exhausting, but here’s the bright side: due to the dialogue, it’s being researched and tested better than ever. And yes, adjustments should be made. But many of the extreme takes are being disproven rapidly.
The science supports balanced strength training, metabolic work, and aerobic development — all adjusted to recovery.
Strength training is hugely important for maintaining muscle mass and bone density. 1-3 times per week is ideal depending on experience, goals, and background in the gym.
Metabolic training (HIIT) has huge benefits, particularly hormonally with all the changes happening, particularly insulin sensitivity (weight gain). It also aids in improving VO2 max, which is still one of the greatest indicators of life expectancy.
Speaking of VO2 max, everyone needs aerobic development. Cardiovascular and metabolic disease are still the leading causes or mortality of all populations in the US – no, zone 2 isn’t poisonous for women. That’s absurd. Contextually, it’s more about what you need based on your training background and what’s most efficient for you.
All of these need to be balanced based on work capacity – Your ability to recover. That’s why a good coach is key – they can help learn about you, where you’re at, and how to adjust accordingly.
Of course, this information can feel better received from someone with life experience similar to yours. But just remember, there’s a lot of people in the health and wellness field with something to sell. Algorithms encourage extreme takes and controversy.
Whether or not it’s ethical or truly science-based is really hard to discern in 2026. Like any realm of fitness, I’d personally view dogmatic or singular approaches as major red flags.
Theme for 2026: Agency
Before we send everyone off into 2026, I want to quickly address my theme for 2026 – Agency.
In my training and in life, there have been times where I felt adrift. As if I let proverbial or real storms dictate my direction. Where the ship was headed.
In 2026 I am resolving to change this, and I challenge you to do the same.
To steer the ship.
Agency is the ability—and the willingness—to take responsibility for your life, your decisions, and your outcomes.
It’s recognizing that:
You are not powerless
You are not a victim of circumstance
And while you can’t control everything, you can always control your response, your effort, and your standards
Agency is the opposite of outsourcing responsibility—to luck, genetics, the system, the weather, your schedule, your boss, your coach, or your past.
Are you taking agency in your life or letting a hectic schedule or a rough patch dictate your outcomes?
This can be as simple as planning your lunches for the week as opposed to eating out 3-5 times per week. Or it can be about intentionally planning your workout schedule instead of trying to squeeze it in when it works.
Or it can be about waking up or going to bed at the same time instead of always wondering why you’re tired or irritable.
Your reasons will be your own – but let’s take on 2026 together and steer the ship, lest we end up adrift.
Every phase of RevoFit has a purpose. Nothing here is random, recycled, or thrown together to “make you sweat.” Each six-week block is part of a larger system built to prepare your body for the seasons ahead. This one — running from November through mid-December — is all about preparing you for ski and winter-sport season.
It builds directly off the last two blocks of foundational strength and power output, taking those qualities and applying them to the specific demands of skiing, snowboarding, and winter adventures: absorbing and generating force, ability to rotate, staying reactive, and maintaining endurance for a full day on the mountain.
Day 1 – Strength: Control, Balance, and Bracing
Our first training day focuses on time under tension and eccentric control — slowing things down so your body learns to absorb and organize force before producing it again.
We’re emphasizing mid-stance strength — that “stacked” position where you’re balanced, ribs over hips, pressure even through the mid-foot. It’s the same posture and control you need to stay balanced over skis.
Many people struggle with this phase of propulsion, particularly in squats. If you’re somebody who has to constantly push your knees out to get squat depth, this may apply to you.
Expect to feel the work through the quads, hips, and core in a way that builds stability and rotational control. It’s going to burn now so you don’t burn out on the mountain.
There’s also an emphasis on anterior loads (Front squats, goblet squats, etc) to ensure you are able to maintain a centered stance – Ribs stacked over hips – For better control in the gym and on the slopes.
This day is about structure — teaching your body to handle eccentric load, decelerate safely, and build real-world strength that translates to the mountain.
Day 2 – Ski Plyometrics: Rhythm, Reactivity, and Pliability
This is where power meets precision. Skiing and snowboarding aren’t just about leg strength in single reps — they’re about rhythm, timing, and reactivity.
Our plyometric day trains the stretch-shortening cycle — your body’s ability to store and release energy efficiently. You’ll move through hops, jumps, and rotational drills that build joint and connective-tissue resiliency while improving coordination and proprioception.
The key here is rhythm. You’re training your body to yield and rebound, to stay elastic and reactive under movement — just like when carving turns or adjusting to uneven terrain.
This type of workout is integral to winter sport prep, but it must be done with intent. Lazy reps or incorrect effort levels won’t help and could even detrain the qualities we’re going for.
This day is about teaching the body to stay adaptable, athletic, and efficient while performcing dynamic movement.
Day 3 – Conditioning: Capacity and Recovery Under Fatigue
True endurance isn’t just about going until you’re exhausted — it’s about staying composed and efficient when you are.
Our conditioning days this block are designed to build aerobic capacity and heart rate recovery ability — your body’s capacity to sustain moderate to hard efforts, recover quickly, and repeat. This is the kind of conditioning that keeps you skiing, hiking, or training all day without falling apart.
The sessions pair interval work with complex movement under fatigue, training you to maintain posture, breathing, and coordination when tired.
Expect cues like:
“Recover while you move.” “Relax the jaw. Drop the shoulders. Control your breath.”
This type of training develops not just physical endurance, but mental composure — the ability to stay sharp, technical, and efficient when everyone else starts to fade.
Why It Matters
Every RevoFit block connects to the next — and this one bridges the gap between gym performance and outdoor performance. It’s built on principles of progressive overload, movement efficiency, and seasonal specificity.
While other gyms chase novelty or volume, we chase intent — using science AND experience based progression to build strength, resilience, and capacity that lasts well beyond the walls of the gym.
This is what separates Revo from the rest: Intelligent programming. Expert coaching. Real-world results.
Ready for the Season?
This six-week RevoFit block runs through mid-December. If your goal is to ski harder, move better, and stay capable all winter — this is your season to train with purpose.
This new 6-week RevoFit block is designed with one clear purpose: to prepare your body for winter sports and life outside the gym by training like an athlete.
Here’s some concepts we’re incorporating into this month’s programming:
Strength Training with some French Contrast Training & Triphasic Training Principles → Combining heavy lifts with explosive plyometrics to improve both strength and power output through Post-Activation Potentiation (PAP). → Example: pairing heavy step-ups with box jumps so your nervous system learns to apply force quickly and efficiently. → Focusing on the eccentric, isometric, and concentric phases of movement to build resilient joints, stronger tendons, and more explosive concentric power. This month will mostly be eccentrics and concentrics, you can expect more isometrics next month! → Example: isometric split squat holds or controlled eccentrics under fatigue.
Energy System–Specific Conditioning
Athletic Plyometrics: low-amplitude, rhythm-based explosive movements that build power endurance and train fast-twitch fibers to use oxygen more efficiently.
High Resistance Intervals: max-output efforts with full recovery between bouts, teaching the body to produce and repeat powerful efforts while maintaining focus under fatigue.
Day-by-Day Training Focus
Day 1 – Strength & Contrast
Heavy step-ups, RDLs, single-arm pressing – Winter sports like downhill or nordic skiing require you to be able to shift from hip to hip, manage and absorb pressure and force, and generate power under fatigue. This strength day progresses our members’ abilities to do so, a concept we will build on through the fall.
Paired with jumps for French Contrast effect – We are building on the strength we focused on last month and developing power as we head into the fall. This can be developed and is absolutely necessary for winter sports.
Spend a summer running or on a bike? You’ll need this.
Strength and power are very much a neurological adaptation, by strategically combining the two, you train your brain and your musculoskeletal systems to better work together and perform the way you’ve always wanted on opening day.
Goal: Build a foundation of hip extension strength, glute/hamstring durability, control your center of mass, and develop twitchy explosiveness for uphill and downhill winter demands.
Day 2 – Athletic Plyometrics
Short-duration, reactive plyos and strength-speed work paired with moderate to short rest times to develop better recovery between bouts of effort
Focus on power endurance: staying explosive even as fatigue builds
Most people only train “power” or “plyos” at the beginning of their workouts, completely missing the real-world application of those qualities. In action, we often need to be able to repeat the movements that plyometrics help us improve under a decent amount of fatigue, think a long day on the slopes or a ski descent after touring up the mountain. This program helps train your aerobic system AND your local muscles to recover faster between efforts and bounce back effectively.
This is one of the most overlooked concepts in injury prevention – Training both your mind and your body to focus and perform under fatigue. This type of training helps you from getting sloppy when you’re tired!
Goal: Teach your body to bounce, recover, and keep producing power over time.
Important Consideration: True mountain and field athletes can express power fluidly and repeatedly — not just once.
Day 3 – High Resistance Intervals w/Movement Quality Integration
Sprint-style intervals with complex tasks between efforts (push-ups, holds, rotational throws)
Piggy backing on the principle introduced in day 2 – This month’s conditioning day will help you build aerobic power endurance while also helping you train your movement quality and focus under fatigue.
Performing relatively complex (but safe) movements after the intervals teaches your various energy systems to help you recover more efficiently as well as maintaining focus on movement quality. Often people want to be able to zone out during hard efforts, but training your brain to do so can lead to injury for trail and mountain athletes.
There will be a focus on breath and recovery, which can train you to better control your stress response surrounding hard efforts.
Requires recovery to ~130 bpm before restarting
Goal: Build aerobic & anaerobic power, sprint capacity, and focus under fatigue to reduce injury risk.
Theme for Day 3: Breathe, reset, and perform with intent — even when tired.
Why This Matters
Most people prep for winter with heavy squats or leg press sets and sprinkle in some slow-twitch aerobic training like running and then wonder why they gas out on the first ski day. This program helps you develop other important qualities needed for winter sports and overall athletic development.
We’re addressing the qualities that actually translate to the mountain:
Strength + power (for control and explosiveness)
Power endurance (to stay bouncy and reactive all day)
Focus under fatigue (to keep movement quality high when you’re tired)
And it’s not just about sports. Recent research shows that power output is more strongly correlated with longevity and quality of life than strength or aerobic capacity alone. Training explosiveness = training for a longer, more capable life.
If you’re here for looks and gains, and don’t care about winter sports – Don’t worry, we’ve got you! Training these traits and energy systems help your glycolytic systems and aerobic systems work better together. So you can oxidize fat and keep building muscle to get that toned up look you’re going for!
Simplified Takeaways
Day 1 = Strong + Explosive → Build muscle and power at the same time
Day 2 = Bounce + Endure → Stay powerful & pliable even when tired & prevent injury
Day 3 = Sprint + Focus → Push hard, recover well, stay sharp under fatigue
Together, these days build a complete athlete — no matter your age or ability.
Looking Ahead
This cycle is the bridge between a summer of adventures, late summer rebuilding and full-on winter preparation. By the end of October, you’ll not only feel stronger and more explosive — you’ll also be primed for the heavier contrast and winter-specific strength work coming next.
Still crushing the trails this fall? So are we. These qualities are hugely beneficial for trail running or mountain biking. Crush these workouts and reap all the rewards.
Get Rolling
Ready to train like an athlete and set yourself up for a strong winter? Join us for this 6-week RevoFit block:
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is one of the most available and heavily used technologies in health and wellness and it doesn’t seem to just be a fad. I’ve been using it for over ten years, starting with Joel Jamieson’s BioForce, then Morpheus, and I’ve tested most of the big-name devices you’ve heard of. It’s one of the few metrics I’ve stayed consistent with over the years and plan to continue to do so.
That being said, not all data is equal. HRV isn’t a magic number. It won’t tell you everything about your training or recovery, and it shouldn’t dictate your day. Still, when used correctly—and consistently—it can help guide your decisions about how to adjust your programming over time. Not necessarily on a day-to-day basis, but medium and long term.
Let’s get into how it works, what it’s actually useful for, and why you should use it as a tool, not a game to win.
What Is HRV and Why Should You Care?
HRV is a measure of the variation in time between heartbeats. At first, the idea might sound like a bad thing, but more variability usually means better nervous system health. Higher HRV often reflects a stronger parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) state, while lower HRV indicates higher sympathetic (“fight or flight”) activation.
Ever risen in the morning with a pounding heart rate after a night of drinking or anxious about a test? That’s your sympathetic nervous system in overdrive. Ideally, you’d see the opposite most mornings.
HRV is one of the best objective markers we have for tracking recovery and systemic stress. It tells us if your body is bouncing back from stress or if it’s stuck in a stressed state. Again, you should see fluctuations, that means you are applying the right amount of stress for adaptation. But HRV can help us take note when we are going too far in one direction or another.
Here’s a little more nuance for you: HRV doesn’t predict performance. You can PR on a low-HRV day and feel like garbage on a high one. Think of it more like your car’s check engine light than a fuel gauge. It doesn’t say how far you can go today—it tells you what kind of state your engine is in. This is why it’s still important to learn to feel how your body is recovering from day to day and not just rely on gamifying your HRV.
So What Does HRV Actually Tell Us (and What Doesn’t It)?
Let’s be clear: HRV is not perfect. It’s influenced by a ton of variables even with the equipment being imperfect—sleep, alcohol, hydration, stress, training load, and even how you breathe when you take the reading.
What it does tell you:
General readiness and resilience
How well you’re recovering from stress
Whether your body is in sympathetic (stressed) or parasympathetic (recovered) mode
Long-term trends in fitness and stress management
What it doesn’t tell you:
How strong you are today
Whether you’re going to crush or bomb your workout
If your training plan is working (in isolation)
Whether you should or shouldn’t train today—context is key
The most useful takeaway? HRV is a trend tool, not a daily grade. You’ll see ups and downs, especially when training hard (as you should). That’s normal. But those swings should be predictable. If HRV is consistently low and you feel drained, it’s time to pull back. If it’s rebounding after a deload or restful weekend, that’s a green light.
How to Apply HRV at Every Level of Training
Whether you’re an elite athlete or just trying to stay fit between Zoom calls, HRV can serve you. But how you use it should change depending on your context.
Elite & Competitive Athletes
HRV can help fine-tune your training blocks. Use it to monitor recovery between hard sessions and deloads. If HRV tanks after a peak phase and stays tanked, it’s a cue that you’ve pushed hard—maybe too hard—and some rest is overdue. You should see ebbs and flows following workouts that reflect the effort you put in.
For higher level athletes, you may find you disagree with your readings occasionally. This is why you don’t want to gamify or try to “win” HRV. It’s also why you shouldn’t panic if you get a poor reading and plan on doing a tough workout that day.
Use it as a tool to learn how you feel when you are recovering, pushing harder, and see if you can start to predict when it will suggest you should scale back. HRV is an effective tool to know when you should “test the fences” and when you should ease up.
Aspiring Athletes & “Hardcore Hobbyists”
This is where HRV shines. You’re training seriously but juggling life. No offense, but I’ve been coaching for over a decade and I often find people in this category don’t really know how they feel or if they’re recovering at all.
HRV can help you learn to regulate intensity: green days are go-days, yellow might be technique or zone 2 work, and red days = recovery. It doesn’t have to be this black and white, but on a broader scale your workouts could adhere to this strategy.
Don’t use HRV to avoid training—use it to shift the focus of your session. Remember, stress is a good thing until it isn’t. You still need to be able to push hard, but if you’re limited because you’re always worn down, the data will reflect that and you may not get the results you want from your training.
Active General Population
HRV is a way to check in with your nervous system, especially if you’re dealing with work stress, poor sleep, or overtraining without realizing it. Use it to reinforce healthy habits. If your HRV drops every time you sleep poorly or drink too much, that’s valuable feedback. And, frankly, it will. HRV often dips quite a bit after just one or two drinks. This is objective data, not just some annoying influencer lecturing you about your life.
If you feel like you’re in this population, the biggest thing would be to use HRV as a baseline data collection tool to help you fine tune your environment to help set you up for success. You will see very positive results in your HRV if you start sleeping better, fueling more healthily, and managing daily stress.
Best Practices for Tracking HRV (and Keeping Your Sanity)
Here’s what I recommend to all my clients:
Take it at the same time each morning Right after waking up, before caffeine or training.
Use the same device and method You’re tracking patterns, not comparing brands.
Look at the trend, not the daily number One low reading? No big deal. Five in a row? Pay attention.
Cross-check with how you feel HRV is a tool, not the boss. Some of your best days might come on “low HRV” mornings.
Don’t gamify it You’re not trying to “beat” HRV. Training hard will lower it temporarily. That’s fine. Recovery is part of the plan.
Final Thoughts: Know Yourself, Use the Tools
HRV isn’t a crystal ball—it’s a mirror. Albeit, maybe one of those weird mirrors you see at the fair with some distortion.
It helps you see patterns you might miss or be ignoring. But like any mirror, it only reflects what’s in front of it. If you’re inconsistent, distracted, or too focused on the number, the reflection gets distorted (And a clown might chase you. Probably not, but maybe).
Used correctly, HRV can help you recover better, train smarter, and feel more connected to your body’s rhythms. That’s the win—not chasing a higher score.
Train hard. Recover smart. And remember: you are not your HRV reading.
The fitness industry has done you wrong—not because available information is bad, but because everyone’s selling you their “one magic pill” solution. Big chains, influencers, and bootcamp classes need you to believe their single modality fixes everything. That’s marketing, not science.
After years of coaching real athletes in the trenches, I can offer this truth: there is no one answer to optimal fitness. It’s about the right dose of different training modalities.
Today we’ll break down the critical differences between strength training and metabolic conditioning (often oversimplified as “HIIT” or Metcons) and why timing them intelligently—not mashing them together—is key to performing your best.
The Problem: Everything Becomes a Sweaty Mess
Ever find yourself racing through a workout, drenched in sweat, wondering if you’re doing it right? You’re not alone.
In today’s fitness culture, there’s massive hype around high-intensity interval training, “metabolic” bootcamps, and sweat-soaked circuits. Meanwhile, traditional strength training gets pushed aside—or worse, gets mashed together with conditioning until everything becomes a painful mish-mash without any proper direction towards adaptation.
Many active adults (especially those 30+) who still love skiing, biking, and mountain adventures struggle to balance these approaches. Should you lift heavy with long rests, or do rapid-fire circuits? Can resting longer possibly benefit endurance athletes?
The truth: strength training and HIIT are distinct training methods with unique stimuli and adaptations. Understanding their differences—and how they complement each other—is key to training smart, staying healthy, and performing your best.
What Exactly Is Strength Training?
Strength training means exercises with heavy resistance performed specifically to increase maximal force production. According to the NSCA, true strength training focuses on developing neuromuscular adaptations like improved motor unit recruitment, synchronization, and firing rate.
Classic strength workouts involve high intensity (heavy loads) for low-to-moderate reps with adequate rest between sets. You might do 5 heavy squats, then rest 2-3 minutes before the next set. That rest isn’t laziness—it’s when your body replenishes energy stores and recovers the neural drive required for maximal effort.
Key point for endurance athletes: Strength training is primarily neurological adaptation. Higher reps with lighter loads or bodyweight won’t yield the strength adaptations you’re looking for—that’s a different stimulus entirely.
What Proper Strength Training Feels Like
During a strength session, your heart rate will spike briefly on heavy lifts, but you shouldn’t be breathless between sets. If you’re gasping and your goal is strength, you need longer rest periods.
One of the biggest mistakes people make is turning strength workouts into conditioning by rushing rest periods. The result? Your muscles and nervous system never fully recover, so you lift lighter with poor form or can’t more very much weight —essentially doing accidental metabolic training that shortchanges strength gains.
You don’t necessarily have to lift like a powerlifter, but it can help to understand their approach and why: they take 3-5+ minutes between heavy sets because those long rests let the fastest, strongest muscle fibers and central nervous system recover fully for maximal force production.
Bottom line: Strength training prioritizes intensity of effort over density of work. Volume and rep schemes should vary based on your experience and skill level. But the effort needs to be focused on moving heavier weights with adequate rest.
Lastly, you don’t need to be doing heavy strength splits all year. Like many training modalities, it should undulate throughout the year. You can make adjustments based on your fitness focuses. That being said, you should have 1-2 focused programs per year where your priority should be adding strength.
Energy Systems and Adaptations
Strength training primarily uses the anaerobic alactic system (ATP-PCr), providing explosive energy for 10-15 seconds max. After that, your aerobic system quietly works during rest periods to clear fatigue and refill energy stores.
Train consistently with proper strength protocols and your body adapts through:
Increased Neuromuscular Strength: Your brain gets better at recruiting more muscle fibers and firing them in sync. Early strength gains come from improved neural drive before muscles even grow.
Muscle Hypertrophy: With adequate volume and nutrition, strength training increases muscle cross-sectional area. Bigger muscles produce more force and raise metabolic rate. However, hypertrophy specific programming is often quite different than strength specific. This will depend on your experience in the gym, genetic factors, age, and more.
Stronger Bones and Connective Tissue: Heavy loading stimulates bone density and strengthens tendons and ligaments—crucial “armor” against injury whether you’re lifting luggage or carving down a mountain.
Sport Performance Benefits: Being stronger makes everything easier. Build a stronger squat and each pedal stroke or ski turn takes a smaller percentage of your maximum force. Strength is also the foundation of power (power = strength × speed).
Important limitation: Strength training alone won’t improve cardiovascular endurance much—and it’s not supposed to. You’ll get strong and muscular but not well-conditioned for long activities. Strength endurance is certainly a trainable quality, but it’s not as simple as high reps = strength endurance.
What Is HIIT (Metabolic Conditioning)?
High-Intensity Interval Training involves repeated bouts of very intense effort interspersed with variable rest periods. Examples include track sprints, burpee circuits, kettlebell intervals, or rowing sprints—typically 20-90 seconds of near-maximal work followed by recovery periods.
If you can keep going hard with no rest, you’re not at true HIIT intensity. By design, HIIT is anaerobic (lactic) during work intervals and aerobic during recovery as your heart rate drops.
What HIIT/Metabolic Training Sessions Feel Like
During work intervals, your heart rate should skyrocket, you’ll experience heavy breathing, and your muscles will burn. Appropriate metabolic training sessions can certainly have you questioning your life decisions.
Metabolic Training has to be a concentrated effort —instead of jogging 30 minutes at a moderate pace, you might do 10 one-minute sprints with breaks to thoroughly exhaust your capacity. Both train your aerobic system, but HIIT also pushes you into the anaerobic red zone repeatedly. This isn’t just intentional suffering – It trains your body to manage stress all the way down to a cellular level.
Metabolic Training Adaptations
Improved Aerobic Capacity: Some studies have suggested that metabolic training can increase VO₂ max as much as traditional endurance training in a fraction of the time. The famous McMaster University study showed 20 minutes of interval training produced similar aerobic improvements as 90-120 minutes of steady cycling. However, I would caution against replacing endurance training with HIIT training. Those studies suggested that you work at 120% of your maximum output for short bursts, which is exceptionally difficult. Instead, view metabolic conditioning as training your body to handle stress more efficiently and recovery faster between hard efforts even in action.
Greater Anaerobic Capacity: Your muscles get better at tolerating and clearing metabolites, so you can sustain high efforts longer and recover faster between bursts—crucial for stop-and-go sports or steep climbs.
Metabolic Health: HIIT improves insulin sensitivity, blood pressure, and cardiovascular markers. It also elevates post-exercise metabolic rate (the “afterburn” effect) for hours after training. It has recently been suggested that it can improve longevity and cognitive health long term as well.
Fat Loss: HIIT burns more calories per minute than lower-intensity exercise and is more muscle-sparing than excessive steady cardio.
Important limitation: While HIIT offers excellent conditioning benefits, those 20-minute metcons and bootcamp classes can’t prepare you for long days in the mountains, on the bike, or trail running. That requires a different approach to aerobic development—but that’s a topic for another article.
Why You Need Both (Not a Mish-Mash)
Strength training and HIIT shouldn’t be competing—they’re complementary. One builds your physical chassis (muscles, bones, strength), the other tunes your engine (cardiovascular capacity and efficiency).
Recent research highlighted by Joel Jamieson: As little as 30 minutes of strength training per week was associated with 10-20% lower all-cause mortality. But combining strength with aerobic training? About 40% lower risk—roughly double the benefit.
The “Mish-Mash” Trap
A common mistake in bootcamp classes, Crossfit, Hyrox, and among inexperienced trainees is mixing strength and HIIT incorrectly—moderately heavy weights lifted fast with insufficient rest interspersed with fatigued interval efforts, day after day.
You might think you’re getting the best of both worlds, but you’re often getting the best of neither:
Strength gains require high intensity (heavy load) and adequate recovery
HIIT gains require high intensity (heart rate) and adequate recovery between intervals
Perpetual circuits lead to chronic fatigue, poor movement quality, plateaued strength (never lifting truly heavy or fresh), and plateaued conditioning (never pushing max effort or allowing adaptation).
Do we use interval training from time to time? Absolutely. But we provide very specific parameters, recognize that the stress accumulation is HIGH, and the adaptations happen quickly. So the programs are short and intentional. And they are all out, not sloppy.
Smart Integration
Organize your week so some sessions target strength with proper intensity and rest, others focus on conditioning. Many experts now follow a high/low/high/low model – IE One high output day followed by a low one. This requires a lot of discipline, whether it’s in the gym or on the trails.
Other examples can include:
Option 1: Lift heavy first, then finish with a brief metabolic “finisher” (5-10 minutes max) once strength work is complete.
Option 2: Separate days entirely—Monday/Wednesday/Friday strength, Tuesday/Saturday conditioning, with low-intensity recovery work filling gaps.
The key: These all depend on your fitness level, training background, and what you need to address presently. Energy is finite. You can’t maximize everything simultaneously. Prioritize one modality while maintaining the others based on your current goals and season.
Signs You’re Doing It Right
When balanced properly, you’ll notice:
Strength progressing or maintaining while cardio improves
Energy for heavy lifts because you’re not exhausted from yesterday’s HIIT
Ability to push harder during conditioning because legs aren’t destroyed from squats earlier
Reduced injury risk and overtraining
Faster recovery time between workouts or even hard consecutive efforts (Think cycling ascents or backcountry skiing transitions)
The Bottom Line
In a fitness landscape full of quick-fix marketing, don’t fall for the “one solution” trap. Both strength training and HIIT are powerful—but in different ways.
Embrace your heavy lifting days: Enjoy the grind of getting stronger and hitting new PRs.
Embrace your HIIT days: Relish the sweat and endorphin rush knowing you’re pushing aerobic capacity. Don’t dog it or finish up with a bunch of slow cardio after. Send it and call it.
Just don’t confuse the two. Give each its own space to shine, and you’ll build what every athlete desires: a body prepared for anything.
As research consistently shows, the greatest rewards come from mixing training styles intelligently. It’s not strength versus conditioning—it’s both working together to create muscle with hustle, strength with endurance, and a body built for long-term performance.
Want to learn how to structure strength and conditioning for your specific goals? Our coaches at Revo Training Center specialize in building programs that work with your outdoor adventures, not against them.
At Revo, we don’t just run workouts — we coach humans.
If you’re ready to train with intention, move better, and build real-world strength, we’d love to work with you.
Here’s how we can help:
👉 Try RevoFit – Your first 10 days are free. No pressure, just smart training. 👉 Get a Free Strategy Session – We’ll map out a custom training plan based on your goals and lifestyle. 👉 Learn More About Semi-Private Coaching – For outdoor athletes and everyday humans who want expert guidance and accountability.
By Michael Savasuk – Revo Training Center | August 2025
You’ve been outside. A lot.
Long trail runs, big rides, ridge scrambles, backpacking trips — it’s what you live for. It’s the whole reason you train in the first place.
But maybe lately, your body’s been whispering that something’s a little off. Or screaming.
That familiar twinge in your knee starts to show up by mile five.
Your hips or SI joint ache at night in bed — not enough to stop you, but enough to notice.
You need longer to warm up, or it takes hours to truly wind down after a big effort.
You’ve rolled your ankle twice this summer, even though you’ve been trail running for years. And now it seems to just keep happening.
This isn’t weakness. It’s just your body asking for a little backup. A little more resilience.
And that’s exactly what this next RevoFit training block is built to do.
What This Block Is All About
For the next six weeks, we’re dialing in a focused blend of restoring strength, movement precision, and targeted conditioning to help you:
Rebuild strength and tissue quality that’s been worn down by high outdoor volume
Address the subtle imbalances and compensations that show up when you move in the same patterns all summer at fatigue
Prep your nervous system and joints for higher output and contrast work in the fall
Provide your brain and muscles with a larger toolbox with which to move through space
This isn’t just about training hard. It’s about training intelligently — with intention, adaptability, and carryover to the life you actually live.
Day 1 & 2: Strength — Better Foundation, More Resilient, [Re]Building Strength
Normally we only do strength on Day 1, and our Day 2 is more metabolic. However, with this program both days 1 and 2 are strength-focused — but not in the way you might expect.
Instead of chasing PRs or volume for volume’s sake, we’re asking you to move with more control, stability, and conscious positioning than you might be used to.
But don’t worry if you’re on the gains train – We’ll be building a lot of strength this program as we head into our fall training protocols.
Day 1: Offset Strength & True Core Control
You’ll notice a lot of single-arm work, mixed rack positions, and anti-rotation challenges. That’s not random — it’s deliberate.
This type of loading forces you to deliberately maintain a stacked position in different movements, using your obliques, glutes, and breath to control your ribcage and pelvis, instead of defaulting to low-back tension or brute-force strategies.
This is what real core training looks like:
Moving with load while managing pressure and position – And being able to breathe while doing it
Bracing through movement, not against it
Learning to breathe under stress, so you can actually access your strength when you need it and keep doing so over time
We’re training proprioception and postural awareness in ways that carry directly into things like descending technical trails, picking your line on a bike, or scrambling over scree when your balance matters most.
Progression-wise? Expect loads to increase week-to-week as your control and movement quality improves.
An Analogy I like: “Think of this like training your body to stand strong in a storm. Not rigid, but anchored. Responsive. Ready. Defiant”
Day 2: Power Across Planes
In Day 2 we will continue with strength, but we will add movements that ask you to generate force — and absorb it — in multiple directions. That means more frontal plane work (think side lunges), more transverse plane (rotation), and more explosive effort.
A big mistake a lot of training modalities make is they only train in the sagittal plane (Flexion & extension, think a leg press) and then we go out in a world that moves in all directions.
If you want to be more athletic — not just stronger — you need to be able to move fluidly, under load, with precision in every direction. You need to be able to rotate.
We combine offset weights with vertical hops, rotational movement, and control-demanding transitions. Your body learns to coordinate different muscle groups together, instead of letting compensations dictate your strategy.
Built into each set, we still come back to postural reset tools — like slider pikes, bear plank variations, and bridge positions — to lock in quality positions before fatigue erodes it.
The goal isn’t just to be able to move better. It’s to move better under pressure & stress, so it carries over into the messy, beautiful chaos of the real world.
Day 3: Conditioning That Doesn’t Break You to Build You
We’ll say it loudly because it bears repeating: not all conditioning needs to be a sufferfest to be effective.
Joel Jamieson’s conditioning framework and a great deal of metabolic research — which we draw from heavily — teaches us that strategic conditioning can build athleticism, speed, and recovery capacity without trashing your nervous system or joints. Sometimes, pushing too hard is limiting your results.
Part 1: Aerobic Plyometrics
These look like jumps, throws, and low-intensity bounds — but they’re not about going all-out.
Instead, we’re training elasticity, joint durability, and fast-twitch aerobic capacity — all while staying submaximal.
It feels like rhythm and bounce. Think flow, not fight.
If you watch world class athletes – Particularly runners & cyclists – You’ll notice how fluid and rhythmic their movement is. This can be trainable.
Benefits include:
Increased tendon and connective tissue resilience
Improved ability to recover between efforts
Better running/athletic economy and overall joint health
Part 2: Explosive Repeats
This is where you will bring the power — but with full recovery between sets so you can actually maintain output.
We’re targeting the alactic energy system, which fuels short, high-force efforts — like charging up a hill, or picking up speed for a pass on the bike.
What this gives you:
More top-end power and repeatability
Better nervous system efficiency
A chance to train intensity without systemic overload
This is what sustainable, smart, performance-focused conditioning looks like. What’s great about both of these modalities is they should pair perfectly with a weekend packed full of adventures. You won’t feel beat up the day after these. In fact, they should help upregulate you so you feel up to the task.
And yes, it’s still hard — just not suffering for the sake of it.
This Block Isn’t Just for the Hardcore Outdoor Athletes
You don’t have to be training for a trail race or backcountry objective to benefit from this block.
If you’re:
Feeling a little beat up from a long summer of play
Coming back to training after some time off
Looking to feel better, move better, and train with more intent…
This block will meet you where you are — and help you build a stronger foundation for what’s coming next.
Looking Ahead: The Fall Ramp-Up
This block sets the stage for our fall programming, where we’ll introduce contrast training, heavier strength progressions, and more advanced power-skill development for those prepping for ski season or looking to peak physically before winter hits.
But that only works if your movement quality, strength foundation, and joint integrity are in place now.
Movement in the gym is a skill, just like any other sport. Don’t wait to strength train in the fall, only to find that you have to re-learn how to move first.
We’re laying the groundwork now — with precision, care, and intention.
You’re Stronger Than You Think
At Revo, we believe training is about more than what happens in the gym. It’s about what you get to do because of it.
We don’t coach workouts. We coach people — with real lives, real goals, and real limitations. And our job is to help you keep going — not just harder, but longer.
So if your body’s been talking to you lately, this block is your chance to listen, reset, and come back stronger.
We’re here for it — and for you.
Ready to train with purpose? Join us in this new block, or come in for a free strategy session and we’ll help you map it out. Schedule Here →
Summer’s here, and we know you’re putting in big miles, bagging peaks, and chasing adventure.
This new RevoFit cycle is built to support your outdoor performance, not compete with it.
Whether you’re peaking for a race or just staying strong for the season, this 6-week training block delivers the right dose of strength, recovery, and conditioning — with options to dial it up or down depending on your goals.
🧱 Day 1 – Strength: Eustress 2.0
We’re building real strength and work capacity — but doing it smart. This phase progresses our eustress approach from last program by adding eccentric control, which improves stability, tendon health, and motor control. This means that we’re making sure you keep and continue to develop the strength gains you made over the winter while doing a lot of activity outside of the gym. Remember – Strength is largely a neurological adaptation that you can lose over the summer if you’re not careful. The good news is that you really only need one to two intentional and dedicated strength workouts per week while you’re in season to keep those qualities.
Because we have many clients with many goals, you will have options on how to approach your workouts this sequence:
✅ If you’re in-season: Short clusters + heavy focus + no nervous system overload or soreness ✅ If you’re training harder: Add load or volume for strength & physique gains
💪 How this helps YOU: More strength and stamina on the trail, better control on descents, and less wear and tear on your joints — in and out of the gym. At least one hard strength session per week will ensure you stay out of the physical therapist’s office and are ready to attack your strength goals come fall.
🔄 Day 2 – High Performance Recovery
Our take on High Performance Recovery Training. Recovery in training is essential. Everyone knows that. But that doesn’t just mean rest, and that’s what this workout helps everyone with — it’s movement-based recovery with metabolic and hormonal benefits baked in.
✅ If you’re in-season: Get recharged mid-week without adding fatigue – We call this a stim or upregulating workout- The hormonal effect can literally help you recover quicker if you’re feeling run down. ✅ If you’re training for gains: Add intensity & volume for a sneaky performance boost – You will continue to get faster and ripped from this day.
🔋 How this helps YOU: Faster recovery. Less burnout. And you’ll leave the gym feeling better than when you walked in. By using short burst and metabolic training qualities we can help you and your body upregulate and reinvigorate you so that you’re ready to attack the trails or your workouts the rest of the week.
If you’re not getting after it outdoors this time of year, we’ve got you covered. Our coaches will help you add volume and difficulty to your workouts so that you can continue to ride the gainz train!
🏃♂️ Day 3 – Conditioning That Transfers
We start with multi-directional plyometrics because this time of year a lot of folks are doing a lot of biking and/or running. Which is GREAT! However, too much time in the saddle or running can drive you into certain movement patterns, which can put you on the fast track to chronic or overuse injuries. It’s extremely beneficial to keep some work in-season that exposes you to other movement potential (proprioception).
After the plyometric start, we will then alternate between:
Lactic Power Intervals – short, max bursts for anaerobic power
Zone 2 Work – longer aerobic efforts for endurance & recovery
✅ If you’re in-season: Maintain your engine and clean up poor movement habits ✅ If you’re pushing performance: Build both your sprint gear and your stamina
⚙️ How this helps YOU: You’ll feel like your body has more gears — and fewer limits — whether you’re chasing PRs uphill or chasing your kids.
👟 Bottom Line:
This block meets you where you are — 🔸 In-Season? It supports volume and keeps you capable. 🔸 Training harder? It gives you room to grow and recover. 🔸 Busy life? It’s efficient and focused, not random.
📅 Block starts Monday — just show up. We’ll help you scale it to your goals.
📣 Questions about how to approach it based on your season or goals? Shoot us an email @ memberships@revomt.com and we’ll get you taken care of!
The trails are open. The weather is (mostly) cooperating. And if you’re like most of our members, your calendar is filling up with miles, rides, hikes, and long days in the mountains.
We love that. It’s exactly what we train for.
But every year around this time, we see a pattern. People start pulling back on strength and gym-based training “because I’m doing so much outside.”
It makes sense on paper — you’re tired, you’re moving more, you don’t want to overdo it.
But here’s the problem: if you drop your gym work completely, you’re not just losing strength. You’re losing the skills, the structure, and the coordination that keep you moving well and keep you safe. That’s why this May, we’ve built a RevoFit block specifically designed to protect your gains, complement your outdoor training, and build durable power without unnecessary fatigue.
A Complete System — Not Just 3 Random Days
RevoFit isn’t just “some strength, some cardio, some intervals.”
It’s a carefully designed 3-day system, built with intention. Each day targets a specific adaptation:
Day 1 = Strength & force production (with posture + intent)
Day 2 = Explosive, repeatable effort (concentric power endurance)
Day 3 = Conditioning + deceleration + focus under fatigue
These aren’t just good workouts — they are complementary pieces that fit together across the week and with your outdoor efforts. That means you can hike, run, or ride AND still get better in the gym — instead of just maintaining or falling behind.
This is not suffering for the sake of it, or crushing yourself to “get a good workout.” It’s intentional and carefully designed to set you up for this season and the next.
Day 1: Strength That Transfers to the Trail
This block’s strength day is all about concentric power — fast force production with clean posture and heavy intent.
We’re using:
Trap bar deadlifts + plyometric pairings (contrast training)
Overcoming isometrics to drive motor unit recruitment
Unilateral and offset carries to build rotational control
This isn’t high-volume strength work. This is Eustress-style programming — the goal is high intent, low wear-and-tear. You’ll leave feeling sharp, not crushed. And ready to rock the trails the next day.
Why it matters: Concentric strength improves your ability to produce force quickly. That’s huge for anyone who wants longer strides when running, more pedal power on climbs, or stronger hiking posture. It also supports tendon health and joint stability — a must as outdoor volume increases.
Why it works so well in-season: This strength day won’t wreck your recovery. Quite the contrary. It’s designed to slot in next to your speed, sprint, or trail days without overlap. You’ll keep strength without blowing up your CNS. We’re cutting out eccentrics on this day to limit overall work done by the local tissue while maintaining and/or improving overall integrity and work capacity.
Day 2: Twitchy, Explosive, and Repeatable
This is not your average HIIT day.
We’re working on concentric power endurance — the ability to move explosively, recover fully, and do it again. The kind of quality that makes you fast, reactive, and athletic for longer.
You’ll see:
Fast bar speed lifts and jumps
Moderate loads moved quickly
Full recoveries between sets to reset energy systems
Why it matters: Your fast-twitch fibers don’t stay fast unless you train them. In fact, as we age (Or if you do too much slow/steady work) we can lose fast twitch fibers first. Without regular explosive work, they get dull. This day helps maintain the explosiveness you built over winter. It also helps retrain the rate of force development (RFD) — your ability to produce power quickly, especially in short, glycolytic bursts. Think sprints, surges, steep inclines, or the hardest part of your climb.
Why it pairs well: This day emphasizes rest and output, not just grind. That means it should actually help your nervous system recover, improve local tissue capacity, and give you the kind of repeat sprint and climb endurance outdoor athletes need. We call this up-regulating, and it can help you bounce back quicker when your volume is up.
Day 3: Focus, Frontal Plane, and Fuel Economy
Yes, this is a conditioning day. But it’s not just about sweat.
This is where we challenge your ability to move well under fatigue, and build aerobic durability through:
Frontal and transverse plane movement (hip shifting, lateral steps, skaters, bounds)
Postural control + breathing mechanics (Zone of Apposition focus)
Deceleration, eccentric strength, and isometric control
Why it matters: This is where we build what Mark Twight’s definition capacity — not just fitness, but the ability to maintain posture, breath control, and mental composure under effort and stress. That’s what keeps you sharp after 3 hours of running or descending rocky terrain. This day also improves proprioception and balance through velocity and directional change — helping your nervous system learn to create the right tension, at the right time, to protect you from rolled ankles, sloppy knees, or bad landings. You need more than box jumps and jump rope to perform well on the trails!
Why it pairs well: This is the ultimate trail prep day. These sessions teach you to regulate breath, posture, and shape while under duress — something endurance volume alone cannot train. It’s simply not safe to redline it on the trails in a training session with so many variables. This is, by definition, what the gym is for. Training for the real world.
Don’t Just Lose Strength — You Lose Skills
The real cost of skipping strength work all summer isn’t just lost tissue.
It’s lost coordination. It’s lost movement efficiency.
It’s lost tissue integrity. It’s lost skill.
And when you try to come back in the fall, you won’t just pick up where you left off. You’ll have to relearn the bracing, the sequencing, and the movement mechanics required to lift effectively. That means you can’t even apply enough stimulus to get results until you shake off the rust — which delays real progress.
At Revo, we’d rather you stay sharp. Stay skilled. And stay ready.
Stay Strong. Stay Capable. Stay In It.
This May RevoFit block is designed to support your outdoor training, not compete with it.
You can ride, run, hike, or paddle and stay strong, fast, and injury-resistant — but you need smart programming and consistency.
If you’re in doubt, show up. If you’re unsure how to pair training with your trail time, ask us. This is what we do.
You don’t have to start over in the fall. Train smart now — and stay in it.
Summer in Montana means long days on the trails for runners, hikers, and bikers. With race season in full swing, it’s tempting to devote every spare hour to logging miles or rides and shelve the gym work. But skipping strength training in the summer (or any in-season period) is a big and unfortunately common mistake. Maintaining a dose of strength work year-round will make you a more resilient, higher-performing mountain athlete.
In this article, we’ll explore why strength training is crucial even during peak season, how the Eustress training approach (from Jon Pope and Craig Weller’s Building the Elite designed for elite Special Forces Operators) can deliver productive stress without burnout, and what the science says about the benefits of in-season resistance training for endurance athletes. We’ll also draw parallels to the phenomenal work capacity of Special Forces and elite athletes – and how you can build similar all-terrain athleticism.
The Summer Temptation: Why Endurance Athletes Drop Strength
After a winter of lifting and base building, many trail runners and mountain bikers abandon the weight room when summer adventures call. It’s understandable – who wants to be indoors when you could be summiting peaks or ripping singletrack?
Additionally, athletes often worry that strength workouts will leave them sore or fatigued, interfering with key runs or rides. The result: strength training gets placed on the back burner until the off-season. However, cutting out strength completely for months can backfire. Research on endurance athletes has shown that when they stop resistance training during the competitive season, they rapidly lose the gains they worked so hard to build. In one study on elite cyclists, terminating strength workouts led to a “rapid decline of adaptations” – hard-earned strength and power faded within just 8 weeks of stopping lifting.
In contrast, those who kept a minimal strength routine in-season preserved their muscle size and strength and continued to improve performance. For example, well-trained cyclists who maintained one strength session per week during competition season kept the increases in thigh muscle cross-sectional area and leg strength they gained in the off-season, and even boosted their cycling power output and endurance more than the cyclists who did no strength training.
In short, if you drop strength completely, you’re likely to give up hard-won benefits – and your performance and injury resilience can and will suffer.
Eustress Training: Productive Stress Without Burnout
How can you continue strength training in-season without overtaxing yourself? Enter Eustress training, a concept from Building the Elite’s Jon Pope and Craig Weller that provides just the right amount of stress. Eustress means positive, productive stress – the opposite of distress.
In training terms, eustress workouts challenge you enough to elicit positive adaptations such as maintaining muscle mass, tissue integrity, and bone density, but not so much that they fry your nervous system or require days of recovery.
According to coach Craig Weller (a former Special Forces operator) and Jon Pope, “Eustress training is a way of training your body to do more work, easily by raising the baseline of exercise you can handle without stressing your body out or draining your recovery capacity.”
In practical terms, you’re teaching your body and mind that hard work can feel surprisingly manageable. Eustress training lets you train harder and recover faster. By staying below your max stress threshold, you accumulate relatively high volume at moderately heavy loads without triggering excessive fatigue. Over time, you can eventually push harder, recover faster, and when you want to really increase effort in the gym or on the trail, you have a higher output potential. Because you’ve practiced making tough efforts feel easy, you can do more before hitting your limit.
In essence, eustress workouts build a bigger engine without burning it out. Importantly, Eustress-style strength work is designed for control and efficiency. Key characteristics include:
Sub-maximal intensity, moderate to low volume: Lifting a weight that is challenging but not maximal, for moderate total reps over time. This builds work capacity. For example, you might perform 20–50 total reps of a lift in short mini-sets (1-3 reps at a time) with brief rest, staying in a comfortable heart rate zone. This approach packs in volume without spiking stress hormones.
No form breakdown or grinding: Every rep is done with perfect technique; you stop well before failure. Quality of movement stays high even as fatigue slowly accumulates. This “teaches you how to make hard things easy” by refining technique and remaining mentally calm.
Controlled heart rate and calm mind: Eustress sessions emphasize keeping your heart rate relatively low (e.g. <150 bpm) and actively managing your stress response. You rest just enough to let your heart rate drop and maintain composure between sets. The idea is to lift in a relaxed state, not a fight-or-flight frenzy.
Short recovery and minimal soreness: Because you never go to all-out failure or trigger extreme fatigue, recovery time is short. You’re ready to train again sooner, which is ideal in-season when you also have high mileage or ride volume. Eustress strength work won’t leave you hobbling for days.
In practice, Eustress training is perfect for in-season strength maintenance. Pope notes that they often use eustress methods during high-volume “in-season” blocks, because it’s “high enough in intensity to maintain top-end output, but ‘feels’ easy enough to not be mentally stressful when volume is kept low.”
It reinforces your ability to stay relaxed under effort – a skill that can decline when you’re grinding out long, intense days. For mountain athletes putting in big miles, this is gold. You can pair eustress lifting with “self-limiting and movement-restorative exercises” during your season (think controlled single-leg squats, lunges, core work, etc.) to shore up any movement issues and maintain proper range of motion while still respecting the heavy training load you’re carrying elsewhere.
The bottom line: Eustress-style strength training lets you reap the benefits of lifting without derailing your endurance training.
Eustress training in action – performing moderately heavy deadlifts calmly for multiple sets. This approach builds strength and work capacity while keeping the effort feeling controlled, not crushing.
Why In-Season Strength Training Benefits Mountain Athletes
Limiting resistance training to shoulder seasons is a poor choice for athletes of any level; it directly supports your performance and health as an endurance athlete. Here are the key reasons you should keep lifting even in peak trail season, backed by science and experience:
1. Preserve Muscle Mass and Joint Tissue Quality
Endurance training by nature is catabolic – long runs/rides and high mileage weeks can break down muscle tissue and strain joints and tendons over time. Without any strength stimulus to counterbalance that, you risk gradually losing muscle mass and structural strength. Strength training is essential to reduce the loss of muscle mass, preserve joint health, and maintain peak performance, as noted in one training review. Even a relatively low dose of lifting can send an anabolic signals to your body that helps offset muscle breakdown.
Crucially, strength work strengthens more than just muscles – it fortifies your connective tissues, bones, and cartilage by subjecting them to safe, controlled loads. It is, by definition, a preventive measure for your body against breaking down. Research shows resistance exercise increases bone density and connective tissue resilience, which running and cycling (or bodyweight workouts) alone does not address. Many endurance athletes actually have low bone density or weak supporting musculature from neglecting weights; over the long term this can lead to stress fractures or joint degeneration. By keeping a weekly strength routine, you maintain the integrity of your joints and tissues during the pounding summer months. Think of it as keeping the chassis of your “vehicle” strong while the engine logs high mileage.
2. Injury Prevention and Durability
Mountain sports are tough on the body – steep descents, uneven terrain, and repetitive motion can create or exacerbate imbalances. One of the biggest arguments for in-season strength training is injury prevention. Endurance athletes are prone to overuse injuries (IT band syndrome, anterior knee pain, Achilles issues, plantar fasciitis, etc.), especially when ramping up volume. Strength training serves as a protective armor: it corrects muscle imbalances, improves joint stability, and builds resilience in tissues so they can withstand higher training loads.
For instance, strengthening the glutes, hips, and core can improve your alignment and form on the trail, reducing stress on knees and ankles. Exercises like single-leg squats or deadlifts with good posture train the muscles both in your lower body and in your core that keep you balanced on technical terrain. Stronger leg and core muscles also mean each stride or pedal stroke places less strain on passive structures like ligaments and is more efficient.
Studies on runners have found that incorporating strength training significantly lowers injury rates compared to those who only do their aerobic work. Simply put, maintaining strength work keeps your body durable so you’re less likely to be sidelined mid-season.
An added bonus: if you do take a spill or have a mishap, a stronger body can better absorb impact and recover faster. Furthermore, avoiding the PT in the late summer or fall means more time for play and a better ability to shift to winter sports.
3. Enhanced Performance: Running Economy, Power, and Endurance
Contrary to the popular fear that lifting might “slow you down,” smart strength training and plyometrics will actually make you faster and improve your endurance. Extensive research in endurance sport athletes has confirmed that adding resistance training leads to better performance metrics.
For runners, one of the key measures is running economy – how efficiently you use oxygen at a given pace. Multiple studies and reviews have shown that strength training improves running economy in mid- and long-distance runners, meaning you become more energy-efficient. With stronger muscles and tendons, each stride is more forceful and elastic, so you maintain pace with less effort. One review in Sports Medicine summed it up: strength work is a significant variable for boosting running efficiency. It’s not just runners – cyclists and skiers see similar benefits in power output and fatigue resistance from weight training.
Importantly, these gains come without adding bulk or hurting your VO₂ max. In fact, a well-designed strength program (focusing on low-rep heavy lifts and explosive moves) tends to improve neuromuscular coordination, not muscle size. Training to gain muscle (Hypertrophy) and training for pure strength are quite different. For example, in one study, a group of athletes who dedicated a portion of training to heavy strength and plyometrics improved their 5K times, increased their anaerobic capacity, and saw better endurance with no loss of aerobic capacity compared to a control group. Stronger legs also translate to higher peak power on the bike and more sprint reserve at the end of a long effort.
Don’t forget uphill performance – those hill climbs get easier when you’ve built up your glutes, quads, and calves in the weight room. Think of strength training as raising your performance ceiling: you develop a bigger power engine to complement your endurance fuel tank.
4. Faster Recovery and Sustainable Volume
One paradoxical effect of keeping up with strength work: it can actually help you better handle your endurance training. Regular resistance training (especially using a eustress approach) conditions your body to tolerate and recover from training stress. This is called Work Capacity.
By exposing yourself to manageable levels of lifting stress, you stimulate your recovery systems and hormonal responses in a beneficial way. Eustress training in particular reduces recovery time – allowing you to shift emphasis to other physiological demands. Athletes who build a higher work capacity through strength can often bounce back quicker between hard workouts.
Ever notice how some ultra-endurance racers seem almost invincible, able to crank out long run after long run? Often, they have a history of strength or power training that gives them a wider base of fitness. Their bodies don’t view a 4-hour effort as a total emergency because they’ve done hard but controlled work in training (like heavy carries, circuits, etc.). Strength training increases your overall work capacity and fatigue resistance, so big days take less out of you.
In mountain terms, if you strengthen your legs and core, a 5-10k ft. day won’t trash you as much – you’ll recover faster for the next day’s adventure. This means you can sustain higher volumes in-season without breaking down. It’s no surprise that many coaches of elite endurance athletes keep some lifting year-round precisely to help with recovery and to avoid the “fragility” that can come from only doing one type of exercise.
NBA players now famously do resistance training after games to help with regulation during a packed in-season for this very reason.
Elite Models of Resilience: Special Ops and All-Terrain Athletes
Need more proof that balancing strength and endurance is the recipe for peak performance? Just look at the training of Special Forces operators and other elite tactical athletes. These individuals are the epitome of all-around fitness: they can ruck mountains with heavy packs, sprint or fight when needed, and keep going for hours or days. How do they develop such high-level work capacity and resiliency? One key is that they train strength and endurance concurrently, year-round – they have to, because their missions demand both.
In fact, the Eustress training concept itself was born from special operations preparation. Craig Weller developed it after seeing how controlling the stress response allowed him and his teammates to do more work with less wear-and-tear. Special Ops training programs incorporate athlete style training (Plyos, contrast training) with strength circuits, heavy carries, and bodyweight exercises even during intense endurance phases. This builds what Jon Pope calls a “high tolerance for objectively difficult conditions without a strong stress response.”
In other words, make hard things feel easier – exactly what mountain athletes want when facing a grueling climb at mile 30 of an ultra or a long backcountry expedition.
The example set by these tactical athletes and ultra-endurance elites is clear: true fitness means being adaptable. As a mountain runner or biker, you aren’t served by being one-dimensional. Sure, you could drop strength training and just run or ride more – you might eke out a slight endurance gain in the very short term, but you risk becoming less robust overall.
Instead, strive to be like those elite performers who can do it all. Maintaining some strength work will give you that extra gear and resilience. You’ll handle surprise demands (like carrying a buddy’s bike out of the woods, or scrambling up a boulder field) without issue. And you’ll simply feel better – stronger, safer, and more confident in your body’s capabilities.
Long-Term Athleticism and Adaptability
Finally, think beyond this season. The benefits of in-season strength training compound over time. By committing to year-round strength, you are investing in your long-term athleticism. Season after season, you’ll build upon a solid foundation instead of starting from scratch each off-season. This leads to cumulative improvements in power, efficiency, and injury resistance.
Many masters athletes who remain competitive well into their 50s or 60s cite consistent strength training as a key factor that keeps them young in sport. It’s not just about performance in one race, but maintaining the ability to do what you love – trail running, mountain biking, skiing, climbing – for decades without your body breaking down.
Strength training fortifies your muscles and joints against Father Time. Moreover, keeping a bit of strength work in your routine can rekindle motivation and break the monotony of pure endurance training. It’s mentally refreshing to challenge your body in a different way, and the confidence from hitting some weights can carry over to your trail exploits. Instead of viewing gym sessions as a shoulder season chore, see them as an integral part of being an athlete year-round.
Embrace the identity of a well-rounded mountain athlete – one who can run far, ride long, and lift strong. That approach will pay dividends, not just during summer race season, but whenever new challenges arise.
Conclusion: Stronger = Better (Even in Summer)
When the mountains are calling, absolutely get out and enjoy them – but don’t neglect the strength and stability work that allows you to answer that call at your best. By applying a Eustress training method and mindset, you can integrate strength training into your summer schedule in a way that compliments your running or riding, rather than competing with it.
The science is clear and convincing: as little as one heavy, low volume, and efficient strength training session each week can keep your gains, prevent losses, boost your performance, protect you from injury, and build the kind of resilient fitness that sets you apart.
As we’ve discussed, studies are clear that just 1–2 focused strength sessions per week (think 30–45 minutes of compound lifts and mobility) can make a huge difference. Remember, this means external load. Unfortunately, bodyweight, reformer, etc, workouts don’t count in this instance.
So, as you lace up for that next trail run or prep your bike for a big ride, remember the weight room is your friend, not foe. Don’t fall for the allure of just running or biking all summer. Strong legs, a stable core, addressing full range-of-motion, and the capacity to handle stress will make you a faster, safer, and happier mountain athlete. Train smart with productive eustress, and you’ll find that a bit of lifting actually gives you more energy for those epic days outside.
In the end, strength training isn’t a distraction from your sport – it’s a secret weapon for longevity and success in it. Keep the iron in your in-season diet, and enjoy the rewards on every trail and summit you conquer.
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