Hybrid athlete Fergus Crawley understands better than most that balancing strength and endurance training is tough. But he follows one simple rule to keep it sustainable: stay adaptable.
Having completed feats as demanding as the Brutal Extreme Triathlon (a 7.6km swim, 275km bike ride and 85km run), lifting a combined 1200 pounds across squat, deadlift and bench press before completing an Iron-distance triathlon on the same day, and running 250km in 50 hours without stopping, Crawley’s goals don’t naturally complement each other.
For that reason, he emphasises just how crucial adaptability is for recreational hybrid athletes. For those who aren’t elite, he argues, training should support your life – not the other way around. With work, family, injuries and general life admin, sticking rigidly to a plan is often unrealistic.
Why Adaptability Matters
'As a recreational athlete, you train to live – you don’t live to train,' Crawley says in his latest YouTube video. 'Those are very different things. Training is a way of supporting your character, your resilience, your sense of fulfilment, but it is one piece of a bigger puzzle. You can plan hypothetically, but the week might unfold completely in a way that you don’t expect. I’m sure this sounds familiar for the vast majority of you.'
Unlike elite athletes, whose lives are structured around performance, most people can’t optimise every variable – from sleep to daily training conditions. Sessions sometimes have to take a backseat.
Adaptability, then, is about knowing when to push and when to pull back. If you’ve had a stressful or exhausting week, scaling down – or even skipping a session – can be the smarter call, regardless of what your plan says. Crawley argues this approach pays off long term, helping reduce burnout and lower injury risk.
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Prioritise Long-Term Consistency
'Don’t let it bruise your ego because you’re not hitting plan A,' he adds. 'Don’t become dogmatic. Don’t become stubborn. By removing the ego attachment that you have to certain numbers, the reality of life is a very useful way of looking at things. Pushing through for the sake of dogma or stubbornness would only have had negative consequences.'
Training should enhance your life, not consume it. There’s little value in overreaching for a single performance goal at the expense of everything else. Instead, it’s about showing up consistently, improving over time and staying within your limits.
'The skill of adaptability is the thing that is going to make you the most sustainable athlete over time. If you find yourself in a cycle of full send until you hit a brick wall, you’re not going to have the sustainability that you’re looking for. By knowing when it’s time to take your foot off the gas so that you can then put it back to the floor – that is a skill in and of itself,' Crawley concludes. 'Training is one part of a bigger picture and it’s very important not to forget that.'
Ryan is a Senior Writer at Men’s Health UK with a passion for storytelling, health and fitness. Having graduated from Cardiff University in 2020, and later obtaining his NCTJ qualification, Ryan started his career as a Trainee News Writer for sports titles Golf Monthly, Cycling Weekly and Rugby World before progressing to Staff Writer and subsequently Senior Writer with football magazine FourFourTwo.
During his two-and-a-half years there he wrote news stories for the website and features for the magazine, while he also interviewed names such as Les Ferdinand, Ally McCoist, Jamie Redknapp and Antonio Rudiger, among many others. His standout memory, though, came when getting the opportunity to speak to then-Plymouth Argyle manager Steven Schumacher as the club won League One in 2023.
Having grown up a keen footballer and playing for his boyhood side until the age of 16, Ryan got the opportunity to represent Northern Ireland national futsal team eight times, scoring three goals against England, Scotland and Gibraltar. Now past his peak, Ryan prefers to mix weightlifting with running – he achieved a marathon PB of 3:31:49 at Manchester in April 2025, but credits the heat for failing to get below the coveted 3:30 mark…
You can follow Ryan on Instagram @ryan.dabbs or on X @ryandabbs_
