Nick Bare

• SupplementDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.

  Electrolyte supplementation

  Built his Leadville fuel plan around a scoop of electrolytes an hour, on top of the carbohydrate mix, from two hours before the gun to the finish. Salt tabs went in alongside rather than instead. The electrolyte product is his own company's.

  Source: BPN: What I Learned From My First 100-Mile Ultra
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• GearDoes it$$$Expensive: Several hundred dollars and up.

  Altitude tent

  All his Leadville training happened in Texas, which is no preparation for the Rockies, so he slept in a Hypoxico altitude tent at a simulated 12,000 feet and put in Stairmaster hours to get ready for the climbing.

  Source: BPN: What I Learned From My First 100-Mile Ultra
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• BookRecommends$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.

  25 Hours a Day

  His own book, written around building BPN while serving as an active duty infantry officer. The pitch he makes for it: there is a large gap between what you think you can do and what you are capable of, and he wants to help close it. He narrates the audiobook.

  Source: Nick Bare: 25 Hours a Day
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• GearDoes it$$$Mid: Roughly $50 to $500, or up to $50/month.

  Running hydration vest

  Ran Leadville in a Salomon vest holding 100 fluid ounces at a time, about 12 miles between refills. He lists spare soft flasks, bladders and a backup vest among the gear he had inspected the night before, in case something split mid-race.

  Source: BPN: What I Learned From My First 100-Mile Ultra
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Repeatable, mostly free routines with a defined trigger and dose.

• Resistance trainingDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.

  A bodybuilder at his core, in his own description, even mid-endurance block. Lifting never leaves the plan; when a race build takes over he cuts strength work from five days a week to three rather than dropping it, and he says he loves the pump too much to give it up.

  Source: InsideHook: How Nick Bare Pioneered the Hybrid Athlete Revolution

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• CyclingDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.

  Trained through a Texas summer in triple-digit heat on the bike, which he credits for a 5:48 split over 112 miles at Ironman Florida. He finished the whole race in 11:28, more than half an hour inside his target.

  Source: BPN: Nick Bare's Ironman Race Day Recap

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• RunningDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.

  Swore off running when he left the military, then signed up for the 2018 Austin Marathon anyway. On his own training page he traces the line from a first attempt he struggled to bring in under four hours to a 2:48 best, 100-mile races including Leadville, and an Ironman finish.

  Source: Nick Bare: Hybrid Athlete Training

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• SwimmingDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.

  Swimming came with the Ironman. After two slow marathons he signed up for Ironman Florida having never raced a triathlon, and covered the 2.4-mile swim in 1:17:57, ahead of the goal time he had set himself.

  Source: BPN: Nick Bare's Ironman Race Day Recap

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• Autoregulated training (RPE)Does itFREE, no cost

  Bad sleep changes the session. If a max-effort squat is written down and the warm-up feels wrong, he says he might cut the intensity or train another body part, and a friend calling about a 20-mile trail run tomorrow will push heavy leg day to the far side of it.

  Source: BPN: Debunking the Top 4 Myths of Hybrid Training

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• Backward planningDoes itFREE, no cost

  Learned it in the military and kept it. Fix the hour something has to happen, list what needs doing before then, work back through how long each piece takes, and the wake-up time falls out of the arithmetic. That is why his alarm sits at 5 a.m.

  Source: BPN: Nick Bare's 3 Tips for a Better Morning Routine

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• Endurance carbohydrate fuelingDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.

  Fueling is not something you pull out on race day, he writes; he rehearses the plan on long runs first. At Leadville that meant a carbohydrate and electrolyte mix every hour alongside bars, gels, salt tabs and peanut butter sandwiches. The drink mixes are his own company's.

  Source: BPN: What I Learned From My First 100-Mile Ultra

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• Hybrid athlete trainingDoes itFREE, no cost

  Running and lifting together is how he has trained since 2018. He told InsideHook he landed on the word hybrid while writing a plan for himself, because he was chasing two sports at once; others had used the phrase before, he says, but this was his version of it.

  Source: InsideHook: How Nick Bare Pioneered the Hybrid Athlete Revolution

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• Two-a-day trainingDoes itFREE, no cost

  Prefers to train twice: a run in the morning, strength work in the evening. He writes that a growing business, marriage and a daughter changed what fits, so he now judges the week by whether the cardio and the resistance work both got done rather than by any single day.

  Source: BPN: Debunking the Top 4 Myths of Hybrid Training

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• Zone 2 cardioRecommendsFREE, no cost

  Running the easy runs too hard was, in his words, the biggest mistake he made as a hybrid athlete, and one he thinks plenty of people repeat. His rule of thumb: 80 percent of running at low, steady heart rate, the remaining 20 at threshold or full capacity.

  Source: InsideHook: How Nick Bare Pioneered the Hybrid Athlete Revolution

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• VO2 max intervalsRecommendsFREE, no cost

  VO2 max falls as you age, he writes, so he argues for building it while young and holding it with zone two work plus some high-intensity zone five efforts. He frames the whole thing as a health span question rather than a racing one.

  Source: BPN: 6 Years of Hybrid Athlete Training, The Top 3 Benefits

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• Caloric surplus phaseRecommends$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.

  Eating above maintenance is what makes or breaks a building phase, says the article his company published on his approach. The advice it attributes to him: find the calorie count that holds bodyweight steady, then eat above it at whatever rate of gain you want. It also describes him fitting five meals into a busy day.

  Source: BPN: Top 3 Rules to Build Muscle While Running

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Daily practices held long enough to become default behavior.

• Deliberate solitudeDoes itFREE, no cost

  The morning run doubles as his solitude: no music, no social media, before the sun is up. Solitude never presents itself, the article argues, so you have to go looking for it, and it frames the habit as what keeps his stress from landing on the people around him.

  Source: BPN: Nick Bare's 3 Tips for a Better Morning Routine

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• Early risingDoes itFREE, no cost

  Up at 5 a.m. daily. His company's write-up of the routine puts it down to backward planning learned in the Army, and to the plain fact that nothing else is competing for those hours: no distractions, and complete control of the day before it starts.

  Source: BPN: Nick Bare's 3 Tips for a Better Morning Routine

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• Personal mantraDoes itFREE, no cost

  Quit a training run at mile 10 and started walking home, then thought about what quitting would say about him, turned around and finished 19. He wrote 1 MORE on the bill of his hat and posted the photo. His site dates that to January 2019 and says thousands of people now carry the words as a tattoo.

  Source: Nick Bare: Go One More

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• Training first thingDoes itFREE, no cost

  Trains early because the rest of the day cannot be trusted. He calls the chaos that follows putting out fires, and once a fire starts you cannot walk away from it, so the movement, and the energy and focus he gets from it, goes first.

  Source: BPN: Nick Bare's 3 Tips for a Better Morning Routine

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• Documenting the journeyDoes itFREE, no cost

  Picked up a camera in 2014, on arrival at Fort Hood and two years into the company, then filmed fitness advice, diet tips, military life and the work of a new entrepreneur. That decision changed everything, he writes on his own site, and sharing every step is what built trust with customers.

  Source: Nick Bare: About

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• “The biggest mistake I made pursuing the hybrid athlete life was running my easy runs too hard. It’s a mistake that I’ve learned that a lot of people make. Our body benefits tremendously from Zone 2 aerobic conditioning, which is when your heart rate is low and your pace is steady. Eighty percent of your running should be done in that state, with that last 20 percent left for your max threshold, full capacity runs.”

  On Zone 2 cardio

• “I was running 10 miles on Saturday and then ripping 405 pounds on a deadlift on Sunday, which I don’t think is the norm for runners. That is how I love to train, and it’s the way that I always will train.”

  On Hybrid athlete training

• “When I transitioned out of the military, I vividly remember saying, "I will never run a day in my life again." If you know anything about me, you know that this did not last long.”

  On Running

• “Fueling is not something that you pull out of your back pocket and try out on race day. You should practice your race fuel strategy during training sessions, long runs, workouts, etc.”

  On Endurance carbohydrate fueling

• “I stopped and thought, "If I quit on this run, what does it say about my character? What else will I quit?" So I kept running. I ran 19 miles that day - one more mile than I had planned.”

  On Personal mantra