Concurrent Training: Strength and Aerobic Training at the same time?

Concurrent Training is a type of training that is often implemented into strength and conditioning programs for team sports, as well as individual sports.  However, we must consider the primary physiological demands of the sport.  Does it require power? Endurance? Strength? Or a combo?  What energy systems are used the most?  All of these questions should be answered when thinking about concurrent training.  
Patrick Ward is a massage therapist, certified strength and conditioning specialist, certified personal trainer, and USA weightlifting certified coach.   He holds many other certifications in active release technique, functional movement screen, and titlelist performance institute.  He is well respected in the fitness industry and owns a sports performance center in Arizona.  This article speaks to some of the important points of concurrent training.  He reports the summary of a research article about this topic in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research:  
  

1. Hypertrophy and max strength did not differ between the strength only and the concurrent training groups, however, power was significantly decreased in the concurrent training group versus the strength training only group.
2. No decrements were found in VO2max between an endurance only group or a concurrent training group which indicates that aerobic capacity may not really be inhibited by this method of programming. An interesting aside is the same result has also been seen in elite endurance athletes.
3. Concurrently performing strength training and running led to significant decrements in hypertrophy and strength gains however this result was not found to be the case when strength training was performed concurrently with cycling. The authors hypothesized that his may be due to the fact that cycling is more biomechanically similar to many of the strength tests used in the study or since running has a higher eccentric component (while cycling is primarily concentric) there may be potential for greater muscle damage. However, despite the performance decrements, concurrent training with running led to a greater decline in fat mass versus concurrent training with cycling.
4. While the common ground between long duration endurance training and resistance training is low (as I indicated above when discussing the interference phenomenon) there does appear to be a common ground between short duration, high-intensity, sprinting and resistance exercise due to the way the neuromuscular system is recruited for these tasks.

Additionally, he adds some of his personal thoughts based on his experience.  His article on this topic is very well thought out and researched, as are many of his blog posts.  I encourage you to read though some of his blog in your spare time as he presents a lot of very good topics.

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