I gave a couple of advanced HS athletes a few double threshold workouts during their offseason training. These are talented, driven athletes that wanted to be training at a high level. However, before I felt comfortable assigning these workouts, I made sure they had the following under their belt:
1. The ability to comfortably double multiple times per week. Easy day or workout day didn't matter, but I needed them to be comfortable running twice per day before having them do two workouts per day.
2. Have a solid base of functional muscular strength from resistance training (squats, deadlifts, etc) and durable mechanics (drills, steep 8 sec hill sprints, flying 30's).
3. The ability to complete a substantial single-session tempo/threshold session like 3 x 10 minutes at the proper intensity.
With those in place, we made sure to do the following:
1. We don't have a lactate meter, but talked extensively about how low the intensity should feel relative to other types of workouts.
2. Limited the total amount of time of reps to ~45 minutes split between the two sessions. If you look at the Ingebrigtsen training, they are usually doing ~60 minutes worth of reps split between two sessions, so doing 3/4th of that seemed about right.
3. Carefully monitored their recovery (how they felt, resting HR first thing in the morning, etc) to make sure they hadn't overdone it.
Both kids had excellent XC seasons, finishing in the top 5 of their competitive state meet. At their recent state meet for track, they both doubled and brought home two 1sts, a 2nd and a 5th while combining to drastically reset the school record books in the 800, 1600 and 3200.
TL:DR - A couple of talented, driven kids used double thresholds carefully in the offseason, and were very successful.
I've used limited double hard workout per day sessions, however I wouldn't say that they were true threshold sessions. I only used them with athletes that met the criteria cited by the poster above. It's funny how close his and my criteria were for assigning the sessions.
Instead of the double threshold, we did more like a double CV session a few times last track season (2023). A fairly common workout for us last season was 6-7 x 3 min at CV OR 5 x 3 min @ CV with some faster stuff tacked on at the end. Instead of making each session longer or harder, I had the kids do 5 x 3 min in the morning and 5 x 3 min in the afternoon, for a total of 10 x 3 min. As stated above, this was for my most advanced kids. I feel like they got a great training stimulus and were no more tired the next day than if they'd just done one of the singles sessions listed above. One of the guys went on to be state champ in the 800 and the other won double league championships (16/32), and was able to close in a 58 to win the 1600 (30/28).
Unlike a lot of other coaches, I try to encourage my athletes to double early in their careers and on relatively low mileage. I'm a big believer in the concept of small training stimuli creating a boost in anabolic hormone levels that last for significant time after an easy stimulus. So, we don't necessarily double to get extra volume in, rather we double in order to get a recovery type stimulus. In the summers, we meet 3 days a week in the mornings. I encourage almost all of my kids to go out and try to jog 15-30 minutes in the afternoons on those days.
So this is an alternative way of thinking about doubles when mileage is still conservative. But I def don't see any evidence base/research for this thinking and it does shorten considerably the recovery phase, which is when you get better. HS level, esp young HS level, I like to see 24 hours recovery.
I would love to hear someone like JDaniels or Seiler chime in academically on this splitting at lower mileage. We are still experimenting with physiology lets be real, but I just cant pull the trigger on young people running around the clock.
I think doubles on lower mileage are fine. Especially in the Summer when it's really hot, I think it's easier to recover from a 6/4 or 6/6 than a very long 10-12M slog in the heat.
There's no magic to double threshold. The big takeaway that coaches who do some of their own thinking should take is that doing higher volumes of lower intensity work more frequently can lead to big gains. As others have said, high schoolers don't need that kind of complexity.
With my fastest runners, I experimented this year with reducing the volume of their 3200 workouts and replacing it with about twice the volume at LT pace (est. 1 hour race pace). For example, in the past we would have done 5-6 x 800 @ 3200 (usually 5 then a few fast 200s at the end). This year we did 2k @ LT + 4 x 800 @ 3200 (and finished with a few faster 200s). We've had big PRs at all events, so it seems like this approach has been working.
So this is an alternative way of thinking about doubles when mileage is still conservative. But I def don't see any evidence base/research for this thinking and it does shorten considerably the recovery phase, which is when you get better. HS level, esp young HS level, I like to see 24 hours recovery.
I would love to hear someone like JDaniels or Seiler chime in academically on this splitting at lower mileage. We are still experimenting with physiology lets be real, but I just cant pull the trigger on young people running around the clock.
I'm with you, I don't think high schoolers should be doubling all the time, especially if they have school days where school starts relatively early (it just doesn't make sense from a teenager's sleep cycle, etc), but kids that are running 60+ MPW can do 2-3 doubles to get to 8-10 runs per week, and that doesn't seem drastic to me at all.
It's monumentally easy to slide threshold training into a HS program - you start like I did - 10x 200m @ a pace at least 1 minute above the runners mile pace. And ONE time a day. Then you work up from there based on how the kid progresses. The idea that you start with 1k (or higher) reps right from the get go is ludicrous. And dangerous. 1k reps would be the LIMIT for HS kids not the starting point.
The problem is most USA coaches have just a few weeks to get a kid ready for hard races in a season that might last 2 or 3 months tops. There is no time to do any type of serious training before the season is over and the kid moves on to some other sport. And threshold training takes - at a minimum - many months to be effective. Sirpocs thread and strava thread outline this - 4 months to see some significant results is a pretty good expectation.
HS coaches (and college coaches for that matter) can't afford to wait that long. But a kid who really loves running - like the many who pop in this forum asking for advice for training over the summer or training for track a year from now - those kids who would benefit the most from SINGLE threshold training.
And since there is an over 100 page thread on this forum outlining exactly how to do that - this thread is full of bad advice.
It's monumentally easy to slide threshold training into a HS program - you start like I did - 10x 200m @ a pace at least 1 minute above the runners mile pace. And ONE time a day. Then you work up from there based on how the kid progresses. The idea that you start with 1k (or higher) reps right from the get go is ludicrous. And dangerous. 1k reps would be the LIMIT for HS kids not the starting point.
The problem is most USA coaches have just a few weeks to get a kid ready for hard races in a season that might last 2 or 3 months tops. There is no time to do any type of serious training before the season is over and the kid moves on to some other sport. And threshold training takes - at a minimum - many months to be effective. Sirpocs thread and strava thread outline this - 4 months to see some significant results is a pretty good expectation.
HS coaches (and college coaches for that matter) can't afford to wait that long. But a kid who really loves running - like the many who pop in this forum asking for advice for training over the summer or training for track a year from now - those kids who would benefit the most from SINGLE threshold training.
And since there is an over 100 page thread on this forum outlining exactly how to do that - this thread is full of bad advice.
Have you even read this thread? It’s actually full of GOOD advice. Most people are saying not to double threshold with high school kids and are outlining ways to implement more threshold with high school kids in SINGLES.
It's monumentally easy to slide threshold training into a HS program - you start like I did - 10x 200m @ a pace at least 1 minute above the runners mile pace. And ONE time a day. Then you work up from there based on how the kid progresses. The idea that you start with 1k (or higher) reps right from the get go is ludicrous. And dangerous. 1k reps would be the LIMIT for HS kids not the starting point.
The problem is most USA coaches have just a few weeks to get a kid ready for hard races in a season that might last 2 or 3 months tops. There is no time to do any type of serious training before the season is over and the kid moves on to some other sport. And threshold training takes - at a minimum - many months to be effective. Sirpocs thread and strava thread outline this - 4 months to see some significant results is a pretty good expectation.
HS coaches (and college coaches for that matter) can't afford to wait that long. But a kid who really loves running - like the many who pop in this forum asking for advice for training over the summer or training for track a year from now - those kids who would benefit the most from SINGLE threshold training.
And since there is an over 100 page thread on this forum outlining exactly how to do that - this thread is full of bad advice.
So for a 5 minute miler you are suggesting 10x200 at 45 sec to start?
I've used limited double hard workout per day sessions, however I wouldn't say that they were true threshold sessions. I only used them with athletes that met the criteria cited by the poster above. It's funny how close his and my criteria were for assigning the sessions.
Instead of the double threshold, we did more like a double CV session a few times last track season (2023). A fairly common workout for us last season was 6-7 x 3 min at CV OR 5 x 3 min @ CV with some faster stuff tacked on at the end. Instead of making each session longer or harder, I had the kids do 5 x 3 min in the morning and 5 x 3 min in the afternoon, for a total of 10 x 3 min. As stated above, this was for my most advanced kids. I feel like they got a great training stimulus and were no more tired the next day than if they'd just done one of the singles sessions listed above. One of the guys went on to be state champ in the 800 and the other won double league championships (16/32), and was able to close in a 58 to win the 1600 (30/28).
Unlike a lot of other coaches, I try to encourage my athletes to double early in their careers and on relatively low mileage. I'm a big believer in the concept of small training stimuli creating a boost in anabolic hormone levels that last for significant time after an easy stimulus. So, we don't necessarily double to get extra volume in, rather we double in order to get a recovery type stimulus. In the summers, we meet 3 days a week in the mornings. I encourage almost all of my kids to go out and try to jog 15-30 minutes in the afternoons on those days.
So this is an alternative way of thinking about doubles when mileage is still conservative. But I def don't see any evidence base/research for this thinking and it does shorten considerably the recovery phase, which is when you get better. HS level, esp young HS level, I like to see 24 hours recovery.
I would love to hear someone like JDaniels or Seiler chime in academically on this splitting at lower mileage. We are still experimenting with physiology lets be real, but I just cant pull the trigger on young people running around the clock.
I'm no Daniels, nor Cannova, but I'll link a self serving post to my team blog that I wrote for my team a few years ago.
There's a research article linked in my post. Super dense and hard to read, but my takeaway from it is that if an athlete hasn't gone to the well too far in any given training session, then the application of a second, very easy, shakeout type of session may be beneficial.
Experience has shown me that when my athletes do lots of moderate sessions followed by easy sessions, that their improvement is greater than if they just do a more typical hard day / easy day approach.
I think that the genius of applying this concept via the "Norwegian Approach" is that athletes can regularly hit relatively high volumes of quality work as long as they stay below specific physiological thresholds (LTP2) in the case of the Norwegian model. Before Double Threshold was a thing, Bakken made a name for himself by doing 4-5 threshold sessions per week with easier doubling back for the second session of the day. I was a regular participant on his message board back in the day and I know for a fact that he was applying easier shakeout efforts as his second session.
So, no, you don't have to do double threshold to get good, however, you don't have to completely throw out the idea of doing doubles with lower volume athletes either.
For those of you doing double threshold at the high school level, or for athletes that are relatively new to the sport, how have you gone about implementing it? What has the build up and introduction looked like? Any tips?
I've adopted the Norwegian style training to high school athletes. My major takeaway is that in base training, tempo runs (especially at threshold) are really taxing and have relatively low volume limit. However, when you structure threshold work as short reps with even shorter rest, kids generally can handle higher volume and more frequent sessions.
Prior years, I had kids maxing out with a threshold run per week, at max 4 miles. Basically every kid felt like this was near max effort and felt it the next day.
MOre recently I switched to threshold k's with short rest. The top athlete got up to 2 sessions of 10xk@threshold in a week during base training. So instead of 4 miles at threshold in a week (which was basically max effort), he got about 12 (and almost always felt the workout was too easy). Week after week the increased volume at threshold has really helped.
Obviously doing double threshold with high schoolers isn't practical. But I think the general lessons from threshold training apply, and can be beneficial. Essentially micro dosing threshold allows the runner to do more threshold, and do it more frequently.
Agree on all of this! We have gotten significantly better as a program since switching to something similar.
We have some JRs/SRs that want to run doubles but we pretty much limit it to 1-2x/wk in the summer where they do an evening easy run after a morning workout for super motivated kids. I'm not willing to have them sacrifice sleep for a double, and our school starts so early that doubling and getting 8+ hours of sleep is nearly impossible.
There's no magic to double threshold. The big takeaway that coaches who do some of their own thinking should take is that doing higher volumes of lower intensity work more frequently can lead to big gains. As others have said, high schoolers don't need that kind of complexity.
With my fastest runners, I experimented this year with reducing the volume of their 3200 workouts and replacing it with about twice the volume at LT pace (est. 1 hour race pace). For example, in the past we would have done 5-6 x 800 @ 3200 (usually 5 then a few fast 200s at the end). This year we did 2k @ LT + 4 x 800 @ 3200 (and finished with a few faster 200s). We've had big PRs at all events, so it seems like this approach has been working.
That's literally what the Ingebrigtsen's do in their pre-season race preparations. They do a lower amount of threshold like 2x2 minutes @ LT and then some fast 200's or 300's for the 1500m.
"anyone having crib babies run triple threshold, and how has it worked out for you?"
post is like satire or something.
if there is any reality to this, does an approach with two high intensity workouts a day, sound like "beginner" stuff, even defined in HS runner terms (which is usually above the average dude takes up the sport)? exactly.
Question for Kid from somewhere and Lap3. Did you two repeat the same workout every week, twice a week? Did you do any fast stuff during this time? One of you mentioned having one max speed day. I’m surprised that you had guys running fast in the 8/mile after doing threshold all fall and only one max speed day.
You can tell from this thread and others when the posters grew up. My generation did doubles all the time, we just called the second one "basketball" or "play" at another sport. Recovery was not an issue, because we did it so often that we were used to it. Those born after technology took over spent their free time on some device, and a double is taxing for them.
You can tell from this thread and others when the posters grew up. My generation did doubles all the time, we just called the second one "basketball" or "play" at another sport. Recovery was not an issue, because we did it so often that we were used to it. Those born after technology took over spent their free time on some device, and a double is taxing for them.
Oh, and get off my lawn!
There is a lot of truth to this, even though I don't have a lawn.
I set my HS PRs for 16 and 32 a day after an easy run that was too fast and then 2 hours of full court pick up basketball.
In college, it was not uncommon for us to play pick up ball for a couple of hours after a workout.
OTOH, I almost never ran my fastest times at the end of the season when it counted the most. But, I attribute this to the fact that most of my workouts were races and most of my easy runs were near threshold.
Question for Kid from somewhere and Lap3. Did you two repeat the same workout every week, twice a week? Did you do any fast stuff during this time? One of you mentioned having one max speed day. I’m surprised that you had guys running fast in the 8/mile after doing threshold all fall and only one max speed day.
I usually do k's twice a week, but sometimes to spice it up we did 400's at 10k pace with very small rest. We did have one speed day. Almost always our preseason speed work is hills. At the start it was like 8-10 second hills at absolute max effort, 5 minutes rest. Then towards the end we did like 20 second ish hills @ 400 effort.
Question for Kid from somewhere and Lap3. Did you two repeat the same workout every week, twice a week? Did you do any fast stuff during this time? One of you mentioned having one max speed day. I’m surprised that you had guys running fast in the 8/mile after doing threshold all fall and only one max speed day.
I usually do k's twice a week, but sometimes to spice it up we did 400's at 10k pace with very small rest. We did have one speed day. Almost always our preseason speed work is hills. At the start it was like 8-10 second hills at absolute max effort, 5 minutes rest. Then towards the end we did like 20 second ish hills @ 400 effort.
How many reps of the hills did you guys do?
How did you find they handled those 20s hills? I feel like the athletes could be feeling it the day after 20s hills at 400 effort, even with 5 minutes recovery.
I usually do k's twice a week, but sometimes to spice it up we did 400's at 10k pace with very small rest. We did have one speed day. Almost always our preseason speed work is hills. At the start it was like 8-10 second hills at absolute max effort, 5 minutes rest. Then towards the end we did like 20 second ish hills @ 400 effort.
How many reps of the hills did you guys do?
How did you find they handled those 20s hills? I feel like the athletes could be feeling it the day after 20s hills at 400 effort, even with 5 minutes recovery.
I mean they definitely felt it, but I think that's generally true when you have any kind of sprint work for distance runners. We did like 4 reps at 20 seconds, 5 when we did 8-10 seconds.
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Narve, Jakob, most nordic/european runners nowadays :)
dont do tempo runs though. Marius spoke about how u.s coaches/runners have a preferance for doing ”tempo runs” in the podcast ”i det lange lop”. And how it doesn’t make sense. And he couldnt give a rational explanation besides ”tradition”. Norwegian training/threshold training is interval based.
It doesn’t make sense to do double threshold unless you are running 5-6 times a week. Once you have reached that volume, start to implement it on saturdays or Sundays.
