Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Keith Livingstone has spoken about this I believe on some talks hes given on sub threshold training? Although I thought he said it was 95% of the benefit.Think it was him though.

Coggan has spoken about it with sweet spot and cycling, I think it's in his power meter book. This might be where the 97% comes from.

I've heard Seiler talk about it in an old journal article. He didn't actually like the idea of threshold or sub at the time. Although I know he's flip flapped on that. But he said along the lines of if you do, you may as well go sub threshold and push it up from below as you are getting around 95+% benefit , with less than 24 hours recovery. I think most of his case studies are from cross country skiers though.

It's probably all relevant to this conversation though despite being different sports, even though running is more impct based I don't know why the aerobic area would be any different, you just can't do as much work as cyclists or cross country skiers, which makes it even more baffling runners don't try and absolutely maximise their training loads as it's harder to pad out and fill a week than cyclists and skiers who can go on pretty much as long as they want without fear of inhury.

Good thread. I also found it via Google when looking up Norwegian model training .

Some stuff I see has been answered. I'm not sure about the Coggan stuff, I've actually got into arguments with him before on the forums I used to be on. Annoyingly, I think he's spot on with TSS. So it's quite possible it's in his book, I just refuse to buy it 😂 as for Seiler, I remember watching one of the many lectures he's done . He showed a graph of diminished returns. Basically within 90% of threshold you were aiding your recovery by more than 24 hours, but you were only missing out on a fraction of the training load that actual threshold would have gotten you. They spoke about it quite recently on a podcast I was listening to, it was the running public one I think. Might have been a Norwegian special one? Or the threshold episode. Can't actually remember. But it was this year.

In terms of race preparation. At the professional level, no idea. I haven't really looked into what Jacob or any of those guys are doing. But his brother, well if you looked at his Strava nothing would tell you really he's doing a race, until, suddenly he's done a race. In the week of the buildup, he's just doing his sessions like normal . And then just keeps going again.

This is what I've always done when I was cycling, never, ever did race preparation stuff. I'm the worst person to ask for this because even now I've been running, if I'm doing a 5k at the weekend, my week will still be totally normal. Easy, sub threshold, easy, subthreshold, easy, race 5k, long run. Nothing bad has happened and it didn't make my legs fall off 😂 but I'm not training for anything specific. I honestly don't think I'm running enough for it to matter.

Just read all 5 pages. Shocked by LR standards this thread hasn't been ruined. I'm guessing all u guys are European? Sirpoc, jiggymeister, lexel, shirt boy? Im from a US college background reasonably recently. They are so old skool and are just so far behind thinking about anything other than this is how it's done, without even thinking why. I've heard some programs have started to have an open mind. But this all seems very European, like the cycling training revolution post drugs era.

I would love to try this, but I just don't have the confidence to. I think once you get stuck in your ways, athletes are as bad as the coaches, who are scared to think outside of what they know. The lack of classic vo2 max is what people can't get their head around, in fact whilst I understand everything being said I'm still not sure I can. It's just so engrained into us as runners.

I found recently that Seiler suggested a '2 zone' model. Either you are over threshold or under threshold. You are turning on your nervous system or not.

Thought it was a very interesting concept from a guy who is so associated with the 3 zone model we all know all too well

Nah, US mate! :)

Take a page from the Norwegian triathletes. When they want to do VO2 they just turn the LT2/Threshold session into a LT2+ session.

You do your 1k repeats, say 6-10 by a K on 1:00R, immediately into 10x400 w/1:00R @ 5K pace

More than enough vo2 stimulus. Plus you have the race itself. And after you can add onto that if youd like to make the day even harder :)

id take a race over a ‘VO2’ session any day and i think most ppl would. Where the breakdown happens is that ppl are convinced they constantly need both

According to various sources, Patrick Sang's runners do just this sort of workout -- a modest number of threshold-ish repeats, followed by a modest number of 400s at 3-5k pace. For example, in another recent thread someone posted a Citius video showing a workout by Faith Kipyegon -- 2K in 6:18, 3x1k at 3:00, 7x400 – 66s for the first three, 64s for the last four.

Not trying to be disrespectful here, but a lot of people need to hear this. STOP trying to copy jakob's training, the norwegian method or whatever you want to call it. It works for him because he is one of the five fastest men of ALL TIME. He is a generational talent and has been training like a pro runner most of his life. You should absolutely not be doing 3 sessions, nor double thresholds. This is not a magic formula. I'm not sure why everyone forgot that every runner is different as soon as Jakob came around and started trying to copy his training. Also, modifying his training to 30 miles a week defeats the whole purpose. He trains with a lot of threshold volume and mileage and that's the whole point of his training. I understand you are just trying to get better and I respect that, but I would definitely consider a different plan. His plan only works with high mileage to be honest.

Tuesday, Friday for the threshold days might be better, gives you two days of easy/steady running between hard days.

If you do treadmill running you have to adjust the grade of the treadmill according to your weight and speed to have about the same effort as running outside (compensation for air resistance). And you have to calibrate the treadmill as the readings on the display is off in most cases. So we do not know what he has done exactly.

I am not aware of a study showing that doing 95% LT pace, creates 97% of the training effect. But the point is, that speed/power and duration are interconnected. If you can hold 300W for 60minutes, you can hold 290W for a longer time. So if we improve the duration we can hold at 290W, we indirectly improve the time we can hold 300W and that shifts LT up. We can then hold 300W for longer time as 60minutes.

Sirpoc84, you said you have 3E, 3Q and 1L running sessions/week. What is your training distribution between (3E+L) and 3Q? Do you follow around 80-20%, or what do you have? Same proportion with cycling?

Have you read this thread? The dude spoc specifically said he's in no way copying Jacob. He's going a little harder in fact, but without the doubles and no hills. I've looked up Jacobs brother like was suggested. He is copying that which he admitted. Why not copy him? He's not a pro. He's doing 7-8 hours a week and it clearly works. If you think this thread is about copying Jacob then you haven't read the whole thing.

It's been laid out here clearly, VERY CLEARLY , almost idiot proof, why this could work, how it works and that it does for at least two people we know of. Does it make it the best way? Maybe? Maybe not. But there is a hell of a lot in this thread we don't usually get from this forum to make me sit up and make my first post in a while.

I didn't hear that, but it doesn't surprise me. He's also shifted to saying easy is around 70% of max HR after the recent study in 2022, the training characteristics of long distance runners, or something like that it was called. It was very good and covered a lot of the top guys. The board agreement, was the "easy" was classed as 70% anyway. It doesn't surprise me he's maybe gone to a 2 zone model. Simply because he was living in Norway and the Norwegians have made him look a little silly as he always said don't do any sub threshold stuff lol 😂 so I'm guessing he's just pushed that into the hard category. But then it all becomes a bit too simplistic. It's almost best for him probably to suggest something like 1mmol and under for the easy and 2mmol and above, or something like that, for the polarisation. It's hard to keep up with him as he is on every podcast and doing talks all the time he does contractict himself a bit, I find. Nice guy though, I've spoken to him a couple of times and was very helpful .

Yes, you are talking about pushing up your threshold from below. I'm mentioned this a few times I probably sound like a broken record, but this is something cyclists have known for a while now and with the advent of power meters it makes it insanely easy to train in that area, not go too hard and recover. Someone mentioned cross country skiers, applies to them as well and I've heard of speed skaters as well who have trained like this for a while. If you are a time crunched cyclist, if you aren't doing quite a bit of this training on your turbo trainer, you are behind the training curve.

Good question about training distribution. Again, as I posted above Seiler orginally (20 years ago) said 80/20 was split into sessions. As I said before, you can never tell exactly where he stands but he's started to come around to the idea that for hobby joggers and cyclists, time in zone he would accept. Mainly because we aren't running doubles, so it's not realistic to have as much easy. I've looked at studies more recent, they usually include "time in zone" , although that is almost complicated in the sense it could be power on the bike, pace for runners or HR as the metric.

Anyway, for me, on the bike I always just went on power. It's the easiest of all the metrics to collect meaningful data on. I was usually around always between 70/80 - 20/30 on the bike. This would be the same pretty much, no matter how many hours I did.

For running, I've been going on pace. I live in a very flat area. So I can go on loops for 15k with like 10 meters of elevation on a road run. Again, if we are going in time on some, just having a look now, the last 6 weeks average out to 74/26. With the schedule I outlined above . This is polarised in the fact there is nothing aimed in the 3:58-4:57/km range other than what you might catch for a few seconds changing paces or whatever. But again, Seiler originally intended for sessions not zones (but has conceded a point as I mentioned) and a lot of the "longer" 2-3k reps are going to be also in the zones he would probably tell you not to run. But I like the idea of trying to fit 75/25 or 80/20 or roughly whatever you want, into just under LT1 and then in that just under LT2 threshold for the harder stuff, to push that up from below. This is a pure rough estimate that won't apply to everyone, but for me that's about anything 90-91% of LTHR up to 98% LTHR. So you have quite a wide margin of error. But if I'm somewhere in there, I'm seeing lactate numbers that are going to be giving me good stimulus for my "20" work , without wrecking me.

This is a really great thread. At first, having read the first few posts, like all these Norwegian threads I rolled my eyes a bit. But it's actually put forward in a really clear way, although may need to read through a second time. A lot of content here from quite a few posters. I do sometimes think about baseball when I think about stuff like this. Not saying it's made baseball better to actually watch it's robotic now, but how sabermetrics have helped improve players or scouting of players. The old scouts saying how this is how it's always been done, you think in 100 years we couldn't have worked out a better way? Discipline has been mentioned . I think you would have to change the mentality of groups of coached runners over time, because no doubt people will ruin these workouts quite quickly and go to hard. Which I guess means they aren't blowing THAT workout, but the next one, or the one after? If I'm understanding this right.

Yes that's the point. You aren't going to die or your legs fall off and or you'll never be a be able to run again if you go into super threshold, or beyond 😂

But you will start to cross that border where fatigue seems to accumulate fast, real fast, and then suddenly it's not easy to do an easy 10k the next day and then go again the following day with another session. I mentioned before, I had a friend do this. His claim was he was "feeling great" and pushed way past 12-15k that we had worked out for him should create the lactate response we wanted. He did this a few times back to back and then suddenly the week after , he's trashed. The whole principle is living on the edge, not falling off the edge of choosing to jump off the edge. Maximising training load, whilst maintaining something that can be recovered from, relatively quickly. It's why I really wish there was a good power solution for running. With cycling is very easy to just say I don't care how good you feel. This is the power zones for the workout, stick to it. It's why I posted the paces up that I work to, as for where I live and it being flat it's probably the best I've got without having to buy lactate strips week after week as they're expensive (although if I was a pro I obviously would).

Whilst this thread is still well alive and kicking without JS even ruining it yet I have a question. So, I heard you mention Friel, this running would equate to his zone 4, of the 7 zones he has? Some in his zone 3? Which is all in zone 3 of the classic and Garmin type sense? And you are saying this is good for accumulation of tss or fitness score or whatever metric the software you use computes it as?

This is a great thread indeed! I came to using a threshold focused structure through lots of experiment and, seemingly, sub-par race results when I would include intervals faster than about 10km pace. It was in 2017 when I started to use the following structure:

Sun - AM: 60 min PM: 30 min

Mon - AM: 60 min PM: 30 min

Tue - Tempo Intervals (12*1K w/ 200m, 6*2K w/ 400m, 4*3K w/ 600m)

Wed - 90 min

Thu - Tempo Intervals (12*1K w/ 200m, 6*2K w/ 400m, 4*3K w/ 600m)

Fri - 90 min

Sat - 120-150 min (including 8-10 miles of tempo intervals)

For a period leading up to a half marathon and marathon, I would include tempo intervals in the Saturday long run as well. Typically in the form of 15 min + 6*1600m (or 3*3200m) + 60 min + 4*1600m + 15 min. I basically pulled this from Daniels' T-L-T workouts. After the marathon I was focusing on a 10km race so began doing the long run easy and did the Tuesday tempo intervals on Monday.

As has been mentioned already, I found the key to sustaining this was to keep the sessions controlled. I seemed to fall into a pace that was 0-5 seconds per km slower than my half marathon pace, so not true LT. This I think is key as if I tried to run my LT pace, I'd feel like I was reaching and would have not been able to sustain this structure. With the exception of the long run session, I'd finish the workouts feeling like I could have done more and gone faster.

The few times I broke this weekly structure was the Tuesday workout, ten days before a Saturday (or Sunday) race. For the half marathon I did 4*4K w/ 400m, for the 10k I did a 10km time trial, and for the marathon I did a 18 mile tempo at marathon pace (I did this on the long run two weeks before the race). The result, for me, was a PR in all three races, which were spaced six weeks apart. The strength that you develop and ability to recover between workouts and from races was most notable to me!

Also, I should add because I think it is important, my easy days were all very easy (i.e. no faster than 70% max HR, often under 65%). Hope that was informative and provides some further encouragement and insight!

You might have missed the title of the thread in your hastiness, but it clearly says "MODIFYING" which i think is what we've stayed true to at this point

Seriously, a ton of content these days.

Yeah i think he was basically saying you are below LT1 or above LT1, which is honestly also not a terrible breakpoint for most people if you are thinking true "HARD/EASY" type system. You are either engaging your glycolytic system in some capacity or you are not was his general point. Gotta see if i can find this interview again now....