I think that Hobbs's philosophy of lots of threshold lots of speed but little in between is fantastic guidance for nearly everyone. Pace work (repetitions of 300, 400, 600 at your mile or even 3k race pace) is way overdone by lots of high school and college kids and leaves people heavy-legged and unable to recover fast enough.
Doing simply a ton of threshold (tempo runs, fartlek runs, 1600s and 1200s at T pace with short rests), a moderate amount of V02 work (1000s or 800s at I pace with 3 min rests), and pure speed and power work (10 second flat-out sprints up hills, 80-120m bursts at 1500 pace with a focus on perfect form, 40-80m bursts at 800 pace with a focus on perfect form, lift weights too) will improve most people's endurance and most people's raw speed. This is the core point to the genius of Hobbs's training (and plenty of other folks these days).
No, read Daniels, watch VO2 max productions, Run Free...educate yourself. Coaches often know less than a PE coach.
If your coach is/was a competitive runner, then yes, listen to them. However, my coach at the small school I attended was also the football coach and didn't give a crap about distance runners. Like the other poster said, it was totally up to me to teach myself what to do.
Keep in mind that Hobbs has worked up to this schedule. It’s relatively intense. Solid mileage. Three workouts a week. Hobbs is also one of the best in the world. It was the next step in his training progression. Plenty of people run fast off of only two workouts a week. Think about where you’re at and what the next logical step in the training progression is.