Luis Del Aguila methodolody

Thanks, this is golden.

I've set a reminder to update this thread in a few months time to see if I progressed a fraction you did: currently in lowish 36 mins shape whilst trying to get over a niggle, so that's the baseline.

I have also been looking into this approach as I have been repeatedly injured when trying the NSA which is unlucky as I actually love the approach.

Looking at the videos that I can find of Luis del Aguila on YouTube, my understanding is that he is now basing his training approach around a threshold type workout on a Saturday followed by a long run on the Sunday (at an easy pace). After that he seems to advise a rest on Monday and the other days are all easy running. The idea, he says, is to really get continuity in the training over many months/years without extended periods off with injury.

However, after a while he advises a small amount of faster running within the Saturday threshold session. For example 30 mins at threshold could be followed by 2 x 1 km at a faster pace. I guess this might be key to his approach into getting fit to race though it is also where you have to be careful to hit exactly the right intensities.

The other thing he advises is regular weight/strength training. Here I run into difficulty in understanding how you could implement it as he seems to be using very specific equipment set up in a particular way so that he does the exercises very slowly. I cannot find this kind of equipment in a standard gym unfortunately...

You're right about the schedule even if his top athletes run everyday (still only one weekly workout). Easy days during the week when the energy is low due to work, family, stress... workout+LR during the weekend when energy is higher. Volume is the same year round with a small increase over the years.

About the weekly workout it's mainly threshold (Hm pace) focused sometimes mixed up with K reps @10k pace. Progression style : 6k @Hmp / 6k Hmp + 1k @10k pace / 7k / 2x4k / 4x1k + 4k / 8k / 8k over-under HM pace continous / 2x5k / 10k.

The aim of the strength sessions is the injury prevention not the performance or the power boost.

Just a heads up to those interested that he's recently uploaded a lot of his YouTube videos with AI autodubbing so it's in English. Obviously it's not perfect but you can easily get the idea of what he's taking about. His channel is https://youtube[dot] com/@luisperformance

Just wanted to add my positive experience on a very similar schedule, although the second faster workout has not been a staple for me and I've just been using it when other life stressors allowed or close to races.
Went down from 35'22" to 33'37" in the 10k over 8 months on basically one split HMP workout a week (the exact same you posted plus 4x9' r.1'45" and 5x7' r.1'30") plus 50'-1h of easy running (truly easy, most times above 4'50"/km which is 10k pace plus 1'30"/km) and a long run of 90-120' at the same easy pace.
Weekly volume about 7h of running

Most importantly, training like this has transformed my relationships with running, making it a truly pleasant experience and something that's reducing life stress, not contributing to it.

Curious to know what pace do you consider CV? For me the second workout was actually 10k pace (8x1k with 200m jog/walk recovery or 4x2k with 400m very easy jog recovery)

Thanks

What happened with Miguel del Pozo, no runs on Strava from 24th of November?

didn't know about this method before but damn, I need to give it a try. One threshold session + easy volume sounds just perfect. Tired of being cooked all the time with 3 hard workouts… your feedback really hit home.

What he says in the comments of his last activity:

"Very beautiful, but I twisted my ankle near Murrayfield because you couldn't see a thing at night. I had to walk 7km back half-limping, and today my foot is swollen and bruised, so... officially goodbye to the streak of more than 2000 consecutive days, to the San Silvestre, to the Valencia 10k, and to Strava for a while, haha. A shame because your route tips for running would have been useful. Thanks."

"I fractured my fifth metatarsal. I found out a week later, when I was already walking decently and doing a lot of elliptical training, so I've just started from scratch. A few weeks without putting any weight on it, I'm climbing the walls. I'm not really into those empty phrases about coming back stronger, resilience, looking on the bright side, and blah blah blah. I'll be more optimistic when I can simply walk and be independent again; running is the least of my worries." Thank you very much, and we'll see you around here in January or February."

I wrote CV but 10k pace is spot on. Even progressing from T pace to 10k pace is enough I guess. First I was jogging the recovery but after switching to walk/stand I noticed a better recovery post workout and better results. The more I train the more I can see that harder is not better in my case.

During the next few months because of the poor conditions here (wind, snow, cold...) I'm going back to the original schedule posted by Potro Desbocado based on HR. I don't want to stress about hitting paces during winter and would rather let the effort coming to me.

Easy runs and long run around 70% HRmax up to 75% and 2 tempo sessions of 40' ~85% which is marathon effort or a tad faster. I know by experience some days RPE and HR won't match very well because our body likes to play but I'll try to stick to HR as much as I can.

It does make me wonder whether the majority of people doing NSM would actually be just as well off doing one or two sessions per week. Enough threshold to get requisite signalling for adaptation and then more time to absorb it. And then only eventually switch to three once you've squeezed every ounce out of one and two.

Thinking about it more as "getting enough" threshold to trigger desired adaptations over the long term, rather than seeing it as a maximization problem: maximizing the amount of threshold signalling per week.

I'm a pretty decent runner but 8 weeks of vanilla NSM wiped me out which is why I've found myself here.

Yes that's it basically, I fully agree on everything. Regarding NSM I think people obsess on the "formula" being the secret sauce with the 3/week subT session when really it's about what you can recover from and making the trade-off between (theoretical) faster rate of improvement and reduced injury/burnout risk. As long as the load progression over time is consistent, adaptation is likely to happen anyway.
The shift in mentality could be summarized as: from NSM's "maximum recoverable load dose" to "minimum adaptation-inducing load dose"

So does Luis del Aguila reccommend 2 x marathon pace workouts each week or is this an adaptation made by Potro Desbocado? I can speak a bit of Spanish but I am very far from being fluent; my understanding from Luis' videos on YouTube was that he was recomending just 1 threshold workout (I guess from his talks that this is at around 1 hour race pace so right on the LT and more intense than NSM paces?) at the weekend and 1 long run.

I am coming back from my 3rd minor soleus tear in 2 1/2 years (each tear takes me around 3 months to recover from) after trying the NSM and I am up to about 50 mins of easy running on most days. On the last 2 Sundays I have tried to do a long run of 90 mins but this might be too much for now as my calf has felt stiff towards the end of the run and I have to run really slowly the next 2 or 3 days for my calf to recover. When I am more comfortable with daily easy runs and a 90 minute longer run I am debating as to whether I should try the NSM again but be much more conservative with the paces or whether I should try the approach of Luis del Aguila. For me right now getting in 6 months of just continuous training would be a huge step forward compared to what I have been able to do the last few years so maybe the Luis del Aguila is the lower risk approach to try ? - I am assuming this would be just one threshold run at the weekends....

Yeah the basic week is 1 long, 1 HM pace threshold and 3 easy. Then as you advance you can add more easy days and eventually if you plateau a second session day. I started about 5 weeks ago and already have seen a big jump in fitness. The biggest thing is just how much better I recover and then feel in the session and long run. Also the slow but not too slow easy pace is much more natural biomechanics for me. All my never ending niggles are finally melting away. Tarvy posted how you can progress the threshold session itself as well. I also do some strength work but that's more prehab to stop old injuries coming back.

OK thanks for that. Is the easy pace with the del Aguila method a bit faster than with the NSM (70% of MHR)? I know it's been mentioned that easy pace with del Aguila is something like 1 min 15 mins seconds per km slower than 10k race pace but when coming back from injury after a long lay off with no races to refer to and having to run on circuits that are not really flat, I was wondering if there is some sort of heart rate guide on pace of easy runs (maybe 75% of MHR if you mean the easy runs are a bit faster?).

That's about right, for me it works out to be in the 75% max HR ballpark. Also seems to be fine to go slower if that feels better for you. Del Pozo does a lot of his easy miles very easy. My cadence slows too much at very slow paces and the long ground contact time always seems to aggravate my calf and hip, so I keep my cadence higher and the pace naturally is a bit quicker than NSM and that feels much better for me.

I posted about this a year or so on the NSM Strava group. I went back to NSM vanilla. You are getting quite a lot of load/stimulus from training at a much higher easier HR for the easy running in this and ultimately that's what got me and burned me out. There's only so many ways you can balance things I guess and no method is going to be for everyone.

I think this method will be pretty good if you follow it and your Lt1 is actually quite high, you probably can get away with higher HR efforts/ paces on what for me are really overly aggressive easuly running.

Just my view, but going back to much easier running, then the only way to get enough stimulus in was to go back to 3 workouts a week at Subthreshold. Then I started to feel much less burnt out again, absorbing a lot more easy miles.

I had more fun doing this, but the results and sustainability just weren't there for me. This actually more in like with what KI was doing, just putting the work into a smaller amount of time rather than his 3 sessions. Certainly in how aggressive it is with easy running, as he did and there's been lots of debate on if he simly is cooking himself long term on easy days. Although, I do see an argument for especially on really limited hours getting a bit more aggressive with easy paces.

Glad to see some people are having some success with it! But I do think this definitely requires a pretty specific type of phisiology that is inherently linked to easy days.

In his videos he always stresses the concept that easy days should be very easy. He says "go out and look at the birdies" so run very easy. Then there is the single circa threshold session on a Saturday but that is also very controlled. Straight tempo up to 8km a bit slower than HM pace, or stuff like 4km tempo followed or preceded by 4x1km at 10k pace.
There is also a great focus on strength work however. It's something he never forgets in his videos, but he does not give many details on that. He has a PhD in strength conditioning I think and has developed a methodology of isokinetic training focused on injury prevention

With respect, it sounds like you were doing the easy days too fast. The guideline pace is for a good day on a flat course and he says it's fine to go much slower. Having done both I find it crazy that anyone could find this program more draining than vanilla NSM, I just felt permanently tired and niggly, I have tried it twice over the past couple of years and even experimented with absurdly slow jogging on the easy days. As you say, horses for courses...everyone is different, for me subT sessions took longer than 48hrs to recover from but I can recover from easy runs just fine especially with 2 complete rest days per week. I guess that's part of the fun of training, finding what works for your specific set of variables/circumstances.

This actually makes zense, I looked into this kind of training and it stuck me how "hard" the easy days were. A bit in line with MFs 80/20 (not that that is good training) easy days.

I actually ran a few guys data using TRIMP who have been training like this and the load of 6 days versus an aggregate of 6 days of NSM had the load more heavier, in favour of this. I know for me personally running some of the easy efforts I have seen people prescribe for this is a disaster waiting to happen.

But I think if you can handle a lot of what I would define as steady running close and up and sound Lt1 as opposed to really easy, you'll probably do well on this method. Steady running up to 75%+ MHR definitely has it's place for some folks and they do respond to it. For really like crunched, I think it could squeeze out a bit more.