Yeah that the if you are running 25mpw you can do anything since you have so much recovery built in. Go google some of the 4x4 studies where they do it 3x/week and people survive cause that is all they do. Get closer to your limit and you need to be a lot more careful. I survived doing 2 5k/week for 10 weeks in HS cause I was young and doing 40mpw. Do that at 80 and I would have broken down…
Can you site or provide links to this research? Are you referring to “The Norwegian Method 4x4min/3min rest”?
They literally claim it’s “the fountain of youth”. However, one of the issues I have with that method is how loosey-goosey they actually are in the specifics of their method.
If I’m not mistaken, they say to run for 4mins with the Heart Rate in the 85-95% range. Do they mean the Max Heart Rate or Average Heart Rate over that 4minutes?
Additionally, 85-95% is a huge window, in terms of workout intensity, covering sub-LT2 up through on to a big anaerobic stimulus.
If you are not aware, I’ll site a couple of videos describing the “The Norwegian Method 4x4min/3min rest” method.
Here is the second video of “The Norwegian Method 4x4min/3min rest” which describes the protocol. As I said, an 85-95% Heart Rate workout zone is a huge window of variation in terms of intensity:
(Note, that video was now harder to find with a search, now that all kinds of videos on the 4x4min have cropped up on the web, (whether or not those videos are backed up with any research.)
Is it OK to do that or will I get stale / injured?
I'm wondering about the best concept of year-round training with the goal of generally getting faster, but not necessarily peaking, at least for the next season or two. Would it be smart to include a workout like this once every 2 weeks, with maybe a tempo or cruise-interval workout on the week in-between, and with a separate day of 10x100m strides once a week?