Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Our spiritual leaders are divided Sir Poc doesn't lift but Kristofer Ingebrigsten does.

And interestingly one is reasonably injury prone, one is not.

Maybe it's just me, but this calculator seems to be pushing the pace a lot. I enter 2:40:29 for marathon, my latest result from late 2024, and get 5:51-6:07/mi for 2K repeats. If usually do 6-8 mile repeats on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and I know quite well that if I run them faster than 6 minutes a) my lactate would be more like 3.5-4.5 than 2 b) I would be pooped for the rest of the day, hard to concentrate on work. Even 6:05..10-ish works only on days when I've slept well and feel fresh, every other time I just wouldn't want to push faster than 6:10.

Interestingly enough my workout paces didn't really change over 1.5 years (bought a lactate meter in Oct 2023). But I would still say that this method is working for me – I got my marathon time as 42 yo back to where I had it as mid-30s guy while doing less mileage, and improved my 5K to 16:30, almost a minute.

I don't understand? Could someone put some context to this, are you saying no strength and you will get injured? If so, I think everyone knows this? It not rocket science. Guy who does strength versus not is obvious to get injured less.

Remark here not really even necessary . Strength is necessity to avoid injury. You are welcome 😁

Actually the opposite. KI lifts regularly and does some “x workouts” here and there, and he’s had several injuries since this thread began. Sirpoc doesn’t lift, doesn’t do strides and just keeps pumping out week after week of the same training without injury.

Personally, I was injury prone running 25-30 mpw before this training. I never lifted heavy, but I did some core/hip/glute/etc routines twice a week. Started doing this training a little over a year ago and quit doing the core work. Now running 45-50mpw, 2 minutes faster over 5k, and haven’t been injured

I do strength training twice per week after one of the sub t sessions

Or being injured makes you take up weights while you cant run as much, and you keep doing it as there is some benefit gor injury prevention. Everything else is extremely shoddy logic at best.

Several people have had similar comments, my experience training via this method and other methods is that I can't use my actual race times (at least after a good race) to dictate workout paces. I need to train a fair bit slower. For your specific case, it seems silly to worry about running 6:10 vs 6:07, especially if whatever you're doing is working well.

Exactly this. KI has stayed remarkable healthy and has a very sensible strength plan. He is coached by one of the greatest running families of all time. Don't even know who the other guy is but Obviously for amateurs let's look at KI who is very fast and his sensible plan rather than some crock from LR.

If you aren't doing strength exercises there is no way you can be successful in this game. Let alone run anything respectable. I'm talking like sub 35, sub 17 guys who are in the later stages of careers especially. Absolutely all of us are doing some sort of strength work.

I was always convinced that lifting was super important to running performance and injury prevention, but over the years my experience hasn't borne it out. I still lift for non-running reasons. It seems like many people on this site agree that the best thing you can do for performance AND injury prevention is just to train smartly. Carefully and intelligently building volume and intensity will make you much more equipped to handle running than lifting will. Not lifting also fits the philosophy of this thread which is so safely maximize fitness on a limited time budget. Maybe if someone has a specific physical issue, it would be necessary. Coming back from a major injury is a whole different thing as well.

Dunno about that, I can run sub 35 mins 10 km in my 40s and have never gone near a weight or even stretched. Did one set of strides the last 6 months. Just not that injury prone.

It's kinda wild misinformation is spread like this. It shows 1. How nobody actually understands the content of this thread and 2. People's ideas and conceptions still of what you have to do, to be good at running are based on what is engrained in them rather than what is actually playing out.

Dude. You would literally get lapped probably at least twice by sirpoc in a 10k and at least once in a 5k. Bare minimum. Maybe it's all those weights you are doing slowing you down and all that non lifting he's doing speeding him up. Or maybe you should focus, you know, more on running on your limited hours?

Quick pace check? 50M, did a 5:23 mile time trial a few weeks ago. Easy pace @ 8:20 (@ 68% maxHR avg over 45 mins). 42 miles/wk over 6 days a week: ST - E - ST - E - ST - ELR - Rest. Wondering if I'm aiming too far subT?

I've been focusing on 5X5min, w/1min rest, at 6:49/mile the last three weeks. %maxHR across the five reps was originally 81% - 84% - 85% - 86% - 87%. Now seeing 78% - 79% - 82% - 83% - 84%, with %maxHR < 70% during all recoveries. Treadmill timed, so very comparable.

I understand that being conservative with this approach beats going too hard, but time for faster pace? More volume? I worry that I'm spending too much time at lower HRs but not sure how sub is too sub. Appreciate any input!

Looks pretty legit, you might be ready for 6x5min now, or inch it toward 6:30/mile. But it's been 3 weeks, better to test by doing another mile time trial if you can, after a month of solid training. Get that racing stimulus. Though a 5k-10k time trial/race is definitely better for figuring paces with this method.

I think you miss the point. The guy was badly pointing out I think that KI has the best coaches in the world, probably the best example we have of a hobby jogger hugely successfully doing the Norwegian hobby jogger method, he is very fast. Why wouldn't we be looking to that as the gold standard for hobby joggers? Been following KI for ages on Strava. His pb's are levels most guys on this thread can only dream of. If he is doing weights, strides, that's telling as it's almost certainly a gain we should all be adding in.

Because a bunch of much slower dudes chirp in here that strength is a waste of time is a bit dumb, to be honest.

Strength training is a tricky thing in running and people tend to have a tough time thinking critically to understand it beyond just their anecdotal experience.

I tend to think about it like this:

• It's obviously NOT a fundamental requirement of training because most of the fastest athletes ever don't lift much/at all.
• It can still be of benefit, but it plays a supportive role to running training. If it doesn't somehow make running training better it's a waste of time.
• The benefit comes from addressing personal limitations in movement quality or capacity. A lot of us have gaps here of innate ability and/or training history, of which strength training can provide a bigger or more targeted stimulus than running alone.
• Some plyos and heavy compound lifts are good if you have the time, but aren't necessary for everybody.

Obviously if someone is limited by durability and strength training helps them do more running it's a good thing, but if someone is limited by time it's probably a poor trade to give up some of their limited running to lifting.

The big things on injury prevention are sleep, nutrition, stress management, and proper training load. If you have a specific issue get a custom plan from a PT or otherwise educate yourself on how to address that specific issue.

Of all the studies I looked at that say strength training improves running economy, performance, whatever... I haven't really seen a strong body of evidence that reallocating running time for lifting time makes already fit people better. Like most exercise phys research in general the majority of studies tended to be some version of "we made some average people actually train hard and it made them slightly less average". The research that was with high-level athletes tends to be adding it to an existing program, but also doesn't explore just making them run more.

Neither of these really speaks to this thread's crowd who already have a base level of fitness and discipline yet are running up against a limit of time.

This is a terrible, terrible argument. The gold standard? What makes that? There's sirpoc from this thread who is significantly faster than KI. To the point it's not even really comparable. In a race, they are in a totally different race. I don't think people's realise how fast sirpoc is, based on the training done. Now that doesn't mean we shouldn't look to how Henrik coaches KI, but let's have it right there is certainly an argument for saying it's just one approach, especially when you have a totally self coached guy, who doesn't do strides, who doesn't do strength, who admitredly is unconventional, but has a large amount more success and is healthy insanely consistently

Of all the studies I looked at that say strength training improves running economy, performance, whatever... I haven't really seen a strong body of evidence that reallocating running time for lifting time makes already fit people better.

Certainly for sprinting it’s well proven. You absolutely need to qualify your statement here. Maybe strength training is useless for marathon. But if we look at mid distance and club running / XC, races are gonna come down to sprints at the end and I think some explosiveness and quickness and strength training will absolutely make a difference. Like you can’t get fit enough to front run and break the pack so it’s better to develop a kick than go all-in on time trial type racing.

imo you can get quite a lot done in 10-20mins a week so we are talking only 1-3 fewer mpw. Even just hill sprints would help a lot, which technically don’t take any time at all as you integrate them into your cooldown (assuming you have a convenient hill).

Also some people only have X amount of time for their run but they could spare 5-15mins at some other part of their day to do some strength training in their garage or whatever.