Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

This is really great to hear, especially for someone who has also been an excellent poster in the thread such as yourself. Is there plans in there as well? Is the marathon included? Sounds like there is stuff on pacing as well? The guy probably gets a lot of his amazing performances from pacing perfection. The fact that when someone like yourself (who people will recognise if they've read the whole thread ,) has found new stuff in the book makes it absolutely a must read.

Totally understand if there's not much more you can say but honestly this really sounds super cool.

I also totally agree, the defining document almost sounds perfect now we have got to the point the growth of this interest in the thread, style of hobby training is now through the roof.

Has anyone heard anything about Continuous Lactate Monitoring technology? Wearable devices that give live lactate readings while you run. Maybe something similar to those Abbott sensors people have stuck in their arms to measure glucose?

Chris Thompson said he knows for sure such devices are in the pipeline on Paula Radcliffe's podcast. If they do become available and give reliable data they could be massive for NSA.

There’s a whole section on the marathon and also schedules for five hours to nine hours a week.

Sirpoc doesn’t go into detail specifically about alternating sub T and easy but I can give you my two cents. I think the back to back easy runs help a ton with overall sustainability. Bakken would probably say that it helps muscle tone or tension to have that weekly reset.

If you look at Sirpoc’s Strava you’ll see that he does his long intervals on Tuesday following the back to back easy days and that when tapering for a 10k or half marathon, he’ll do two easy days prior to the race. Those back to back easy pace runs really helps to shed lingering fatigue.

The benefit of the long run is that it’s a sneaky way to add load while also giving a reset. This is especially helpful if say, you race on Saturday. You can jump straight into LR then E and be good to go on Tuesday. All of that becomes much more precarious if you’re alternating ST/ E indefinitely.

Also, the advantage to alternating ST/E is that you get an extra ST session every 2 weeks. The problem is you still need to stay in the 75/25ish E:ST time ratio, so you’d probably find that you need to slightly reduce ST volume in each session to make it sustainable, which would neutralize the advantage you’re going for.

In my mind it’s similar to the question, “why not just do steady MP runs everyday?” If there isn’t enough slack in the system it’s easier to get progressively fatigued without being able to bounce back. That catches up eventually and will force you to slow down or reduce volume of ST.

Questions about the book are awesome. One of the reasons why myself, grandma’s guy, and the other fast old guy(lol) were asked to read the draft is to spot if anything is missing. I don’t think there is, but your questions would help highlight a gap if there is one.

Fast twitchers are probably over represented at the recreational level, compared to elite level. There has been a fair bit of discussion in this thread by FT types finding success with NSM. Sirpoc appears to be extremely ST. I wonder if any of the FT types who have experimented and found success would be prepared to contribute a section to the book?

I've posted before, but this is overthinking it for hobby joggers. I'm incredibly fast twitch and I posted about this. Whilst it took a while to adapt, for sure working on the longer reps improved me greatly. Look at the guy a page or so back. Fast twitch who now training like this is now at his best on the HM distance. 99% of us our raw speed is absolutely no use and we are best off working on our weaknesses, rather than our strengths that really don't help much. Coupled with that, I'm very much like the guy a page or so ago. I have still not my natural ft speed anyway.

We are way over thinking this. Fast twitch, slow twitch, if you train like this the vast amount of evidence is it's most likely to work the nearer you stick to the rigidity of how it's laid out. I've seen nothing ever in this thread to suggest otherwise. There's been so many testimonials backing this up, FT guys who just did the plain old basic sirpoc program and had huge success.

This sounds really great. It's awesome that these things are included and it sounds like you have most bases covered. You are a poster who has always been respected in this thread so if you approve that's good enough for me. Cool that grandma's guy is around as well, I think the thread is still awaiting his verdict on the sirpoc marathon build still! Especially considering I believe he's an experienced runner and a college coach. But I totally understand this is people's free time they are giving up for all of this, but feel free to nudge him towards the thread. Is the other guy you are mean the one who broke 15 for the 5k? He is the one who really opened my eyes to just how you get your head down and get on with this sirpoc style training and create minimal fuss.

Is there anything on tapering itself in the book? I've always seen what sirpoc has done with that as clinical, very measured and probably pretty well thought out. I think that and pacing are the things I am really most interested in, outside of the basics of the thread. Seems like with 5-9 hour plans (maybe cross training?) that this could really be an awesome read. Sorry, like someone else said you will be spammed with questions now lol

He's basically saying to keep the speed in there which is at odds with the cult of this thread?

Steve Magness “coveres” NSA in his latest video. I put it in quotes because to me it feels like he mostly talks about what other coaches do and why that is good.

I thought Steve's video was somewhat disingenuous when talking about the limitations of the method, because he seemed to be saying that at some point you need to introduce some speed work to balance out the reduction in the anaerobic capacity, using the example of Ron Clarke never winning gold, and that eventually you need to think about pulling threshold up from above rather than just pushing up from below.

I don't think he's wrong per se but I thought it was interesting that he didn't discuss at what point the gains that you might see from pushing up from below might diminish and require additional stimulus. I think that's maybe the part that I would see as disingenuous, because Steve must be aware that for every Ron Clarke there's a thousand hobby joggers who can't break 20 mins in the 5k (and these are probably a large part of his audience!) - none of those hobby joggers need to worry about their anaerobic capacity.

So in summary, I would say that maybe Steve falls into the trap of missing the wider context - that the limitations of the method, where the tipping point is crossed - are way beyond the scope of the average hobby jogger.

I think he's mostly talking about this from a middle distance perspective. He seems to think, probably correctly, that running only aerobic stuff reduces your anaerobic capacity, which I feel like he wouldn't mention if he were looking at this from the same long distance focused perspective that this forum does. He does say though that it's an ideal boost for your aerobic capacity, but he doesn't mention anything about Sirpoc or CTL, and says you should add hill sprints and that you'll need to periodize eventually and add specificity. He talks a lot about how eventually you'll have to do more, but he never says the method doesn't work or that you shouldn't do it or that just the threshold isn't enough to improve. Overall I think he respects the method but wouldn't apply it to middle distance unmodified. He seems to focus on mid distance on his channel so I wouldn't take any of this as him criticizing the method at all.

Why would he talk about Sirpoc? Not talking about overly techical stuff like CTL is the roght call in my opinion.

Happy to answer a few questions.

A few points:
1. I'm not being disingenuous. I'm trying to use examples that resonate with a large swatch of people. I'm not going to be able to address every situation in a 25minute video. I wrote a 250 page dense book on running....and still couldn't address every situation. My goal is to give clear principles that help people. Which in this video it's that training is like a see-saw. And that balance depends on the individual and event they are training for. The Clarke example is an easy one to show what happens when we neglect a component.

2. I'd argue that SOME of those novices do need to worry about the speed/anaerobic side because novices are often way more FT orientated. Not always, depending on the event. But it's why you see some novices respond really well to Igloi style/Easy Interval Method. Because they are much more FT orientated, so you run "easy" intervals.

3. I think NWS is great for building aerobic abilities. As I said, I did something similar in 2005. It's all derived from Bakken's work. It worked well. But if not counterbalanced, it will erode your anaerobic/speed side. To put it simply, you'll go from running a 50sec 400 with 18mmol of lactate at the end, to a 52 second 400, only able to produce 14mmol. Now, for some, that won't matter. For others, it does. It depends on the event and individual.

The solution to counterbalance that is low risk and doesn't add much stress. So I tend to favor counterbalancing that. Whether it's through hill sprints, some 200s or 150s, or any number of options, I like that approach better.

4. As far as when do you need to switch from mostly sub-LT to a different stimulus? It's impossible to give a prescription on that. It varies a lot. But in trained athletes, you generally see a plateau at between 6-8 weeks of repeating the same types of workout over and over, based on lactate testing. This is a very rough rule of thumb. But what you tend to see is sub LT stuff does a good job of flattening and shifting the left hand side of the lactate curve, but where the alternations/pulling up really helps is making sure once you go past that threshold your lactate doesn't shoot up exponentially. Again, I'm simplifying a bit.

But the point is, why stick to

5. THe last point I'll make is I think NWS works because it just gets novice athletes to stop doing dumb workouts and emphasize aerobic training. Many serious novices try to hammer their hard workouts to prove fitness. And then neglect their easy/aerobic side. But if you look at how most elites train, their hard workouts might look crazy to you, but they're mostly under control. They accumulate a high volume because their aerobic systems are so developed they can just recover, bounce back, and handle it. WIth novices, they aren't.

Again, I think that's a great thing. But I don't think we should look at is as some magic solution, or not acknowledge that it has tradeoffs. For some those tradeoffs will matter. For others, not so much.

The way I see training is simple. There is no perfect system. The best coaches and athletes understand a myriad of systems so that they can apply items from each....dependent on the athlete sitting in front of you. Don't wed yourself to a rigid system.

Anyways, keep up the good work, and best of luck. If you want some questions answered, throw thema at my youtube. Thanks

Again, for the contrarians: You are welcome to adapt this in any fashion you would like. No one in black vans will come for you if you do so. The original version of this included little to no formal speed work, which is appealing to many. Make your adaptations, create your own post about it, and write your own book. We may, or may not, be interested.

Thanks Steve for replying to my post. It's good to have someone with your experience and credentials contributing to the discussion.

I still think the point around eroding the anaerobic capacity is missing context, which is that this matters for podium contenders but is never going to be the limiting factor for a runner who can't get under 40 mins for a 10k. These are, by far and away, the runners who follow plans in books and watch running videos on YouTube.

This is really key for NSA for me. It's also about being consistent and more importantly, being able to be consistent.

To highlight the context of anaerobic capacity. How faster would the 40 min 10k runner be, if they trained this capacity? Presumably it is similar to racing without the peaking phase.

I don't think it's lacking context. It's basically saying: this is a tradeoff. One acknowledged by the originator of this method (Bakken). For some that tradeoff is big. For others, it's small.

My counter would be: Easy feel good fast work is low risk, low injury, and often big bang for your buck for novices. Because their anaerobic capacity might not be a limiting factor, but they often have god awful running economy, especially at specific speeds. And their fatigue resistance to economy changes also sucks...

What's the best way to improve that (again, going back to something Bakken pointed out): A variety of faster work.

I think most of the issues come down to this. Most people suck at interval training, especially if it's controlled. Instead of just brushing it off, why not teach people how to run intervals that aren't nuts and they'll benefit from for low cost. If you can't teach someone, sure avoid it. But as a coach, who got his start teaching a bunch of HS kids, my approach is always: I'm going to teach you how to do this well.

And I'd argue that most doing NWS would greatly benefit from doing some easy hill charges, or rhythm 200s, or the Webb/Razcko 200-150-120....which the Ingebritsens utilized as well!

Again, to each their own. I've done a variation of the high LT work. My HS teams in the 2008 era used to build to 2 sub LT sessions + HS a week for our late base phase work. But to me, it's a bit silly to neglect a very low cost, high return, and potentially something that improves injury resistance. Maybe not every week, but every once in a while.

Again, that may not be the case if you're running 3-4 days per week. I get it. But that's my two cents. Nothing wrong with overloading with sub LT. I think it's a great bridge for late base phase training. But if that's all your doing...I'd adjust, even if I was a serious amateur. Because there are very simple low cost, larger reward stimuli you can introduce.

do you have evidence (empirical or published studies) that back this up?

I’ve never been tested for FT vs ST but I’ve run over 20+ years and done all kinds of training and racing from sprints to mid distance to marathons and using performance tables I know I drop way off for distance racing. I’ve found that not much affects my speed, ie I can do sprint training or easy jogging and my 100-400m times stay the same. If I want to run a decent mile-5k I need to do a lot of miles even if they are easy. I don’t need much else and there have been times when I did NSA type training and also times when I overtrained with too much anaerobic work. I’m giving NSA a try since it fits where I’ve had success in the past and it’s low risk for overtraining. The main adjustment I’m currently making are short sprints with lots of rest to keep speed up.