Great to see the discussion. That's what this should be about, and hopefully those who have read the book will see it's a framework to work within, and no definites. The framework probably breaks down (or the balance) if you stray quite a way from it, but there's definitely wiggle room. But probably not, for arguments sake, for piling on intensity.
Anyway, a bit of a further update. Thank you for the pre orders on the ebook, seems like there's a fair amount.
Now, having said that I've listened to a lot of people and taken on board about making a true reflowable edition, which, seems to almost be there. The book has proved way more popular than I can even have imagined, so to spend a bit on getting it done properly I think is fair in return (this isn't really something me or the guys can do ourselves, it turns out it's quite hard).
Now, the problem being I'm struggling to get Amazon to agree to let me change it from a fixed format, to a proper reflowable epub. I'm hoping , they will let the pre-orders carry over but it's very tricky to get any sense out of them, even though it will mean a better product for the customer.
So, keep an eye out. The good news is, I think it will be better, but, it might require re-ordering again. The good news, there won't be a pre-order and it should just drop (nobody who pre-ordered has been charged yet anyway as far as I know). I'll continue to go back and forth with Amazon, in the hope they just do the simple thing and let me change the format, but, if not, it's a slight pain but will probably be a better experience than a print replica. The majority seem to have wanted a paperback anyway, which has proved straightforward.
You'll never please everyone, but the general consensus was this is what people would prefer.
Sirpoc now faces his biggest challenge - making sense of Amazon's processes!
I've pre-ordered the kindle version - I can confirm I've not been charged yet.
We're you using HR to determine subthreshold? That would probably be a lot higher effort on a bike.
If I do a Sweet Spot session on a bike, my HR will be about 10 beats lower than my Sub-T running session would be at equivalent points.
Sirpoc has said something similar I believe.
It's on page 177 I think, in the cross training section. I think the suggestion is ideally you'd know your FTP (solves the majority of problems), but if you don't, there's a good chance your LTHR is going to be significantly lower.
I assume sirpoc is doing some sort of sweetspot in these bike sessions, it would indicate for him LTHR is at least 10 BPM lower on the bike, assuming he is doing these at the same target of sub threshold intensity. This would make sense as he gives a range of 5-15 lower as a guide, on the page mentioned.
I find I have followed a similar pattern and if I am injured I have jumped on other modes of fitness and used this rule. Cycling, elliptical, rower, ski machine. I don't think you would go far wrong at all, with this advice.
It's on page 177 I think, in the cross training section. I think the suggestion is ideally you'd know your FTP (solves the majority of problems), but if you don't, there's a good chance your LTHR is going to be significantly lower.
I assume sirpoc is doing some sort of sweetspot in these bike sessions, it would indicate for him LTHR is at least 10 BPM lower on the bike, assuming he is doing these at the same target of sub threshold intensity. This would make sense as he gives a range of 5-15 lower as a guide, on the page mentioned.
I find I have followed a similar pattern and if I am injured I have jumped on other modes of fitness and used this rule. Cycling, elliptical, rower, ski machine. I don't think you would go far wrong at all, with this advice.
It’s best to test threshold for each sport and not assume.
People keep saying your LTHR for running will be lower than cycling, but that’s not the case for me.
It's on page 177 I think, in the cross training section. I think the suggestion is ideally you'd know your FTP (solves the majority of problems), but if you don't, there's a good chance your LTHR is going to be significantly lower.
I assume sirpoc is doing some sort of sweetspot in these bike sessions, it would indicate for him LTHR is at least 10 BPM lower on the bike, assuming he is doing these at the same target of sub threshold intensity. This would make sense as he gives a range of 5-15 lower as a guide, on the page mentioned.
I find I have followed a similar pattern and if I am injured I have jumped on other modes of fitness and used this rule. Cycling, elliptical, rower, ski machine. I don't think you would go far wrong at all, with this advice.
Definitely a good starting point, especially if you suddenly find yourself injured and need to jump into another mode on short notice. FTP test is obviously best, but someone might not even have access to power or even wanna test for the sake of 2 weeks cross training for example. I fall into the about 8-9 lower on the bike. For most, it's definitely going to be less as a general rule, especially if they don't regularly do it. The good thing is, if you under pitch, no big deal and because of the lack of muscle damage, if you over pitch, no big deal either. It doesn't take long to work out but I wouldn't over complicate it too much and just go about -10 as your cap versus your usual HR cap in these sessions and agree, just work off that.
Also curious if anyone's tried running the workouts and cross training the rest, or most of the rest
I don't know if this is a good example and answers your questions. I injured my foot from a bad twist, nothing serious, but it didn't improve for several months, so I had to stop running to recover. In July, I did only cycling, but I find it very boring, and I took August completely off, or almost completely. By September, I was recovered and resumed running, but very gradually because I had lost a lot of fitness. By October, I was almost at 4 hours a week and reached a maximum of 4 hours during that month. In October, I also introduced 2 or 3 hours of cycling per week spread over 2 or 3 days, and 3 days of subthreshold training. So, the distribution ended up being 3 days of 30 minutes easy + 20 minutes subthreshold + 10 minutes easy, one day of 60 minutes easy, and 2 or 3 days of cycling (some days easier than others). In May I ran a 10K at a pace of 4:20/km. By November, I wasn't capable of anything faster than 5:00-4:55/km. On Sunday, I raced at a pace of 4:40/km. I started with something like 5:20 for 7-10 minute intervals, 5:15 for 5 minutes, and 5:10 for 3 minutes. By the end of November, I was managing paces of 5:00 for 3 minutes, 5:05 for 5 minutes, and 5:10-5:15 for 10 minutes. My last workout was 6 x 3 minutes at 4:55/km.
Before summer, my interval training paces were 10K + 10", 10K + 15", and 10K + 20" for 3', 5', and 8'-10' intervals respectively. After summer, they became 10K + 20", 10K + 25", and 10K + 30", mainly because I used to train alone, and then, due to circumstances, I had the opportunity to run with my girlfriend and I adapted to her. However, I've noticed that I finish feeling very fresh, with the feeling of having worked just enough; I feel good. Paradoxically, she crossed the finish line a mere 10 seconds behind me, beating her personal best from two years ago, when she ran at a pace of 4:47.
Hard2find and sirpoc actually came up with a number of potential combinations, of which I don't believe anyone actually tried long term. Including the slightly slower than M pace every (LT1) day broken up into small chunks
Does anyone know where this is discussed in more detail? Is it earlier in this thread or elsewhere? I have read the whole thread but it's been a while. Hard2Remember where all the info is between the thread, Strava group, Reddit page, and now the various podcasts and articles being written on this...
This is interesting, I've been experimenting with removing the long run. Theoretically if you didn't care about anything longer than a 5k, it makes no sense to not just do sub threshold every other day and get the extra 3ish sessions a month?
This is interesting, I've been experimenting with removing the long run. Theoretically if you didn't care about anything longer than a 5k, it makes no sense to not just do sub threshold every other day and get the extra 3ish sessions a month?
I think you would have to be pretty aerobically fit to do 4 subt and 3 easy days. I've slowly been working my way up to doing 36 minutes in each subt session and doing 3 a week is already pretty taxing. Personally I would not risk adding in another subt session, the long run and the easy day after it lets me feel just refreshed enough to keep the ball rolling. I'm in about about 17:40 5K shape right now for context and have been doing NSM for 7 months.
I think it would make more sense to just double up on easy runs if you want to squeeze a little more out of yourself without too much extra risk. If that's not enough you just do easy in the AM and then subt in the PM. And eventually you get to double T.
This post was edited 4 minutes after it was posted.
I meant something more like cutting out the long run, and running 30 min sub t every other day (+30 min of WU, CD and rec.jogs) sandwiched between 60 min easy runs. Some weeks it would be 4 sub t sessions (Mon, Wed, Fri, Sun) and some weeks it would be 3 sessions (Tue, Thur, Sat). I think for something like this, you'd probably have to stop thinking of training load in terms of weeks and more in months which I think is more in the spirit of this method. I've finished the whole book and I've not seen anything recommending against something like this. A long run takes more out of me than a sub t session, though I suspect it's more likely because I never sleep well on Sundays
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
So far, on here, Strava, and Reddit, people are posting up gains. The gains are being achieved, even by FT types, who Magness and other high profile influencers, say threshold doesn’t work.
Maybe I am misunderstanding, but the negative comments appear to be coming from those who haven’t trained this way for a period. If someone has trained for 6 months at vanilla NSM and regressed, we want to hear about it.
Magness does not say that threshold/sub-T doesn't work, or that it doesn't work for FT athletes - when he talks about FT athletes needing work closer to threshold pace, he's literally reading Bakken off the screen. One of his recommendations, to add some shorter faster work, is nearly the same as Bakken's recommendation.
It's unfortunate that some people can't handle back-and-forth discussion with differing views without treating the other side as blowhards and trolls (who do exist!), because Magness vs. NSM is a really interesting debate based on competing views of training with real, important consequences. Stop treating one of the most knowledgeable and accessible people in the sport like some influencer in search of clicks.
One of the great things about NSM is that you can put it in a (small) nutshell very easily: Load is load, and fitness depends overwhelmingly on cumulative load, and the best way to build cumulative approach is with a "sweet spot" approach of 3 sub-T sessions a week.
Compare that to Magness, whose basic model - based on decades of experience and an incredible understanding of the science and history of the sport - is that a training program needs to be tailored to the FT/ST physiology of the runner, and to the demands of the goal races, so that both aerobic and anaerobic fitness are essential, periodization is important, and specificity is key. His model - based in part on Bakken and on some other very reasonable points with good support - tells him that NSM would lead to sub-optimal fitness in important ways, including for 5K and marathon training. This is not a dumb take at all.
NSM even agrees slightly - a special marathon block is recommended - but overall disagrees about the importance of fiber type and specificity in most cases, and sees most periodization as a net negative for long-term training.
So it's very interesting that a lot of people report substantial success with NSM. Maybe there's something about the hobby jogger condition that means specificity and periodization just aren't as important as longer-term term incremental gains. Someone could design a rigorous experiment to find out.
And there are some clear implications about where to go after doing NSM base training. Magness sees a danger of near-term stagnation, with the next step being to work on anaerobic capacity and shift toward event-specific work. NSM instead predicts a plateau only the scale of 1-2 years, with a shift towards adding additional load (through doubles or cross-training) after that. Again, those are concrete, actionable predictions. Someone could test them rigorously in an experiment.
To be clear, it's not Steve Magness' obligation to perform the experiment. He's been giving us free blog posts, videos, and podcasts for the last 15 years. Still, it would be nice if someone could take an empirical look at what's going on, because it's probably interesting. The science might support Magness and Bakken, but my experience aligns with NSM, and I'd like to know why. Maybe, as Magness said, a lot of us just suck at workouts. But can we put parameters on that? Or is something else going on?
Magness does not say that threshold/sub-T doesn't work, or that it doesn't work for FT athletes - when he talks about FT athletes needing work closer to threshold pace, he's literally reading Bakken off the screen. One of his recommendations, to add some shorter faster work, is nearly the same as Bakken's recommendation.
It's unfortunate that some people can't handle back-and-forth discussion with differing views without treating the other side as blowhards and trolls (who do exist!), because Magness vs. NSM is a really interesting debate based on competing views of training with real, important consequences. Stop treating one of the most knowledgeable and accessible people in the sport like some influencer in search of clicks.
One of the great things about NSM is that you can put it in a (small) nutshell very easily: Load is load, and fitness depends overwhelmingly on cumulative load, and the best way to build cumulative approach is with a "sweet spot" approach of 3 sub-T sessions a week.
Compare that to Magness, whose basic model - based on decades of experience and an incredible understanding of the science and history of the sport - is that a training program needs to be tailored to the FT/ST physiology of the runner, and to the demands of the goal races, so that both aerobic and anaerobic fitness are essential, periodization is important, and specificity is key. His model - based in part on Bakken and on some other very reasonable points with good support - tells him that NSM would lead to sub-optimal fitness in important ways, including for 5K and marathon training. This is not a dumb take at all.
NSM even agrees slightly - a special marathon block is recommended - but overall disagrees about the importance of fiber type and specificity in most cases, and sees most periodization as a net negative for long-term training.
So it's very interesting that a lot of people report substantial success with NSM. Maybe there's something about the hobby jogger condition that means specificity and periodization just aren't as important as longer-term term incremental gains. Someone could design a rigorous experiment to find out.
And there are some clear implications about where to go after doing NSM base training. Magness sees a danger of near-term stagnation, with the next step being to work on anaerobic capacity and shift toward event-specific work. NSM instead predicts a plateau only the scale of 1-2 years, with a shift towards adding additional load (through doubles or cross-training) after that. Again, those are concrete, actionable predictions. Someone could test them rigorously in an experiment.
To be clear, it's not Steve Magness' obligation to perform the experiment. He's been giving us free blog posts, videos, and podcasts for the last 15 years. Still, it would be nice if someone could take an empirical look at what's going on, because it's probably interesting. The science might support Magness and Bakken, but my experience aligns with NSM, and I'd like to know why. Maybe, as Magness said, a lot of us just suck at workouts. But can we put parameters on that? Or is something else going on?
This is where I disagree, which is fine. We can all interpret things differently. To me, Magness was wanting to change things up way too early for the sake of it. Ignoring the fact people aren't stagnation on "just" threshold work, for quite literally years. Magness doesn't understand Bakken IMO, some of his videos have been wide of the mark. Bakken I would imagine is fully on board with NSM vanilla for hobby joggers, from the foreword and everything he's shared on Reddit, I can't see how that's not the case.
If we are talking elites, I have no problem with any of what Magness said. Absolutely makes sense. But I think he's blindsided by elite running, which I believe, is the trap virtually everyone at the top does when they try and then solve the problem of non elites.
The reason NSM works so well is it isolates the issues hobby joggers face, which are unique in comparison to full time athletes. We suck, we are aerobically underdeveloped and recovery and fatigue management is probably the biggest issue. A lot of us are lucky if we get enough sleep at night compared to a nap Jakob might take in the day.
Btw I'm a huge Magness fan and have been, but in my opinion he doubled down and didn't listen to what was being said about why NSM works out the box. The red flag for me is he was suggesting you start adding in some intensity, even when you are ok the upwards trajectory. To me, that's insane as one of the biggest benefits of NSM is almost the limitless free gains for hobby joggers. I doubt many of us will ever do enough volume to max it out. Sirpoc will probably still improve, by doing the same but absorbing some cross training to increase load, but not intensity. I think Bakken gets this, I'm not sure Magness does.
In Magness defence, it was just some random posts on Letsrun. I'm sure he didn't look into it properly or care. There's been hundreds of "golden goose" threads in the years I've been here, but this one has stuck. I've been in running a long time and this thread is at the front I think of what will change hobby jogger trends , maybe for good. It really is important.
If anything, I would like to see someone like Steve instead of putting his own spin on it for the sake of it, have his own opinion on the why it works so well, his opinion obviously carries weight but I don't felt like he dealt with a few challenges very well, especially the big issue of why add intensity and risk when you are still improving? That is hugely different from Bakken's mantra. Because I think in general we are all broadly in agreement that for a wide distribution of the running population, this is working.
Anyway, I hope you don't think this is a personal attack. I really enjoyed your posts colder and wiser. We probably just see this a bit differently. Which is fine. It seems like we have both been around running long enough to know little debates like this are probably just splitting hairs, anyway.
For the most part, I think broadly colder and wiser and old_skool50 you agree. You are two of the better posters we have.
I think Magness wasn't used to being challenged. I did find that kind of worrying, as we can all learn. But, I agree he probably just saw this thread as a silly trend.
Whereas I think like colder and wiser says, probably the vast majority of us the experience likes up with NSM being key to our progress. I don't think 1-2 years will max out though, as I can't ever see myself in the situation where I need to move to doubles. I'll just improve and continue to, much slower, or the improvement will manifest in me ageing but perhaps not getting worse (which is improvement).
I would love to see a full blown study into why this is proving so successful, but I think it's solved with a key phrase in the book. It's this simple. The impact of load itself, is the dominant driver of performance. Up to a point, the composition of training is irrelevant. Just fit in as much as you can and recover. None of us with full time jobs, families etc are ever reaching that "point".
Until you do, why change it up? Ok some hobby joggers will, but that message from the book will apply to well over 90% of us, as a guess, who will never need to worry about anything else, because we will just never get to the point of diminishing returns from NSM.
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