Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Daniels was a legendary ex physiologist, but his coaching resumé is very poor. I'm pretty sure I have coached more successful runners than he has (6 sub 14 5k runners a 3 sub 3,40 1500 runners - all of them from scratch) but my knowledge of physiology is probably around 1 % of his.

Jumping on and off various bandwagons, focusing on the wrong things, ramping up too rapidly, etc., isn't "tried and true" - it's "tried and failed".

There is no reason whatsoever that training for distance running needs to be as complicated as so many make it out to be.

Funny, I would say that his coaching resume is far more impressive than his less-than-a-dozen scientific publications.

Daniels is basically opposite of Costill: the first started out to be a scientist but became a coach, whereas the second started out to be a coach but became a scientist.

A good coach helps a client or athlete naviagate training AND life, not just training. How does this session fit into the weekly schedule? How should I time my nutrition pre and post-run? What should I do for this injury that popped up? What should I try and fit in with this busy work week/travel? Sure, you can pick up the book and fire your coach. Probably would be better off.

On the flip end, a good coach will be able to recongize where the most benefit can be gained for their client in ANY training modality. If they're a runner who wants to get faster, odds are this is a pretty good training philosophy for them. Your value isn't in the program you can write as a coach, but how you coach someone to implement it, make it a habit and improve whilst enjoying the process and the expertise surrounding the why behind it.

Congratulations youve got yourself to understanding the main point of the entire thread

You seem to have missed my prior comments where I suggested even simpler approaches than doing intervals three times per week.

Hello,

The time it takes to see an improvement in race times when starting NSM might be due to a faster decline in our anaerobic energy systems than our initial aerobic gains.

Indeed, on the one hand, our aerobic capacity improves slowly (but the potential is enormous).

On the other hand, our anaerobic capacity deteriorates because we stop high-speed training with NSM. Anaerobic gains are rapid, but the loss occurs quickly when this pathway is no longer stimulated.

In total, when starting NSM, it takes time for our aerobic gains (slow gains) to compensate for the loss in our anaerobic capacity (rapid loss). However, once compensated, progress is gradual. Perhaps runners heavily focused on high-speed intervals, and therefore who train their anaerobic system extensively, take longer to see improvements in race times when starting NSM?

(Sorry for my english)

That's not it.

The anaerobic contribution to the typical hobbyjogger's 5 km time is minimal. There's also no evidence that such abilities are lost (or gained) with any different time course than the aerobic determinants of performance.

Daniels did release a program. It’s called the “red intermediate plan” (at least what I have in the 2nd edition of the book).

Red plan is 2 workouts/week of 20 minutes of threshold. Other days are 40-50 min easy running.

The problem is that most runners think they are “too advanced” for this plan and go directly to the 5-15K plan or half marathon-marathon plan then cook themselves.

Daniels recommends that after the red plan you move to blue plan. And if blue plan is too tough you go back down to red plan until you’re ready for the blue plan. In theory this could take a runner years to progress to blue, but most people want to go to the harder plans immediately.

I’m not trying to say that Daniels is better or worse than NSM. Personally I’ve been doing NSM since February after ~10 year layoff from consistent running. Daniels never explicitly writes FOLLOW THIS PLAN, and I personally ignored the red plan thinking high school and college prepped me properly for more strenuous plans

<speechless>

Magness has made this point a number of times. His view is that the more FT type will lose more than they gain, by dropping the faster stuff. This is true in the short term, but FT types have reported gains over the longer term in this thread, without doing faster stuff.

Yeah I was one of them. There were a ton of people at one point when this debate came up. My view is still the same, despite what Magness or anyone says. Sure, it was tough initially, especially the 10 minutes reps, but it worked on my weakness. When I need to turn my fast twitch sprinters legs over, I still can. At the end of the day you need the aerobic engine if you want to run really anything from the mile up. There's no hiding whether you are FT or ST. probably one of the biggest regrets ever is listening to advice for the last decade as to whether that makes much difference. Good training is just good training, especially at hobby level where there is so much room for easy gains when you get it right.

So Nico Nico running, amirite?

Hi, I only want to run 3-4 times a week. So have been training every second day. I have been doing 3x sub threshold days and then an easy medium/long run. So basically vanilla NSM without the three easy days - which I take as pure rest days. I am loving it and feel I am getting great bang for my buck. Any idea where this might go wrong? Book is in the post and have read this full thread but don’t feel this has been directly answered. Is there a better system on 3-4 days? I am finding this combo excellent- feel I am still running strongly, injury free, and a great life balance…on just 3-4 hours a week. Thank you Sirpoc - this has given me a simple routine which I needed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AdvancedRunning/comments/1psz0nc/5k_time_trialprogress_report_1925_1751/

Guy here is another success story. 19:25 to 17-high in 6 mos.

The thing is with people's criticism of NSM, is they never really lay out something better when challenged. Poor Magness, but even he didn't really have an answer to why would he change anything when the athlete was still improving? He couldn't seem to remove the concept that hobby joggers might never really get to the point they need true intensity and default mode was to just to back to what he knows.

If you think there is a better method out there (which there may well be), then sirpoc has shown that l literally anyone can drop in into a thread, and if they communicate their ideas clearly, honestly, share their training data and why they have done things, there is a market there for people to listen. You can be a random guy on the internet and write a book. If your ideas work, it will gain momentum. So I have no idea why people are so reluctant to share training they say provides them better progress. The floor is yours.

My view is this: this thread and the wider community has inadvertently been the best case study of all time with regards to hobby jogging. Thousands of runners experimenting with a systematic plan over a long period of time, with a significantly large proportion of them reporting excellent results.

My own view is until someone else does that, I'll probably stick with the general NSM outline and l even less likely to listen to even more random people on the internet who won't even share their own training or outline.

W/ regards to “speechless”..

I never considered the red plan while I was in high school and college (why would I, I’m getting coaching). My initial thoughts when reading about the red plan as a 16 year old is “this is for people that suck”. NSM has helped shift my perspective towards training. As a 17 year old I thought I’m hot stuff running 1:55 800 and 15:39 5K, I need to run hard workouts to run faster. I now get that while those are solid times for high school, I was still SEVERELY aerobically underdeveloped. There’s no need for much more than “red plan” or “nsm” for a looong time

Interestingly TSS for 45 min daniels easy run is the same as 30 minutes of subT. Total TSS/week for NSM is higher than daniels red plan.

here’s calculations for my current fitness below, 16:30 5k

1/36 * IF^2 = TSS/second

IF = threshold pace / actual pace running
For 16:30 5K

Threshold pace = 344 seconds/mile
SubT = 360 seconds/mile (3x 10 min reps)

SubT/NSM TSS 30 min = 45.65
Threshold/Daniels TSS 20 min = 33.33

Daniels easy = 450 seconds (7:30/mile)
NSM easy = 510 seconds (8:30/mile)
Daniels TSS easy 45 min= 43.8
NSM TSS easy 45 min= 34.12

Week Daniels TSS (5 easy + 2 T)= 285
Week NSM TSS (3 easy + 3 SubT + 90 min easy)= 239.25 + 68 = 307.25