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.
This is great post. I hope people bring this up when inevitably the same discussion loops round.
As time has gone on, it's no longer a question of if this will work, it's more why this works.
Like you rightly point out, it's a giant case study at this point. Obviously not controlled, but in general we have hundreds if not thousands of people deep in nsm vanilla and still improving.
I'm all for a better way to train as well, I've swallowed my pride and admitted I was wrong and have had success with this (initially, I thought it was just another fad). So if someone did everything sirpoc did, laid out what works, why, all with a focus on hobby joggers first and foremost, I think everyone would be open ears.
But the silence is deafening usually, just a lot of people who say "oh but you don't know how to use vo2 max workouts and pure threshold running, but I do, because I'm smarter".
Then never go on to explain it more , let alone have open access to their training. Or the big thing for me is they say "well add a sprinkle of this". But why? I'm still improving ag a nice rate. "No add this is, trust me bro it's what the pro guys do".
For me the biggest factor is that quite obviously this isn't going to cut it for an elite with competition in mind. The flip side to that, is why should the training of an elite with competition in mind, apply to me? I think that's when I started to understand and change my mind. But it took a while, add me to the long list of runners who have intensity overuse absolutely drilled into me and have made some horrible training decisions over the years based on it.
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.
This is great post. I hope people bring this up when inevitably the same discussion loops round.
As time has gone on, it's no longer a question of if this will work, it's more why this works.
Like you rightly point out, it's a giant case study at this point. Obviously not controlled, but in general we have hundreds if not thousands of people deep in nsm vanilla and still improving.
I'm all for a better way to train as well, I've swallowed my pride and admitted I was wrong and have had success with this (initially, I thought it was just another fad). So if someone did everything sirpoc did, laid out what works, why, all with a focus on hobby joggers first and foremost, I think everyone would be open ears.
But the silence is deafening usually, just a lot of people who say "oh but you don't know how to use vo2 max workouts and pure threshold running, but I do, because I'm smarter".
Then never go on to explain it more , let alone have open access to their training. Or the big thing for me is they say "well add a sprinkle of this". But why? I'm still improving ag a nice rate. "No add this is, trust me bro it's what the pro guys do".
For me the biggest factor is that quite obviously this isn't going to cut it for an elite with competition in mind. The flip side to that, is why should the training of an elite with competition in mind, apply to me? I think that's when I started to understand and change my mind. But it took a while, add me to the long list of runners who have intensity overuse absolutely drilled into me and have made some horrible training decisions over the years based on it.
I think it’s just we create an identity of ourselves and those who core identify is predominantly as a runner, their core belief/tenet is being challenged (much like if we were discussing religion/flat earth/gun control/etc) with this method that says you don’t need to run vo2max or hero sessions. Instead says that moderate hard 30-180 min race pace sessions with lots of easy miles will get you there through maximum commutative load and minimise fatigue instead on limited total training hours.
Only when you are out of the hobby jogger stage where you stop improving with vanilla NSM then switch it up to doubles threshold as our races are time trials rather than placing for positions.
To be fair the USA collegiate system the athletes would be better spent training subT for their first few years and switching part way through their final year to focus their 200m speed as this will give them the best opportunity and better outcomes in their races and setup up post graduation to continue running.
But what do I know being a random voice on the interweb and qualified athletics and endurance coach?
At the end of the day you need the aerobic engine if you want to run really anything from the mile up.
More like anything over 400 metres
That's correct in some way! 👏 But to be 100% correct infact 400m is included in distances needing more % of the aerobic engine than most have a clue of.
I said that the time required for the body to respond to training is measured in hours to days, not weeks to months. You questioned that assertion. As this study demonstrates, though, you can indeed detect changes within hours, even using older techniques.
You're of course right in this.But this is not truths 'the sect' want to listen to. lol
I said that the time required for the body to respond to training is measured in hours to days, not weeks to months. You questioned that assertion. As this study demonstrates, though, you can indeed detect changes within hours, even using older techniques.
You're of course right in this.But this is not truths 'the sect' want to listen to. lol
Dr Will, your video is still up and you're still get blasted in the comments, don't you want to take it down or do you have a humiliation fetish?
You're of course right in this.But this is not truths 'the sect' want to listen to. lol
You absolutely know you are in trouble, when you are in agreement with Jan.
The fat con man is so obsessed with intensity over volume, it's why just about every athlete on the cusp of elite, gets worse when he has coached them.
He literally is the epitomy of a coach obsessed with intensity, to the detrimental effect of the athlete in question. Absolutely proven over years and years of his own posts, yet he still lives in his fantasy world.
Here is the thing. His system is basically textbook from the era he started coaching. It's probably not terrible in the short term, but long term it's a flawed approach. Again, see the performances of anyone he's coached or any of the car crash threads. It's exactly the opposite of anything you will find in testimonials here.
Thankfully, more and more people are seeing that a lot of what has been engrained into us, is fundamentally flawed for the average Joe. That's the value of this thread and I personally think it's the best thing to happen to my running in a long time.
With spoc still doing a lot of SS on the bike, what are people's thoughts on doubling on a bike with the occasional VO2 max workout?
I tried it once as a part of a special block (basically Sub-LT running in the AM and 20-ish minutes of hills / HIIT on a bike in the PM) and felt like it improved my fitness quite a bit without threshing my legs -- but would it be sustainable long term?
With spoc still doing a lot of SS on the bike, what are people's thoughts on doubling on a bike with the occasional VO2 max workout?
I tried it once as a part of a special block (basically Sub-LT running in the AM and 20-ish minutes of hills / HIIT on a bike in the PM) and felt like it improved my fitness quite a bit without threshing my legs -- but would it be sustainable long term?
There’s always going to be confusion (sometimes intentional trolling here) on what works for an individual vs what works for most.
NSA is probably the best (bang for buck) we’ve seen for hobbyjoggers on a quantitative basis. But we’ve also seen enthusiasts qualitatively performing well using all sorts of approaches over decades (which is of course survivor bias pov).
Given what you said above it will probably work for you especially if you control load. It’s not like intense sessions suddenly stopped working.
On factor why NSA works better than traditional has nothing to do with methodology itself as just discussed above re Daniel’s red plan. Ambitious runners tend to pick the plan based on what they think they can complete if they really exert themselves, but this is settling up for stagnation or even failure (injury). NSA is about consistency, control , and trusting the process.
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.
Magness does in fact have a very plausible answer, and it's grounded in the prevailing theory of endurance physiology. If I understand him correctly, he would say that even hobby joggers would benefit from small amounts of work at faster pace to improve things like running economy and lactate buffering capacity. Nudging the lactate threshold from the bottom up is great, but he would suggest adding a little work to nudge it from the top down as well. The goal is to build not just more pipes, but also wider pipes, or something like that. That doesn't mean doing a block of intense vO2max sessions, but it seems really sensible to switch from, say, 5 x 6 minutes to 4 x 6 minutes + 6 x 1 minute at 5K pace once a week when preparing for a 5K race.
Magness has spent over a decade researching the history of training and has taken a detailed look at dozens of training systems. He's not trying to sell anyone his own system. He doesn't need clicks. You can't dismiss his objections as uninformed, especially since it's similar to what Bakken said in a less direct way.
Which is why it's genuinely weird that vanilla NSM is working so well for so many people. We've seen a range of modifications to NSM at this point, and not every modification has failed (Andy R and Paul L have done well on modified NSM). But a lot of modifications have failed, and vanilla NSM seems to work even at a high level, and that's interesting.
Magness does in fact have a very plausible answer, and it's grounded in the prevailing theory of endurance physiology. If I understand him correctly, he would say that even hobby joggers would benefit from small amounts of work at faster pace to improve things like running economy and lactate buffering capacity. Nudging the lactate threshold from the bottom up is great, but he would suggest adding a little work to nudge it from the top down as well. The goal is to build not just more pipes, but also wider pipes, or something like that. That doesn't mean doing a block of intense vO2max sessions, but it seems really sensible to switch from, say, 5 x 6 minutes to 4 x 6 minutes + 6 x 1 minute at 5K pace once a week when preparing for a 5K race.
Magness has spent over a decade researching the history of training and has taken a detailed look at dozens of training systems. He's not trying to sell anyone his own system. He doesn't need clicks. You can't dismiss his objections as uninformed, especially since it's similar to what Bakken said in a less direct way.
Which is why it's genuinely weird that vanilla NSM is working so well for so many people. We've seen a range of modifications to NSM at this point, and not every modification has failed (Andy R and Paul L have done well on modified NSM). But a lot of modifications have failed, and vanilla NSM seems to work even at a high level, and that's interesting.
Magness (or anyone, he was like the 5th person to come say the same thing), seemed to be missing the point. You can push up, or pull up your thresholds. There's a point, where pulling it up is the last move you have, but whilst you are improving and there's a huge amount of space to push it up, there's absolutely no point in a smaller pull, especially with the increased risk.
Absolutely, you need it at some point. But everyone is just vastly overestimating how soon a pull up, outweighs the value of the push up. This is probably in the realm of elite training, certainly not 17 min 5k hobby joggers.
That's why this is working on such a basic level, aside from the changing stuff around to suit lifestyle, small kids etc.
The fact is, nobody on hobby hours is getting to the point where there is more value in vo2 max work, than spamming Subthreshold some more all week instead.
Once you get your head around that, it makes total sense. As someone else said, whilst I'm not going to knock Magness or anyone, this is a great argument for the previous point, this is a giant case study. The explanation makes sense and the results are playing out like that. I see it as relatively simply explained.
If I was coaching again, there's absolutely no doubt I would put my athletes on NSM vanilla for a long period of time, before I even considered something else.
This is great post. I hope people bring this up when inevitably the same discussion loops round.
As time has gone on, it's no longer a question of if this will work, it's more why this works.
Like you rightly point out, it's a giant case study at this point. Obviously not controlled, but in general we have hundreds if not thousands of people deep in nsm vanilla and still improving.
I'm all for a better way to train as well, I've swallowed my pride and admitted I was wrong and have had success with this (initially, I thought it was just another fad). So if someone did everything sirpoc did, laid out what works, why, all with a focus on hobby joggers first and foremost, I think everyone would be open ears.
But the silence is deafening usually, just a lot of people who say "oh but you don't know how to use vo2 max workouts and pure threshold running, but I do, because I'm smarter".
Then never go on to explain it more , let alone have open access to their training. Or the big thing for me is they say "well add a sprinkle of this". But why? I'm still improving ag a nice rate. "No add this is, trust me bro it's what the pro guys do".
For me the biggest factor is that quite obviously this isn't going to cut it for an elite with competition in mind. The flip side to that, is why should the training of an elite with competition in mind, apply to me? I think that's when I started to understand and change my mind. But it took a while, add me to the long list of runners who have intensity overuse absolutely drilled into me and have made some horrible training decisions over the years based on it.
It's hard for people to dump their own philosophy. As someone who coached, it's hard for me to admit the amount of vo2 work I was giving my athletes almost certainly was detrimental to many of them.
Nobody likes to admit they got things wrong, some people are too stubborn to learn, even if all the real world evidence points to an outcome they don't believe in.
The reason this method works, from reading the book especially, is because sirpoc wasn't hindered by what the consensus and standard views are. He didn't care about things that are often running myth, or handcuffed to ideas that are probably suboptimal. You take known ideas that work from other endurance areas and apply them without bias to solve the problem of over intensifying running training.
Whilst the roots of this method in running go back maybe 50 years, this thread is now ahead of its time in terms of how much the science and understanding of running regressed so much, during a time where I am guessing a lot of us older guys were coming into the sport.
When using the NSM where should you aim to be on the Borg Scale (6–20)during the Sub-T reps?
Specifically, how should the effort be during the first third, middle third, and final third of an individual rep—or across the entire set of intervals on the Borg Scale?
Magness can’t let go of his belief in the need for intensity for everyone.
In his recent video he mentioned Paavo Nurmi doing long walks, and commented that this was probably wrong. He obviously forgot that Bannister also got much of his endurance from long hill walks.
Modern day Ultra runners still include lots of walking in their training. The average recreational runner completing a marathon in 4 plus hours, is competing in an event that is more akin to an ultra, compared to the elite marathoner finishing in 2 plus hours. They may both be entered in to the same event, but that is all they have in common.
Elite race walkers can walk at sub 7 mpm pace, faster than many recreational runners can run.
Club runners, certainly in the UK, race very frequently, and this likely gives them all the intensity stimulus that they need, without adding it into their routine training. There may be an argument for them to race less, for more long term benefit?
Once people have adapted to running 7 days per week, including 3 s/T sessions, and it feels sustainable, there is going to be the inevitable temptation to add some “spice”. So far, the evidence suggests this is not needed. Most would be better adding more volume, including walking at easy pace hr intensity.
I said that the time required for the body to respond to training is measured in hours to days, not weeks to months. You questioned that assertion. As this study demonstrates, though, you can indeed detect changes within hours, even using older techniques.
You're of course right in this.But this is not truths 'the sect' want to listen to. lol
Of course I am right.
I don't think it is a case of people rejecting the truth because they don't want to hear it, though. They're just not capable of thinking clearly enough to recognize the question for what it is.
Q: "How quickly does the body respond to training?"
Magness can’t let go of his belief in the need for intensity for everyone.
In his recent video he mentioned Paavo Nurmi doing long walks, and commented that this was probably wrong. He obviously forgot that Bannister also got much of his endurance from long hill walks.
Modern day Ultra runners still include lots of walking in their training. The average recreational runner completing a marathon in 4 plus hours, is competing in an event that is more akin to an ultra, compared to the elite marathoner finishing in 2 plus hours. They may both be entered in to the same event, but that is all they have in common.
Elite race walkers can walk at sub 7 mpm pace, faster than many recreational runners can run.
Club runners, certainly in the UK, race very frequently, and this likely gives them all the intensity stimulus that they need, without adding it into their routine training. There may be an argument for them to race less, for more long term benefit?
Once people have adapted to running 7 days per week, including 3 s/T sessions, and it feels sustainable, there is going to be the inevitable temptation to add some “spice”. So far, the evidence suggests this is not needed. Most would be better adding more volume, including walking at easy pace hr intensity.
Interesting using walking at EZ pace as a safe add-on to vanilla NSM.
Also, didn't know racewalkers could walk faster than 7:00/mi.?!