Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Regarding gradually increasing load, how does one decide when it's time to add more minutes? Say if you're trying to decide whether it's worth going from 7hrs per week to 7.5, how do you realise when you've plateaued or if the fitness gains are just taking time to show up? 3 months?

There's definitely some folks with a head in the sand attitude or just waiting for the latest edict from their lord and savior, but overall the thread seems fairly receptive to talk of additional stuff IF it's well-reasoned and consistent with the already established logic. We gotta show the work, explain how something fits, and who it fits for.

Often the heavily downvoted suggestions are themselves extremely dogmatic -basically amounting to "you need to add X thing because thats how training is done" without providing any real underlying reasoning.

I myself have made many posts of deviance and heresy in this thread (X-factor work, VO2 work, plyometrics, sprints, lifting, longer slower than subT workouts, periodization with race-specific workouts, easy doubles before Sirpoc did them, etc). Yet to my memory at least, I accumulated very few downvotes and the only person I recall really arguing with is Coggan.

I would encourage you to not be discouraged by a few zealots.

The reason that you're confused is because sirpoc has perpetuated the mistaken beliefs that (r)TSS = training performance score and CTL = fitness. Neither is correct, the former in particular because (r)TSS is a relative measure.

I have read the book and found it really helpful. I am bought into the method. I however don't understand how to know what's sustainable to start out. I understand the concept of progressing slowly but I have no idea how to know where to start. I'm thinking right now that I should start really low, even if it's unnecessarily low, but I'm concerned by doing that I could be wasting months of training. I think I've averaged 35 for the past year, then 50 and 55 for the years before. Do I try to build to 50 in a few months or try to sustain around 35 or less?

Thanks! Really helpful! I almost miss lexel…

Ultimately that question's too individualized for others to answer. Your history and ability to adapt to this type of training stimulus is going to determine what you can handle.

If you want an easy answer, start with 30, and bump up by 5 every 3 weeks. As long as you feel like it's sustainable for months, you're good. As soon as you start feeling challenged to maintain the structure, cut back a step and build from there.

Or you can be like me! I can hit TSS of about 70 in a marathon build ("Fitness" on intervals.icu), so tried to get back near that and burnt my self good. Got back to TSS of 55 more slowly and cooked myself again. Old habits of pushing the line die hard. Maybe I'll listen to the wisdom of this thread and ramp things up more slowly. Maybe you will too.

I don't think you are at the "upper limit" of this method.

I'm doing close to 12 hours of running a week, and I'm yet to reach the "upper limit".

I think people see the guidelines of this method and they interpret them as hard rules.

The 75/25% split isn't a target, it's a cap on intensity - as in, 'don't do more than 25% of your weekly volume as sub-T, because you won't have the foundation to support it'. It doesn't mean you have to have 25% intensity. You can increase load by increasing your volume of easy running - which is a much less stressful way to do it.

Lot of people come here saying this or that should be done, but then there is never an explanation of how this should be added.

If you want to do faster stuff there is the 45/15 reps. Going for longer reps just doesnt seem substainable.

So how would add "additional stuff" in a substainable way? Magness came up with changing the last rep/reps slowly to 5k speed weeks put of a race. I dont think this was dismissed or downvoted by most. Most are just making great gains and dont want to take a risk by adding faster stuff. Which is just a fair option. Seems like the 45/15 sessions from Bakken are also only done by few.

So is it dogma to stay at the orginal layout? Or is it that nobody is giving us an addition that actualy makes sence. But then are still telling us we need to do additional stuff anyway because the elites train like this, or the great choaches are saying so, or a study shows it, etc. But without making a senseble tweak to work with.

So can you give us an exemple of the "additional stuff" in a way that it fits the the system?

I honestly believe that if you can improve the system that loads of people would use it.

For the first 3-6 weeks, just prioritise moving towards the structure/distribution of this method. 6/7 runs a week, 3 with a little work, 1 a bit longer, the rest super easy. If that is quite a shift from your current structure or highlighting some issues, fix it before refining it.

Generally, switching to this method is straightforward because, in the short term, it feels easier. I would always recommend getting the structure/distribution of volume right before worrying about intensity. So that may be running every day easy if you’re just trying to go from 5 days to 7 days.

Also, try to avoid thinking about “wasting months of training”. You will ALWAYS feel like you could be doing more, that’s a good sign. I feel I could have done EVERY run/session further, faster, more.

The book gives a good guide. If you are already doing 5 hour weeks, the 5 hour guide is the place to start is the suggestion. If you are only running 4 our weeks, there is a beginner program which is essentially NSM life to start from. If you already do 6 hours, you can jump in on that but if you are extra cautious maybe the 5.5.

I mean this is just common sense. You aren't going to go from 4 hours training to 7 in the book. Likewise, if you are already doing 8, you aren't going to start at 4.

I was running 5 regularly, so I just jumped on in that and it feels way easier already than my old schedule. Again, I will just follow the guide in the book. Consolidate that level of running of volume for a while before maybe in 4-6 weeks, starting to sprinkle a few minutes on here.

I think it comes down to a lot of suggestions have been said so many times and nobody really sticks with them. Usually, I would guess, it's because they are unsustainable. The best thing about this training is the results are great and you don't have to worry really about when you add stuff in, because you probably don't need to.

One of the posts the other day explained it well. I've done 45/15. I found them OK, but actually even with those once I got to the end, biomechanically felt much harder to recover from. I've done 12x400 that felt even harder to recover from. Did it make any difference to my 5k? Probably not.

The flip side is what someone pointed out, you probably don't need this stuff, but if you do add it in and have a good race that you might have had anyway, you then convince yourself this was the key to everything, ignoring the 4+ months of 3x Subthreshold a week was probably the key, and then you can easily talk yourself in to more and more regular intensity sessions and you fall back into bad habits.

I think just about everyone would probably make this better, if they could and follow it. Most people here just want to know their hours are best invested with their precious time for the best results possible.

This is the problem though. Hobby joggers are limited by time and it comes down to a really simple equation. You cannot fit everything from the four corners of training into a hobby jogging schedule and it be meaningful. You will always be missing something and the thing you will miss the least is intensity above LT2. The biggest zealots in this thread are often to the ones who absolutely refuse to accept that, despite with all the evidence of the thread and so many people dropping work above LT2 and getting better, it's probably close to being a proven fact.

Jan. The strike rate of NSM is huge. Nobody is saying it'll work for everyone. But a large and significant proportion of hobby jogging population probably would hugely benefit from it. 9/10 testimonials are positive, which tells you all you need to know. Even a few who were disappointed, often didn't actually get worse just didn't shift up or down the improvement curve. Some I would argue lacked the patience. Others I would also argue would have improved on any other method.

But even when you put all of that into the melting pot. What we have here is arguably the best template a hobby jogger could ever have with a small amount of wiggle room to fit the athlete and allow them to make their own decisions without the need for a coach. But we've even seen some coaches embrace this. What's strange is how defiant some coaches seem to be. Again, coming back to who is a zealot and not. The coaches really (a certain number of them) have proved themselves to be some of the most stubborn, stuck in their ways with their views people in the entire thread.

The thread has embraced many adaptions by the way. 6 day schedule, cross training, easy doubles all pop straight into my head that weren't a thing on day 1. All backed up with reason and then people trying it, coming back, providing more evidence it works and then it becoming part of normal adaptation.

I don't think I've ever seen another training method where seasoned hobby joggers who have been treading water for years and who all have trained in various different ways, have all suddenly made huge improvements, often coming up to 40 years old or even beyond. That is never explained by zealots and members of the intensity cult like Jan, where their only answer is "ah by they didn't train the power of vo2 max properly!" Then never go onto explain what that even means. Or even lay out an alternative training schedule.

I would say you have to change the NSM system drastically and only save a small part of it to get all runners improve with it. What you have to do is cutting the three weekly subT down to just one! But that one will be like a longer tempo and subthreshold pace for 6-8 miles. Then you just add one more workout in the week to be max vo2 stuff at 5 k pace.

Never I had run my elite times I did with just three weekly subthresholds.One subthreshold workout weekly is enough if you want to be guaranteed to find the gold at the end of the rainbow.Good luck!

Testing and finding THE threshold are made into bigger bugbears than they actually are IMHO, with lactate overcomplicating things as well. Sirpoc's conversion tables from 5k races work just fine. Or if one subscribes to Paul Luttrell's very good post about deriving easy paces from 10k races, one can use 10-15k race as a threshold test for a large chunk of the NSA population.

But if one insists, or feels that a race is somehow impractical, a threshold test is just a hard workout. Also the idea is not so much to determine a heart rate, or a pace as such, or whatever. The point is to calibrate RPE (internal load) and map it into an intensity measured by pace, power or some other external load. So, devise a long test which towards the end parachutes the athlete into a situation where they will have meet and to perceive the pace-time range wherefrom they actually cannot up the pace for a sustained time (the "threshold", literally). Cannot link, but Google training peaks article empirical cycling ftp test for a good example.

So there really is no need to introduce the unnecessary layers of hassle, gadgets, theory and assumptions that come with lactate to what is a practical matter in the end. In my case, a long honest test avoids problems of overestimation that come especially with short step (3-5min) lactate tests.