Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

BigMango wrote:

OK, he ran 18 or 19 or whatever. I never argued that he wasn't running whatever time. I keep repeating myself but everybody is determined to defend him and he doesn't need your help.

I believe his training was very poor before NSM. The story that he was stuck at 19 minutes without context doesn't help. You yourself on a prior post said his training was inconsistent. You made almost this exact post before registering. Go look at it :)

Do you think there is a difference between being stuck at 19 minutes vs training little and not being able to break through 19 minutes? Do you think it might help to see his inconsistent training so we can measure the impact of NSM?

This thread is cult like. No doubt or questions allowed. I don't idolize anybody and as much as I like Sirpoc's NSM, I don't idolize him. This is reminding me of MAF threads on Reddit.

BigMango wrote:

OK, he ran 18 or 19 or whatever. I never argued that he wasn't running whatever time. I keep repeating myself but everybody is determined to defend him and he doesn't need your help.

I believe his training was very poor before NSM. The story that he was stuck at 19 minutes without context doesn't help. You yourself on a prior post said his training was inconsistent. You made almost this exact post before registering. Go look at it :)

Do you think there is a difference between being stuck at 19 minutes vs training little and not being able to break through 19 minutes? Do you think it might help to see his inconsistent training so we can measure the impact of NSM?

This thread is cult like. No doubt or questions allowed. I don't idolize anybody and as much as I like Sirpoc's NSM, I don't idolize him. This is reminding me of MAF threads on Reddit.

uwot wrote:

Is the point though not that his training was inconsistency largely because he was cooking himself with hard V02 work and that, by training at the correct intensity, he was able to stack weeks upon weeks of good (but never spectacular) training and make a breakthrough?

I wouldn't go as far as saying that this thread is cult like, but I think people do get a little irritated when they see others getting on as if James/SIPOC invented the the system from scratch when all it really is is sensible threshold training combined with decent mileage, something we have known works for decades.

To be clear, Sipoc has never, ever claimed this himself and he deserves immense credit for explaining it well and articulating it to other people. But I'm sure he would be the first to admit that he is standing on the shoulders of e Lydiard, John Kellogg, Bakken etc.

For what it's worth I think NSM is a great system and I follow aspects of it myself, with the only real differences being that I include strides because I am a complete carthorse and need to keep on top of my biomechanics and form and sometimes replace one of the threshold interval session with a marathon effort tempo (roughly just over LT1) or a progression run (from very easy to just below LT2) or a "solid" long run just below LT1 with a small pickup at the end.

Koenaldo wrote:

Hi all,
long time lurker here. I’ve discovered the forum about half a year back. After reading through the 10k+ posts I thought: might as well give it a try and in a later stadium add my experiences.

Background
Over the past few years, I’ve been a very effective boom-and-buster. I have been running on and off for over 7 years, usually running about 6 months of the year, taking the rest off due to injury or burn-out. Looking back I’ve averaged about 20km/week/year since 2021. With peaks around 70km/week during marathon build-up and absolute lows where I wouldn’t run for weeks on end. Furthermore, usually I’d run my easy runs around 150 bpm (HrMAX = 187) and beat myself up at the track weekly whenever I wasn’t injured. Had a lot of fun, and some linear progress. Since 2022 I started cross-training with cycling and swimming for a total of 6 hours, that increased to 8 hours in 2025.

Some PRs from recent years:
2022: FM 3:00, HM 1:24, 10k 37:xx, 5k 17:40
2023: FM 2:56, HM 1:21, 10k 36:30, 5k 17:10
2024: HM 1:20, 10k 35:30, 5k 17:04
2025: 5k 16:48 (March), 10k 35:30 (October)

Through this I’ve gotten seriously injured every half year, peaking in 2025 where I
made quite a jump in my 5k time in March, but now had structural nags and pains
during the rest of the year.

NSM
Stumbled upon NSM in September, started reading the forum and figured I’d give it a go. Decided to take 25k/week as a starting point and take my time building up from 3 to 4
times a week. I ran only easy (now being <130 HR for me). Which was incredibly slow, starting around 6:00 min/km. Took a while to get used to. Collected a lot of street credit by chatting with the elderly who I was now running along with. Quite relaxing. End of October ran a 10k race as a starting point in 35:30.

In November I started adding sub-treshold intervals, as I had now reached 5 weekly runs in
a sustainable manner. Built it up by a few minutes each week, reaching about 45-50 minutes over three sessions in January. In the meantime my easy pace dropped from 6:00 in October, to 5:50 in November, to 5:45 in December, and a big jump to 5:30 in January.

Last weekend I ran a 34:09 10k, on the same race where I ran the 35:30 in 2025. Felt quite easy, never even came near those paces during training. Yet still, big PR. And no injury. Very happy with this result as it didn’t feel like a peak performance at all. I’m intending to stick to 5 times a week as that is sustainable for me, not going to build above 25% of volume for sub-treshold. Going to try a 5k in a month or two.

In my opinion the biggest success is consecutively running 50k weeks for several months now, without injury or feeling burnt out. I have never done that before and am enjoying it thoroughly. I realize that I’m only applying a stripped down version of vanilla NSM for
cross-training, plus I’ve only been doing it for a very brief period of time relative to others. However my experience doing this is so much more positive than any other running method so far that it doesn’t feel premature to share a good result in this stadium.

Anyways, will post another update when I do that 5k some time in the future.

Kind regards

euro coach wrote:

uwot wrote:

Is the point though not that his training was inconsistency largely because he was cooking himself with hard V02 work and that, by training at the correct intensity, he was able to stack weeks upon weeks of good (but never spectacular) training and make a breakthrough?

I wouldn't go as far as saying that this thread is cult like, but I think people do get a little irritated when they see others getting on as if James/SIPOC invented the the system from scratch when all it really is is sensible threshold training combined with decent mileage, something we have known works for decades.

To be clear, Sipoc has never, ever claimed this himself and he deserves immense credit for explaining it well and articulating it to other people. But I'm sure he would be the first to admit that he is standing on the shoulders of e Lydiard, John Kellogg, Bakken etc.

For what it's worth I think NSM is a great system and I follow aspects of it myself, with the only real differences being that I include strides because I am a complete carthorse and need to keep on top of my biomechanics and form and sometimes replace one of the threshold interval session with a marathon effort tempo (roughly just over LT1) or a progression run (from very easy to just below LT2) or a "solid" long run just below LT1 with a small pickup at the end.

I think this is where the book is golden. He is obviously coming around it from a cycling mindset, but also understands this is nothing novel. Lydiard, obviously Bakken writing the forword given credit, even Daniel's and Coggan he is hugely complimentary of.

All of this wrapped up in the concept that he clearly says two things. One thing is that there is no real such thing as the Norwegian singles method and secondly he has created a framework for shaping training, rather than re inventing the wheel.

Part 2 is the important bit. We have something we can understand and just about anyone can pick up and follow broad guidelines. This, ultimately is what makes the book so useful. There's actually never any must or must nots, but encourages you to think yourself. Which is probably the opposite of how a lot of people see this method. Which I have always found strange.

Also, fwiw his previous training whilst not in amazing detail (there's no need) is covered in the book. In that we can see as he moves through, as the recovery cost etc got worse as he moved through the first two years of training, leading to big boom and busts and never really getting above reasonably low peaks. The sample graph of a traditional couple of training blocks versus consistent sweet spot I think really can help anyone visualise why this works.

Someone else posted earlier. Most of the debate isn't even around if this works anymore. We have moved on from that just by the sheer numbers of people posting up their successes here or elsewhere.

BigMango wrote:

OK, he ran 18 or 19 or whatever. I never argued that he wasn't running whatever time. I keep repeating myself but everybody is determined to defend him and he doesn't need your help.

I believe his training was very poor before NSM. The story that he was stuck at 19 minutes without context doesn't help. You yourself on a prior post said his training was inconsistent. You made almost this exact post before registering. Go look at it :)

Do you think there is a difference between being stuck at 19 minutes vs training little and not being able to break through 19 minutes? Do you think it might help to see his inconsistent training so we can measure the impact of NSM?

This thread is cult like. No doubt or questions allowed. I don't idolize anybody and as much as I like Sirpoc's NSM, I don't idolize him. This is reminding me of MAF threads on Reddit.

WhoopsieAtwWork wrote:

BigMango wrote:

OK, he ran 18 or 19 or whatever. I never argued that he wasn't running whatever time. I keep repeating myself but everybody is determined to defend him and he doesn't need your help.

I believe his training was very poor before NSM. The story that he was stuck at 19 minutes without context doesn't help. You yourself on a prior post said his training was inconsistent. You made almost this exact post before registering. Go look at it :)

Do you think there is a difference between being stuck at 19 minutes vs training little and not being able to break through 19 minutes? Do you think it might help to see his inconsistent training so we can measure the impact of NSM?

This thread is cult like. No doubt or questions allowed. I don't idolize anybody and as much as I like Sirpoc's NSM, I don't idolize him. This is reminding me of MAF threads on Reddit.

And what exactly are you trying to prove?

Are you actually trying to suggest he was running low 18's secretly and then faked Parkruns to show improvements?

No wonder Sirpoc avoids this thread with kind of drivel.