That's simple. They didn't do enough volume or load, because they did too many hard workouts. Or their coaches or training plan put an unnecessary emphasis on stuff hobby runners and cyclists don't need to worry about - which is anything above LT2.
There is obviously a point where consistent load will top you out. But it's obviously not guys on 5-10 hours a week, where a huge base will outrun or outride just about any plan that has intensity as it's regular focus.
Obviously more and more people are understanding this at amateur level, but there are also a lot of minds still struggling to catch up. Despite all the evidence.
It's not that anyone was doing anything inherently wrong. No training is "wrong". This training is just better, given the restrictions and limitations amateurs have.
Not doing enough volume or load ( time limited hobbyjoggers) I can't agree, but as you say probably the wrong quality workouts and maybe too many of them.
As so many of them testifies they frequently got injured of course they did wrong training.
To paraphrase Almgren, threshold alone does not make a great 5k/10k runner.
If you want to paraphrase Almgren, he also has said that he has removed the hardest sessions from his schedule. This had resulted in the training consistency he achieved in the last couple of years. Earlier in his career, he was frequently injured for many many years.
To paraphrase Almgren, threshold alone does not make a great 5k/10k runner.
If you want to paraphrase Almgren, he also has said that he has removed the hardest sessions from his schedule. This had resulted in the training consistency he achieved in the last couple of years. Earlier in his career, he was frequently injured for many many years.
If the 3000+1500+4×400 with the 3000 in 7,40 that he did before his European 5000m record wasn't his hardest session, I would love to se what his hardest session looked like.
If you want to paraphrase Almgren, he also has said that he has removed the hardest sessions from his schedule. This had resulted in the training consistency he achieved in the last couple of years. Earlier in his career, he was frequently injured for many many years.
If the 3000+1500+4×400 with the 3000 in 7,40 that he did before his European 5000m record wasn't his hardest session, I would love to se what his hardest session looked like.
Where would you guys argue the tipping point is though? From where you start getting diminishing returns from just stacking easy + sub-t and it becomes worthwhile to add in the other stuff? Maybe somewhere around 2hrs of sub-t or 10+ hrs a week? I guess at this point it's worth considering moving from 3xsub-t (converging on 40min a session) to Norwegian 2xDouble-T + weekly X-session?
For what it's worth I'm sure most of us are good enough with vanilla NSM on <8hrs a week but there are some of us who have too much free time...
It’s a non-answer, but you can always add whatever else you want if you’ve a lot of free time. Anything additional will fall outside “NSM” framework, but your running is up to you to decide what works best. For me at least, NSM helped teach how to accurately assess training load and hammered the importance of consistency. Best practice seems to be to acknowledge risk of new training, adjust for your ability, and introduce gradually.
I think Renato Canova said it takes 5-8 years to build aerobic fitness. One key part of building the fitness is subT. This thread linked below has an example of high school teams using subT for base of 3 months then introducing workouts to peak for state meet. Renato himself advised on this base work too.
“I try explain again for you. I have woman that runs 15:20 for 5k. During this three month cycle she runs easy long runs with pace of 6:20 per mile, steady runs at 6:00 per mile, and medium runs of 5:40 per mile, and tempo pace for is 5:20 for each mile. This woman spends many kilometers between easy pace and tempo. Sometimes my friends, the best coaches in the world, they don't take good advantage of this pace that is between easy and threshold. When I read article of some coach, and they say that they believe in the method that is hard/easy, I want to cry for them.”
One of Renato's strange comments.( 16 years ago!) 🤔
A woman ran 15:20 for 5 k using an easy pace for a runner should give 13:30 ???LoL 🧙♂️
It’s a non-answer, but you can always add whatever else you want if you’ve a lot of free time. Anything additional will fall outside “NSM” framework, but your running is up to you to decide what works best. For me at least, NSM helped teach how to accurately assess training load and hammered the importance of consistency. Best practice seems to be to acknowledge risk of new training, adjust for your ability, and introduce gradually.
I think Renato Canova said it takes 5-8 years to build aerobic fitness. One key part of building the fitness is subT. This thread linked below has an example of high school teams using subT for base of 3 months then introducing workouts to peak for state meet. Renato himself advised on this base work too.
“I try explain again for you. I have woman that runs 15:20 for 5k. During this three month cycle she runs easy long runs with pace of 6:20 per mile, steady runs at 6:00 per mile, and medium runs of 5:40 per mile, and tempo pace for is 5:20 for each mile. This woman spends many kilometers between easy pace and tempo. Sometimes my friends, the best coaches in the world, they don't take good advantage of this pace that is between easy and threshold. When I read article of some coach, and they say that they believe in the method that is hard/easy, I want to cry for them.”
One of Renato's strange comments.( 16 years ago!) 🤔
A woman ran 15:20 for 5 k using an easy pace for a runner should give 13:30 ???LoL 🧙♂️
Sirpoc, or rather SirPump as I like to call him, leaves out a key piece of anaerobic conditioning that we KNOW he is doing extremely regularly. Here’s a fit, charismatic dude in his literal prime and we’re supposed to believe he’s not laying massive amounts of pipe?! These vigorous sessions are surely anaerobic (one fine lass quoted “he took my breath away”)—and are certainly frequent enough that they should be considered a staple part of the anaerobic conditioning. There’s probably an isometric strength component buried somewhere in here as well. It’s not written down, but when you realize this is the reality on the ground the entire wholeistic model starts to make more sense.
The man is running Seville Marathon this weekend and I am very curious to see the result and hear his reflections on this last few months of his training. As we've talked about he's incorporated a lot more biking, while doing a similar amount of running to pre-London. So his baseline CTL must be higher. But a lot of that is from cross training, and he hasn't done the big workouts like the 5 x 5k from the special block he did before London. It'll be an interesting experiment to see whether that last little bit of specificity was important or not. Also, it'll be a demonstration of what can be gained from cross training; he mentioned he thought he'd worked out a formula for how it converts, but he didn't share exactly what that was. I wouldn't be surprised if he PRs by a couple of minutes, but I also wouldn't be shocked if it's a few minutes slower than London. Hopefully he de-briefs either here or on a podcast after. I think we'll learn a lot either way.
Is Magness really out there saying that double olympic gold winner and multiple world champion/diamond league winner Ingebrechsen would do better with him as a coach?
Just Wow .. :D
But ok, if he wants to put himself in the same category as Jan then who am I to judge?
Magic Coach Magness! :)
A runner who is notorious for 1) outstanding fitness and 2) getting outkicked in the biggest races does in fact need to work on top-end speed. This has been stated by many people, many times. Steve Magness' coaching career has given him much more direct experience with people close to that level than anyone here, so playing his comment for yucks is just stupid ignorant. On top of that Magness has spent over 20 years studying the history of training, so if he thinks some elite needs to work on top-end speed, there's a good chance he's right, and that's a question that has nothing to do with NSM, and where NSM has absolutely nothing to say.
We've got a good thing going here with NSM. It's a system that works for a lot of people. Let's try not to ruin it by being complete D-bags to everyone else who comes at it from a different perspective.
A runner who is the absolute GOAT over 3k, who wins basically any championship 5k if he turns up fit, also manages to run world-leading 1500s and often comes out on top over that distance. Are we saying the 1500 is a more prestigious distance so he should stop caring about his best events?
Is Magness really out there saying that double olympic gold winner and multiple world champion/diamond league winner Ingebrechsen would do better with him as a coach?
Just Wow .. :D
But ok, if he wants to put himself in the same category as Jan then who am I to judge?
Magic Coach Magness! :)
A runner who is notorious for 1) outstanding fitness and 2) getting outkicked in the biggest races does in fact need to work on top-end speed. This has been stated by many people, many times. Steve Magness' coaching career has given him much more direct experience with people close to that level than anyone here, so playing his comment for yucks is just stupid ignorant. On top of that Magness has spent over 20 years studying the history of training, so if he thinks some elite needs to work on top-end speed, there's a good chance he's right, and that's a question that has nothing to do with NSM, and where NSM has absolutely nothing to say.
We've got a good thing going here with NSM. It's a system that works for a lot of people. Let's try not to ruin it by being complete D-bags to everyone else who comes at it from a different perspective.
But, Magness isn’t preaching to JI or any other elite, he is using this as an example to preach to the masses.
There won’t be many hobbyjoggers whose running performance in distance events, is going to be defined by what happens in the final 10 seconds of a race.
I am much more interested in how the neuromuscular component affects the whole race, but this wasn’t covered well.
If you can add strides or hill sprints to your NSM load without any problems, do it. Otherwise don’t worry about it.
A runner who is notorious for 1) outstanding fitness and 2) getting outkicked in the biggest races does in fact need to work on top-end speed. This has been stated by many people, many times. Steve Magness' coaching career has given him much more direct experience with people close to that level than anyone here, so playing his comment for yucks is just stupid ignorant. On top of that Magness has spent over 20 years studying the history of training, so if he thinks some elite needs to work on top-end speed, there's a good chance he's right, and that's a question that has nothing to do with NSM, and where NSM has absolutely nothing to say.
We've got a good thing going here with NSM. It's a system that works for a lot of people. Let's try not to ruin it by being complete D-bags to everyone else who comes at it from a different perspective.
But, Magness isn’t preaching to JI or any other elite, he is using this as an example to preach to the masses.
There won’t be many hobbyjoggers whose running performance in distance events, is going to be defined by what happens in the final 10 seconds of a race.
I am much more interested in how the neuromuscular component affects the whole race, but this wasn’t covered well.
If you can add strides or hill sprints to your NSM load without any problems, do it. Otherwise don’t worry about it.
I stand by my first reply to your post
In my opinion Magness does not have the credentials to lecture Ingebrigtsen on his training
A gold medal in the 1500m and the 5k is beyond anything Steve has ever achieved
It's not even about masses vs. elite ... It's just a bad look
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Magness NSM video clearly revealed that he assumes all his audience are either high school runners or at least sub elite, as his main argument against NSM was "What about your 400-800m races?"
So I have no issues with him only addressing those kinds of runners as he seems to be unaware of what a hobby jogger is.
But when he goes and starts claiming to know better than one of the most successful athletes in recent times then he just loses all credibility.
There are so many things wrong with this line of logic:
1. You are arguing that Jakob needs to do more specific mile work because he lacks top speed. Specific mile work does not improve top speed.
2. Jakob does about as much specificity as other elite runners before competitions, just not as much during the base phase.
3. Jakob does do top speed work. Look at any elite runner that copies the Norwegian system on Strava. They all verifiability do top speed work. Jakob has been filmed doing top speed work. They do them on Mondays.
4. Jakob doesn't do less top speed work than other elite 1500 runners. For example Hocker doesn't seem to do any pure top speed sessions, rather slightly longer submaximal strides. Kessler for example, does 1-2 top speed sessions a week while Jakob does 1. Jakob and Kessler's training is remarkably similar, and Kessler's lower load mostly just reflects his much lower training age. Oddly enough, Monday morning quarterbacks on letsrun criticize Kessler for not doing enough aerobic work and Jakob for not doing enough speed work, when in fact they train almost exactly the same.
4. Distance runners aren't typically able to make big improvements in top speed while running high mileage.
5. If he could improve that much by just doing top speed work then he'd just do it.
6. Jakob is naturally more of a 5k runner, who has so much strength that he is also competitive in the 1500. Nobody tells other 5k runners that they need better top speeds. Their top speed's are worse naturally, that's why they're a 5k runner.
An elite 1500m time is being timed to 1/100th of a second.
In a 5k/10k race a recreational runner can lose a couple of seconds in the huddle at the start line, even with a chip.
Whether I run the final 10 secs to the finish line, at 1 mile pace or 400m pace is largely trivial to the finish time.
Is the correct answer.
Let’s face it road races are time trial and track is jog and kick. Why, it’s are you confidence you are aerobic and anaerobic stronger than your fellow athlete? And in 99% of cases the answer is no, so you take the easy route of jog to save yourself for your 200m sprint finish and hope for the best to place or win, it’s a different way of racing.
Boring, as it mounts to watching a bunch of failed 200m runners, but best chance for each athlete.
As most of the Letsrun crowd is US based and brought up this way it’s ingrained in their DNA/psyche to train this way, its why Magnus pushed it and why it’s pointless for 99.9% that are not going for the win when racing on the road when improving aerobically out weight focus on speed development.
Let’s face it road races are time trial and track is jog and kick. Why, it’s are you confidence you are aerobic and anaerobic stronger than your fellow athlete? And in 99% of cases the answer is no, so you take the easy route of jog to save yourself for your 200m sprint finish and hope for the best to place or win, it’s a different way of racing.
Boring, as it mounts to watching a bunch of failed 200m runners, but best chance for each athlete.
As most of the Letsrun crowd is US based and brought up this way it’s ingrained in their DNA/psyche to train this way, its why Magnus pushed it and why it’s pointless for 99.9% that are not going for the win when racing on the road when improving aerobically out weight focus on speed development.
What is shocking to me, is despite so many pages of this thread, which has hundreds of testimonials, some people are so blinkered they still can't see this.
Someone even said the other day, what were people doing wrong before? It's not even that, it's more following NSM is just likely what is better for the majority of us, compared to anything that's come before.
I respect Magness, but the main issue I had with him in this thread was he seemed to be suggesting, even if an athlete was still progressing in a linear fashion this way, you should add in some speed. This is highly illogical to me, since this method seems to be as close to a cheat code as you can get if you can follow it's guidelines and repeat it for a long period of time. It's probably the final resort, but again, nobody really seems to have maxed this out yet. Those who completed singles, can just go onto sub threshold doubles or a hybrid approach and even that is years down the line.
The man is running Seville Marathon this weekend and I am very curious to see the result and hear his reflections on this last few months of his training. As we've talked about he's incorporated a lot more biking, while doing a similar amount of running to pre-London. So his baseline CTL must be higher. But a lot of that is from cross training, and he hasn't done the big workouts like the 5 x 5k from the special block he did before London. It'll be an interesting experiment to see whether that last little bit of specificity was important or not. Also, it'll be a demonstration of what can be gained from cross training; he mentioned he thought he'd worked out a formula for how it converts, but he didn't share exactly what that was. I wouldn't be surprised if he PRs by a couple of minutes, but I also wouldn't be shocked if it's a few minutes slower than London. Hopefully he de-briefs either here or on a podcast after. I think we'll learn a lot either way.
Isn't the "formula" in his book in the section on crosstraining? There it's mentioned how bike training are indexed compared to running, and how much crosstraining that can be done before the specificity aspect kicks in.