Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Is there any concensus on how to modify the approach for fast twitchers? Feels necessary for me at this point as progress has stalled for months and I'm pretty much at the limit of vanilla NSM.

Discussion has come up probably multiple times at this point but the best I could find was a few Bakken posts on Reddit where he suggested fast twitchers to do shorter and progressive reps, maybe do double sub-T one day, drop the other sessions and add one traditional 5K session instead.

The latter resonates with me as often felt like I was making the most progress when I added some HIIT on the bike but I'm not a huge fan of cycling.

I guess I see three possible ways to approach this:

1) 5x6 or 3x10 on Tuesdays, 10x3 or 20x1:30 on Thursdays, Hills or 5k on Saturdays. Basically the original Norwegian doubles approach ... without the doubles. Hills should be manageable in terms of fatigue for me, 5k workouts less sure.

2) Bakken #1: Regular NSM but with focus on short intervals like 10x3, 20x1:30, 30x0:45. Maybe a few mixed sessions like 2x6 + 4x3 + 4x1:30. Should be able to handle the load, legs are rarely an issue.

3) Bakken #2: Tuesdays 5x6 or 3x10 in the morning, 10x3 or 20x1:30 in the evening. Fridays 6x800 or 5x1000 at 5k pace. Maybe Monday or Wednesday off to manage fatigue. Hardly NSM anymore though.

Thoughts?

I posted a while ago. I found switching to faster stuff and it was all too easy. The biggest breakthrough I had was following a guy who posted here. I actually dumped all reps under a mile. Incredibly fast twitch guy and used to run the 400. I found this worked on my weaknesses. An eye opener was also cheetodust, who is a really fast guy at the lower end, has natural speed and I don't think he does NSM repeats shorter than a mile.

I don't think there is a general consensus on this but virtually all the reports I have seen or testimonials regarding NSM and this kind of problem that it's probably quite overblown, in terms of FT v ST.

Interesting, so you did basically the opposite, only 5x6, 3x10, ... and longer?

To be fair, I don't know how much is FT vs ST but I'm definitely FT and if I look back at what worked for me in the past, I always seemed to respond best to 5k+ workouts. Injuries have never been a real issue for me so far (finger crossed) but ANS/CNS recovery obviously gets harder with faster workouts.

The only "slow" workout that always seemed to yield good results was something like 60+ easy followed immediately by 3x10-15 or 5x6. But that's a hard one and only makes sense 2-3 times in preperation for a marathon or maybe a half.

I haven't stagnated but I plan on doing a 4 week block of race specific and suprathreshold work prior to a HM. Prior to this I have had about 11 weeks of cookie cutter NSM at around 70km a week. I plan to drop mileage to about 65km for these specific weeks to compensated for the harder work. I hope that the 11 weeks of running 70k have made me durable to work at these faster paces. Loadwise these workouts are not much different and sometimes lower load than the regular single sessions.

The plan is to still do 3 workouts a week but replace two of the workouts with suprathreshold and race specific work

- short fast rep workout 6x2min around CV Pace + 6x90s @ around VO2 pace

- Normal single threshold session albeit less intense than NSM like 5x6 @ MP so close to LT1

- Race specific stuff 10x3min @ 10KP, 3x15min, 4x15 min working up to HMP.

Have you supplemented your training with lifting at all? Perhaps it could be a good idea to throw in explosive lifts, plyos, drills, maybe even a day of short hill sprints or short accels if you feel like you're being limited as a FT runner.

A guess that I would make is that nuerologically you're not getting the stimulus you need. If you do a lot more volume of shorter repetitions you risk excess mechanical stress. You can recreate the same neuromuscular stimulus with targeted lifting. Perhaps that will help, especially considering you noted HIIT on the bike worked.

I would keep the running workouts going and try to throw in some weight training. Perhaps you can decrease workout volume a bit to allow your body to adjust if you decide to add them in. I would do so on workout days as "doubles" so your easy days are still easy.

It's what I did and it worked for me, at least until I foolishly incresed running volume and got hurt. I was still able to access <30 200m speed pretty easily without doing any strides. Just plyos and fast, heavy compunds.

I am not sure why people feel the need to trade a full sub-T workout for a full VO2 workout. I have introduced intensity into the system and have only seen benefits, but I attribute this to keeping most of the standard NSM structure. Every other week I do the 3x10, 5x6, and 10x3 sub-T, plus maybe 5x20 sec hills (controlled) at the end of one of them IF I feel strong (if not, I forego to recover and reduce risk). The other weeks, I do 3x10, 5x6, and then EITHER a hybrid workout of 6x3 sub-T + 10x20 sec hills (or 10x200m flat) OR 25x1 sub-T at around 8k pace working down to 5k pace. All of this introduces some muscular/mechanical intensity without overstressing my body. It's essential to recover. Subbing a full VO2 workout may be helpful for peaking over the course of a couple weeks, but is not sustainable for progressing long term. All this to say, you can inject intensity while keeping a good amount of sub-T on that third day. I will also add that adding small bouts of intensity made the transition to 25x1 min sub-T a nonissue for me. The first time I tried that a couple years ago it wrecked me for days. But now I have the mechanical efficiency to complement the aerobic component – these two components (physiology and musculature/mechanics) do not progress 1:1 for everyone.

Exactly! The adding of a maxVO2 workout to 1-2 threshold workouts per week speed up the runners improvement. It's a symbiosis reaction where the two paces interact to maximize the runners results. That fast develop can never be done by 3 NSM workouts per week! And it's a misconception maxVO2 workouts at 5 k pace would increase injury risk as long as the reps keeps to be short enough 200- 600m ...... no problems to execute every week. 🇸🇪🧙‍♂️🇸🇪😎

6 weeks is too long. I’m talking about maybe 3 weeks or a maximum of 4.
Doing hard hills on a Saturday before a Sunday long run is also something I wouldn’t do.

I'm not talking about doing full hard V02 sessions or adding pure speed sessions.
Just tweaking the sessions to add a little bit of intensity and creating a little bit more lactate. Things like 8 x 1km at maybe slightly quicker than 10km pace, 3 x 3km at 10km pace or slightly slower.
You can still run them controlled but just pushing the RPE and intensity up just a little.

I’m FT, to the extent that my best distance was 200m and the further the distance, the worst my results compare.

I’ve found NSM has yielded the best results for every distance from 5km up but I’m also running more than I ever have. The only issue I’ve had is if I run a 5km T/T after not doing one for awhile, I really struggle. It takes me 2 or 3 of these hard efforts over 4-5 weeks to really yield my best results. It’s almost like I need to build up my lactate tolerance.

It’s the same with 10km and Half marathon races, I have to do a month of harder work leading into the race otherwise I struggle. My normal sessions are 5x6min, 3x10min, 10x3min.

I have a 10km coming up on the 22nd of March. My next month will be:

Week 1: 5x6min, 3x10min, Hard 5km Parkrun.

Week 2: 8x1km at 10km pace, 3x10min, 5x6min

Week 3: 2km,1km,500m x 2-3sets, then 1km hard, 3-4x6min, Hard 5km Parkrun, Reduced long run (30-45min less)

Week 4: 3-4x6min, 10 x 200m @ 5km pace working down to 3km pace with 200m jog recovery, 2 x Easy days, Race day.

The week after is 3 easy days(so miss 1 x sub t session) and then normal sub T sessions and a reduced long run (30min shorter).

I know it gets away from vanilla NSM but it’s what works for me.

This is not a good plan. It's less specific to racing a HM than vanilla NSM, where the workouts are already at, just above, and just below HMP. 70 km/week is already low volume as preparation for a HM, but you're planning to go lower. NSM is all about slowly increasing load, but you're planning on decreasing load. Vanilla NSM is still working for you, but you want to make changes. You want to jump from 30 minutes of workout volume to 45 and then 60 minutes at HMP. In prior builds I've done things like 4 x 13 minutes and even 3 x 18 minutes as peak workouts (it was clearly overreaching), so I understand the point, but I had to build up to it over several months, and then I needed so much recovery that my average workout volume per week was actually quite low.

I would re-read the basic overviews of NSM and then rethink your plan. Maybe you could benefit from adapting vanilla NSM, but not like this.

Where is the 500+ page Letsrun thread where I can see people talking about Dancan, implementing it, telling of the success they had with it?

Where is the Strava group with 6000+ members using or interested in Dancan, where one can verify their success?

Where is the bestselling book on Dancan?

Where can I listen to a podcast interviewing the creator of Dancan?

Why are you so invested in discrediting NSM when it clearly works for thousands of people?

Asking for a friend.

Another FT guy here, interesting read overall. Bakken seems to think FT need to train differently though.

I guess the more general question is, where do you go once you have maxed out vanilla NSM for you personally? Most suggest full Norwegian doubles -- but are full doubles actually more manageable than two SubT and one faster workout, for example?

Really sorry to not be able to tell you what page, but I am firmly in the FT camp. Came to the thread and read a bunch of people's experiences last time it came up. It was an excellent part of the thread (the best thing about the thread is often user feedback).

TL;DR a good number of people were fast twitch, but deliberately focused in the stuff they were struggling with, longer reps. Over around a couple of months, most reported these became easier.

Months on, I tried this and it is how it played out for me. I really hated 10+ min reps and the RPE on the longer reps was always much higher and struggled to hit paces in line proportionally with the 3 min reps. Around the 6th week things got easier and after around 2 months it was all in line.

The good news is my natural "speed" (if you can call it that at hobby level) is still there, all that has happened is I was prepared to deliver my best performance in a half. I'm even considering a marathon now, something I could have never dreamed of without NSM. I'm just now an overall better runner. The flip side, of course is too could say slow twitch so do speed. But, if they naturally don't have those fibers there's only so much you can do and obviously the downside is the time at these intensities add risk to their training. In some ways, it's actually easier for FT guys on NSM. Our speed still hangs around in the background even without focus.

Bakken may well be correct and again he probably is, at an elite level where training towards or around muscle type might score you a fraction here or there. For myself, it made sense to try and level the playing field and make me a better all around runner. Of course, if you are looking 5k and under only, then this is a bad plan and focusing on your FT is going to be the way forward. I believe cheetodust btw is naturally a fast guy and as far as I can tell, he isn't doing anything under mile repeats.

I'm not discrediting the NSM method . It obviously works great for many. I just think it's interesting how so many of these NSM runners testify they had a background of repeated injuries and overdoing . I myself ran 30 years with serious running and some of the years at national Swedish elite level without almost any injury using maxVO2 intervals almost every week. As it looks to me it must come down to the majority of the NSM runners didn't know before how to correct implement maxVO2 intervals ( at 5 k pace) to maximize their race results.

There was some years ago a thread here at LRC about my the Dancan System of over 7000 posts( !) where even the great Canova participated in discussions with me, but unfortunately my longtime stalkers destroyed that thread ......

I'm not active on Strava anymore and I have never tried to do a podcast.And a book about my running career and the Dancan System will only be if I see there will be a public interest of it to be written.

And you are all welcomed to follow and post in my now thread " Comeback journey to sub 20 min 5k at age 66...." where I use my the Dancan System on myself after 26 years without serious training. 🧙‍♂️

Those 3x15' and particularly 4x15' at HM pace seem pretty damn hard. That would mean running your race in training. On the other end, 6x2' at CV+6x90" at VO2 pace is a bit too little of a training stimulus but could do as a (a bit heavy) sharpening session some 4/5 days before a 5k/10k race.
One of the strengths of NSM is it gets you out of the "overloading/peaking/recovering" loop. Yes, you can in theory get marginally better at a certain race by applying some concepts of periodization, but is it really worth the increased risk? You can achieve that same level you would get from periodization (which is difficult to master) after some more standard training weeks. Not even that many weeks. The race you will run in 4 weeks is much more dependent on the 11 weeks you have under your belt than the weeks you still have to complete.

The only missing elements to the vanilla schedule at this point is some more in depth consideration of muscle tone leading up to races, and more in general the adaptations needed for strictly fast-twitch runners. Then there are still some stones unturned about cross training. Hope the thread will progress on that

Ah, yes, the famous thread where you took the credits on my invention, Email.

Doubles are a big commitment. I mean, there are other nice things to do in life other than running, but to each their own. Also, if you "max out vanilla" you're likely at the upper end of your sustainable long term chronical load.
That said, I think that before making structural changes to the schedule some tools from classical periodization could be deployed. An example could be periods of high volume through cross training (say >12h/week of easy riding plus some running) during holidays or times of the year with higher time availability. That could shift the lipidic metabolism a bit higher and unlock some gains at 10k/HM once the regular NSM schedule is reintroduced.

Links to your results?

No problem it they are in Swedish .. Jag klarer mig i alla fall !

Throw in your Strava as well, so we can be inspired by how fit someone at your age is :)