Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

As has been covered on here, NSM and Bakken are not the same. Each book deserves its own review. Mixing the two reviews together will just confuse.

Yeah, you called him out on his very bold claim and in the old fashion way, it went exactly as expected — he chickened out

I'm not even shocked,

Of course I'm not in my 5km PR shape! I ran 14:29 on the track like 20 years ago when I was in college. Since then I've had a pulmonary embolism and I'm over 40 now and do long trail ultras like 100km-100-miles.

I never claimed that i was in 14:30 for 5km shape currently at all!

But yes, I mentioned that as my PR time in my video as I flipped through the chart for some sort of reference point (much like i used to do back in the day with Daniels VDOT tables...which went down to like 12:40 for 5km). I was just surprised the chart ended at 15:00 for 5km. Especially in this era of super shoes and spikes and people claiming "Garmin or Strava PRs" (which as you should know is not very accurate!).

It would be like if there was a marathon training chart based on race performances/fitness and it went right down to 2:24 and then just ended (Sirpoc's PR)?)?

Guys, I'm reading the books (Bakken and Copeland). I grew up reading Bakken's blog and Canova's Threshold threads on here. I get that NSM is "simplified" and for the "common runner." Is one aspect of "following NSM" that it gets you running higher mileage more consistently though? Or are you actually dropping mileage in lieu of more moderate (relative) quality?

One of the biggest "gifts in training" JK and Rojo gave me at Cornell was the term "Uptempo". I never understood the Threshold Realm of training when I was in highschool running 60-70 miles a week and doing hard Vo2max (too hard!) sessions all the time to "work on my speed." But when I started actually doing more aerobic based, "marathon base training" with a lot of workouts like 3 x 8-minutes and 4-5 x 2-miles at a moderate quality ("Uptempo" meaning Zone 3) on a short rest all our times came down from the 800-1500m to the 5km-10km (and in my case the marathon also).

I apologize if this has all been covered before (I'm not going back through 600 pages on this thread even though I have glanced at some)...thanks to whoever linked to that Reddit thread though...I'll have to check that out too.

Lactate levels and clearance and Vo2max are one thing. I'm more interested in the dynamics of how a training program or protocol is boosting Running Economy in certain pace ranges.

I'm going to do a RAC here and go into semantics :D

NSM is a subset of what Bakken is about .. Bakken contains all of NSM and more. He even recommends NSM to most people

(lowkey in his book and wholeheartedly in the recent Magness youtube)

In my humble opinion saying that Bakken shouldn't be discussed here also implies that Sirpoc's crosstraining and bike rides shouldn't be discussed either as they are outside the scope of NSM and that seems silly :D

I think the answer is yes and no. Sirpoc has stated many times that NSM is a "bang for the buck" system not meant for someone who has unlimited time to train.

People who were accustomed to running "high" mileage with doubles are probably doing less miles overall if they follow NSM. I know I am for example.

On the other hand, someone who was coming from a higher intensity program (like Daniels) might end up doing more miles with NSM since the intensity is more manageable.

To me, it seems like some people seems to go down a bit in mileage while starting, some stay at about the same as before and some start at a little bit more mileage. But the consistency is the key thing, since NSM is a slow burn approach. There are numerous examples of runners who constantly were injured before, but are now running NSM 7 days a week every week without injuries.

NSM focus much more on weekly load (CTL) than weekly mileage, though. Higher CTL=higher running performance is the basic principle.

the irony of all this is NSM shares the exact same arc/history of Bakkens method just with an elite vs novice backdrop

first contact: ‘this is obviously ridiculous BS no one will ever succeed doing this’

now all elites acknowledge this is the paradigm in one way or another

the number of ppl Bakken used to argue and fight with on lrc alone is very reminiscent of NSM

its always the same: ‘you can’t do that!’ guy does it ‘ok that’s an N=1’ multiple ppl do it and find success ‘it was obvious all along this is just training!!’

this is just the phase everything must pass through

Like Magness you might be missing who the core demographic is for Norwegian Singles.

After all the name of this thread is "Modifying the Norwegian Method for lower mileage".

It's for time constrained hobby joggers with life's outside of running and more often than not also kids.

The strength of the method is that is has removed all whistles and bells from training and is a very lean bang for the buck way of training.

It's not going to make you world champion tho .. but luckily there are in practice no hobby joggers that can run a sub-15 5k.

If manage to run a 15 minute 5k and still want to improve then it's time to do more than just what is in the NSM book. Time to start doubling and what not ... You're in Bakken territory or where ever you choose to go.

Once you realize this then it makes sense that the tables stop at 15:00.

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As a side note.

Not being able to see clearly who the demographic for Copelands book is was really what made Magness look silly in his infamous "Norwegian Singles - Best Training for Amateurs" video.

His argument against Norwegian singles is that training this way would hurt your 400-800m racing.

There might be a hobby jogger here and there that races 400-800m, but that is maybe in in 1.000 or probably more 1 in 10.000.

I suspect that an "amateur" in Magnuss world is a high school or perhaps college runner .. It does seem like he has no idea what trying to run as good as you can while also balancing a regular life as a hobby jogger entails.

That he here in this thread doubled down on insisting you do speed work even if you're constantly seeing improvement just doing NSM only made him seem more out of touch.

Why risk adding speed while you're obviously still improving doing the safer stuff?

It's to maximize training load for runners who have roughly 7 hours a week (an hour a day) to commit to running and race distances roughly from 5km - 21km. This is probably the bulk of competitive (or rather, committed to self-improvement) hobby joggers. Again, those of us within the margins.

If you are running less than that, the general expectation is to work your way up to those numbers (though some are pivoting a bit). If you have the bandwidth to run more time than that, then you may consider some alternative programming because you have the time (and durability/resilience) to play with.

Where sirpoc is coming from is the fact he understands if you are time crunched, you just want to be able to hit your best bang for buck in the time you available. Subthreshold is the perfect tool for that, the book does a fantastic way of getting these ideas across with some strategies for load management. If people can't see this, then god help them. They'll never understand training.

I think what some of these running influencers are struggling with, is they assume everyone runs 10+ hours a week. The reality that is a tiny fraction of the running population, but they are probably biased as high mileage is prevalent at college and pro level especially, so they just assume everyone can run that amount. As said, it's a tiny fraction of actual runners who are the target audience of books, training plans etc.

Time crunched plans in cycling often 15+ years ago faces the similar barrage of "what about this missing element". Ultimately when guys started to get faster, power went up people stopped caring. The dinosaurs died out, mostly. Anyone who didn't adapted. The irony being, when you learn to control intensity you can then do much more anyway, given lack of time constraints.

The thing that disappointed me the most about Magness's response was his insistence on periodization / complexity to get that final 1% of performance or whatever. Sage mentioned periodization also and how to prepare for a marathon one must do some hard long runs, etc.

Spoiler alert: a special marathon block is a part of it. But I almost wish it wasn't, just to show what kind of performance one could achieve without it. Sirpoc went from >21min 5k runner to a 15min 5k runner on NSM. Before the marathon, he did a handful of longer, more marathon-specific sessions and he lengthened his easy long run. And then proceeded to run a 2:24 on a warm day when many other more experienced marathoners blew up. As long as you zoom out on the training, it's obvious that 99.9% of what contributed to the 2:24 was the years of NSM.

The "special marathon block" didn't provide any transformative physical adaptations in the last moment like some insane durability / resilience / fatigue resistance that years of training on fresh legs failed to develop.

The "value" of training on tired legs is so misunderstood. As is the "value" of doing a huge, exhausting session. Non-elites have zero business doing either of these things. There's no value in seeking them out. They're a consequence or a side effect of elites pushing the limits to seek the highest levels of fitness. At that point, there can be value in doing sessions despite how fatigued you are going into them and how taxing they are.

But for everyone else, even sub-elites, it's absurd to be purposely violating the basic premise of training: do a workout, then recover and adapt to it before you do another workout. There's no special hidden adaptation that you get that's worth undermining this basic cycle of training. And while you can "weave" different stimuli that have different "recover and adapt" timelines in some complex dance, the fact is that for beginners, hobby joggers, and even sub-elites, the one overwhelming factor that matters more than any other is aerobic development. So the most surefire way to improve is a repeatable, not periodized, finely tuned cycle of doing a workout that advances aerobic development, recovering from it, and then doing another. All other routes to improvement be damned, as they either get slowly developed along the way despite not being the emphasis, or they're too small a factor to be worth prioritizing until much later.

Okay thanks for that. (Obviously I'm not very far into the book!). I'll look forward to learning more.

So, would you say that maybe total mileage drops for many.... But say instead of 80% of your volume being around Zone 2 or Zone 1....maybe only 65-70% is then more often? Since you're essentially doing more Zone 3 a lot more (2-3 times a week) and racking up "high end aerobic quality" for over 30%-35% of your total volume?

If someone simply changes workouts over the weeks slightly and emphasis in training (be that doing 30% of mileage at Zone 3 into Zone 4 etc.) or adds "Strides" or does a few 5km park runs each month then that is essentially "Periodization" imo. Just like ebbs and flows in mileage/volume and manipulating interval duration from say something like 5 x 6-minutes to 5 x 8-minutes extends load. Any little tweak of your training load can be seen as "Periodization" imo.

In summer base training before cross country season we used to say all the consistent weekly mileage, a few Uptempo runs + strides and maybe some light turn-over sessions (12 x 400m etc.) with a few longer runs got you to 90% to full race fitness. Like you're basically 90% of the way there without doing any hard Vo2max sessions or true Lactate Threshold work. That "extra 10%" could be gained mostly through a few time trials and races during the season.

And being 10% "under-trained" and below one's limit was always better than being "1% over-trained and exhausted or injured."

I mean it all makes sense for "best bang for your buck" (in terms of time efficiency) and reducing the risk for injury so you can stay consistent (mentally motivated too and not burned out).

Maybe yes? Or maybe no? Doesn't matter with this model however, as the point is to simplify things remove any the decision fatigue so one just keeps up with the core sessions.

Now you're starting to catch on.

Which says a lot about those "experts" as threshold based training is well known to work very well for a very long time. I've quoted an interview with Paula Radcliffe earlier in this thread who said very clearly that she never run above threshold in training. She was a world record holder at 5k, 10k and marathon. There are other examples as well. One from cycling is Lance Armstrong and other Dr Ferrari's athletes who said they were forbidden from going above threshold in training as well. Armstrong might have been doped to the gills but that makes the case for threshold training even stronger (he could have handled high intensity much better due to doping and still didn't do any of it).

Again, Paula Radcliffe has done 0 above threshold work in training and hold 5k, 10k and marathon world records at the same time. (Sub) threshold only approach apparently works for at least some people pretty well. Maybe it doesn't work for all but blanket recommendation "you need speed training" is just moron territory in light of multiple examples contradicting the advice.

It seems a lot of successful endurance athletes only do "micro" periodization: an easier week sometimes (or Hard-Hard-Easier schedule). Cyclists used to do Hard-Medium-Easy 3 day cycles. The idea that you need weightlifting like periodization with multi-week blocks in endurance sports is unproven to put it mildly. Insisting that it's necessary makes you just ignorant.

i think you make a good point about periodization

even pros are likely periodizing less snd less because they have to be at a baseline level all year. thats not even just cyclists now, runners as well.

so lets apply that to amateurs, who have no real ‘seasons’ — theyre racing whenever, and dont get paid to go all in on medals or majors

on the hierarchy of needs an amateur is thinking about it’s laughable how low that notion should be. Probably down with what type of kit youre going to take a photo with

for example, look at anyone on sub T based training, almgren, myers, et al

they are all about 2 focused weeks away from being race ready, racing well in the winter, indoors, in the spring, in the summer

thats what we were lead to believe was ‘impossible’ — you had to make a ‘choice’ about when to run fast

and yet, we see great performances at ridiculously high levels throughout the year

if we are going to copy the elites anywhere its in dispelling silly myths around whats actually allowing performance to materialize

That's not true. Maybe she was talking about only a small portion of her marathon training. She was known to do plenty of VO2 max stuff & train extremely hard in training, often until she collapsed. She also copied Olga Bondarenko workout --

Progressive ladders starting with 400s @5k pace, followed by 400 float, 300 @ mile pace/300 float, 200@ 800 pace/200 float, 100 all out then repeat 3x.

Also, all her regular runs(the non track workouts) were at 6 min pace or 80% of 5k pace & ALL her runs were progressive, finishing at 90% max HR. She did 17-22 mile long runs at 95% marathon pace, 5:20 pace or 88% of max HR.

Her typical threshold workout was 4 x 6 1/2 min with 2 min rest at threshold pace, @90% max HR, at altitude. Her track workouts were VO2 max stuff at 10k pace or faster (mile pace) & nothing longer than 1k. Also did a lot of hard hill repeats in Albuquerque at altitude.

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=360198

I meant Ingrid Kristiansen, not Paula Radcliffe, I am sorry. I am readding Paula's book now and mentally slipped. It seems Paula has done some speed work but Ingrid was explicit about never doing any in training. There is a long interview with her on Youtube, easy to find.

The description of NSM that sticks in my mind is from sirpoc himself: High volume, but not high mileage. That didn't make much sense at the time, but it does now. My weekly mileage on NSM race build-ups hasn't been anything special, but my weekly average mileage at MP or faster has doubled, even compared to marathon buildups with long MP tempos (that then required long recoveries for my old legs). The basis in cycling sweet spot training is critical for understanding NSM.

Outside of the marathon special block, periodization really isn't part of NSM. It's just building up and then sustaining the same workouts each week over a long time horizon. People have latched onto that as a weakness, but it's also a critical part of what makes the system work.

While this is a great thread, do keep in mind that this is still LRC and reading comprehension is sometimes poor. While I am admittedly a certified Magness fanboy, what people here will tell you, and what Magness actually said, are miles apart.
Best to listen to his take yourself.

Magness has a good argument for varying NSM even while people are still improving just with NSM, for example: Ignoring anaerobic training gets aerobic vs. anaerobic fitness out of balance, which might not matter for marathoners, but does matter for 5K runners; this is all based on Bakken, who people here love, but they treat Magness like a heretic for saying it, even as they try to add 45/15 workouts to their training because Bakken says so. I think Magness is likely correct, but I'm sticking with vanilla NSM anyway.