How do the Ingebrigtsens get away with it...?

They got a hell of a chemist on their team. Props to that guy. Deserves all the credit in the world but will most likely remain in the shadows for a long time.

What's the real reason for their dads coaching change?

You think these bros are clean? Not many top elites are.

Yep, pretty much the zone that you need to go to only on rare occasions.

The unfortunate thing is that it’s the most fun zone to train in. You get to run at a good clip, yet you don’t go to all out…

Problem is that you get stale very fast when you train too much in that zone.

It's called polarized training, most of the elite cyclist and triathletes been doing this sort of training forever now. But I guess a lot of runner are too stubborn to realize there's no real benefit to training in zone 3.

Makes sense to me. In college we had one guy who would almost always be out running what was probably “marathon pace” on easy days (because we never did very hard workouts or high mileage). He was by far the best runner on the team. Kind of Norwegian in hindsight. Just doing a bunch of 7-10 mile bouts of Marathon Pace a few times a week but always by feel.

I thought this was the zone they spend most of their time? So what is HR when doing threshold training 4 times per week?

Zone 3 is useless. Daniels even states 75-79% as “no man’s land,” which is the upper end of zone 3. Yet most America runners let their “easy” runs get right there. Then they wonder why they’re rarely recovered for the zone 4 training. Or they simply don’t do enough volume in zone 4.

Yeah I guess we should talk percents instead. They do easy runs at < 70% maximum HR.

Obviously their threshold training is done by lactate, but I would GUESS that their easy threshold sessions (many say their threshold runs are much easier than most Americans do them, so closer to Marathon Pace) would be around 85-87% Max HR. A classic threshold run for Americans is probably right around 90% Max HR.

So when I refer to bpm, I actually mean that it seems they mostly avoid training between 70-85% Max HR, instead favoring polarized training of < 70% and > 85% (obviously using lactate readings though). I wonder how realistic it is to almost completely avoid that range though? I guess for shorter distance specialists it’s fine.

Since they’re racking up ~ 25mpw of this each week, it is probably closer to the 85-87% Max HR range, or higher when they do the really short reps, but due to short rep length the effort would feel very similar.

This is entirely speculation on my part based on reading on the internet though

There are several ways to train. But they cover from slightly slower than marathon pace to 5k/3k pace in workouts, plus 20x35s mile effort in weekly hills. Then the easy 10k or 20k runs can progress from 4->3.30 (should not but sometimes could). There is still a gap in pace, but not very large. If they did tempo runs, the pace might have been slightly slower and the gap a little less. But they are not training for marathon and don't focus on high fat metabolism, but rather a high LT pace. I think that is a reason for not using the moderate intensity

Great post, thanks.

Just curious, have you seen anything that suggests they do their easy runs at this pace? I had assumed slower based on how low they keep the HR, but haven’t seen them detail it much anywhere. I guess they are so aerobically fit that their pace is probably very good even at such a low HR.

They say on the show that 4:00 is easy pace on an occasion that Jakob has been doing a good deal faster than 4. I think he says that he hasn't done 4 since he was 14.

It is well above 165 in most cases, more like upper 180s for a younger runner.

OP, read Marius Bakken’s long blog post on Norwegian and Ingebrigsten training that had a good thread here recently.
He explicitly says that for non marathoners there is no point to running paces between easy (truly easy!) and threshold. These middle zones are the true “junk miles”—Too fast to recover properly and accumulate large volume, too slow to maximize fitness gains. The end result of spending time here is feeling flat and tired all the time, struggling to get “up” for workouts, and underperforming in races.

Read the recent research paper from Arturo Casado on what really matters in training: total volume of training, volume of easy runs, and hitting the specific workouts. That’s it! It’s so simple, yet SO easy to mess up. Note he did NOT say PACE of easy runs.
For your 15:30 5ker, there is nothing beneficial happening at 6:20 miles that is not happening at 7:30 or 8:00 miles. Extrapolate for those faster and slower.

A poster above was spot on when he described how easy it is to make this mistake because cruising along at 6:20 feels good biomechanically and isn’t “hard” but over time just beats you down at significant volume. I know because I’ve been there in D1 college. Very similar story to Wejo’s “Why I sucked in college.” We ran every “easy” run at 6:30 or faster. It was not truly easy. As the weeks pile up you dread the workout days because you don’t feel fresh, and you kinda dread the next day’s “easy” run because it’s not easy either. End result is racing underperformance or injury or both.

The beautiful thing about training correctly is feeling fresher and less mentally drained even at higher volumes. There is no dread because you feel fresh for the workouts. There is no stress on the easy days because you just need to jog around accumulating time on feet.

Found the Bakken paragraph I mentioned (link to document posted by Fnff above).
“Keep the easy training easy.
The easy running in this model is exactly that : easy. I would entirely stay away from the zone in between very easy running and the threshold for 5k/10k training. For the marathon it is different – there I believe it has its place to some degree, especially integrated into a hard training session.
All of the mentioned athletes above using this model have a clear difference between the hard days of training and the easy days, focusing as much as possible on the hard “block” days of threshold work.
In terms of lactate, we are below 1.0 mml/l, heart rate below 70 % of max for the easy runs
Likely, the benefit of easy running is running economy and recovery – and the better an athlete becomes, the less important is volume for purely aerobic benefits.
Still, the number of kilometers should be fair, for most around 180 km, with a range for the 5k runners from 150-220 in my opinion.”

Thanks Marius!

Target is 4 I have heard on the Norwegian series about them. Jakob often is bored and want it done so he might run faster. They are also competitive so when training together they might increase the speed a little. I think 4 is a limit father and coach sets to limit them and spare the energy for the workouts. they run 180k/w incl 5-6 workouts so normally there is no juice to run faster.

Marius Bakken and his norwegian model did not run fast on the easy. He tried to stay below 70% of max HR. I guess the Ingebrigstens are not using HR that much and try to limit pace. A team mate of them does not use HR and just run on feel. I also like that because easy feel will on heavy days give a lower pace and faster pace on good days. I agree with Marius that the benefit of running faster is so little compared to any lack of recovery and less quality of the workouts.

No, actually none of the elite cyclist and triathletes train like this. Zone 3 about as specific as you get for half ironman distance...

Bingo! Zero bang for the buck.