The secrets of double threshold training are revealed. From Norway to Flagstaff: How Double Threshold Training Is Taking Over the World

OK. But how do they do the testing, then, given the possibility of transmitting blood-born pathogens through the water in the pool?

It isn't like we have studies that compare training at say 4.5mmol, 4.0, and 3.5 (assuming athlete threshold is 4.0) and compared how they developed over 26+ weeks.

Some people like the sort of OCD approach of measuring everything. Someone else will go running 60s at 10k pace and then 60s rest works out close enough 4.5mmol. And you use feel to adjust the couple seconds for fatigue and the conditions.

Are you afraid of getting the AIDS? Or were you an investor in Theranos?

So many band aids at the pool, just everywhere. Bottom of pool, in the filters, gutters, walkways, locker rooms. A little bleeding prick should be fine. Stick a bandaid on the little bleeding prick every time if you want as well.

You literally just Schul-ed him.

And it's a shame because that kind of study is entirely feasible. Wouldn't be that hard to do. Just grab some recreational runners for one study and make them do 2 sessions per week at various lactate values. Then retest.

The difference would likely be too small to measure. And you are really looking for long term results. I have no doubt over 6-8weeks the harder training will give better results. It pretty much always does. But over 26+ weeks? The evidence on stuff like that is a lot more vague.

Heck I wouldn't be surprised if some of this stuff is athlete specific. Maybe double threshold doesn't work as well for the fast athletes (sub 47.5/1:44) and the do better with 30 mins of CV work. Who knows.

In almost all of these conversations we are solely focused on the training of the men. So what about the proper way to train women utilizing this more systematic threshold system?

There are obvious physiological differences between men and women, so would women benefit the same way as men from this system? What sort of tweaks might be made? The women of NAU aren't' nearly as successful as the men, is there a training related reason to that?

And the best thing of that is, if you try to discuss that with such 'pure lactate guys', they insist on that it is the best training method (they say forget HR and so on), but they have not managed to write one single study in the last decades. Ridiculous.

Not even such a simple study comparing easy training at lactate baseline vs. training short above it, exists. Which would be a great starting point.

It is a shame, lactate guys. It is really a shame!

I think the big thing with this is not so much about world records, per se - someone will always come back and say, El Gerrouj trained differently, or Peter Snell did something different all together, whatever - but how this system (when performed with proper intensity management) allows a large cross section of athletes to train consistently for a long time with relatively low exposure to injury.

If you're the Chinese state you can afford to put athletes through the most destructive training regime possible, so long as you end up with a single gold medal winner at the end of it - who cares about the 2000 injured athletes who will never compete again? Same goes in Kenya or Ethiopia, and even in the US, there seems to be an acceptance that striving for the highest performance is going to leave a lot of athletes broken - and with so many talented runners leaving the NCAA each year, maybe that's fine.
But in a rich, small, social democratic country like Norway, that model isn't going to cut it. Whereas a model that demands a lot of time and significant investment in technology but that gets a lot of people to within say, 98% of their potential without damaging them is likely to do well.

Anecdotally, the big advantage of the Norwegian approach seems to be that fewer athletes suffer career ending injuries or burnout etc when they're strict with the intensities

This is very interesting. How do fast twitch athletes respond to double threshold? Robert Farkin, of OAC Europe, is doing double threshold training. He doesn’t quite meet your criteria but he’s run 1:45 guy and 3:32 already this year as well as dropping a 23.x 200 in a tactical indoor 1500. Surely he’s more fast twitch but he still runs 150km a week and does double thresholds (source: his YouTube channel).

Haven't the two older brothers been constantly injured for like 5 years now?

Using RPE (perceived exertion, i.e., respiration) is well known training tool and not pseudoscience. There are some well-researched training guides that counsel using RPE over other measures when the training session gets long/hard enough because something like HR will drift and affect the desired training intensity.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Associations between Borg's rating of perceived exertion and physiological measures of exercise intensity - PubMed

Borg's rating of perceived exertion (RPE) is a widely used psycho-physical tool to assess subjective perception of effort during exercise. We evaluated the association between Borg's RPE and physiological exercise parameters...

Link:pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22615009/

Clearly he would be a 1:43/3:30 guy with more traditional training.😋 Heck Jakob would have the WR if he trained like El G.😋

There are a lot of systems that are in the good enough category to produce WR holders. We have no way of knowing if people would have ran better or worse with a different system. We have general guidelines but we have know way of figuring out if system x gets you to 99.1% of your potential while system y gets you to 99.2%. Is Jakob being a second faster than Nuguse a result of talent or training? Who knows.

In the end the double threshold, x workout and easy running is a solid model. You can either stop there and assume they hit perfection and can't be changed or you can adapt it to your situation.

And some day I hope some pro published all their training from some 14 year old to 25 year old champion. With GPS watches and the like it should be possible to get everything.

I'm surprised that no one ever talks about hitting the same mmol with a continuous tempo instead of intervals. With 4 sessions a week, it's not worth having just one of them be continuous? Would that possibly be more desirable for marathon training? Or should the "X" element be the only part of the training that is race-specific?

well, colour me intigued, I didn't realize Igloi did double threshold. I thought he just made up jibberish like short swing hard medium and long swing easy fresh

I’m not so sure that this version of Norwegian training is going to be damage free…

I’m pretty sure that this kind of work probably led to his recent injuries and will possibly lead to further orthopaedic issues down the road…

Gibberish like threshold.😋 The effects of a lot of those crazy interval sessions was similar to a CV/Threshold workout but it is really hard to interpret things like swing. Lydiard 3/4 effort wasn't much better..

Yes, super fast intervals for El G...80rpm for Lance...double threshold for Jakob...The best drugs produce the best training methods