Has anyone tried the NOP training method?

Sound interesting, Ill look up those vids.

As far as your situation, Id say go for it.

I like to race so I've never been a fan of training 48 weeks of the year so you get to take a chance at 4 races.

Nothing wrong with trying it if you want.

I have done all types of different training over the years geared to the events I am running. It makes it a little more interesting to me than doing the same thing year after year.

Lockdown wrote:

If I were to do this, i would implement a more lydiard-esque base phase, of about two to three months before moving on to the max-intensity / volume phase NOP uses and the tapering.

I would love to hear your thought on this.

How is Lydiard any different than this? According to you, NOP already spends 2-3 months in base phase.

Salazar still does more speed work and interval type workouts in his 'base' phase than what lydiard advocated. Salazar also doesn't seem to put that much of an emphasis as high end aerobic running as Lydiard did. When i say that i want to do a lydiard base, i really want to focus on my aerobic strength-alot of sub maximal LT runs and weekly fartleks.

Properly implemented its very sounds solid training. I tried it, went too hard early on and was in peak shape after 6-8 weeks of speed workouts. I was very fit though so idk.

Lockdown wrote:

Salazar still does more speed work and interval type workouts in his 'base' phase than what lydiard advocated. Salazar also doesn't seem to put that much of an emphasis as high end aerobic running as Lydiard did. When i say that i want to do a lydiard base, i really want to focus on my aerobic strength-alot of sub maximal LT runs and weekly fartleks.

I'm not sure that you understand the Lydiard system. In the Lydiard system, speed work is done all year long. Yes, that means even in base phase 1-3 days should be speed work/sprint work.

Regarding LT training, how do you know Salazar isn't doing that? Can you explain how his base phase differs? Does he not do tempo runs?

To be honest I'm not totally sure, I am just going with what i refer to as a lydiard base phase because i know more about it than Salazar's base stuff.

Yes there is speed implemented in the Lydiard base phase-but it doesn't sound like to the same extent as what NOP uses. From what i understand, all the speed in the lydiard phase comes from short strides and sprints (please correct me if i'm wrong) There was an article where Salazar talked about a speedy 300 workout that they used year round-a bit longer then your average stride.

So really there isn't a huge difference between the the two different bases. I would say that Salazar just focuses a bit more on longer speed and the Lydiard base is a bit longer.

As to the LT training, Salazar most likely does put an emphasis on that at the beginning of the year. I guess i just said that because when ever i read about Salazar's training, its always about his multi-pace method.

So, yeah alot I think Lydiard can be seen at the beginning of NOP training. I was really interested in the program for what Salazar advocated doing during the max volume/intensity period. I buy into the whole 'one step backward and two steps forward' idea. It sounds like that would give one alot of confidence heading into a key race.

Also another difference between Salazar and Lydiard, Lydiard always talked about running by feel but Salazar seems to obsess a bit more about hitting times. For instance, Salazar has a specific easy/recovery pace that he calculates using his runner's 5k pace. His tempo pace also seems to be pretty time-specific, not really finding it by feel.

interesting, could you post part of your training log? What type of recoveries did you use during the intervals?

Lockdown wrote:

Also another difference between Salazar and Lydiard, Lydiard always talked about running by feel but Salazar seems to obsess a bit more about hitting times. For instance, Salazar has a specific easy/recovery pace that he calculates using his runner's 5k pace. His tempo pace also seems to be pretty time-specific, not really finding it by feel.

What kind of specific formulas (I.e. tempo pace = 5k pace + X)

I'd like to know the formulas he has for paces

People have been doing a short interval day and a long interval day plus a long run for a long time. Nothing unusual about this, but doing it all season (including 300s and 400s) is exactly what Lydiard did NOT do, although this is not really Coe-style multi-pace.

Somewhat similar is the Kostre (Ethiopia) system, which we use with D1 athletes with moderation (mostly lower volume):

Short interval day @ 3K pace

Longer interval day @ 10K pace

Long threshold (15 miles for the Ethiopians)

1 day of sprints in spikes

This is more like multipace training (and Bekele is/was supposed to do a long run of 30 miles in the forest at 5:40 pace...only if you're Bekele are you going to survive that). I suspect few, if any, of the Lydiard advocates would be able to do this program and recover.

Lockdown wrote:

interesting, could you post part of your training log? What type of recoveries did you use during the intervals?

Not going to post my log specifically, but here is the gist of how it went:

Monday- easy 60/30 double with 10 strides in PM

Tuesday- speed/25 double

Wednesday- easy 60/30 double

Thursday- easy 60/30 double with 10 strides in PM

Friday- threshold/25 double

Saturday- 105 min long run

Sunday rest day

Speed- 12 x 200 all out with 200m jog, or 5-7 sets of 400/200 workout (400 at goal pace, 100m jog, 200m sprint, 100m walk is one set) (alternated each week between these 2 workouts)

Threshold- 6 x 1600m untimed (by feel) with a 400m jog recovery, or 8-10k tempo

Is this what you did from the start of the training? If so you may have peaked prematurely because of the all out 200s from the beginning...this is why i think the one A effort a week is very important-and alternate that A effort with other workouts. So really you shouldn't give the same workout an A effort until a month later, as i interpret from Salazar.

Is this what you did from the start of the training? If so you may have peaked prematurely because of the all out 200s from the beginning...this is why i think the one A effort a week is very important-and alternate that A effort with other workouts. So really you shouldn't give the same workout an A effort until a month later, as i interpret from Salazar.

interesting, i'll have to read about the Kostre system-was that type of schedule done year round? How did it progress, just faster paces?

I've tried this with some success. One thing I would say is that the long fast run would crush me for a few days so I would reduce the volume every second Tuesday. This was my interpretation of the NOP format:

Sun: Long fast run 1.05x marathon pace

Mon: Easy/Easy

Tue: 2.4km vol/Easy

Wed: Steady/Easy

Thu: Easy/Easy

Fri: 9.6km vol

Sat: Rest

Sun: Long steady run 1.15x marathon pace

Mon: Easy/Easy

Tue: 4.8km vol/Easy

Wed: Steady/Easy

Thu: Easy/Easy

Fri: 6-8 mile tempo

Sat: Rest

I'm not too dogmatic about the format of the 26 weeks. Generally I'd have two weeks off, two weeks easy/progressive, and about 10 weeks of this stuff. Then I'd move away from this onto about 12-weeks of longer long runs, long sustained tempos, and threshold intervals.

Lockdown wrote:

Is this what you did from the start of the training? If so you may have peaked prematurely because of the all out 200s from the beginning...this is why i think the one A effort a week is very important-and alternate that A effort with other workouts. So really you shouldn't give the same workout an A effort until a month later, as i interpret from Salazar.

Yeah probably, thats the hard thing, its hard to have the patience to develop intensity as you go.

Is it possible Salazar doesn't put enough emphasis on long tempos and VO2max intervals, thus resulting in the NOP becoming milers instead of strong 10k runners?

TJ AJ RJ wrote:

Is it possible Salazar doesn't put enough emphasis on long tempos and VO2max intervals, thus resulting in the NOP becoming milers instead of strong 10k runners?

Ummm last time I checked Rupp had the American record for 10k (26:48). I think that's pretty fast.