Professor shares secrets of Ingebrigtsens training - They run between 87 and 100 mpw (140-160 km).

Bingo it’s not that they are doing LT workouts but it’s the volume that they do. 20 miles a week of LT running is unique training.

Bob Schul Country wrote:

So they do 25% of weekly mileage at 85-90% of max HR.......in comparison Jack Daniels recommends 10% a week.

Jack Daniels is a less successful coach than Gjert. Don't compare them.

Daniels is overrated and REALLY good at burning out runners with the complicated paces and formulas etc.

I think the secret of their success is a combination of:

- Strong family structure

- Consistency

- Dedication and focus

- Healthy approach to competition

- Resilience / ability to properly handle failure

- Talent

With the above still in place they would thrive off a variety of reasonable training programs.

Their example shows what can be done when the first five are combined with talent. The Ingebrigsten family is showing us what we could possibly do if we adopted their principles of success. Granted, most of us will not have their talent, but if many adopt the other principles, we will see great results. In my opinion, the actual time you run is not as important as the fact that you dug deep, challenged your doubts, and found something in you that would not have come out otherwise. For some, it is 20:00 5K. For others, 15:00 5 K is achievable without a whole lot of such digging. Only you will know yourself if you dug deep enough or chose to settle for less. But it is good that we have a family that is showing us how to dig and find it.

Elite runners are born, not made. Anyone who cares how they train is an idiot.

Smooth Daddy wrote:

Elite runners are born, not made. Anyone who cares how they train is an idiot.

Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work.

Jgt11 wrote:

SLOWER. Above pace=Slower On pace=exact pace Under pace= faster

Incorrect. "Above threshold pace" means faster than the pace associated with threshold. Wording may cause confusion, but reading the original article there's no question about what is meant. 23-25 % of the volume was done at speeds at or faster than threshold. This doesn't mean they accumulated high levels of lactate all the time (because of breaks), but the intensity was at a level above maximal lactate steady state, which means a constant increase in lactate WOULD be observed if running at that intensity was continued.

This is directly from the article:

Training frequency and intensity distribution. All three brothers have followed a training regime with a relatively high weekly volume of intervals at and above the anaerobic threshold (20–25% of the weekly volume). Their father and coach, GI, underlines that during adolescence the primary focus was on aerobic capacity training. The volume of intensive anaerobic training during adolescent was very limited. Most of the interval training has been performed in 10,000 m and 5000 m race pace as threshold training in zone 2 (Table 2). From the age of 16–17, they have trained between 10–14 sessions per week. During the preparation period leading up to the 2018 and 2019 seasons, these three runners carried out 23–25% of weekly volume as interval training at and above the anaerobic threshold.

Morning sessions consist of continuous running or longer intervals in zone 2 (Table 2). According to Billat, Lepretre24 threshold pace is the pace an elite runner can sustain for approximately 1 h, which is close to half-marathon pace. The runners in the present study do repetitions over distances from 2000 m to 3000 m at this pace. However, when these runners do repetitions over distances from 1000 m to 400 m with lactate and heart rate in zone 2 (Table 2) they run at paces between 10,000 m and 5000 m race. The volume of a zone 2 session is between 8 and 12 km.

In the pre-competition period and during the competition-season, they do sessions on the track at race pace, while the volume of training at anaerobic threshold is reduced. In addition to these running sessions, they also do drills, some sprints, jumping exercises and general strength training during the preparation period. In the pre-competition period (April–May), the weekly training structure differed more from week to week than during the preparation period. In some weeks, the number of zone 2 sessions was reduced due to more sessions performed in zone 3. In the competition period, the training structure and number of sessions in zone 2 (10,000 m and 5000 m pace), zone 3 (3000 m pace) and zone 4 (800 m and 1500 m pace) differed from one week to another depending on the competition structure.

And the intensity zones are defined as:

1 Easy and moderate continuous running 0.7–2.0

2 Threshold training 2.0–4.0

3 Intensive aerobic intervals 4.0-8.0

4 Anaerobic training, mainly at 800 m and 1500 m pace >8.0

5 Sprint Increase speed

Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work. wrote:

Smooth Daddy wrote:

Elite runners are born, not made. Anyone who cares how they train is an idiot.

Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work.

Talent always works.

Unfortunately wrote:

Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work. wrote:

Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work.

Talent always works.

If you sit on your a$$ and never train, with all the talent in the world, you're never going be at the top of any sport.

They are micro doping , for sure.

Interesting, thanks for posting.

Do you know where someone can access this article?

Did you ever try it? I know I spend years doing a 20-30 min tempo run and the following day coming back for another track workout and it was totally doable. Cranking out the second workout at night and having a longer rest period might have been a better idea. Obviously this isn't for most HS, they don't run nearly enough.

£££££££ wrote:

Unfortunately wrote:

Talent always works.

If you sit on your a$$ and never train, with all the talent in the world, you're never going be at the top of any sport.

The point is that there's thousands of other talented people who are working.

This is....not how it works. Your VO2 max doesn't link to your recovery ability. Some of the most durable athletes I've worked with have been 20'+ 5k runners. Not 80 VO2 maxers. If anything, recovery is linked the most to your overall background training load. Someone running 100mpw is going to tolerate 30' AM threshold 45' PM threshold much better than you're typical 50mpw runner would.

Okay, this basically sounds pretty textbook Seiler in my mind. He uses three zones. Where Z1 is easy running, Aerobic Threshold (AeT) or lower. Often done much lower for general aerobic building. 60-70% of HRMax is common. Then Z2 goes from AeT up to AnT. Then Z3 is your hard interval work.

Intense, anaerobic capacity work isn't really on the scale, and for endurance athletes doesn't need to be on a regular basis. Maybe a few weeks pre-comp to top it off.

I guess the bigger difference here is that textbook Seiler is more polarized, i.e. by time, 90% ish Z1, and then the rest at Z2/Z3 border up to Z3. General idea is to progress not so much the intensity of the intervals, but accumulating the minutes spent working at/above threshold, as that's the physiological driver of improvement.

Seems the Ingebritsens are doing something similar, but working more mid to high Z2, rather than Z3. This is of course less intense, so more volume can be done and the training skews more towards 80/20 balance Z1/intensity rather than 90/10 by duration.

Also, interesting to note is that the description of workouts using 400m-1000m but keeping lactate and HR in Z2 basically means doing repeats until HR is approaching/just exceeding Z2, and then recovering with shorter recoveries. This sounds alot like something that Drew Hunter's coach is doing with his so called "CV" reps, run at around 8k-10k pace for 3' taking 1' recoveries. If you do that workout you find that HR stays right around threshold.

Smooth Daddy wrote:

Elite runners are born, not made. Anyone who cares how they train is an idiot.

JFL. I guess we are just getting better and better born elite runners over time. The improvement of human genetics.

docepo wrote:

They are micro doping , for sure.

That accusation is going to upset the apple cart here. ?

That's all going to be related to genetics. That's why guys not built for running with a high propensity to injury aren't going to be able to handle high to moderately-high mileage without breaking down and sustaining major injuries...no surprises there.

Genetics R Us wrote:

LM wrote:

This is....not how it works. Your VO2 max doesn't link to your recovery ability. Some of the most durable athletes I've worked with have been 20'+ 5k runners. Not 80 VO2 maxers. If anything, recovery is linked the most to your overall background training load. Someone running 100mpw is going to tolerate 30' AM threshold 45' PM threshold much better than you're typical 50mpw runner would.

That's all going to be related to genetics. That's why guys not built for running with a high propensity to injury aren't going to be able to handle high to moderately-high mileage without breaking down and sustaining major injuries...no surprises there.

It's absolutely related to genetics, although with the right work durability can be improved more than people give it credit for. But is there a sizable genetic component to durability? Absolutely.

The response I gave was to the idea that its terrible to copy. It's not. Or rather, the concepts and framework are not. Injuries training like this are much less common than say a runner doing a bunch of moderate to moderately hard runs as so many guys tend to. Also, when training like this easier is much easier than most people do easy runs, which helps tremendously.

So for the injury prone what to do? Usually its scaled down. Instead of 160km a week with 40km hard, its 80km a week and 20km hard. Lots of coaches having success and finding that this polarized approach scales down well, and the research from Seiler coming out is supporting this.

No, that's exactly the opposite of what I'm saying! Ability/VO2MAX is what matters in terms of recovery, NOT mileage done by week. Know why? There are many 17:30 min 5k guys around, that run a 100 mpw. Their VO2MAX is only around 60. You wanna throw an intense training load on them just because they run high mileage? They will be chronically fatigued. They can only use 3600 ml of oxygen per minute. World-class runners with a VO2MAX of 80 can consume close to 5000 ml of pure oxygen/minute, which is HUGE. That's 39% more oxygen consumption than of the 17:30 min 5k guy, with both doing the same 100 mpw!

Even if you just look at the raw amount of air that is being consumed, elites consume about 170 liters of air per minute - just imagine that! An average 17:30 min 5k HS runner consumes maybe 130 liters.

Setting the training load of threshold and higher intensity intervals to a percentage of weekly mileage is one of the big flaws of Daniel's system. He just assumes that aerobic capacity doesn't matter and everyone recovers at the same rate. An elite can do 6xMile or 10x1k at a fast pace and come back two days later for another workout, a HS kid with low VO2MAX will be fried for days, even if he is doing the same amount of running as the elite (probably 80 mpw vs 100 mpw taking into consideration the difference in speeds).

Trying to deal with a lack of talent by copying the training of elites is not going to work and will lead to burn-out, overtraining and injuries. Ingebrigtsen training is not gonna turn a 55 VO2MAX with a lifetime best of 17:30 into a 80 VO2MAX 13:30 runner. TALENT is what makes runners fast, and not "TRAINING is what makes talented and untalented runners fast".