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Full Video Transcript

It’s time. We’re going deep on the Norwegian method, double threshold. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know because we have a special guest. The innovator of the method himself, former Olympian, worldclass runner, Marius Bachan.

I am thrilled to have this interview because we go deep. This is like a running nerds delight. We go through history, science, lactate testing, muscle tone or muscle tension. It’s something that I think fundamentally changes how you think about training and peaking and sharpening.

We talk about it all. So, this was a pleasure to do. Before we get into it, if you enjoy this conversation, don’t forget check out Marius’s brand new book. I wrote the forward for it.

It’s phenomenal. It helps you understand the system like nothing else before it. The Norwegian method applied. I’ll throw in links so you can check it out.

Just came out with Let’s go get into this fun interview of some track and running nerds nerding out. Marius, it is so good to have you. I feel like we’ve exchanged emails for probably I don’t know decades now. That’s correct.

So, it’s good to good to have you. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you.

So, I I wanted to start with first off, I you know this I I love the book. I’ve loved your work for a long time, but I want to start

Coaching Influences

with history a little bit because and particularly you because you have and you laid this out in the book, but you’ve had the fortune of working with I think like a bunch of what I’d call Hall of Fame coaches, you know, going you’ve had Joe Newton famously in the US, York High School, Peter Co, Carsten Warhol’s coach, uh you know, Bob Kennedy’s coach, some wonderful Norwegian coach and and scientists and I I just and what’s really strikes me is like there’s a contrast there. Like people hear Joe Newton and they think Miles Miles Miles and then they hear Peter Cohen and they think the opposite. So I’m I’m wondering if you can briefly take me through like what lessons you learned from those coaches. Yeah, I mean like you said, you know, they have a wide like a range of uh training philosophies.

Uh but if you look on the on the like the common um patterns uh for all of them, uh I would say it’s um it’s trying to make a long-term progression and trying to balance load. The difference is that they’ve been or they they’ve been using different ways of balancing load uh with the uh co for example you know we have the variety principle and trying to like balance the different speeds and the like the multi- tire training and then you had and John Newton with like the lots of mileage at a young age. So you have and then you have K Waram’s course which is like blocking of training. So we had this like different philosophies uh trying to balance load and my goal in my training road I would say uh was trying to bring all these principles together and find a framework that could take the best from each one of those great coaches and put it together uh in order to make training uh even more effective and less risky I would say.

Yeah, that comes through very very clearly. And I’m wondering I if we could go like dial into what do you think you know specifically let’s let’s talk about Peter co. Yeah. What do you what do you think people get

Peter Coe Precision

wrong about the popular kind of characterization of his training methods? Um that’s a good question. Um I would say um uh with with with Peter I mean I discussed training a lot with him. I was, you know, very interested in training from a young age and like I mentioned in my book, I was staying his in his house in Chelsea and he came over to Norway.

I met him in the US. We had long discussions on training. Uh Peter uh was also into aerobic training but at the same time anorobic training and the main challenge with uh uh the co um way of training you have to tolerate the intensity. That’s the main difficulty and I would say uh only a few middle distance runners would be able to do that without breaking down you know at the same time he was into precision.

So like I talk in my book about uh I he taught me about uh trying to be precise in the training. I just applied it in a different way to doing lactate measurements and going into muscle tone and you know a different kind of pattern I would say. Yeah, that’s it’s fascinating because like if you look at the end goal of your training, people would say, “Okay, Peter Co wouldn’t see that. I couldn’t see the influence, but it’s very clear when you see the precision and the control and the specificity on what you’re doing.” I I’m I’m wondering if Okay, we take you from Peter Co.

Kenya Insights And Lactate

Yeah. You also spent time with, you know, training with Bob Kennedy and then later the East Africans which really kind of influenced your viewpoint on things. Can you talk about what you noticed in those early trips or early experiences that the East Africans especially in the 90s and 2000s when you know I remember it everyone was trying to figure out how to play catchup. like what was the experience like that kind of made you have that light bulb moment to shift your training?

Yeah, I mean like you said it was a different uh uh um if you look on the world championship finals those days compared to now it was just way different. You had African runners and maybe one or two non-affrican runners. So they were totally dominating the field. Um so um my thinking at that time was uh if I uh were to have a like I get even remote uh possibility to get even close I had to do something different.

So, so I would um try to uh balance the load. We’re doing lactic measurements and I would go down to Kenya and I would do the same type of measurements down there and I would compare it to Norwegian runners and what we were doing in Norway and I would try to find a pattern going and what I would see in Kenya was they were doing uh their sessions on a lower lactic acid level than in Norway. That’s one of the main uh things I would observe. I would also observe that the structure of the training was probably not optimal.

So I would take the elements from Peter Cole, the double threshold work that I I’ve been doing since 95 and I would try to test that uh with controlled um uh intensity. So I what I hear here is really interesting and fascinating. Something that I think a lot of people miss here is that a well let me start with this question. Let me reframe this.

How do you think those elite East

Culture Altitude And Intensity

African runners kind of got it or stumbled upon this this lower lactate levels uh idea or concept without the science the testing that we have available? I mean I think it’s a part of is cultural. Um if you go to Africa it’s more laidback. It’s more natural I would say.

So I think that they they they hit it more naturally without pushing that hard on the sessions. Also at altitude you will notice the difference going into the anorobic system more easily. Uh I would also say and third probably uh due to uh like long time time adaptation to altitude and like a more aerobic tuned system that made it easier. So you have those three factors and that’s also one of the reasons why I went like full out into threshold training to try to see is it possible to compensate for those uh like I would say not genetic but those adaptive um uh real benefits of the East African runners.

Yeah, I love that. I think the altitude case, I hadn’t thought about that, but it serves almost as like a natural kind of li limiter, you know, that makes it where you’re anyone who has trained at altitude, you’re it’s much clearer when you start pushing the intensity than at sea level where you can kind of rationalize your way through it and be like, “No, I’m okay.” I also I also wonder, you know, growing up um and spending time in the US, I know you were as Joe Newton, but the ‘9s were very famous in the US for like pushing that intensity. Y and like culturally we had something in the west about the way to kind of get better was like this no pain, no gain, like hit the hit the repeats to show that you’re possible. kind of mindset like precluded adopting something that has like no control control.

Yeah, exactly. And that was also when I was you know uh back in time it was a big focus on intensity and variation and so I was you know I was working against um like the main way of thinking at that time I would say. So I was in a constant debate and discussion with other coaches and other athletes. It was just like I I felt I was going, you know, in a in a headwind the whole time.

Now it it’s different, but it used to be that way back in time. It was just very very very uh different. And even with Peter Co, you know, I I spent a week over in London trading with him and it was just a brutal week. Uh I I was and at the at the end of the week I would uh tell him you know just there like a slight comment about this is you know this is a hard way of training you know this session was maybe a little bit too hard and he would just give him like a second world war story about him being you know torpedo down in a ship and he was one of five survivors and he escaped the Germans and he said that is what harist so it was just a different framework at that time How do you And that’s hard that’s hard to fight against like you’re running like that.

I’m I’m 18 years old, you know, is is my hero. So no pain, no gain. Yeah. It’s funny.

It’s It’s funny how

Building The Framework

you fight against this. But I’m I’m curious like if you look at every big training intervention Yeah. Like if you look at we went from the interval craze to lineard said no like let’s try and run a lot of aerobic volume and do something. Yeah.

Every single and even co himself we went from lots of interval or lots of long steady slow stuff. Co said hey no we’re going to try this systematic approach with some intensity and controlled it. Yeah. Every major training invention has essentially taken what’s normal y and said like I’m going to take parts of this but I’m going to get I’m going to look in this other direction.

Exactly. And I think but I think that’s easy to say but really hard to do when every coach athlete is screaming at you to come out to like you’re doing it wrong. So take us through like what’s your mindset going through? You’re you’re Norway’s hope.

You’re one of the few, you know, to put it bluntly, you’re one of the few white guys who is competing at a high level at that point. Yeah. Like, how do you have that confidence to try and try something new and different? No, I mean I first I I would notice that it was working and then I would measure more and more and more.

I mean, I did five and a half thousand lactic acid tests and I would register everything and trying to, you know, get some control and and look at the patterns and then I got into muscle tone and I would uh start to see how I can manipulate load and get better results. So, I had the the lactate meter, I have the uh the muscle tone and then I would start to tune in the system more and more and more and I can see the results were getting better and better. So I would just looking at what is actually working here and also since I came from a school of Peter co John Joe Newton Sam Bell I could compare it. I had an actual you know I did a lot of mistakes but I did them early on.

I was lucky. I didn’t do it when I was 22. I did it when I was 17 18 19. So I could compare things back in time and see okay this wasn’t working so well compared to this for example.

Um, and like I said, this is the way I’m thinking now in terms of training. You need to really balance load as much as possible and try to get uh as much specific enough load and try to control the recovery window and that’s, you know, the muscular system that we talk about. Yeah. So, I want to I want to get into that that training a little bit more.

I know we’ve been nerding out on the history, but it seems like every not to tie it back well to tie it back to history. It seems like every training event intervention we’ve had is trying to solve for that problem that you you said right there. Yeah. How do how do we balance that load out, right?

How do we how do we figure out how to do this? And every every progression in training has offered something a little bit different to solve that problem. linear like people think okay run a lot but what he was actually doing was saying hey we’ve got to develop this aerobic system and then periodize it so we have this hill phase this intense phase versus like before that everyone do intervals all the time this is how we balance the load in a in a better place

Double Threshold Explained

can you maybe I express or explain to folks like how This Norwegian system takes that next leap in allowing us to balance that load with a little bit more precision and control. Yeah. I mean, first of all, you would look at what type of pace do you need to be training at to get get close enough to race pace while at the same time time as little as possible muscular load. And that’s where we get into like sub threshold or training right below the threshold.

Also they came from measurements. I would measure on measure measure. I could see that I can increase load more and more and more. I could do the double up threshold sessions morning and evening without paying the price the next day.

So you would use the lactate meter in my case to control the intensity much more precise than you would do on doing on feel or pace for example. And then you would see what would that do to the muscular system the next day. And you know in my book and uh in general I talk a lot about muscle tone and muscular system. I’m I’m I almost feel bad by doing it uh because it’s it’s just I it’s been one of the most fascinating things in my career but also the one of the most frustrating and uh it’s just so important and it’s uh so difficult uh because it’s been studied so little.

I mean it’s not muscle tone has been studied a lot but just not into athletics that’s the main problem. So all right we’re yeah I want to go

Muscle Tone Defined

deep on this because I think this is one of your best observations and actually to prepare for this I I pulled up an email that I think I sent in like 2007 to you where I saw you talking about muscle tone and I said this idea is brilliant. I’m going to look into it more. and we had a back and forth on this and I I think I ended up writing a article for Runner’s World on it or something like that. But this is one of those ideas that changed my coaching and that’s all all to you because well let’s let’s first talk about what it is.

Yeah. Okay. When we talk about muscle tone, you outline it in the book tension, elasticity, stiffness, but can you give kind of the layman’s overview of what it is for the listener? Yeah.

Okay. I’ll I’ll start first. There’s been some discussion now is is a is a too like vague thing. It’s not scientific.

First of all, it’s very uh you know scientifically proven and in my medical practice I a doctor normal like a GP. Um you will see this in patients for example with the cereble paly where you have like the the high end of muscle tone where is spasticity or in Parkinson patients you can uh see how you know one part of the the spine for example will be totally curved because of the higher muscle tone on one side compared to the other side and you could do the botox and you will correct it. So we know that this is a a real thing. Once a week I work with with children.

I examine from six weeks olds up to five year olds and I will examine the little ones in terms of which one are hypotone. So I would look on the tone. It’s part of the general examination. So we know this is not uh like this is not something new or like a wake thing.

It’s action and it’s real. Um when you look at muscle tone you have two things. you have the like the nervous system like the extrinsic factor you know the systematic response from the central nervous system that’s one factor and then the other the other factor which is maybe more important in terms of training and uh recovery and is the intrinsic factors and that’s also what I wrote my master thesis on in medical school um if you look at the intrinsic factors it’s really about the like the firmness fullness of the muscle. And uh if you look what is that um it’s usually like four factors we’re talking about.

We’re talking about like a passive uh force within a muscle where you have no neurological activity there. So um when you look on the like basil studies you see that it’s uh probably uh a combination of several factors. It’s the uh what’s called the titin uh proteins proteins elastic proteins in the muscle. You have the water content in the muscles like extracellular and intracellular and then you also have cross bridges like small cross bridges that are there in rest between the actin and meioin.

So different like properties of the muscles that are there and we know they’re there and um when you look now on more and more um like newer studies they’re using ultrasound to look more closely into this. So, okay. And the way I kind of like conceptualize it for people to get it across is imagine if you went on a a long plane ride, right, to to Europe, right, for us to Europe. You’re sitting in the chair, you’re not getting up much and if you got off that plane ride and then you immediately went into a run, right?

And what what does it feel like? It feels you feel flat, right? there’s everything doesn’t work as well. Am I kind of getting on the right picture to explain that to exactly correct you know uh that’s what happens and at that state you have a higher toll and lower elasticity and that’s also why you know when I was competing I would never travel the the day down to a race the day before I would travel two days before do a threshold run and then I would rest for an east run and then the race due to the muscle tone.

So we can look at this in

Recovery And Stiffness

two different ways and I want to cover both is yeah one how does this impact recovery y okay so in the week itself and then the second which we’ll come back to is like peing and and sharpening for a race how do you get the tone in the correct place for race day. So let’s start with that that training aspect where um and you cover this well in the book. There’s a wonderful graph that gets at this but too often in training we often think of fatigue in terms of like the physiological effects but a a major limiter and I think a difference maker between um training for running specifically and maybe swimming or cycling or crosscountry skiing is the muscular component. So can you talk about a little bit of how the muscle tone plays in towards your thinking about the training schedule and the the sequencing of things?

Yeah, I talk about it in the book what I call the infliction point. uh when you do the intensity above the threshold or above sub threshold, you get to a point where the muscle tone will increase and it it increase more rapid than below and you also lose control over how much it will increase from one day to another. It it makes the like recovery window much more unpredictable. That’s a main uh um uh re that uh but it happens.

Um and if you look uh like on newer studies um I email you a new study from the like a Nike Nike science lab. It’s just half a year ago they did a study for marathon runners and they would say see that uh if you have an increase in u what they measure with like an ultrasound like share wave elastography if you have an increase in stiffness you would have a longer recovery window afterwards. And that what happens if you do intense work, you will have a longer recovery window and it’s difficult to know how long it is. That’s why threshold work makes it more predictable.

Um it’s not that’s that’s the challenge. It’s not the most effective training likely, but it’s the most predictable at the lowest risk that is repeatable without going overboard.

Individual Differences And Overtraining

So So how do you think this impacts if we were to look at it um from an individual standpoint? Yeah. um we’ll we’ll simplify but like a slow twitch more slow twitch or fast twitch oriented athlete right with the recoverability I think this is one of the things that makes often training for the middle distance events maybe a little bit trickier um because we we have this kind of muscular component and the stiffness component which I think can play impacts things even more if you have a little bit more fast twitch fibers yeah yeah okay I’ll I’ll give you one one for this you know, Karl and I I asked him specifically if I could refer to this. So, he’s okay with it.

You know, I of course palpated his his squads to to check out the muscle tone, and he has a a higher muscle tone than you would have for a long distance runner, but it’s very elastic. So, he he can manage a higher tone while at the same time keeping the elasticity going. Um so so it’s it’s a little bit different from individual to individual probably because of the uh muscle fiber composition. At the same time if you go from one day to another uh and accumulate uh a load at a high uh muscle tone and lower and lower elasticity you will go into overtraining.

Uh, one very interesting thing is this. Even if you’re doing three or four times a week training, if you do it too intense, you’re going to that route. And that’s also a frustrating thing. You know, I’m talking about a concept that it sounds vague.

It sounds like too technical and I see it in my clinic working with runners that work three or time, four times a week. It happens to me myself if I go a little bit too intense these days. I’ve been, you know, running my whole life. I’ve been training a lot.

If I go too intense for a few times a week, I go into trouble in the muscular system. So, so one year, it’s just frustrating. It It is. No, I hear you.

One year um when I was coaching college athletes. Uh we didn’t have any fancy myometers or anything to measure this. So, what we did is we just um I taught athletes about muscle tone and tension. Said, “This is kind of what it feels like.” Yeah.

And I said, “Every day, I want you to rate it.” We called it, we kind of called it our our scale of pop, meaning like, “How poppy do your legs feel?” Exactly. And then I took all that data, looked at it, and then correlated it with race day performance and some other fatigue measures. And it was the best predictor of how they were going to show up in race or perform on a workout. Exactly.

So if their pop if they’re if they self-rated their pop as being in a you know good kind of zone where it feels good etc and not feeling kind of too low too high they they would perform better. Exactly. And and I think I think what you’re getting at and I think why this is so important is like if you look at all of the ways that we measure fatigue and and recovery and adaptation from HRV and other things like this, they’re useful. Yeah.

But they look at things from a physiological standpoint and ignore this muscular system which which I would guess or I’d love to hear your thoughts is often the limiting factor and the thing that pushes most people over into this overtraining phase more than you know pure physiology. Yeah, I mean I it’s correct and like I said I think it’s u I feel like uh this is 25 years back in time when I was fighting for intensity control you know if we go you know 10 15 years you know um into the future we will see more and more focus on this I’m I’m sure about it uh because this is the I would say for sure the limiting factors in terms of recovery for example back to myself, you know, I run maybe five, six times a week in general. Now, if I optimize the muscular system now, even at this level I’m at now, I can run 20, 25 second per kilometers faster on my runs just by tuning it in like optimal. So, it’s just that it’s an enormous consequence and so few athletes are even close to it and when I examine patients with injuries like running related injuries, usually their muscular system is off.

So for the listener out there, and I

Practical Muscle Tone Fixes

know you covered this well in the book, but can you give some examples or interventions that people could be if people hear this and say, “Okay, I got it. Muscle tone. I understand what it feels like when I feel flat or have some pop in my legs.” How what are some interventions you could use to uh adjust that? Okay, first of all, control the intense training days.

So try to focus on sub threshold training. That’s number one. The second, use the easy days to get the

Respect Easy Days

muscle tone down. Do not try to put in uh too much uh speed work or or try to not put any speed work or any strength work or anything on the easy days. Think about lowering muscle muscle tone. That’s the second thing you should be aware of.

Then you have all these passive things you could do. Of course, you could do warm baths on the easy days. You can do cold baths after the hard sessions. You have lots of different things you can do, but the most important thing is lower the intensity on the hard training days and also respect the easy days.

And if you do that for a long long period of time, you’ll normalize the muscular system and then you can start adding things after that. You know, as I am listening to

Hard Easy Origins

you, I I also wonder if like this was one of the profound insights um and the reason it stuck around of the kind of Bowererman hardy principle that came about is that yeah, from a physiological and stress p standpoint, it made sense. But before that, if you look at training, most of it was like, hey, five days in a row, we’re going to do, you know, hard intervals or some sort of training. And the Bowerman, you know, and others came around and they said, “Okay, we’re going to alternate some hard and easy.” And that allowed this muscle load to muscle tone to kind of uh eb and flow naturally to give us some more space for adaptation and recover. Yeah, exactly.

And the other problem is that uh variet variety has been such a focus and variety adds another factor to muscular load because you need you get the adaptation every time. So if you have intense training and variety then you have a even bigger problem. Um and then you could again you can look on isolated studies that this type of training is more effective than this type of training but you have to look at it on a longer perspective over longer period of time and if you get control over the recovery window then you can start adding other components you know and see what uh the system can handle.

Race Week Muscle Tone

So, I want to come back to that before but before we move off muscle tone here, I want to talk about it in terms of peaking. Yeah. So, let’s hypothetically walk someone through. It’s the week of a race.

Yeah. We’ve got to get our tone in the right place. For this example, we’ll say, you know, someone racing 5K or something like that. What?

And I get like their starting resting tone matters here, but how would you advise someone to say, “Okay, we’re gonna walk through this. Here are the things you need to think about. Here are the workout structures, interventions to get your tone in a good spot.” Yeah. I mean, first of all, uh uh the elasticity of the muscles, uh they need some frequency.

So if you do the resting too much before a race, you’ll race well the weekend after. So that’s that that’s one thing. So I would say try to keep the frequency uh like you would normally do and then you just reduce the normal like load of the total training. Uh and then um I would experiment with to see if uh doing something a little bit more intense one or two days before works for you or not.

this individual. And it also um is uh depending on if you’re well balanced going into it. If you’re a little bit off, I wouldn’t do any kind of speed work in the last days cuz you will just add uh muscle tone on top of low elasticity and that that’s just trouble. But if you’re well balanced, I would start to experiment.

In my case, for example, I would do usual and hard workout four days before threshold two days before and then race. Uh a lot of athletes they like to do it the day before just to get the pop going and that can work really well. But I would say uh lower the total load but keep the frequency and then experiment with uh like type strides uh type um structure and see you know what makes it repeatable. Usually it’s the same every time.

Do you ever do you ever get to race day and feel that your tone is off and then adjust your warm up to, you know, it impact that? It’s it’s difficult. Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s it’s it’s not I would say it’s not easy.

You could do it uh the day before, but again, like I talk in the book about, you have the unfortunately the postp prone muscle uh reaction to muscle tone. So, uh at the same day, it’s it’s it’s hard. I mean, it’s kind of like, you know, uh you you done what you can do and uh you know, that’s u but but you know, to finish up the muscle tone, uh the study I referred

Measuring Stiffness Data

to before is it’s very interesting in terms of muscle tone, the Nike study. Uh what they did was that they measure with an ultrasound. They put a probe on and they put what’s called a share wave elastography like a a wave into the muscles. They can measure stiffness.

And that’s a development within uh actually measuring the muscular state. And they found out that the fastest runners are the lowest uh value before the race and also the higher value after the race, meaning the higher stiffness, the longer recovery window. So you’re getting more and more data that this matters and also you can see that the competitive runners they had a lower um value going into the race compared to recreational runners which means that you have to take this into consideration in terms of recovery time. um with training and with good training your recovery window will go down which is why recreational runners I would say more often overtrain than top athletes which is just it’s the opposite way and you know um there’s a method called the Norwegian singles method and one of the reasons why I like it is that you get more control over the recovery window you know it comes back to I think the main principles that you’ve outlined which is it is the whole game is essentially figuring out the safe model for yourself that regulates intensity while allowing you to build volume in a you know safe way.

Exactly. And over time and and and also like I said a lot of models can work the problem uh is individual and it’s I I would say it’s better to start with something safe and then you expand. You know, I talk about the threshold of the center and then you do the orbit around with different elements and I think that’s a more safe way of doing it instead of going into a training philosophy and then it’s kind of like hit and miss. Yeah.

And I I think that especially in

Anaerobic Button Trap

the west we tend to have this this compulsion or this idea that we need to get to the intensity quick is that’s the the difference maker. Right. It is. Yeah.

And and exactly and it’s it’s it’s also um like I talk in the book about it’s like a switch you know if you do anorobic work you will get uh a gain very quickly and you will think oh well this training is working and it’s just the anorobic system that is being triggered. is not the training of variety itself. is that you’re pushing a button that is very very effective short term like I talk in the book about car you know he’s an anorobic machine he does uh uh you know threshold work lactic uh um measured the whole pole when he start doing more intense work one or two sessions and it’s like hitting a button and if you look on the values for the threshold work you will see that it just goes straight up straight away. So he’s been pushing his button and it’s just it you cannot explain it by anything else that it’s a way of solving a problem for the body.

It it I I I love that too and I also think this is why often the kind of research training studies go wrong. Yeah. Because what happens is we have this 6 to8 week window. We’re going to apply these different workouts.

You control the workouts. So it’s one of each. And often what happens is the the workout style that pushes that button looks pretty good after 6 weeks. Exactly.

Think it’s short term, you know, that’s uh it’s not long term. So like you said in in the studies and this was also I had all these discussions back in time with physiologist you know concerning training like interval training compared to continuous training. Same thing studies show it’s more you have a a higher load doing continuous training for a session. The problem is that you cannot repeat it, you know.

So it’s like it’s it’s isolating. Um and and and that’s um and the other thing is like I said um even though it’s difficult to um measure accurately like muscular load, it doesn’t mean that it’s not very very very important. Right? And I think we have a tendency of like what we can measure gets valued and if we can’t measure it accurately, we kind of dismiss it when it still could be an underlying contributing factor and I think that’s the case for muscle load.

I’m wondering also like speaking of things that may be slightly different

Lower Threshold Rationale

for the research. Yeah. and you know this well is that especially when you were competing when I was competing there there was a a large push around thresh threshold meant essentially 4 millm moles and or somewhere in that area it’s like you’re going to do threshold training like it needs to be at this and you came along and you said okay through experimentation like no we need this to be a little bit lower to have that kind of safe effect where we can build an accumul ate the load in a safe way. Can you talk talk a little bit of why that’s important and then why again how you had the confidence to go against something that was kind of especially at that time very well ingrained in our kind of coaching and physiology world.

Yeah. Um again it came from um a combination of experimentation and also observations. Um so I could see uh on athletes uh the better Arabic trained they were especially looking at the East Africans the lower you will see the value going and then I would further uh look on athletes that were actually getting into better training that their actual threshold value would go down over time. So my thinking was if we start with the training at that level straight away what will happen long term and then you can see on athlete it will adjust faster down to a lower value.

Uh so it’s sort of like if you if you continue doing it the wrong way it will continue to be in the wrong value and for example my own threshold was a little bit over 4.0 when I was a middle distance runner. So I was up there before it came down and then again I would measure load uh in terms of the muscular system and I would see that okay this narr uh below the actual uh measured threshold where you can do much more training and you can recover much faster and like I said you know threshold is is is like a zone it’s not like an actual point we know all of that so it’s not like it’s not it’s not that accurate but I would say that the load good area. It’s a good area to be and again if you do if you you know uh go depleted in a session you’ll not have an accurate value for the lactate level which is why in the book I talk about something called triangulation you use heart rate you use the talk test you use lactate and you see if they are in balance if they’re off you have to question yourself on that session you cannot um all of those measurements are indirect. Lactate is still an indirect measurement.

It’s not direct. So, I love that you say this because I think sometimes, especially in our modern world where we can start to measure everything and our watch tells us all these things that we can freak out if you know it’s like panic if the the heart rate is a little bit higher than than you know normal or tells us we’re out of the threshold zone or what have you. Yeah, but it but it really is like taking all of these things are indirect and it’s it’s it’s taking all of them and weighing them y and deciding okay for this session am I at the point where I can safely accumulate the desired training load so that I can recover off of it and adapt. Yeah, exactly.

And like

Adjust Sessions Live

I talk about in the book also, it’s like a dynamic dynamic thing. For example, in a session, if you if you are in doubt, is this correct or not? You adjust a session. You maybe go over to do 45.

You lower the intensity. You play around with the speed. You play around with the structure. You’re not set on I’m doing six by six minutes and that’s it.

You know, you adjust it on the way. which was also one of the reason why it was difficult to do training with me because I was always, you know, tuning back and forth to training. Uh so so but it’s it’s it’s a way of thinking about training that you’re trying to balance thing. You’re trying to play with things.

You’re trying to you know have a feel of what matters and what doesn’t matter. Um, so that’s really I’m going to tell you from an American standpoint that’s really hard for people to wrap their minds around and let go of because we’re brought up and the session is 6 by 1k at 3:15 and we’re going to hit 3:15. Yeah. And like if we don’t, we see it as a failure.

And sometimes coaches often view this, it’s almost like a challenge to go faster on this. But what I remember especially reading your work early on and and implementing it and implementing it as a coach is it requires a mindset shift where the the goal is not repeat the session as written on paper. No, the goal is like read the triangulation, listen to my body, and am I in the place that I need to be where I’m going to be able to adapt, recover, and bounce back and keep accumulate the load over a consistent period of time so that over the time I’m gonna get better. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. You’re trying to to get as many weeks as possible in a balanced way uh in terms of muscular system and accumulate as much specific enough work and when it’s time you push the button in terms of anorobic work. So you know and and then the other thing is and you cannot push that button if uh you don’t have I would say this is on the top level um if you don’t have anything of it before that then it will be pushed too hard which is why you need some like hill work or you need something in the winter otherwise you will get um a too rapid change and that will shift the whole system.

So I I like to call it like you’ve got to maintain that system you can’t let it go. Exactly. Exactly. So I I love that we’re on this.

So can you give some examples

Maintain Anaerobic System

and I know you did it in the book but for listeners that are like what does it mean to maintain that kind of anorobic system so it’s not over loading us not causing us to overtrain but so it is trained enough so that when we come to the hit that button when we need to we’re not just like flooding our system and messing up our aerobic balance. I mean first of all it’s it’s like a risk calculation which is why like for a recreational runner it may be not be needed. So first of all you have to see that um you do it um uh not because it’s uh that effective you do it because it’s something that will help you when you choose to uh bring that system into race pace. Okay.

So that’s the first thing. The other thing is that I would say the most important thing is to limit um the number of days each week you do it. Uh one day a week you will usually get away with if you don’t if you don’t get any injuries but you need a longer recovery time which is like in classical Norwegian method you have a hill workout on the Saturday you have a long easy on Sunday because that will lower the muscle tone the most effective. So you you hit a peak after the hill work and you lower it the maximum with a longer Sunday run and easy day on Monday and double threshold on Tuesday.

So it’s a way of like balancing load and if you do that hill workout during the winter you can gradually adjust into more um like race pace. And again this is slightly individual. Some athletes will be able to do something on the days between the threshold sessions, but uh not all and the risk is it’s substantial. So I want to stick with a highle athlete

Elite Lactate Evolution

here for a moment as we talk about flipping that switch. One of the things that you noted in the book is that compared to your training, one of the the things you’re seeing now with this kind of Norwegian styles from people like Andre Somgrren and others is that they’re experimenting during the season with more sessions in that kind of 7 to 10 mill range where it’s like K’s at 5k pace or something like that. Can you talk about how you see that evolution and like how on the elite level we’re starting to see how we can get away not get away with but find the right safe amount where we can increase some of the speci specificity or intensity during that yeah if you look on the the algen example uh I think if I don’t remember incorrectly it was between five and seven in lactate which is was which is also the same level I found But I could get away with in the winter 4,000 repeats. So it’s it’s it’s a big difference if you go this also depends on your max lactate acid level.

Okay. So let’s say it’s 15 to 18 which is like like the average for a longd distance runner. Let’s you know work from there and that your uh threshold level is around three. Uh between five and seven it’s much lower risk than between seven and 10.

Um so you can repeat it uh much more often. Uh at the same time uh again you have to balance it you know and try to measure it uh according to your uh threshold value. If you decrease your threshold value too much you will get into trouble. Um you also have the shoes of course that’s a big change you know compared to when I was an act active athletes.

So you may be able to get away with it slightly more of that type of work just due to the the the better shoes. Yeah, I think from a speed and probably recovery standpoint as well. Um, all right. I I want to talk a little bit actually I want to talk about we’re going to switch gears slightly here on

Sprint Strength Blocking

the training because I want to go towards something that you included in your training when you’re uh when you’re running and you had Warhol’s coach as well which um is you experimented around with sprint training. Yeah. Can you can you walk us through like why and like where you might see that that fit? I mean, first of all, I was quite explosive when I was younger.

I had 7.2 in the 60 m when I was 15. So, I wasn’t slow. My father was a sprinter. My grandfather was a sprinter.

So um uh even with that uh you know type of background uh it was very very very difficult to incorporate speed or strength training in the training. This is also a little bit individual. Uh what I did find out was to concentrate it again blocking it together with more intense work was the safest way. So doing it together with the X factor session like the hill session was better than spreading it out during the week.

Uh so it’s again a principle of muscular load. You’re trying to block an element concentrated within uh like a framework of hours so that you can get the tone down the next day or the next period. So you always you know go from that type of thinking uh which was the only reason why I could compose you know that type of training week uh that type of thinking and then also you know have to think about again uh the relative uh change in load if you’re doing strength work do it the whole year around do not go in and out of it is a high high risk way of doing it yeah I I think if nothing else from this conversation what’s very clear is like you want to figure out the safe way of doing it, which anytime you introduce stress, anytime you introduce high levels of variability or variation of the workouts, what we’re doing now is like causing our body and physiology and muscular system to say okay here’s something crazy we haven’t done for a while adapt to it. And that’s where the risk lies.

There is. And also, you know, I discussed this Kash War’s coach. He’s probably the smartest coach I’ve, you know, I I’ve worked with a lot of coaches. He’s he’s likely the smartest one out there.

Wow. And like, you know, he said, you know, you’re running so much, it’s difficult to get any kind of adaptation. You can get maybe like a spring like polytric uh effect by doing this the sprint, but you’re running, you know, you’re running it all out in your training. Um, which is also why maybe doing a type of running specific strength work like Carson is doing now.

That’s a big change from um Aless when he was working with me 25 years ago. He’s changed his sprinting philosophy. They’re doing much more strength work with jumping with like doing stairs and those things. Likely that’s a better way of doing um um recruitment for speed or explosiveness.

for an long-distance runner I would think and concentrating it to the hill data. It it comes back to Lydiard’s kind of hill springing or bounding as well. Exactly. And that’s why it’s effective.

You’re doing something that is specific and strengthening uh and you’re giving it time afterwards to adapt and get the tone down again. I I want to Okay, we’re going to switch to I think the complete opposite side of training, the long run,

Rethinking Long Run

because I know for your career, you experimented around with it. You wrote about it in the book as well, but for many, especially in the US, like the long run is the sacred cow of like go run for whatever two hours, get your long run in. This counts and you’ve had at various points success with the shorter long run. Yeah, exactly.

I mean everything counts but does it count enough to the load you’re putting in there compared to other loads that you can put in there at a low risk you know it’s just a it’s a way of thinking you have to really look at every component of the training and ask yourself is this specific enough is it helping me enough and the long run can be effective um but I would say uh it’s most important to get the tone down after the hard session and and I think I think that’s That’s spot on. And I think the context that is often missed is the long run got popularized from Lydiard and others who at the time were utilizing it to get the, you know, endurance- wise, but also probably to get the tone down because at that point, yeah, they were during the competitive season, they were doing five days of interval training. Yeah, I know. You know, like the long run kind of you had to have something in there to counterbalance things.

Exactly. And we’re not doing five days of intense interval training anymore. No, no, that’s the thing, you know. It’s just a different, you know, type of framework or or or thinking, you know, and and and I also talk about, you know, uh why it’s a problem doing uh you know, backto back hard training days is due to uh muscle tone.

It it it seems to have like a an effect that it increases the most the day after the load. So, so it’s just the way it behaves and this is this is the the brilliance and then inside of the double the famous double threshold, right? Is the reason it’s combined and sequenced the way it is. Y is because it helps from a muscular standpoint.

Is that correct? It does. Yeah. But I mean, look at it this way.

For example, in my clinic, I have patients coming in. I mean, they’ve been in a like a a car crash. Y and they have some neck pain, you know, a little stiff. The day after it’s much much worse.

And it’s it’s the same thing, you know, you have a delayed response in terms of the muscular tone of the the muscular system and that’s also uh like the the whole variety of the week, you know.

Rapid Fire Future Trends

So I I want to finish, you’ve been ve very generous and kind with your time. I want to finish with a couple we’ll call it like rapidfired questions on on the system. One is often training philosophies become kind of like a a simplistic meme meaning lineard becomes 100 miles a week and we forget everything else, right? Yeah.

CO becomes like the five paces and we forget every everything else or the intensity. Yeah. What do you think that is for the kind of Norwegian double threshold s session that has kind of do you think it’s become kind of that and what are people sometimes missing when they kind of simplify it? I think they’re missing uh the extreme uh like precautions on the way like uh you have um that you’re doing the like the balancing act the whole way.

It’s not about double threshold. It’s about balancing load uh at a low risk. Love it. Where do you think we’re headed to next?

If this has been the, you know, 2000s were the I’m I’m going to simplify, but like the 2010s were the years of the Canova and then the 2020s were the year of the like Norwegian. I think where we going? We’re going I think it’s going to be a comeback for Kova when we get the continuous lactic acid measurements. It’s going to be integrated.

I think you’re going to have it on and off in a much more controlled way. And in addition, I think uh we get more and more data on the muscle tone and muscle stiffness because of like I said ultrasound sharewave elast elasttography. It’s coming. So I think those two things will change training in uh like a better direction, more safe, more effective.

So do you think on the Canova on and off the alternations that he loves? Yeah, I have this pet theory that those tend to work really well with East African runners who have a very high sense of perception and effort and often they can be overdone or push us too far with Western runners who have have a base period of like or a base idea of like I need to push. Do you think? Yeah, that’s Yeah, I mean it’s it’s more difficult to control.

That’s the main thing. I mean I I’ve been discussing training with Konova. It’s it’s a very very uh interesting coach and and experienced. Uh and I would say that the only problem with that training is uh the control aspect.

It’s more difficult because you always moving and it’s hard to know and especially since you have the lactic testing is an indirect measurements is more difficult when you don’t have the systematic breaks all the time. Um but yes, I would say that’s probably uh one of the the things going on here. Okay. And my final question for you on this is in the name of

Coach Simple Framework

coaches tend to make things complex. We tend to we tend to add things, right? And from what I’m hearing from you and what I’ve known of your training and everything is like you took almost like a very scientific approach of I’m going to like keep it simple and then adjust variables and see how they respond. What advice would you give to a coach who is saying I’m learning all this, I’m hearing all this, like it seems really complicated.

How what are the simple maybe couple things where it’s like focus on this first, nail these things and then you can start to experiment. Yeah, I mean first try to do sub threshold training on uh most of the training days uh that are in toolbased run easy on the easy days below 70% of max heart rate and then only one day a week where you do more intense work and then if that works really well you start to add one element at a time. It’s that simple. And if you’re doing uh heart rate or perceived effort, you need to have a a bigger margin of uh control in terms of the threshold.

You need to go lower. If you do lactic testing, you can go, you know, more closely. Love it. All right, Marius, this has been fantastic.

I can’t believe it’s

Closing Thanks

been so long since we’ve had to you got 25 years. Yeah, I know. So, I I just appreciate it. Um, for those who haven’t, please check out the book.

I’ll have the links and everything in the caption or show notes or wherever it is. It’s uh it’s fantastic. I don’t say that lightly. As you probably know, as listeners know, I’m a stickler on training books.

Um, and this one definitely sits right up there with some of the greats in terms of co and Kenova’s uh short book and others who have really in No’s uh classic who have re really made a made a difference on um you know innovating training and giving us we’ll call it something different to think about and chew on which I think is is really important for moving training forward. So well well done on uh well done the book and everything you’ve done.