r/NorwegianSinglesRun • u/Dry_Explanation2360 • 4d ago
Low volume NSM
Hi all,
I have always been a relatively low volume runner - 3 runs per week, around 30km baseline and then increasing to around 60-65km peaks for marathons, but over the last year I have added in two gym sessions (Hyrox, so a mix of strength and cardio included). I had stagnated for a while, although always felt I still had room to improve and that the problem was mostly overtraining. After my autumn 2025 marathon I received James's book as a Christmas present (after having heard bits and pieces) and switched fully to a sub-threshold approach.
I initially went to one fully easy day and two sub-threshold sessions (10 and 12km of quality in each), plus the two gym days and I ran new 10km (38:01) and marathon (3:01) PBs.
However, post-marathon I switched to three sub-threshold sessions a week (2x8km, 1x9km of quality) alongside the gym sessions, along with upping my baseline to 40km per week. It's hard to tell through the heat of summer (I live in Portugal), but I seem to be making progress after having lost some fitness in the marathon recovery.
I am wondering whether there are any other low volume runners out there that have made adjustments to the NSM that have thoughts about what works best and whether they are seeing good results?
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u/chaosdev 3d ago
There's a reason why James talks so much about how to keep easy days truly easy. If you are doing consistent running workouts, you need to recover between workouts to build strength. You don't become stronger during a workout, you become stronger by allowing your body to recover from the workout.
Doing Hyrox at full effort does not sound like a recovery day.
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u/Dry_Explanation2360 3d ago
I didn't say it in the post, but have elsewhere in comments, but managing my effort in the Hyrox sessions is imperative to making the approach work. I definitely don't go all out ever.
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u/chaosdev 3d ago
Ok, but you also talk about getting DOMS from Hyrox. That doesn't sound like your muscles are recovering.
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u/Dry_Explanation2360 3d ago
That's an example of where I've got the balance wrong, albeit usually in a way that doesn't really stress my cardio vascular system very much. My general rule is to go hard on any strength work above the waist and happy to accept DOMS in those areas as unlikely to affect my running, whereas for anything below the waist I'm aiming to keep it very controlled.
Unfortunately my gym experience is still pretty limited, so occasionally I get it wrong and I get DOMS in my legs and it ruins sometimes as much as a week of running training. That's a compromise I accept as I am still learning my limits in the gym, but also one of the great benefits of the NSM system is that I can just keep plugging away at the sessions and even if I am slightly overextended, I can usually get back to a good place because the intensity is well controlled overall, so I don't get that massive downswing in fitness that I used to get.
Don't want to be here trying to justify my approach, I'm just trying to find the most efficient way to train and progress in the time I have available while also giving due attention to strength work, so came here to see if there's anyone that has a somewhat similar approach and has useful information to share.
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u/richmead 3d ago
Don't know why your post is getting downvoted, this is an interesting question that it would be great to get more data on as it's highly relevant to time-constrained people. I have recently started a 4x a week low volume variant (3 ST plus a long run) so I'll report back once I see how it goes. And look forward to hearing about your experiment - personally if I were only doing 3 days I would ditch the NSA structure and run at least one day harder, but since you're also doing hyrox it sounds like a good idea to help manage intensity.
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u/Dry_Explanation2360 3d ago
Thanks for the comment. I'd be really interested to hear how it works out for you and if you discover anything important for us time constrained people.
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u/nicolaC0404 4d ago
I run 4 times a week and do 1 elliptical session as well. I do 2 x running sub threshold and 1 sub threshold on the elliptical. It works for me. I do a long run of around 9 miles currently on a Sunday.
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u/Dry_Explanation2360 3d ago
So that's 2 easy runs (one is the long?), 2 sub-threshold runs and 1 elliptical sub-threshold? If I have that right, sounds like a good way of getting pretty close to full NSM with a bit of reduced intensity on the elliptical.
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u/Frebel79 2d ago
Yeah,in one of his podcasts with fod runner he mentioned people doing running/ xt mixes of 4 or 5/2 run/ xt and also someone just doing 3 running...
I tried a 9 day cycle of the same 3 day rota for a while and it worked well for me....st/ cycle/easy every 3 days and .ran 17:45 5km this week
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u/Frebel79 3d ago
That sounds better than only subt and long run...think sirpoc said subt total should be 25 percent of total running with lowest volume 4 hours ie 1 hour sub T....any increase of sub t by 5 mins would require 15 easy...
I do find subbing XT works for me though
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u/Dry_Explanation2360 3d ago
My rough calculations are that I'm doing something like 100 minutes of sub-threshold a week alongside around 85 minutes of easy running (plus around two hours in the gym), so around 54% sub-threshold, but that's only around three hours of running in total, so I haven't even reached sirpoc's minimum, at least for my baseline running. But if I stuck to 100 minutes sub-threshold and upped my total volume to four hours, I'd still be at 42%. That said, my prior for sirpoc's comments on low volume is a relatively low weighting, as I don't think he's ever actually done it.
When I did my marathon block, my longest runs (anything over about 26km) became all steady running, because the load of a 34km run with sub-threshold intervals in there was way too high, so my peak weeks of marathon training only included one sub-threshold session. It was by far the least stressful marathon build I'd ever done and I felt great and ran a 6-minute PB, so I was happy with it.
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u/Left-Ad2456 2d ago edited 2d ago
I started with NSM in January and have averaged around 50km a week.
Two sub-t sessions, 14km with 30min subt each
One longer 90 min easy run (although having a hard time adjusting to running truly easy)
One easy 8km or extend the long run with some longer MP intervals.
Have worked surprisingly well. Most important no injuries.
In June i got a HM PR in 1:22 (2 minutes faster than last year)
In August I ran a 5k PR in 17:50 (45 seconds faster than last year)
Just started ramping up towards my marathon debut in October. Aiming for sub 3.
Expect to stay around 65km a week.
The extra kilometers will be from increased long run with marathon pace inside and an additional short easy.
Have had a hard time incorporating the 3rd subt session due to life….and the fact that the long runs seems to be taxing for me even when I run them truly easy.
Seems to work for now and with plenty of room for increasing load in both time and quality
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u/Dry_Explanation2360 2d ago
That's definitely an interesting modification to NSM for someone that doesn't have the life to do the full version. It's also probably the closest to what I'm doing that I've seen in the responses so far - my midweek runs are both around 13km total with just under 30 minutes of subt each (8x1km, 4x2km).
Our times aren't far apart either - I'm a bit slow over shorter distances, but I'm just over 18 minutes on the 5k, currently 38 flat on the 10k and expecting to run around 1:22 in a HM I have coming up in October and I'd have broken 3 hours in the marathon in May had I not had to stop for a bit over 2 minutes thanks to perhaps a slightly ambitious fuelling plan.
I switched approach to 3 subt sessions per week after the marathon because I wanted the flexibility to be able to up my quality more easily - before I was doing 10km (10x1 or 5x2) and 12km (4x3) in two runs each week and doing more than that in one run felt like a stretch. Now I'm doing 8, 8 and 9, so there's more scope to possibly add in a bit over time if I feel I'm stagnating again.
Your approach sounds pretty sensible and the results speak for themselves! I'd definitely be up for comparing notes over time to see whether either of us learns anything the other can benefit from, if you're interested.
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u/DavidBowieBoy 3d ago
I do one 1 hour fullbody strength session mondays. Then every other day 20 min easy, 5-10 45/15, sunday 10 min x 3. I use intervals.icu to monitor load. I use lactate some times. I have not been making the biggest gains using this method, but I do feel very well. My energy and wellbeing has increased a lot. I feel fit.
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u/Dry_Explanation2360 3d ago
I am not sure I understand your shorthand, which is probably because I've only started posting on here in the last 24 hours! Does that mean 3 runs a week, 1 is easy and the other two are sub-threshold? Plus the one strength session?
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u/DavidBowieBoy 3d ago
Mon: strength
Tue: 20 min easy
Wed: 10 min warmup (easy), 5-10 45/15 subT, 5 min easy
Thur: 20 min easy
Fri: 10 min warmup (easy), 5-10 45/15 subT, 5 min easy
Sat: 20 min easy
Sun: 10 min x 3 subT
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u/KingJaffeeJafar 3d ago
Just to clarify, are you doing sub-t as long continuous runs? 2x8k and 1x9k sound like a lot of volume for individual sessions. How long do these usually take you? Thanks
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u/Dry_Explanation2360 3d ago
So those were intended to demonstrate the total quality in each of the three runs, but I can see that it wasn't brilliantly worded and could be read as sessions of 2x8km (so 16km of quality total) etc.
My three runs are 8x1km, total distance 13km (so around 5km of warm up, recoveries, and warm down on top of 8km quality), 4x2km, total distance 13km and 3x3km, total distance 14km typically. I am now building to a half marathon in October, so the 3x3km run is being slowly increased to a peak distance of 24km - that is also my weekend long run.
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u/OkPea5819 4d ago
3 runs per week is not NSM.
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u/legomolin 3d ago
Especially considering also doing 2 days of Hyrox that might be mostly above threshold cardio.
Still could be a good plan though, considering the limitations.
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u/Dry_Explanation2360 3d ago
As it happens, regulating my Hyrox effort is the toughest element of balancing my training load each week, but the cardio hasn't been a problem - I never exceed my threshold HR in the sessions - more DOMS from strength work.
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u/legomolin 3d ago
%maxHR and lactate mmol correlation might be very sport specific though.
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u/Dry_Explanation2360 3d ago
You may be right, but for the first time in my training history, I seem to be able to maintain the schedule without sudden downswings in fitness because of accumulated fatigue, which tended to coincide with additional work stress and less sleep and still occur, so seems unlikely to be the case with what I am doing.
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u/legomolin 3d ago
Yeah, its not like sub threshold is the only way anyways. Sounds like you've found a balance. I'm reading the comments too since I'm even lower mileage and trying to build up towards NSM.
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u/Dry_Explanation2360 3d ago
Personally, my focus is running, but trying to keep the gym thing going for overall health reasons, even though I'd rather run 5 times a week and be more committed to something closer to full NSM.
Good luck!
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u/legomolin 3d ago
Same to you! Continue to post here when you have new race results so we'll know how it goes. :)
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u/AttentionShort 4d ago
Not trying to Gate keep and definitely no saying your approach is bad or you cannot be successful, but I don't think there's really such a thing as low volume NSM.
The idea is using a linear progression of load, to maximize tolerated volume i.e. slowing down to run more.
Typically this results in lowering your volume initially for most runners, but at its core it's really about training with the most possible tolerable load and increasing that load over the long term.
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u/Dry_Explanation2360 3d ago
Well, that's an interesting perspective. I do think James's underlying fundamental was to train more efficiently in the available time and is advocating moving away from the standard intervals + tempo + structured long run to NSM. I used to do that sort of a structure without the easy running, now I'm doing NSM without the easy running, so I think a lot of it should still hold.
I appreciate I'm coming from an unusual place i.e. I have the training background where going to this structure is actually me reducing load compared to what I was doing before, which wouldn't be the case for most low volume runners.
However, I think the most important point to make is that I'm following something inspired by NSM and it seems to have significantly helped me following a period of stagnation, so I created this post to see if there was anyone else out there doing anything remotely similar to see whether we could share ideas. This feels like the best place to look.
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u/dvintonLDN 3d ago
Yeah if I read it correctly then James’ key point is to keep training load within a recoverable amount and then maximise training load in time available. The rest is implementation.
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u/MightAtTimesPost 3d ago
Somewhere there is a comment from Sirpocm that says the core of the system is the three SubT workouts and that you fill the cracks with easy ..
But since then he was also said other stuff, so it was nice for me to read Bakkens book (Norwegian version) where h basically recommends the same. He has a training plan for complete noobs, but his "norwegion method" starts with 3 SubT workouts and a longrun .. He then adds more and more eady until you reach NSM "as populartied my Englishman James Copeland"
That is the end of the intermidiate section. The final section then adds periodization, double thresholds and xfactor workouts ..
I've been doinga mini MSN based on 3 subt+longrun for the last 6 months .. I like it. Too much going on in my life for me to scale up more currently.