September 12, 2024 • 48 mins
Coach Jason Koop discusses the merits of double threshold workouts with Rune Talsnes.
Comparison of acute physiological responses between one long and two short sessions of moderate-intensity training in endurance athletes.
SUBSCRIBE to Research Essentials for Ultrarunning
Additional resources:
Buy Training Essentials for Ultrarunning on Amazon or Audible.
Information on coaching-
www.trainright.com
Koop’s Social Media
Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
trail and ultra runners.
What is going on?
Welcome to another episode ofthe coop cast.
As always, I am your humblehost, coach jason coop, and this
episode of the podcast attemptsto demystify something that has
gotten a lot of attention andhype recently in endurance
communities, and that is doublethreshold workouts the ability
(00:33):
for you to take one workout thatyou would normally do in one
session, break it up into twodifferent sessions throughout
the day, and the potentialadvantages that might have on
any particular athlete.
This style of training can berolled up into a greater
philosophy of lactate controlledtraining, which is sometimes
referred to as the Norwegianmethod, and it has certainly
(00:56):
garnered the imagination andattention of a lot of elite and
recreational endurance athletesout there, and so I did want to
demystify this just a little bitand talk to some people that
are on the ground performingresearch on it.
So on the podcast today we haveRune Talnes, all the way from
(01:17):
Norway.
He works in the Department ofNeuromedicine and Movement
Science in the Center for EliteSports Research at the Norwegian
University of Science andTechnology.
He wrote a great paper recentlyon this particular subject and
attempted to define, orattempted to peel back the
curtain on, how athletesactually react to these two
(01:38):
different styles of training,one of them being you're doing
one hard single session and theother one being you're going to
break that session up into twoindividual section sessions.
And what is going on underneaththe hood, so to speak.
We then take this podcast andwe start to speculate a little
bit about what types of athletesmight benefit from this and
what types of scenarios.
What might we actually use thistraining intervention?
(02:01):
As always, there's no hype orhyperbole.
We're just presenting the dataand his research as it is.
All right, folks, with that outof the way, I am getting right
out of the way.
Here is my conversation withRune Taleness.
All about double thresholdworkouts.
All right, rune.
(02:22):
First off, welcome to thepodcast, coming all the way to
us from somewhere in EuropeSweden, norway.
Where are you coming to us from?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, thank you for having me.
I'm a Norwegian living inmid-Norway in a city called
Trondheim, and I work at theuniversity there, the Norwegian
University of Science andTechnology in Flomland, where
I'm a researcher or apost-doctor.
I do research mostly onendurance sports, endurance
(02:54):
training and different topicsrelated to that, and in addition
I also do some consulting ortesting of endurance athletes in
the Norwegian OlympicFederation.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So I have a question to start out that's kind of
unrelated to the paper thatwe're going to talk about double
threshold sessions, but sinceyou're involved in it and just
so the audience can kind of getto know you a little bit better,
why is it that sportsscientists and athletes from
your region of the world are soendurance centric?
(03:28):
Like we get a lot of likeinterval training theories and
interval training research wehave a disproportionate amount
coming out of that area of theworld is compared to like the U?
S who has a much more populousathlete base to kind of work
through.
So I was wondering if you couldjust peel the curtain back for
(03:49):
the listeners a little bit aboutwhy that's the case.
Why is it just so ingrained inthe culture out there and why do
we see so many good athletesand so much good research around
endurance training come out ofthat area?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
yeah, that's a good question.
Um, interesting observation.
Most likely also really true, Ithink.
Probably it has differentreasons.
There are longstandingtraditions in Scandinavian
countries, like, for example,especially in Norway and Sweden,
for doing research on humanperformance exercise physiology.
(04:21):
The kind of pioneers inexercise physiology were from,
were from sweden and then alsoin in both norway and sweden.
There are also traditions for acollaboration between academia
research on one side and thensports practice on the other
(04:42):
side, and particularly that isthe case in endurance sports, I
would say.
And there are for sure longtradition traditions as well for
endurance sports in Norway and,as probably many are aware of,
there are long traditions forcross-country skiing, which is
one of the most demandingendurance sports, I would say,
(05:04):
which is one of the mostdemanding endurance sports, I
would say.
So that is probably also a partof the reason for your
observation about this interestof endurance training in
Scandinavian countries, both insports practice but also in
research.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, I remember early in my coaching career a
lot of the block style trainingarchitecture started to gain
just a lot of notoriety andtraction within the endurance
world, and it came from.
Two facets is one the strengthtraining world, which is neither
here nor there, it's kind ofnot that relevant to what we're
going to talk about.
(05:37):
But the other piece of it camespecifically from cross country
skiers and the research and thepractice emanating from from
from that area of the world.
So this basis of takingtraining theory that was either
developed or pioneered or atleast communicated in that area
(05:58):
of the world to the rest of theworld has got a long-standing
history and it's always justreally fascinating.
To me that is the origin of alot of what we that area of the
world is an origin of a lot ofwhat we think about endurance
training today.
So we're going to talk aboutthe next iteration of that Time
will tell will be the nextiteration of that Something that
has gotten a lot of attentionover the past two to three years
(06:22):
in a number of differentformats, and that's double
threshold training.
I think the way that this isgoing to work is we'll spend a
little bit of time kind ofdiscussing what it is just to
bring the audience up to speed,and then a whole lot of time
talking about how you're tryinghow you and some of your
colleagues are tryingspecifically to kind of get a
fix on exactly how this type oftraining not only affects the
(06:45):
athlete but also can potentiallypromote the adaptive process,
which is ultimately what we'reconcerned about.
But just to level, set thevocabulary and the strategy for
the audience to start out within your mind how would you
describe this to an athlete?
Athlete comes to you hey, I'veheard about this double
threshold training stuff.
(07:06):
How would you actually describethat to them and what would be
some of the key like theoreticaladvantages that you, that we,
you would try to communicate tothat athlete?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
yeah, no, I'm not sure where to start, but I guess
I was.
Double threshold training as aconcept or or method is just
performing two sessions ofthreshold training or moderate
intensity training during oneday.
That is kind of the idea thatis, as you said, kind of have
(07:36):
received increased attentionover the last years.
I don't think I will engage inthe debate where this originates
from and who started in itdoing it first.
But that's fair enough.
I don't think I will engage inthe debate where this originates
from and who started doing itfirst.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
That's fair enough.
I don't want you to have tostep into those waters as well.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, I think it's been around for quite a long
time and I've heard that it'sbeen used in kayaking and rowing
for many years ago, also inrunning many years ago, also in
running many years ago.
And there's this well-knownauthor in Norway that has
written a lot of books oncross-country skiing and sports
(08:14):
and he always says that nothingis new, everything has been
tried before.
But the context changes and Ithink that's the case here as
well.
It's been around for fourdecades but, as you pointed out,
it's got increased attentionover last year and I think that
is particularly due to the useof middle and long distance
(08:36):
runners, particularly someNorwegian, or some of the world
or at least the world have someof the best runners in the world
and the the brothers jacobingebrigtsen has received some
attention in with that regards,and then it's kind of been
adopted to, to, to try us aloneand other endurance sports and
(08:59):
this concept, uh, probably thenalso that probably then also be
referred to as the Norwegianmethod or the Norwegian model,
which is this double thresholdtraining specifically, but also
threshold training with emphasison intensity control, intensity
(09:20):
steering, particularly by usinglow-lighted measurements to
kind of steer the intensity ofthe threshold training.
All this somehow relate themand by many now referred to as
the Norwegian method ofendurance training.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Well, I'll give the Norwegians the credit for the
origin story there, althoughit's not novel, but maybe we'll
give them credit for at leastnaming it after themselves.
Fundamentally, there are alldifferent types of permutations
of this type of workout that youstudied experimentally, and I'd
be remiss to not mention those,because when you're doing an
(09:58):
experimental design you've gotto narrow it down to something,
usually a singular thing thatyou're actually testing, but at
its core a double thresholdworkout is taking, a threshold
workout that you could domaximally, something that
represents almost the mostvolume of intensity that you
could handle in a session.
(10:18):
And the classic way to look atthat you've pointed on your
paper is six by 10 minutes hardand breaking that up into two
different sessions, a morningsession and a night session, by
either doing the entirety ofthat six by 10 or some variation
of that which you kind of seein practice.
Sometimes it's four, you know,four intervals in the morning
and two intervals at night,sometimes it's three and three,
(10:38):
sometimes it's four and four,and there's all different kind
of variations of that and Ithink we'll get down to which
ones can be more advantageousthan others in the in kind of
the dialogue and kind of thedialogue, of this, but
fundamentally that's what you'redoing is you're taking
something that you would domaximally, or something that
represents the maximum or closeto the maximum amount of volume
(11:00):
of intensity that an athletecould withstand, and you're
breaking it up into twodifferent sessions that are
separated by half a day or anafternoon or something like that
.
I'd be remiss to mention that.
I think that threshold trainingand this might be a catalyst of
it has kind of got a resurgence, so to speak, over the last few
(11:21):
years.
It seems that sometimestraining theory goes in these
waves based on popular opinionOne thing becomes popular and
then another thing getsdemonized, and then another
thing gets popular and thenanother thing gets demonized,
and the latest iteration of thisis VO2 max training is good and
threshold training is bad, andI'm putting those in intentional
(11:43):
air quotes because aspractitioners we usually realize
that there's a variety ofdifferent intensities.
But I was wondering if youcould kind of like expand on
that a little bit and like why,specifically, what threshold
training tries to elicit andwhat your opinion is on why we
shouldn't think about some ofthese intensities as necessarily
good or bad, that we have tokind of elicit a range of them
(12:07):
over the course of an athlete'slifespan.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, I think that's a good and valid observation.
Threshold training has probablyalso been around for a long
time, long, long time.
As you say things, common goalsand goals, and for 10, 15, 20
years ago it was probably morepolarized than during training
(12:32):
of endurance athletes.
It was kind of either you didlow intensity training that was
the focus, or you did more highintensity training or via the
max training than this kind ofemphasize on threshold training.
We've got some density zone inbetween there where it came
around and that has kind ofreceived more attention in
(12:54):
different communities andendurance sports and probably
this is also reflected in theresearch literature that most of
the literature, at least onkind of training intervention
studies, has been emphasizinghigh intensity training.
It's not that much on kind ofmoderate intensity training,
(13:15):
threshold training, andparticularly not that much on
low intensity training whichoften represents 90% of the
total training time in endurancesports.
So there are different benefitsof doing threshold training.
Typically I would say it'smostly the argument will be that
(13:39):
it acts on your fractionalutilization of your V2max or
your threshold intensitythreshold, pace, anaerobic
threshold or critical speed orcritical power.
But also at the same time it'shard to separate that kind of
low intensity training andtarget dose adaptations,
(14:00):
threshold training, target doseadaptations and high intensity
training and those adaptationsand high-intensity training,
target, those adaptationsthey're kind of all overlapping
and are contributing todeveloping high aerobic
endurance capacity.
So the question always is notif you're going to do one or the
(14:21):
other, but it's about kind offinding the right balance
between different endurancetraining intensities and find
the right balance betweentraining load and recovery and
also kind of the periodizationof this training.
And typically you have more lowintensity training, moderate
(14:43):
intensity training or thresholdtraining in your preparation
period and then when thecompetition season are coming
closer, then you kind ofincrease more emphasis on high
intensity training and speedtraining.
And also it depends on thesport that you're doing.
(15:04):
What are the kind of the demandsof the sport you're doing?
What type of athletes are wetalking about?
Different approaches withregards to threshold versus
high-density training.
It's probably differenttraining that you need if you're
a junior athlete compared tokind of senior athlete.
(15:25):
That's an elite level.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
So the context, context matters so try to set
this up for the audience.
If what I'll call regularthreshold training targets a
very specific aspect of anathlete's physiology, what's
different or what is theadvantage for taking that
threshold training session andsplitting it up into two
(15:50):
different sessions, like justfrom a theoretical or
philosophical trainingarchitecture standpoint.
You've got this one session andyou're saying we're going to,
instead of doing this onesession, we're going to do these
two sessions.
What are the advantages that wethink might be going on by by
using that type of trainingstructure?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
yeah, I guess you can get different answers on this
one, depending on who you ask,of course, but there are
different aspects that have beenaddressed with regards to this
double threshold concept, and Iguess the aspect that has been
mentioned the most is that ifyou kind of have a certain model
(16:29):
of threshold training that youwant to perform and you do that
in two shorter sessions comparedto one longer session, then you
will kind of achieve a lowertraining stress and potentially
lower recovery time per session,and then maybe over a longer
time period, for example a weekor a month, then you can obtain
(16:52):
a higher total volume ofthreshold training by doing it
this way.
That is kind of one aspect ofit, given that it's performed
kind of at the same externalintensity, even though it is
performed kind of at the sameexternal intensity.
Another aspect that is oftenmentioned is that, particularly
in running, if you split sessionup to two shorter sessions,
(17:14):
then you kind of have a lowermechanical loading per session
and a lower injury risk maybe,and also from kind of a more
molecular or adaptive signalingcontext, if you have two
sessions in one day, you kind ofprovide two signals for
(17:35):
molecular or two molecularsignals for adaptations during
one training day compared to onesession and one signal.
So there's a few aspects thathave been mentioned.
And also, if you do two shortersessions, as I said, they will
probably cost less with regardsto internal intensity, for
(17:56):
example heart rate or bloodlactate levels or RP, and then
you can also probably compensateby having a higher external
intensity, for example speed orpower, by splitting it into two
shorter sessions and now youallow for performing more
threshold training closer toyour actual competition speed.
(18:18):
That could also be an aspect ofthis.
But, as I said, with regards toendurance training intensity and
endurance training intensitydistribution, the question is
not if you should do doublethreshold training or not.
Probably the answer is kind offinding the right balance
(18:38):
between doing one longer sessionper day and then sometimes you
can do two shorter sessions inone day and use this concept as
a tool that you have in yourtoolbox.
And what you can lose in a wayof doing it as two shorter
sessions compared to one longersession is that if you have a
(19:00):
longer session, you typicallyachieve duration-dependent
increase or drift in internalintensity measures, heart rate
drift, increase in lactate or RP, and the physiological stimuli
and cost of the session ishigher, and then you might also
(19:21):
achieve kind of one larger orhigher signal for adaptations,
particularly through glycogendepletion.
So there are probably pros andcons of doing double threshold
training compared to fewer andlonger sessions, and this
concept can, as I said, be atool that you can use together
(19:45):
with performing some longersessions, I would say.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Rune.
That was really wellarticulated, I think, for all
the coaches out there.
If you just rewind three orfour minutes and bullet point
each one of those almost like apros and cons list that you went
through, I think that's areally good exercise to go
through when designing trainingarchitecture, because everything
that you do will have aslightly different, or could
(20:12):
potentially have a slightlydifferent effect on the adaptive
process that you're ultimatelytrying to elicit.
And how you tune thoseindividual workouts and the
whole milieu of workouts thatyou prescribe for an athlete has
to be discreet and veryspecific towards what the
athlete actually needs.
(20:32):
And here you have somethingthat looks on paper where it
might actually where it looks onpaper at least, where it could
be the same.
You have six 10-minute intervalsand in one scenario they're all
done at once.
In another scenario they'resplit up in two sessions.
That's the only variation of it.
But if you do start to do that,you start to see subtle
(20:53):
differences in the way that theathlete actually physiologically
reacts to that.
And that's exactly what youdecided to test, and I'll leave
it to you to kind of describethe specific paper that we're
going to talk about in just alittle bit.
I'll leave a link to it in theshow notes, but the title is
Comparison of AcutePhysiological Responses Between
(21:14):
One Long and Two Short Sessionsof Moderate Intensity Training
and of acute physiologicalresponses between one long and
two short sessions of moderateintensity and moderate intensity
training and endurance athletes.
I'll use that as a little bitof setup and throw it over to
you.
Describe like the experimentalcondition that you're creating.
Then what were the keytakeaways from it?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
yeah, we can try that .
As I said, this concept ofdouble threshold training has
probably been around for severaldecades but it's not received
any attention in the researchliterature.
So this was kind of the firststudy on this topic and this
concept and it's not kind of atraining intervention study that
(21:52):
really does say anything aboutthe actual training effects of
doing double threshold trainingversus not doing it.
But the purpose was to kind ofhave a starting point, try to
understand this concept better.
So we kind of did a moreobservational study where we
measured the acute physiologicalresponses of doing double
(22:15):
threshold training compared tothe same time and intensity
matched session as one longsession.
So that was kind of the purposeof the study and we recruited
14 national level cross-countryskiers in norway to do this and
they, in a counterbalanced order, they performed they all
(22:35):
performed one day of twointerval sessions and those were
kind of three times 10 minutesper session, and then the other
day was one single session withsix times 10 minutes intervals
and this was running in thelaboratory.
During the sessions we measuredkind of different physiological
(22:56):
measures, so heart rate, bloodlactate levels, rating of
perceived exhaustion, oxygen,optic ventilation, and then also
after the sessions wereperformed, we had the
participants in the lab for onemore hour and measured kind of
their heart rate recovery duringthat hour post-exercise.
We also had some questionnairesput directly after the sessions
(23:21):
were performed on how theyperceived the exhaustion and the
training quality of thesessions.
We also had this questionnaireon perceived training stress and
recovery that they filled outthe morning after the training
(23:41):
day.
Basically what we didrelatively simple study design
and measurements, just to kindof acute responses.
But this hopefully serves as astarting point in this topic and
might generate some kind ofhypothesis for further work and
(24:02):
maybe some future trainingintervention studies.
It's also the case in theresearch literature on endurance
training that a lot have beenemphasized towards the
interaction between trainingvolume and intensity.
There's not that much researchand scientific understanding of
(24:23):
the interaction between trainingvolume and frequency.
It's mostly emphasizedintensity.
So that was basically what wedid in the study.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's almost like you get what you expected, right, so
you have one session.
That was that.
That when you study thesubjects during the session and
after the session, six by ten isis I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of
bastardize the results here thatone session is harder, right,
or physiological,physiologically more stressful
(24:56):
than splitting the two sessionsup, which is the audience is
going to think about this and belike, well, yeah, of course
it's not.
Like if I go and I do thehardest workout I could possibly
do, or a really hard workout,of course that's going to be
more stressful orphysiologically stressful than
if I split it up.
And I always feel that studieslike this that are looking at
the response from the athleteand not necessarily the training
(25:20):
effect or what you call thetraining effect Well, I'll call
the adaptive response the samething it ends up being a little
bit of a Rorkshaw test, right?
In terms of if you're coming tothe test or if you're coming and
reading the paper through acertain lens, you're going to
interpret it that way.
And if you come to the paperfrom a different viewpoint,
you're going to interpret itthat way.
And if you come to the paperfrom a different viewpoint,
you're going to interpret itthat way as well.
(25:41):
So if you're looking at thispaper saying, okay, I want to
create the most stress aspossible, and then that higher
level of stress is going tofacilitate a greater adaptation,
you're going to say, ah, ofcourse, six by 10 is better.
We're going to break it up intoreally blunt categories here,
even though we already wentthrough that.
It's a tool, but six by 10 isbetter because you're going to
(26:03):
get a more robust adaptation,because the higher level of
stress If you look at it fromwell, the lower stress is better
at the same exact workload.
You're going to say, oh well,breaking the session up is
better because you're going toget a, say, a similar level of
adaptation for lessphysiological cost.
Is that a fair, like workshopanalysis of it?
(26:24):
Like when you put this paperout in the world and I'm sure
that you saw some of thefeedback and the commentary and
the dialogue that revolvedaround it is that a fair
encapsulation of how you couldpotentially view the same paper
through two different lenses?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
yeah, definitely.
I think that's a fair and andgood summary of the of the
results in in the study.
It was definitely not surprisingif you kind of have if you do
one longer session that have thesame kind of volume and
intensity, that have a higherphysiological cost acutely and
(27:01):
potentially a higher recoverydemand, splitting it up into two
time and intensity matchedshorter sessions.
So it can kind of be interpreteddifferent ways depending on the
lenses that you put on.
You say, if you want kind ofthe highest possible training
stress or training stimuli, thenyou should probably go for
(27:23):
doing one longer session.
If you want a lower historicalcost and training stimuli
acutely, then you shouldprobably split it up to two
shorter sessions.
And both of those kind ofscenarios have pros and cons, I
would say, and it depends whatyour goal is and what you want
to get out of it.
It's probably a combination ofboth that you should kind of
(27:47):
prescribe to your athletes orimplement in your training
programs.
And yeah, it all depends.
I would say If you want toaccumulate more time over a
certain time period, it might begood to have lower costs for a
session to kind of try toachieve a more consistent
training process, sustainabletraining process with a lower
(28:10):
risk in a way.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
But if you kind of want a higher training stimuli,
potentially also moreadaptations out of a few
sessions, then you shouldprobably go for one longer
session where you actually havethese kind of physiological
drifts during the session yeah,it becomes one of those things
that, from a coaching and anathlete perspective, that many
(28:35):
athletes are going to go down tothe pragmatic implementation of
either one of those styles andnot to say that you have to do
all of one or all of the otheror whatever, but because some of
the differences might be soincredibly nuanced.
It kind of comes down to canyou do two sessions in a day,
which many athletes either don'twant to do, or especially the
regular athletes that have likefull-time jobs and things like
that?
They just can't?
Few sessions in a day, whichmany athletes either don't want
(28:56):
to do, or especially the regularathletes that have like
full-time jobs and things likethat, they just can't.
They can't like practically,can't practically pull off.
So I don't know if you had anyfurther thoughts on that or if
you can come up with an exampleof an athlete in a particular
event and you could span theentire endurance sphere right.
(29:17):
An athlete in a particular eventor that needs to elicit a
really particular adaptationwould be a more favorable
candidate towards one style ofdoing this or the other.
Because what I want to try tocommunicate is athletes are
always trying to achievesomething.
They know what they want to getbetter.
I'm going to take it out ofphysiology.
They want to get better atclimbing right, so they do
(29:39):
specific things that make thembetter at climbing.
They know they want to getbetter at speed, so they do
specific things that get betterat speed.
Is there an athlete prototypeor an event prototype that, in
your mind, would favor one styleof doing this type of work
versus another?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
yeah, it's also a good question.
I would say, as you said, itprobably depends a bit on the
athlete, what kind of profilethat we have, and then it also
depends on the sport in a way,what kind of demands that the
sport includes.
For example, in in road cycling,where you have long and long
(30:21):
competition time, it's maybe notthat relevant, but in in
running it might be.
At least in middle and longdistance running it might be
more relevant because you wantto accumulate more time at
threshold or do more thresholdtraining, and this might be a
method to obtain that.
And also by reducing mechanicalloading per session,
(30:44):
cross-country skiing, biathlonyou have the possibility to
change between differentexercise modes, so you can also
then do different exercise modes.
So have, for example,cross-country skiing, something
that are more lower body in themorning, running, for example,
uphill running or something.
Then it can be more double polein the evening that are more
(31:08):
low in the upper body, obviously, and then you can buy that also
toll rates, a higher volume ofthreshold training.
And another kind of potentialbenefits or advantage of doing
it is if you try to center yourinterval sessions or your
threshold training in one day ormaybe over two subsequent days,
(31:31):
then you potentially havebetter time in between there to
do more low intensity trainingor other type of training that
you need to prioritize.
So that's probably also oneaspect of this double threshold
concept that is relevant tomedicine you.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
So your time at threshold concept actually
struck a chord with me becausethis is something that we see at
the more at the elite end ofthe spectrum and to a certain
extent kind of like the mid-packfor 100k and maybe 80k types of
races.
I just was telling you offline.
I just got back from UTMB orthe whole UTMB races and CCC is
(32:12):
actually a great example of this.
It's a 100K race and for theprofessional athletes typically
they can do the climbs rightaround their threshold and they
get a little bit of recovery onthe descents.
It's not like a cycling racewhere it's more zero watts and
the stress is just the stress ofthe high speed descent and
things like that.
But my point with that is theway that the race unfolds 10
(32:37):
people make it over the firstclimb, 8 people make it over the
second climb, 6 people make itover the third climb, 3 people
make it over the fourth climband then the winner in the
podium is kind of determined bythe last climb and the descent.
And if each one of those climbsis done at threshold, they're
anywhere between 20 and 45minutes or something like that a
(32:57):
very typical threshold type ofuh time to or very typical time
where you can elicit a thresholdtype of intensity.
It's not that they can run anyone of those climbs faster, it's
just they can do more of it.
So instead of being able toaggregate 90 minutes, let's say,
at threshold intensity, theycan aggregate up to two hours at
(33:18):
that threshold type ofintensity or whatever the domain
that we're looking at it is.
I view this application throughthat lens.
So in one single session Imight only be able to get 60 or
75 minutes out of an athlete atthreshold.
If I can somehow rearrange thearchitecture so that over the
course of a day, a week or amonth they're more exposed to
(33:45):
time at that intensity and thentherefore in a race they can
operate at that intensity for alonger period of time.
That's a performance advantage.
It's not necessarily althoughthis would also happen it's not
necessarily improving thatthreshold capacity from whatever
minutes per mile or minutes perkilometer to a better minutes
per kilometer.
(34:05):
It's being able to do it for alonger period of time or do it
repeatedly over the course of arace.
That, I think, is the materialadvantage.
That's what that's kind of.
The first lens that I look atthis through is through just how
would that actually play out ona race course, and in my
estimation that's one of themore likely candidates that will
(34:26):
eventually kind of get flushedout when we start to look at
this more and more yeah, no, Iagree.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
I think that's a good example of a way to kind of use
this double threshold trainingas a method to target specific
demands in after running,because intuitively, you would
probably think that this is notthat relevant for ultra-learning
because it's long-durationevents and this is splitting it
(34:52):
into shorter sessions.
You probably will have better,greater benefits of doing longer
sessions in ultra-learning, butto provide a new stimuli for
your training and alsoaccumulating more time at a
higher speed or at the threshold, this might then be a method
(35:12):
that is interesting to to use asa part of your training program
.
It's not the most importantpart of your training program, I
think, but it might be a toolin your toolbox that you can use
.
I'm not that familiar withultra running, but if I
understood it correctly, it alsoin the beginning of the
(35:33):
competitions.
Then the speed is often quitehigh.
So you need some kind ofcapacity of handling with higher
speed and maybe the higher lowlactate values, and now doing
this double threshing trainingmight be a method to practice
that more.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, it's interesting because in sports
like cycling we know very wellwhat the demands of the events
are, because we have onboardpower meters.
That really revolutionized theway that we thought about
cycling training because wecould very realistically look at
what the external load of astage in the Tour de France was.
(36:11):
A road race any sort of cyclingapplication became a really
good window into that.
We don't really have a verygood equivalent of that in trail
and ultra running.
We can guess by looking atheart rate and normalized graded
pace and even perceivedexertion and things like that,
and start to try to alchemize.
Okay, how hard are they runningduring any one particular race?
(36:34):
And this is just when I say anathlete can do this in this
situation.
Right?
I just mentioned the CCCexample.
That's just based off of myobservation of looking at
training files and watching howthe races unfold and trying to
dig into whatever data I canwhat's actually out on the
course, and I think that's arealistic level of accuracy to
(36:57):
try to get to.
There might be some window thatwe ultimately like open up, you
know, several years from now.
That adds more precision tothat.
But I do think that at theelite level and mountainous 80K
and 100K.
Those athletes are spending alot of time very close to their
threshold on these 20 to 40minute climbs and that becomes
an important component of it.
Your point that it's maybe notthe most important component of
(37:22):
it is really well taken, becausethat's not the entirety of the
race.
They still have to descend,they still have to eat, there's
still other things that go intoit.
It's a really complicated sportthat can't just be defined by
the intensity on the, by theintensity on the climbs.
But at least for that, like Isaid, when I look at this type
of training intervention, thewhat I'm always trying to slice
out whenever I see any of thesestudies that come out is okay.
(37:45):
Now that we know what's goingon, how does it ultimately apply
?
And then how could Ipotentially incorporate this
into an athlete's trainingprogram?
And when I go through thatlogical exercise, that's the
application that I see sort ofemerge yeah, definitely I agree
on that.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
I think it's important to emphasize, not only
in ultra-rhyming but allendurance sports that kind of.
Although we have done thisstudy on double threshold
training, it's a concept that'skind of received a lot of
attention over the last years.
It's not any magic with it.
It's kind of in many cases itis given too much attention and
(38:23):
value.
It's in a way sort of a hypeand it's nothing magic with that
.
You can't find any magictraining method.
It's kind of the important thingis to have a good balance
between training and recoveryover time and have a training
process that's are consistentand that you can do over a long
(38:46):
time and then typically youreceive better adaptations and
improvements in performance.
So I think also part of thisdouble threshold training might
be that if you're going to dotwo indoor sessions, threshold
sessions one day, maybe you're alittle bit more focused you
(39:07):
know I want to do it even betterbetter at intensity steering,
and you're basically yourtraining quality, execution,
quality of the training will bebetter because you're so focused
on doing this right, doing itmore in a more systematic manner
with better intensity controland so on.
(39:27):
That might also be a part ofthe effect.
You should not underestimatethe kind of effect of believing
in it either.
If this is a concept that someof the best endurance athletes
in the world are doing and youstart doing it and believing in
it, that also kind of have aneffect on its own.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
I would say both of those are really well taken.
I like it.
I like the fact that the personproducing the research is
trying to tone down the hype onit like realizing that it's
gotten a little bit out ofcontrol.
I appreciate that about you.
So you did this initial studyright, which looks at the acute
response right Between these twostyles.
Where do you want to take itfrom here?
Because I know that you'reintellectually curious.
(40:08):
You kind of want to see ifthere is any magic behind it.
Right, to use your earliervocabulary, what do you
eventually want to do to try tounderstand what might be going
on further?
Take us in your five years downthe line, three years down the
line.
What do you want to betterunderstand about this concept?
Speaker 2 (40:27):
what do you want to better understand about this
concept?
Yeah, I think, as I said, thisis a starting point to better
understand the kind of pros andcons of splitting endurance
training up to frequent sessionsand, as I said, also in general
in the research literature onendurance training.
It's not that much that I'vebeen kind of trying to
(40:48):
understand this interactionbetween training volume and
frequency.
So I think to continue to tryto understand that, not only in
threshold training, moderateintensity training, but also low
intensity training that is, 90%of the training time in
endurance athletes or 80% of thesessions, and we don't actually
know that much about lowintensity training, or 80% of
(41:09):
the sessions, and we don'tactually know that much about
low-intensity training.
What is the optimal intensity,the optimal duration, frequency
and so on?
So continue down that road, bothwith regards to low-intensity
training and also thresholdtraining.
I think is really interestingand something that you want to
continue with.
And maybe when we haveunderstood even more about this
(41:32):
these acute responses ofmanipulating with training
volume and frequency, then wehave a hypothesis that we can
actually test using a moreexperimental design or training
intervention study.
We actually apply differenttraining models, measure the
(41:53):
effect of doing it over a numberof weeks with the training
intervention study to predictthe loss.
So that will in a way be thenext step, I think, to see if
there's actually some potentialdifferences in the training
spectrum and performanceoutcomes.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Yeah, because when you look at how you would do
this, practically, dividing onesession into two equal parts is
not the only way that you coulddo it.
So to my earlier example if youknow that you can do 6x10 in
one session, and that's aboutall you can do, If you know that
you can do six by 10 in onesession, and that's about all
(42:31):
you can do, you can squeeze outfour by 10 in two sessions,
which gives you 80 minutes onthe day versus 60 minutes on the
day.
That's an apples and orangescomparison.
But if you're going to use whatI would call a time under
workload strategy, right Timeunder a specific workload is
going to be the biggest hammeron the adaptive process.
(42:53):
If that is your viewpoint, howyou kind of view a big component
of training, then this againbecomes more than a reasonable
intervention to kind of throw atan athlete, given that they can
actually do two by 40 anddoesn't cause downstream
problems and so on and so forth.
(43:14):
So your point is real, is welltaken on that, that we kind of
don't know what these you knoweffect or we have a few
guideposts.
I wouldn't say we don't know,but we have a few guideposts in
terms of what are effectivedoses, what are good maximum
doses, what are effectiveminimum doses and things like
that, and using these types ofstudies to to really elucidate
(43:35):
that, I think is actually quitehelpful.
Just your point of what's theminimum, what's the minimum
level of intensity that you needduring an easy workout that's a
really common question athleteshave.
Is it a heart rate of x?
Is it a pace of y like?
Does it matter if I go twohours at a heart rate of 140
versus 120?
(43:55):
I'm just throwing those numbersout just to give a relative
example.
Does that actually matter?
The fact that we have a littleclarity on that, I think it
speaks to a lot of what weactually can find out that's not
true.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
My way is like in in the research literature on
endurance training, typically weuse three intensity zones,
that's low, moderate and highintensity, and the low intensity
zone is from 55% of heart ratemax to 82% heart rate max.
So where's your low intensitytraining?
Yeah, it's a really big range.
(44:27):
So we actually don't know thatmuch.
We don't know that much.
So it's definitely more nuanced.
Although other intensity soloscales exist and are being used,
that is what's most commonlyused in the research now.
So there are work that could bedone in this field to try to
understand this better.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
I'll tell you from ultramarathon perspective.
The answer is yes.
Just more of all of it isbetter.
Higher heart rate, biggertraining volumes, whatever you
want just more and more isbetter.
And I use that part in jest,but part in serious that you
can't always apply the morehammer to elicit further
adaptation.
Sometimes you have to use alittle bit more precise tool to
(45:10):
do it, and this would be a good,very practical use case of that
, where you're using moreprecise tool.
I appreciate you coming on thepodcast today.
This is super fun.
I can't wait to hear what elsecomes out of your lab before I
let you go.
How can people find you?
And a little bit more aboutyour research and the work that
you guys are doing over there.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Thank you for having me.
It was interesting with adetailed discussion on double
threshold training.
Hopefully the listener will getsomething useful out of it.
I'm not the most activeresearcher, I think, on social
media, at least compared to many, but you can find me on my ex.
(45:51):
Some of my research will bekind of published there, and
then ResearchGate, I think isthe best way of finding and
getting access to my researchand, yeah, I would start there
if someone are wondering whatelse that I have been doing over
the last years.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
And I'll leave links to all of that, as well as the
paper, which is open access.
I found it freely so otherpeople can have free access to
download it, so I'll leave linksto all that in the show notes.
Appreciate you coming on todayand we'll have to bring you back
once you have step two, whichis inevitably going to be how do
athletes actually get better inone style versus the other?
Speaker 2 (46:33):
definitely, I will do that, thank you, thank you all
right folks.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
There you have it.
There you go.
Much thanks to rune for comingon the podcast today.
I always appreciate the insightfrom people who are actually
doing some of this research onthe ground and presenting a very
practical approach for how wemight actually implement these
workouts.
As I mentioned during thepodcast, his paper that we were
(46:59):
discussing is open access.
A link to that will be in theshow notes.
Y'all feel free to go and checkit out and download it.
It's a pretty good read, butit's one that leaves you
wondering what is actually goingto happen to the adaptive
process at the end of the day,now that we know what is
actually happening to theathletes themselves in terms of
fatigue and or recovery.
(47:19):
If you like this podcast,there's no Patreon.
I ain't got nothing to sell you.
There are no affiliate links oranything like that.
The only thing you can do isshare this with your friends.
I always appreciate it when Igo out into the community, just
like I did over at UTMB a coupleof weeks ago, and people come
up to me from kind of allcorners of the world and tell me
how much they appreciate thecontent within this podcast.
(47:42):
So if you like it, you thinkthat either one of your training
partners, a fellow coachingcolleague or just somebody that
you happen to compete with oragainst would find this content
valuable, please just share itwith them and spread the love.
That means a whole heck of alot to me.
All right, folks, that is itfor today and, as always, we
will see you out on the trails.
trail and ultra runners.
What is going on?
Welcome to another episode ofthe coop cast.
As always, I am your humblehost, coach jason coop, and this
episode of the podcast attemptsto demystify something that has
gotten a lot of attention andhype recently in endurance
communities, and that is doublethreshold workouts the ability
(00:33):
for you to take one workout thatyou would normally do in one
session, break it up into twodifferent sessions throughout
the day, and the potentialadvantages that might have on
any particular athlete.
This style of training can berolled up into a greater
philosophy of lactate controlledtraining, which is sometimes
referred to as the Norwegianmethod, and it has certainly
(00:56):
garnered the imagination andattention of a lot of elite and
recreational endurance athletesout there, and so I did want to
demystify this just a little bitand talk to some people that
are on the ground performingresearch on it.
So on the podcast today we haveRune Talnes, all the way from
(01:17):
Norway.
He works in the Department ofNeuromedicine and Movement
Science in the Center for EliteSports Research at the Norwegian
University of Science andTechnology.
He wrote a great paper recentlyon this particular subject and
attempted to define, orattempted to peel back the
curtain on, how athletesactually react to these two
(01:38):
different styles of training,one of them being you're doing
one hard single session and theother one being you're going to
break that session up into twoindividual section sessions.
And what is going on underneaththe hood, so to speak.
We then take this podcast andwe start to speculate a little
bit about what types of athletesmight benefit from this and
what types of scenarios.
What might we actually use thistraining intervention?
(02:01):
As always, there's no hype orhyperbole.
We're just presenting the dataand his research as it is.
All right, folks, with that outof the way, I am getting right
out of the way.
Here is my conversation withRune Taleness.
All about double thresholdworkouts.
All right, rune.
(02:22):
First off, welcome to thepodcast, coming all the way to
us from somewhere in EuropeSweden, norway.
Where are you coming to us from?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, thank you for having me.
I'm a Norwegian living inmid-Norway in a city called
Trondheim, and I work at theuniversity there, the Norwegian
University of Science andTechnology in Flomland, where
I'm a researcher or apost-doctor.
I do research mostly onendurance sports, endurance
(02:54):
training and different topicsrelated to that, and in addition
I also do some consulting ortesting of endurance athletes in
the Norwegian OlympicFederation.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So I have a question to start out that's kind of
unrelated to the paper thatwe're going to talk about double
threshold sessions, but sinceyou're involved in it and just
so the audience can kind of getto know you a little bit better,
why is it that sportsscientists and athletes from
your region of the world are soendurance centric?
(03:28):
Like we get a lot of likeinterval training theories and
interval training research wehave a disproportionate amount
coming out of that area of theworld is compared to like the U?
S who has a much more populousathlete base to kind of work
through.
So I was wondering if you couldjust peel the curtain back for
(03:49):
the listeners a little bit aboutwhy that's the case.
Why is it just so ingrained inthe culture out there and why do
we see so many good athletesand so much good research around
endurance training come out ofthat area?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
yeah, that's a good question.
Um, interesting observation.
Most likely also really true, Ithink.
Probably it has differentreasons.
There are longstandingtraditions in Scandinavian
countries, like, for example,especially in Norway and Sweden,
for doing research on humanperformance exercise physiology.
(04:21):
The kind of pioneers inexercise physiology were from,
were from sweden and then alsoin in both norway and sweden.
There are also traditions for acollaboration between academia
research on one side and thensports practice on the other
(04:42):
side, and particularly that isthe case in endurance sports, I
would say.
And there are for sure longtradition traditions as well for
endurance sports in Norway and,as probably many are aware of,
there are long traditions forcross-country skiing, which is
one of the most demandingendurance sports, I would say,
(05:04):
which is one of the mostdemanding endurance sports, I
would say.
So that is probably also a partof the reason for your
observation about this interestof endurance training in
Scandinavian countries, both insports practice but also in
research.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, I remember early in my coaching career a
lot of the block style trainingarchitecture started to gain
just a lot of notoriety andtraction within the endurance
world, and it came from.
Two facets is one the strengthtraining world, which is neither
here nor there, it's kind ofnot that relevant to what we're
going to talk about.
(05:37):
But the other piece of it camespecifically from cross country
skiers and the research and thepractice emanating from from
from that area of the world.
So this basis of takingtraining theory that was either
developed or pioneered or atleast communicated in that area
(05:58):
of the world to the rest of theworld has got a long-standing
history and it's always justreally fascinating.
To me that is the origin of alot of what we that area of the
world is an origin of a lot ofwhat we think about endurance
training today.
So we're going to talk aboutthe next iteration of that Time
will tell will be the nextiteration of that Something that
has gotten a lot of attentionover the past two to three years
(06:22):
in a number of differentformats, and that's double
threshold training.
I think the way that this isgoing to work is we'll spend a
little bit of time kind ofdiscussing what it is just to
bring the audience up to speed,and then a whole lot of time
talking about how you're tryinghow you and some of your
colleagues are tryingspecifically to kind of get a
fix on exactly how this type oftraining not only affects the
(06:45):
athlete but also can potentiallypromote the adaptive process,
which is ultimately what we'reconcerned about.
But just to level, set thevocabulary and the strategy for
the audience to start out within your mind how would you
describe this to an athlete?
Athlete comes to you hey, I'veheard about this double
threshold training stuff.
(07:06):
How would you actually describethat to them and what would be
some of the key like theoreticaladvantages that you, that we,
you would try to communicate tothat athlete?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
yeah, no, I'm not sure where to start, but I guess
I was.
Double threshold training as aconcept or or method is just
performing two sessions ofthreshold training or moderate
intensity training during oneday.
That is kind of the idea thatis, as you said, kind of have
(07:36):
received increased attentionover the last years.
I don't think I will engage inthe debate where this originates
from and who started in itdoing it first.
But that's fair enough.
I don't think I will engage inthe debate where this originates
from and who started doing itfirst.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
That's fair enough.
I don't want you to have tostep into those waters as well.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, I think it's been around for quite a long
time and I've heard that it'sbeen used in kayaking and rowing
for many years ago, also inrunning many years ago, also in
running many years ago.
And there's this well-knownauthor in Norway that has
written a lot of books oncross-country skiing and sports
(08:14):
and he always says that nothingis new, everything has been
tried before.
But the context changes and Ithink that's the case here as
well.
It's been around for fourdecades but, as you pointed out,
it's got increased attentionover last year and I think that
is particularly due to the useof middle and long distance
(08:36):
runners, particularly someNorwegian, or some of the world
or at least the world have someof the best runners in the world
and the the brothers jacobingebrigtsen has received some
attention in with that regards,and then it's kind of been
adopted to, to, to try us aloneand other endurance sports and
(08:59):
this concept, uh, probably thenalso that probably then also be
referred to as the Norwegianmethod or the Norwegian model,
which is this double thresholdtraining specifically, but also
threshold training with emphasison intensity control, intensity
(09:20):
steering, particularly by usinglow-lighted measurements to
kind of steer the intensity ofthe threshold training.
All this somehow relate themand by many now referred to as
the Norwegian method ofendurance training.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Well, I'll give the Norwegians the credit for the
origin story there, althoughit's not novel, but maybe we'll
give them credit for at leastnaming it after themselves.
Fundamentally, there are alldifferent types of permutations
of this type of workout that youstudied experimentally, and I'd
be remiss to not mention those,because when you're doing an
(09:58):
experimental design you've gotto narrow it down to something,
usually a singular thing thatyou're actually testing, but at
its core a double thresholdworkout is taking, a threshold
workout that you could domaximally, something that
represents almost the mostvolume of intensity that you
could handle in a session.
(10:18):
And the classic way to look atthat you've pointed on your
paper is six by 10 minutes hardand breaking that up into two
different sessions, a morningsession and a night session, by
either doing the entirety ofthat six by 10 or some variation
of that which you kind of seein practice.
Sometimes it's four, you know,four intervals in the morning
and two intervals at night,sometimes it's three and three,
(10:38):
sometimes it's four and four,and there's all different kind
of variations of that and Ithink we'll get down to which
ones can be more advantageousthan others in the in kind of
the dialogue and kind of thedialogue, of this, but
fundamentally that's what you'redoing is you're taking
something that you would domaximally, or something that
represents the maximum or closeto the maximum amount of volume
(11:00):
of intensity that an athletecould withstand, and you're
breaking it up into twodifferent sessions that are
separated by half a day or anafternoon or something like that
.
I'd be remiss to mention that.
I think that threshold trainingand this might be a catalyst of
it has kind of got a resurgence, so to speak, over the last few
(11:21):
years.
It seems that sometimestraining theory goes in these
waves based on popular opinionOne thing becomes popular and
then another thing getsdemonized, and then another
thing gets popular and thenanother thing gets demonized,
and the latest iteration of thisis VO2 max training is good and
threshold training is bad, andI'm putting those in intentional
(11:43):
air quotes because aspractitioners we usually realize
that there's a variety ofdifferent intensities.
But I was wondering if youcould kind of like expand on
that a little bit and like why,specifically, what threshold
training tries to elicit andwhat your opinion is on why we
shouldn't think about some ofthese intensities as necessarily
good or bad, that we have tokind of elicit a range of them
(12:07):
over the course of an athlete'slifespan.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, I think that's a good and valid observation.
Threshold training has probablyalso been around for a long
time, long, long time.
As you say things, common goalsand goals, and for 10, 15, 20
years ago it was probably morepolarized than during training
(12:32):
of endurance athletes.
It was kind of either you didlow intensity training that was
the focus, or you did more highintensity training or via the
max training than this kind ofemphasize on threshold training.
We've got some density zone inbetween there where it came
around and that has kind ofreceived more attention in
(12:54):
different communities andendurance sports and probably
this is also reflected in theresearch literature that most of
the literature, at least onkind of training intervention
studies, has been emphasizinghigh intensity training.
It's not that much on kind ofmoderate intensity training,
(13:15):
threshold training, andparticularly not that much on
low intensity training whichoften represents 90% of the
total training time in endurancesports.
So there are different benefitsof doing threshold training.
Typically I would say it'smostly the argument will be that
(13:39):
it acts on your fractionalutilization of your V2max or
your threshold intensitythreshold, pace, anaerobic
threshold or critical speed orcritical power.
But also at the same time it'shard to separate that kind of
low intensity training andtarget dose adaptations,
(14:00):
threshold training, target doseadaptations and high intensity
training and those adaptationsand high-intensity training,
target, those adaptationsthey're kind of all overlapping
and are contributing todeveloping high aerobic
endurance capacity.
So the question always is notif you're going to do one or the
(14:21):
other, but it's about kind offinding the right balance
between different endurancetraining intensities and find
the right balance betweentraining load and recovery and
also kind of the periodizationof this training.
And typically you have more lowintensity training, moderate
(14:43):
intensity training or thresholdtraining in your preparation
period and then when thecompetition season are coming
closer, then you kind ofincrease more emphasis on high
intensity training and speedtraining.
And also it depends on thesport that you're doing.
(15:04):
What are the kind of the demandsof the sport you're doing?
What type of athletes are wetalking about?
Different approaches withregards to threshold versus
high-density training.
It's probably differenttraining that you need if you're
a junior athlete compared tokind of senior athlete.
(15:25):
That's an elite level.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
So the context, context matters so try to set
this up for the audience.
If what I'll call regularthreshold training targets a
very specific aspect of anathlete's physiology, what's
different or what is theadvantage for taking that
threshold training session andsplitting it up into two
(15:50):
different sessions, like justfrom a theoretical or
philosophical trainingarchitecture standpoint.
You've got this one session andyou're saying we're going to,
instead of doing this onesession, we're going to do these
two sessions.
What are the advantages that wethink might be going on by by
using that type of trainingstructure?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
yeah, I guess you can get different answers on this
one, depending on who you ask,of course, but there are
different aspects that have beenaddressed with regards to this
double threshold concept, and Iguess the aspect that has been
mentioned the most is that ifyou kind of have a certain model
(16:29):
of threshold training that youwant to perform and you do that
in two shorter sessions comparedto one longer session, then you
will kind of achieve a lowertraining stress and potentially
lower recovery time per session,and then maybe over a longer
time period, for example a weekor a month, then you can obtain
(16:52):
a higher total volume ofthreshold training by doing it
this way.
That is kind of one aspect ofit, given that it's performed
kind of at the same externalintensity, even though it is
performed kind of at the sameexternal intensity.
Another aspect that is oftenmentioned is that, particularly
in running, if you split sessionup to two shorter sessions,
(17:14):
then you kind of have a lowermechanical loading per session
and a lower injury risk maybe,and also from kind of a more
molecular or adaptive signalingcontext, if you have two
sessions in one day, you kind ofprovide two signals for
(17:35):
molecular or two molecularsignals for adaptations during
one training day compared to onesession and one signal.
So there's a few aspects thathave been mentioned.
And also, if you do two shortersessions, as I said, they will
probably cost less with regardsto internal intensity, for
(17:56):
example heart rate or bloodlactate levels or RP, and then
you can also probably compensateby having a higher external
intensity, for example speed orpower, by splitting it into two
shorter sessions and now youallow for performing more
threshold training closer toyour actual competition speed.
(18:18):
That could also be an aspect ofthis.
But, as I said, with regards toendurance training intensity and
endurance training intensitydistribution, the question is
not if you should do doublethreshold training or not.
Probably the answer is kind offinding the right balance
(18:38):
between doing one longer sessionper day and then sometimes you
can do two shorter sessions inone day and use this concept as
a tool that you have in yourtoolbox.
And what you can lose in a wayof doing it as two shorter
sessions compared to one longersession is that if you have a
(19:00):
longer session, you typicallyachieve duration-dependent
increase or drift in internalintensity measures, heart rate
drift, increase in lactate or RP, and the physiological stimuli
and cost of the session ishigher, and then you might also
(19:21):
achieve kind of one larger orhigher signal for adaptations,
particularly through glycogendepletion.
So there are probably pros andcons of doing double threshold
training compared to fewer andlonger sessions, and this
concept can, as I said, be atool that you can use together
(19:45):
with performing some longersessions, I would say.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Rune.
That was really wellarticulated, I think, for all
the coaches out there.
If you just rewind three orfour minutes and bullet point
each one of those almost like apros and cons list that you went
through, I think that's areally good exercise to go
through when designing trainingarchitecture, because everything
that you do will have aslightly different, or could
(20:12):
potentially have a slightlydifferent effect on the adaptive
process that you're ultimatelytrying to elicit.
And how you tune thoseindividual workouts and the
whole milieu of workouts thatyou prescribe for an athlete has
to be discreet and veryspecific towards what the
athlete actually needs.
(20:32):
And here you have somethingthat looks on paper where it
might actually where it looks onpaper at least, where it could
be the same.
You have six 10-minute intervalsand in one scenario they're all
done at once.
In another scenario they'resplit up in two sessions.
That's the only variation of it.
But if you do start to do that,you start to see subtle
(20:53):
differences in the way that theathlete actually physiologically
reacts to that.
And that's exactly what youdecided to test, and I'll leave
it to you to kind of describethe specific paper that we're
going to talk about in just alittle bit.
I'll leave a link to it in theshow notes, but the title is
Comparison of AcutePhysiological Responses Between
(21:14):
One Long and Two Short Sessionsof Moderate Intensity Training
and of acute physiologicalresponses between one long and
two short sessions of moderateintensity and moderate intensity
training and endurance athletes.
I'll use that as a little bitof setup and throw it over to
you.
Describe like the experimentalcondition that you're creating.
Then what were the keytakeaways from it?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
yeah, we can try that .
As I said, this concept ofdouble threshold training has
probably been around for severaldecades but it's not received
any attention in the researchliterature.
So this was kind of the firststudy on this topic and this
concept and it's not kind of atraining intervention study that
(21:52):
really does say anything aboutthe actual training effects of
doing double threshold trainingversus not doing it.
But the purpose was to kind ofhave a starting point, try to
understand this concept better.
So we kind of did a moreobservational study where we
measured the acute physiologicalresponses of doing double
(22:15):
threshold training compared tothe same time and intensity
matched session as one longsession.
So that was kind of the purposeof the study and we recruited
14 national level cross-countryskiers in norway to do this and
they, in a counterbalanced order, they performed they all
(22:35):
performed one day of twointerval sessions and those were
kind of three times 10 minutesper session, and then the other
day was one single session withsix times 10 minutes intervals
and this was running in thelaboratory.
During the sessions we measuredkind of different physiological
(22:56):
measures, so heart rate, bloodlactate levels, rating of
perceived exhaustion, oxygen,optic ventilation, and then also
after the sessions wereperformed, we had the
participants in the lab for onemore hour and measured kind of
their heart rate recovery duringthat hour post-exercise.
We also had some questionnairesput directly after the sessions
(23:21):
were performed on how theyperceived the exhaustion and the
training quality of thesessions.
We also had this questionnaireon perceived training stress and
recovery that they filled outthe morning after the training
(23:41):
day.
Basically what we didrelatively simple study design
and measurements, just to kindof acute responses.
But this hopefully serves as astarting point in this topic and
might generate some kind ofhypothesis for further work and
(24:02):
maybe some future trainingintervention studies.
It's also the case in theresearch literature on endurance
training that a lot have beenemphasized towards the
interaction between trainingvolume and intensity.
There's not that much researchand scientific understanding of
(24:23):
the interaction between trainingvolume and frequency.
It's mostly emphasizedintensity.
So that was basically what wedid in the study.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's almost like you get what you expected, right, so
you have one session.
That was that.
That when you study thesubjects during the session and
after the session, six by ten isis I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of
bastardize the results here thatone session is harder, right,
or physiological,physiologically more stressful
(24:56):
than splitting the two sessionsup, which is the audience is
going to think about this and belike, well, yeah, of course
it's not.
Like if I go and I do thehardest workout I could possibly
do, or a really hard workout,of course that's going to be
more stressful orphysiologically stressful than
if I split it up.
And I always feel that studieslike this that are looking at
the response from the athleteand not necessarily the training
(25:20):
effect or what you call thetraining effect Well, I'll call
the adaptive response the samething it ends up being a little
bit of a Rorkshaw test, right?
In terms of if you're coming tothe test or if you're coming and
reading the paper through acertain lens, you're going to
interpret it that way.
And if you come to the paperfrom a different viewpoint,
you're going to interpret itthat way.
And if you come to the paperfrom a different viewpoint,
you're going to interpret itthat way as well.
(25:41):
So if you're looking at thispaper saying, okay, I want to
create the most stress aspossible, and then that higher
level of stress is going tofacilitate a greater adaptation,
you're going to say, ah, ofcourse, six by 10 is better.
We're going to break it up intoreally blunt categories here,
even though we already wentthrough that.
It's a tool, but six by 10 isbetter because you're going to
(26:03):
get a more robust adaptation,because the higher level of
stress If you look at it fromwell, the lower stress is better
at the same exact workload.
You're going to say, oh well,breaking the session up is
better because you're going toget a, say, a similar level of
adaptation for lessphysiological cost.
Is that a fair, like workshopanalysis of it?
(26:24):
Like when you put this paperout in the world and I'm sure
that you saw some of thefeedback and the commentary and
the dialogue that revolvedaround it is that a fair
encapsulation of how you couldpotentially view the same paper
through two different lenses?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
yeah, definitely.
I think that's a fair and andgood summary of the of the
results in in the study.
It was definitely not surprisingif you kind of have if you do
one longer session that have thesame kind of volume and
intensity, that have a higherphysiological cost acutely and
(27:01):
potentially a higher recoverydemand, splitting it up into two
time and intensity matchedshorter sessions.
So it can kind of be interpreteddifferent ways depending on the
lenses that you put on.
You say, if you want kind ofthe highest possible training
stress or training stimuli, thenyou should probably go for
(27:23):
doing one longer session.
If you want a lower historicalcost and training stimuli
acutely, then you shouldprobably split it up to two
shorter sessions.
And both of those kind ofscenarios have pros and cons, I
would say, and it depends whatyour goal is and what you want
to get out of it.
It's probably a combination ofboth that you should kind of
(27:47):
prescribe to your athletes orimplement in your training
programs.
And yeah, it all depends.
I would say If you want toaccumulate more time over a
certain time period, it might begood to have lower costs for a
session to kind of try toachieve a more consistent
training process, sustainabletraining process with a lower
(28:10):
risk in a way.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
But if you kind of want a higher training stimuli,
potentially also moreadaptations out of a few
sessions, then you shouldprobably go for one longer
session where you actually havethese kind of physiological
drifts during the session yeah,it becomes one of those things
that, from a coaching and anathlete perspective, that many
(28:35):
athletes are going to go down tothe pragmatic implementation of
either one of those styles andnot to say that you have to do
all of one or all of the otheror whatever, but because some of
the differences might be soincredibly nuanced.
It kind of comes down to canyou do two sessions in a day,
which many athletes either don'twant to do, or especially the
regular athletes that have likefull-time jobs and things like
that?
They just can't?
Few sessions in a day, whichmany athletes either don't want
(28:56):
to do, or especially the regularathletes that have like
full-time jobs and things likethat, they just can't.
They can't like practically,can't practically pull off.
So I don't know if you had anyfurther thoughts on that or if
you can come up with an exampleof an athlete in a particular
event and you could span theentire endurance sphere right.
(29:17):
An athlete in a particular eventor that needs to elicit a
really particular adaptationwould be a more favorable
candidate towards one style ofdoing this or the other.
Because what I want to try tocommunicate is athletes are
always trying to achievesomething.
They know what they want to getbetter.
I'm going to take it out ofphysiology.
They want to get better atclimbing right, so they do
(29:39):
specific things that make thembetter at climbing.
They know they want to getbetter at speed, so they do
specific things that get betterat speed.
Is there an athlete prototypeor an event prototype that, in
your mind, would favor one styleof doing this type of work
versus another?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
yeah, it's also a good question.
I would say, as you said, itprobably depends a bit on the
athlete, what kind of profilethat we have, and then it also
depends on the sport in a way,what kind of demands that the
sport includes.
For example, in in road cycling,where you have long and long
(30:21):
competition time, it's maybe notthat relevant, but in in
running it might be.
At least in middle and longdistance running it might be
more relevant because you wantto accumulate more time at
threshold or do more thresholdtraining, and this might be a
method to obtain that.
And also by reducing mechanicalloading per session,
(30:44):
cross-country skiing, biathlonyou have the possibility to
change between differentexercise modes, so you can also
then do different exercise modes.
So have, for example,cross-country skiing, something
that are more lower body in themorning, running, for example,
uphill running or something.
Then it can be more double polein the evening that are more
(31:08):
low in the upper body, obviously, and then you can buy that also
toll rates, a higher volume ofthreshold training.
And another kind of potentialbenefits or advantage of doing
it is if you try to center yourinterval sessions or your
threshold training in one day ormaybe over two subsequent days,
(31:31):
then you potentially havebetter time in between there to
do more low intensity trainingor other type of training that
you need to prioritize.
So that's probably also oneaspect of this double threshold
concept that is relevant tomedicine you.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
So your time at threshold concept actually
struck a chord with me becausethis is something that we see at
the more at the elite end ofthe spectrum and to a certain
extent kind of like the mid-packfor 100k and maybe 80k types of
races.
I just was telling you offline.
I just got back from UTMB orthe whole UTMB races and CCC is
(32:12):
actually a great example of this.
It's a 100K race and for theprofessional athletes typically
they can do the climbs rightaround their threshold and they
get a little bit of recovery onthe descents.
It's not like a cycling racewhere it's more zero watts and
the stress is just the stress ofthe high speed descent and
things like that.
But my point with that is theway that the race unfolds 10
(32:37):
people make it over the firstclimb, 8 people make it over the
second climb, 6 people make itover the third climb, 3 people
make it over the fourth climband then the winner in the
podium is kind of determined bythe last climb and the descent.
And if each one of those climbsis done at threshold, they're
anywhere between 20 and 45minutes or something like that a
(32:57):
very typical threshold type ofuh time to or very typical time
where you can elicit a thresholdtype of intensity.
It's not that they can run anyone of those climbs faster, it's
just they can do more of it.
So instead of being able toaggregate 90 minutes, let's say,
at threshold intensity, theycan aggregate up to two hours at
(33:18):
that threshold type ofintensity or whatever the domain
that we're looking at it is.
I view this application throughthat lens.
So in one single session Imight only be able to get 60 or
75 minutes out of an athlete atthreshold.
If I can somehow rearrange thearchitecture so that over the
course of a day, a week or amonth they're more exposed to
(33:45):
time at that intensity and thentherefore in a race they can
operate at that intensity for alonger period of time.
That's a performance advantage.
It's not necessarily althoughthis would also happen it's not
necessarily improving thatthreshold capacity from whatever
minutes per mile or minutes perkilometer to a better minutes
per kilometer.
(34:05):
It's being able to do it for alonger period of time or do it
repeatedly over the course of arace.
That, I think, is the materialadvantage.
That's what that's kind of.
The first lens that I look atthis through is through just how
would that actually play out ona race course, and in my
estimation that's one of themore likely candidates that will
(34:26):
eventually kind of get flushedout when we start to look at
this more and more yeah, no, Iagree.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
I think that's a good example of a way to kind of use
this double threshold trainingas a method to target specific
demands in after running,because intuitively, you would
probably think that this is notthat relevant for ultra-learning
because it's long-durationevents and this is splitting it
(34:52):
into shorter sessions.
You probably will have better,greater benefits of doing longer
sessions in ultra-learning, butto provide a new stimuli for
your training and alsoaccumulating more time at a
higher speed or at the threshold, this might then be a method
(35:12):
that is interesting to to use asa part of your training program
.
It's not the most importantpart of your training program, I
think, but it might be a toolin your toolbox that you can use
.
I'm not that familiar withultra running, but if I
understood it correctly, it alsoin the beginning of the
(35:33):
competitions.
Then the speed is often quitehigh.
So you need some kind ofcapacity of handling with higher
speed and maybe the higher lowlactate values, and now doing
this double threshing trainingmight be a method to practice
that more.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, it's interesting because in sports
like cycling we know very wellwhat the demands of the events
are, because we have onboardpower meters.
That really revolutionized theway that we thought about
cycling training because wecould very realistically look at
what the external load of astage in the Tour de France was.
(36:11):
A road race any sort of cyclingapplication became a really
good window into that.
We don't really have a verygood equivalent of that in trail
and ultra running.
We can guess by looking atheart rate and normalized graded
pace and even perceivedexertion and things like that,
and start to try to alchemize.
Okay, how hard are they runningduring any one particular race?
(36:34):
And this is just when I say anathlete can do this in this
situation.
Right?
I just mentioned the CCCexample.
That's just based off of myobservation of looking at
training files and watching howthe races unfold and trying to
dig into whatever data I canwhat's actually out on the
course, and I think that's arealistic level of accuracy to
(36:57):
try to get to.
There might be some window thatwe ultimately like open up, you
know, several years from now.
That adds more precision tothat.
But I do think that at theelite level and mountainous 80K
and 100K.
Those athletes are spending alot of time very close to their
threshold on these 20 to 40minute climbs and that becomes
an important component of it.
Your point that it's maybe notthe most important component of
(37:22):
it is really well taken, becausethat's not the entirety of the
race.
They still have to descend,they still have to eat, there's
still other things that go intoit.
It's a really complicated sportthat can't just be defined by
the intensity on the, by theintensity on the climbs.
But at least for that, like Isaid, when I look at this type
of training intervention, thewhat I'm always trying to slice
out whenever I see any of thesestudies that come out is okay.
(37:45):
Now that we know what's goingon, how does it ultimately apply
?
And then how could Ipotentially incorporate this
into an athlete's trainingprogram?
And when I go through thatlogical exercise, that's the
application that I see sort ofemerge yeah, definitely I agree
on that.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
I think it's important to emphasize, not only
in ultra-rhyming but allendurance sports that kind of.
Although we have done thisstudy on double threshold
training, it's a concept that'skind of received a lot of
attention over the last years.
It's not any magic with it.
It's kind of in many cases itis given too much attention and
(38:23):
value.
It's in a way sort of a hypeand it's nothing magic with that
.
You can't find any magictraining method.
It's kind of the important thingis to have a good balance
between training and recoveryover time and have a training
process that's are consistentand that you can do over a long
(38:46):
time and then typically youreceive better adaptations and
improvements in performance.
So I think also part of thisdouble threshold training might
be that if you're going to dotwo indoor sessions, threshold
sessions one day, maybe you're alittle bit more focused you
(39:07):
know I want to do it even betterbetter at intensity steering,
and you're basically yourtraining quality, execution,
quality of the training will bebetter because you're so focused
on doing this right, doing itmore in a more systematic manner
with better intensity controland so on.
(39:27):
That might also be a part ofthe effect.
You should not underestimatethe kind of effect of believing
in it either.
If this is a concept that someof the best endurance athletes
in the world are doing and youstart doing it and believing in
it, that also kind of have aneffect on its own.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
I would say both of those are really well taken.
I like it.
I like the fact that the personproducing the research is
trying to tone down the hype onit like realizing that it's
gotten a little bit out ofcontrol.
I appreciate that about you.
So you did this initial studyright, which looks at the acute
response right Between these twostyles.
Where do you want to take itfrom here?
Because I know that you'reintellectually curious.
(40:08):
You kind of want to see ifthere is any magic behind it.
Right, to use your earliervocabulary, what do you
eventually want to do to try tounderstand what might be going
on further?
Take us in your five years downthe line, three years down the
line.
What do you want to betterunderstand about this concept?
Speaker 2 (40:27):
what do you want to better understand about this
concept?
Yeah, I think, as I said, thisis a starting point to better
understand the kind of pros andcons of splitting endurance
training up to frequent sessionsand, as I said, also in general
in the research literature onendurance training.
It's not that much that I'vebeen kind of trying to
(40:48):
understand this interactionbetween training volume and
frequency.
So I think to continue to tryto understand that, not only in
threshold training, moderateintensity training, but also low
intensity training that is, 90%of the training time in
endurance athletes or 80% of thesessions, and we don't actually
know that much about lowintensity training, or 80% of
(41:09):
the sessions, and we don'tactually know that much about
low-intensity training.
What is the optimal intensity,the optimal duration, frequency
and so on?
So continue down that road, bothwith regards to low-intensity
training and also thresholdtraining.
I think is really interestingand something that you want to
continue with.
And maybe when we haveunderstood even more about this
(41:32):
these acute responses ofmanipulating with training
volume and frequency, then wehave a hypothesis that we can
actually test using a moreexperimental design or training
intervention study.
We actually apply differenttraining models, measure the
(41:53):
effect of doing it over a numberof weeks with the training
intervention study to predictthe loss.
So that will in a way be thenext step, I think, to see if
there's actually some potentialdifferences in the training
spectrum and performanceoutcomes.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Yeah, because when you look at how you would do
this, practically, dividing onesession into two equal parts is
not the only way that you coulddo it.
So to my earlier example if youknow that you can do 6x10 in
one session, and that's aboutall you can do, If you know that
you can do six by 10 in onesession, and that's about all
(42:31):
you can do, you can squeeze outfour by 10 in two sessions,
which gives you 80 minutes onthe day versus 60 minutes on the
day.
That's an apples and orangescomparison.
But if you're going to use whatI would call a time under
workload strategy, right Timeunder a specific workload is
going to be the biggest hammeron the adaptive process.
(42:53):
If that is your viewpoint, howyou kind of view a big component
of training, then this againbecomes more than a reasonable
intervention to kind of throw atan athlete, given that they can
actually do two by 40 anddoesn't cause downstream
problems and so on and so forth.
(43:14):
So your point is real, is welltaken on that, that we kind of
don't know what these you knoweffect or we have a few
guideposts.
I wouldn't say we don't know,but we have a few guideposts in
terms of what are effectivedoses, what are good maximum
doses, what are effectiveminimum doses and things like
that, and using these types ofstudies to to really elucidate
(43:35):
that, I think is actually quitehelpful.
Just your point of what's theminimum, what's the minimum
level of intensity that you needduring an easy workout that's a
really common question athleteshave.
Is it a heart rate of x?
Is it a pace of y like?
Does it matter if I go twohours at a heart rate of 140
versus 120?
(43:55):
I'm just throwing those numbersout just to give a relative
example.
Does that actually matter?
The fact that we have a littleclarity on that, I think it
speaks to a lot of what weactually can find out that's not
true.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
My way is like in in the research literature on
endurance training, typically weuse three intensity zones,
that's low, moderate and highintensity, and the low intensity
zone is from 55% of heart ratemax to 82% heart rate max.
So where's your low intensitytraining?
Yeah, it's a really big range.
(44:27):
So we actually don't know thatmuch.
We don't know that much.
So it's definitely more nuanced.
Although other intensity soloscales exist and are being used,
that is what's most commonlyused in the research now.
So there are work that could bedone in this field to try to
understand this better.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
I'll tell you from ultramarathon perspective.
The answer is yes.
Just more of all of it isbetter.
Higher heart rate, biggertraining volumes, whatever you
want just more and more isbetter.
And I use that part in jest,but part in serious that you
can't always apply the morehammer to elicit further
adaptation.
Sometimes you have to use alittle bit more precise tool to
(45:10):
do it, and this would be a good,very practical use case of that
, where you're using moreprecise tool.
I appreciate you coming on thepodcast today.
This is super fun.
I can't wait to hear what elsecomes out of your lab before I
let you go.
How can people find you?
And a little bit more aboutyour research and the work that
you guys are doing over there.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Thank you for having me.
It was interesting with adetailed discussion on double
threshold training.
Hopefully the listener will getsomething useful out of it.
I'm not the most activeresearcher, I think, on social
media, at least compared to many, but you can find me on my ex.
(45:51):
Some of my research will bekind of published there, and
then ResearchGate, I think isthe best way of finding and
getting access to my researchand, yeah, I would start there
if someone are wondering whatelse that I have been doing over
the last years.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
And I'll leave links to all of that, as well as the
paper, which is open access.
I found it freely so otherpeople can have free access to
download it, so I'll leave linksto all that in the show notes.
Appreciate you coming on todayand we'll have to bring you back
once you have step two, whichis inevitably going to be how do
athletes actually get better inone style versus the other?
Speaker 2 (46:33):
definitely, I will do that, thank you, thank you all
right folks.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
There you have it.
There you go.
Much thanks to rune for comingon the podcast today.
I always appreciate the insightfrom people who are actually
doing some of this research onthe ground and presenting a very
practical approach for how wemight actually implement these
workouts.
As I mentioned during thepodcast, his paper that we were
(46:59):
discussing is open access.
A link to that will be in theshow notes.
Y'all feel free to go and checkit out and download it.
It's a pretty good read, butit's one that leaves you
wondering what is actually goingto happen to the adaptive
process at the end of the day,now that we know what is
actually happening to theathletes themselves in terms of
fatigue and or recovery.
(47:19):
If you like this podcast,there's no Patreon.
I ain't got nothing to sell you.
There are no affiliate links oranything like that.
The only thing you can do isshare this with your friends.
I always appreciate it when Igo out into the community, just
like I did over at UTMB a coupleof weeks ago, and people come
up to me from kind of allcorners of the world and tell me
how much they appreciate thecontent within this podcast.
(47:42):
So if you like it, you thinkthat either one of your training
partners, a fellow coachingcolleague or just somebody that
you happen to compete with oragainst would find this content
valuable, please just share itwith them and spread the love.
That means a whole heck of alot to me.
All right, folks, that is itfor today and, as always, we
will see you out on the trails.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!