Training philosophies
Evidence: contested
A descriptive survey, not endorsements. No single system suits everyone, and no intensity distribution is a proven universal winner.
Describing a training system is not endorsing it. No single philosophy suits everyone; the right choice depends on the event, training age, time available and injury history (individual variation).
Two facts frame everything below. First, almost no packaged “system” has ever been tested in a randomised trial against alternatives; what exists is the originators’ results with selected, usually elite athletes, plus a separate body of evidence on the underlying principles the systems draw on. Second, where the systems converge, a large base of mostly easy volume plus a minority of threshold and VO₂max work, sharpening toward race specificity, is the best-evidenced part. Elite training across very different “brands” collapses onto that common template (Haugen et al. 2022). The distinctive apparatus of each system, the exact caps, formulas and phase sequences, is mostly coaching judgement.
The systems
- Arthur Lydiard: aerobic base and periodisation. A long base of high-volume easy running, then hills, anaerobic work and sharpening toward a single peak. The base principle is strongly supported; the packaged structure and the dogmatic “100 miles a week” are coaching lore, high-risk for non-elites.
- Jack Daniels: VDOT and pace zones. A single fitness index from a recent race assigns easy, marathon, threshold, interval and rep paces. The pace ingredients reflect mainstream physiology, but VDOT is a performance-derived proxy, not a measured VO₂max, and the tidy “one intensity, one adaptation” mapping is not well evidenced.
- Renato Canova: train around race pace. Build event-specific speed, then extend how long race pace can be held, with workouts set as percentages of race pace. Elite coaching practice, not trial-tested.
- Pete Pfitzinger: threshold and medium-long runs. Lactate-threshold runs concentrated early, plus the signature midweek medium-long runs. The threshold focus rests on solid physiology; the plans themselves are unvalidated.
- Hansons Marathon Method: cumulative fatigue and the 16-mile cap. Train slightly tired so the capped long run rehearses the late miles. The capped long run and “cumulative fatigue” rationale are reasoned coaching positions without direct supporting evidence, and the cap is actively debated.
- Phil Maffetone / MAF: the “180 minus age” heart-rate cap. Train below an age-derived aerobic ceiling for months. The easy-base idea is sound, but the 180-age formula has no physiological derivation, by its author’s own admission, and inherits the large error of age-based heart-rate formulas. The weakest-supported core claim of any system here.
- “Zone 2” training. The current popular framing of easy aerobic work, drawing on metabolic-flexibility and lactate-clearance research (San Millán & Brooks 2018) and popularised for a wide audience. The underlying message, most training should be easy, is well supported, but “Zone 2” is defined inconsistently (the same label means different intensities in the three-zone research model, the five-zone watch model, and the fat-oxidation framing), and the claim that a narrow Zone 2 is uniquely optimal is not supported (Storoschuk et al. 2025). Much of the novelty is marketing around the long-known 20 idea.
- Norwegian double-threshold and its grassroots “singles” adaptation. Controlled sub-threshold work, twice a day for elites or once a day for amateurs. Well described, physiologically plausible, but without trial evidence of its own superiority.
- 80/20 and polarised. Seiler’s descriptive science of what elites do, popularised prescriptively for amateurs by Matt Fitzgerald’s book. The “keep most running easy” core is strong; the specific polarised ratio as optimal is contested.
- High-intensity, low-volume (Furman FIRST, CrossFit Endurance). Fewer, harder sessions. FIRST has small uncontrolled cohort data; an independent trial of a similar higher-intensity, lower-volume concept gained more VO₂peak but showed no significant half-marathon advantage (Hottenrott et al. 2012). CrossFit Endurance has essentially no supporting evidence and contradicts the well-evidenced easy-volume model.
- Mihály Iglói: high-volume short intervals. A historical but influential system of large volumes of short, controlled intervals run by feel. Coaching history with a remarkable record, not formally studied.
The honest bottom line
No intensity distribution is a proven universal winner; head-to-head meta-analyses find no clear winner (Silva Oliveira et al. 2024; Rosenblat et al. 2024). Individual response varies and is partly genetic, and single before-after testing tends to exaggerate how distinct “responders” are (Atkinson & Batterham 2015). The defensible position is to build on the shared, well-evidenced core in the basics, borrow structure from whichever system fits your life and event, and judge it on your own response over time, not on the brand.