JSET is underpinned by science

Training
Plans

JSET works by understanding the relationship between weekly mileage and weekly pace, and combining these two factors into a measure of training load. JSET builds your training program slightly differently depending on what your goal is.
If your goal is to improve your fitness and become a better runner then JSET assesses your recent training and sets a target at the start of the week that is a little higher than the training load you have recently managed. Each week JSET repeats this process. In this way JSET adapts to how well your training has been going. For example, if you are progressing quickly JSET ‘learns’ this, and pushes you a little harder than it would for someone who has had some time off running.
If you have a specific race goal, JSET quantifies your fitness using data from recent runs, and compares that to the required fitness level for your target race time. Knowing the difference between where you are and where you want to be, JSET sets out the required training load for each week between today and race day. This gives you a clear roadmap that will allow you to gain the fitness required to achieve your race goal.
By only prescribing training load each week, JSET allows you to tailor your training to your preferences. This means that you are able to run:
    • Short and sharp
    • Long and slow
    • Any combination of the two – as long as you meet the required training load.
In practice, this means that the further you run each week, the slower your average pace can be in order to achieve any given race time. Importantly JSET won’t dictate how you should run these miles, it’s simply about the total training load. Realising that it doesn’t matter how you achieve your miles is a game-changer. There’s no one ‘right’ way to train.

Race Performance Prediction

There are many methods that can be used to predict marathon performance, including measuring physiological variables such as VO2max or critical velocity , age grading and Riegel’s formula. However, each of these methods comes with their own flaws and limitations. For example proper VO2max testing is expensive, and Riegel’s formula often gives an overly optimistic prediction.

In order to deal with the fact that no marathon prediction tool is perfect, JSET combines two independent prediction methods to produce a more accurate race prediction. By assessing your input (the training you’ve done) with your output (your heart rate data), JSET produces a highly accurate race prediction.

The basis of the JSET training prediction is a study performed in 2011 by a scientist named Giovanni Tanda. He developed an equation that claimed to predict marathon performance to an accuracy of 4 minutes simply by knowing the runner’s average weekly mileage (in the eight weeks leading up to a race), and the average pace of these miles. This marathon race predictor received very little attention from the wider running community, but it has shown to be a very strong predictor of performance. With some refinement this has become the basis for the JSET training predictor.

Alongside this; JSET uses heart rate data to predict race performance. By regularly measuring an athlete’s heart rate during training we are able to predict the marathon performance that they are likely to achieve. Of course you can use the JSET program regardless of whether you measure your heart rate or not, but you will get most out of your training by wearing an accurate heart rate monitor.

Online
Coaching

JSET online coaching offers the additional analysis, interaction and motivation provided by Josh S, founder and head coach at JSET. For many people a coach can be the factor that allows them to continue to progress, when alone they may have struggled.

Despite our best intentions, training cycles never go perfectly – life gets in the way of running; injury or illness can disrupt your routine or motivation can dip. It is in these times when a coach becomes invaluable. With JSET online coaching, I will help to structure your running around your busy life. I can guide you back to full strength after illness or injury. 

With JSET you will experience coaching rooted in the latest sports science. I do not follow conventional wisdom just because “that’s how it’s always been done”, instead JSET coaching is underpinned by data and evidence. 

Online marathon coaching is available to runners who subscribe to JSET-full. Click here for more details on the program.