Why Does Norway Have So Many of the World’s Best Endurance Athletes? The Norwegian Training Method

Norway has been racking up wins in the running and triathlon world with the likes of Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Kristian Blummenfelt, Gustav Iden and more. How is it that such a small country has so many of the worlds best endurance athletes? Is there something about their training that’s setting them apart? In this video I dive into the science of the Norwegian training method.

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Research used in this video:
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00022.2012

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6873141/

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/sms.14201

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/5/3782

https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ijspp/17/6/article-p820.xml?content=abstract

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2015.00295/full

https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ijspp/13/9/article-p1114.xml

https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/2007/08000/Autonomic_Recovery_after_Exercise_in_Trained.20.aspx

Norway has a population of just over 5 million people which is roughly how many people live in the US state of Minnesota I imagine the climate is probably similar as well the population of all of Europe is around 740 million meaning that less than 1% of Europeans are Norwegian these numbers should provide

Some perspective as to how slim the odds are that Norway would emerge as such a dominant force in the world of Endurance Sports just by chance with the success of Olympic 1500 meter Champion yakob inab briten Olympic triathlon Champion Christian bloomenfeld and Iron Man world champion Gustaf Eden just to name a few

Many have speculated that there may be something particularly effective about the Norwegian Training Method either that or there’s something in the water up there now this is certainly not the first time that a small country has dominated a sport but from what I can tell the difference here is that this

Isn’t just in one sport but multiple different Endurance Sports and it can’t be entirely explained by culture like with belgians and cyc cross for example o yeah maybe not the best time to bring that up fortunately the Norwegian Training Method is well documented and as you can imagine has been gaining a

Lot of attention recently today we’ll take a look at the Norwegian Training Method and the science behind it to try to see whether or not they just got lucky with a particularly talented generation of endurance athletes or whether there really is something Superior about their training that’s

Setting them apart and if that is the case is this a method that cyclists should be and will be adopting in the near future welcome back to the channel this video is fueled by the feed let’s start by addressing what the Norwegian Training Method is regular viewers of

Mine will be familiar with the terms polarized and pyramidal but it’s worth going over them again because they’re important Concepts to understand when talking about the Norwegian method if you plot blood lactate concentration on a graph you will find that there are two important points the point at which

Lactate first starts to rise and the point at which lactate spikes for those who use a power meter this first lactate Turn Point usually happens at around 75 to 80% of FTP and the second lactate Turn Point happens at your FTP these two points separate the three zones used in

Polarized training and as the name suggests strict polarized training avoids this middle moderate Zone and has athletes spending 80% of their time or more in zone one and 20% of their time or less in zone three this method of training has plenty of research to back

It up and at this point if you take a look at the balance of evidence on the topic it seems obvious that this is a superior method to threshold training now when researchers talk about threshold training they’re not referring to riding at FTP like a lot of cyclists

Might think but rather they’re talking about spending a significant amount of training time between these two thresholds or zone two in the three zone model simply put when you put polarized training up against threshold training or what some cyclists May refer to as sweet spot training polarized almost

Always comes out the winner that being said it has been observed that most elite endurance athletes don’t actually use strict polarized training rather they use pyramidal training pyramidal training is similar to polarized in that the vast majority of training time is spent in zone one again 75 to 80% or

More but then the remaining 20 or so per is split between Zone 2 and Zone 3 for example you might do 80% of your training in zone 1 15% in zone 2 and 5% in Zone 3 if you were following pyramidal training there is less research on pyramidal training but the

Research that we do have looks very promising reviews on the topic generally conclude that both polarized and pyramidal are effective it seems likely that the important part of polarized or pyramidal training is not necessarily what you do with your intensity but rather just the fact that a large

Proportion of your total training time is done at a relatively low intensity I know sad day for your Hammer bro who won’t do a single pedal stroke below 300 watts what hey stop zooming in this brings to the Norwegian model former Elite track runner Marius bachan who developed the

Norwegian training model writes about it in detail on his website where he refers to it more specifically as lactate threshold training and the lactate controlled approach to training and lactate monitoring is a critical aspect of this method of training Mario states that he’s performed over 5,500 lactate

Tests on himself the reason for this seemingly obsessive level of testing was to tightly control intensity specifically on threshold days again threshold meaning zone two in the three zone model the Norwegian model places a huge emphasis on this Zone 2 training so much so that one of the Hallmarks of

This method has become the double threshold days in which athletes perform lactate guided threshold sessions in both the morning and afternoon on the same day in this example training week that Marius provides both Tuesday and Thursday are double threshold days and Saturday is a high-intensity hill run

Now this may seem like a ton of intensity but this actually still falls under the umbrella of pyramidal training in this review article on lactate guided threshold interval training which Marius co-authored they specifi that this training is done within a high volume low intensity model that is consistent

With the literature on pyramidal and polarized training okay so there’s nothing actually special about the Norwegian train training model is just the same old pyramidal training that Elite athletes have been using and that I’ve made 500 videos about already oh boy how much is this guy struggling to

Find content now that it’s not Race season well not quite if I had to further categorize the Norwegian method I would classify it as strict pyramidal which is a very subtle but important distinction While most athletes who follow pyramidal training are strict about keeping it easy on their easy days

They’re not necessarily strict about keeping it in the middle on their in the middle days sure their power may stay in range but if their heart rate or more importantly their blood lactate drifts into Zone 3 well who cares it’s all just considered intensity anyway whyde does

It matter the Norwegians on the other hand are about as strict as you could be about staying in that middle threshold Zone during their threshold workouts to the point that they’re using blood lactate monitors to ensure it and they find unique ways to maximize the amount

Of time at this intense it like breaking up these workouts into shorter intervals to allow their blood lactate to come down as opposed to doing them continuously at a lower Pace like so many Runners do on these double threshold days lactate is carefully monitored to make sure that athletes

Aren’t going above their threshold Zone not going too hard is about as important as not going too easy which is not usually something that you hear athletes say when they’re talking about intervals so the question now is why why would you be so concerned about staying within

Such a narrow band of intensity other than making modern training even more robotic than it already is one theory has to do with fatigue generation it’s been shown that muscle contractions done just 10% above critical torque can generate a rate of fatigue that is four to five times greater than contractions

Done just 10% below critical torque it’s been hypothesized that since only recruit rooted motor units are likely to experience increases in mitochondrial number and capillary density it may be speculated that training at lt2 optimizes the number of motor units recruited without having to accept the consequences of elevated levels of

Catola means likely to be experienced with Zone 4 training essentially the amount of fatigue that you experience for given intensity isn’t linear there’s a threshold at which fatigue ramps up substantially for just a small increase in intensity Marius writes that you can get the huge benefits of pushing the

Threshold high at the least possible wear of the muscles therefore you can do loads of this type of work this intensity is one at which there are big physiological benefits with minimal amounts of fatigue making it a desirable Zone to be in if you’re trying to maximize gains while still balancing

Recovery some of you fellow training nerds watching right now which is probably most of you may be thinking hey this is the same reasoning that people use to justify Sweet Spot training and I thought you said sweet spot training didn’t work I actually get this comment somewhat frequently whenever I post a

Sweet spot or Tempo workout on my Strava presumably from people who’ve only ever watched five minutes of any video I’ve ever made on the topic the big problem with Sweet Spot training as it’s typically used in cycling is that sweet spot training plans can often have

Athletes do four to 5 days of Sweet Spot training or other intensity per week and this is in the context of a relatively low amount of low intensity training which again has been shown to be an inferior method of training when compared to polarized or pyramidal it’s

Not that it won’t work at all but it won’t work as well as a properly planned out polarized or pyramidal plan and the risk of overtraining and burnout is much higher with a sweet spot plan all of that being said although the Norwegian Training Method does try to maximize

Time at intensity by staying in this sweet spot Zone it’s still not sweet spot training as I just described it if we look at the amount of time spent at low intensity we can see that it provides athletes with plenty of easy work more in line with pyramidal and

Keeping easy days easy is emphasized just like it would be from a strict polarized coach the question now becomes whether or not pyramidal training or more specifically the very strict form of pyramidal training where intensity is carefully controlled on threshold days using a lactate meter is a particularly

Effective way to train unfortunately no controlled Studies have been done to test this the data that we currently have is from observational studies and reports that examine the current training regimens of some of the best runners in the world that being said we do have some research that looks into

This question of whether or not pyramidal training is superior to polarized training which may give us some insight for example this study on half Iron Man triathletes separate subjects into a polarized and pyramidal training group and found that results were pretty comparable between the two with perhaps a slight Edge to the

Pyramidal group in running performance that being said most reviews on the topic have a hard time declaring a clear winner they just agree that doing either one is better than doing threshold or Sweet Spot training one factor that many of these studies don’t take into account is periodization which is how training

Chang ches over time almost no athlete does the exact same training every week all year long instead intensity and volume is manipulated to Peak at the right time it could be quite possible that both polarized and pyramidal training need to be used just at the right time of year this 2022 study on

Runners is probably the best one we have in answering this question the study separated subjects into four groups two used either polarized or pyramidal training for the entire 16we study period and then the other two Ed polarized or pyramidal training for the first 8 weeks and then switch to the

Other protocol for the second 8 weeks sure enough they did find that switching from pyramidal to polarized halfway through the study induced bigger improvements than sticking to either polarized or pyramidal training the whole time or switching from polarized to pyramidal uh okay even I got lost

There with how many times I used the word polarized and pyramidal basically the group that started with pyramidal and then switched to polarized was the winner in this study this confirms what a lot of coaches already know which is that training needs to be periodized not to be confused with polarized or

Pyramidal I I know a lot of multiple syllable PWS in this video I wouldn’t worry about it man no one is even paying attention this deep into one of your videos anyway most coaches agree that training should go from less intense to more intense as you approach a peak

Which is what this study showed and most elite athletes tend to train this way as well this article on how the top five Juro finishers trained from 2022 confirmed that overall they followed a pyramidal approach with an increase in intensity and polarization in the competition period it seems as though we

Shouldn’t necessarily be arguing about whether or not one is better than the other the studies that we have on that are so close that it’s basically a wash but rather we should be trying to determine how we can use both to hit a Peak at the right time of year and from

The research that we currently have it seems that pyramidal training in the preparation period morphing into polarized training in the competition period may be the best protocol okay so where does that leave us with the Norwegian method well the proponents of the Norwegian method actually agree stating that some of the threshold

Training sessions should be removed and there should be more higher intensity sessions in the runup to competition which is consistent with the literature that I just cited about periodization even the authors of the review recognize that this is not a revolutionary training model but rather the product of

100 years of training history and knowledge that being said I think there are two key takeaways from the Norwegian training model that are important for endurance athletes the first is this careful intensity control that they have adopted to the point that they’re monitoring their blood lactate to ensure

That they are staying within the right Zone there’s been a lot of Buzz recently about continuous lactate monitors being on the horizon for athletes to further refine their training they’re the hot new thing that everyone is talking about and they’re not even available yet but with good reason personally I think that

Continuous lactate monitors will revolutionize training the way the power meter did that is if the data they give you is accurate which is is a big if the reason being is that the way that the Norwegians and everyone else who tests blood lactate does it is incredibly cumbersome using a blood lactate meter

You need to prick your finger and you need test strips and you can’t contaminate those test strips which is already a big ask when you are in the middle of a workout possibly gasping for breath at a very high heart rate and usually you have to stop your workout to

Do all of this which is just a way bigger headache than most people are willing to deal with a continuous lactate monitor would change all of this and make lactate guided training much more accessible for everyone the question Still Remains whether or not being this refined with your training is

What is setting the Norwegians apart more research is needed to see whether or not carefully controlling intensity on these threshold days does actually lead to more gains with less fatigue as is claimed it is important to remember though that we are dealing with such small differences between winners and

Losers in in sports like Elite Track Running and Triathlon that if this attention to detail enabled athletes to do a bit more intensity than they otherwise would have and that resulted in even a fraction of a percent Advantage this could still be significant enough to make that difference the second important takeaway

Is this idea of clustering or blocking hard work in the training week together as opposed to spreading it more evenly throughout the week I bring this up because this is something that I see a lot of athletes and coaches get wrong the reason for the double threshold days

Is to get in all of the intensity work in one day and then have days that are nothing but easy work you could technically be following a pyramidal or polarized training distribution but doing just a little bit of intensity every single day or every time you ride or you could be disciplined about

Keeping your easy days easy so that you get the most out of your hard days the reason why the latter is far more preferable is because you aren’t constantly stressing your autonomic nervous system every single day there appears to be a threshold for autonomic nervous system recovery at the first

Lactate Turn Point the Norwegian method applies this principle very well easy days are easy so that more work can be done when it really matters on the hard days it may be possible that even though most elite athletes are already following this basic principle even stricter adherence to it is what is

Giving them an edge as well thanks for watching if you want to step up your own training I have online training plans and coaching available and they are linked down in the description below if you enjoyed this video be sure to give it a like subscribe and share it with

Your cycling friends I’ll see you in the next one