The Norwegian Method – Season 2 Episode 1 – Kristian and Gustav’s Altitude Training Camp

Season 2 of the Norwegian Method begins in Sierra Nevada, where the boys test the new developments coming from Surpas, Body Rocket, and Core. The wider Santara Tech team and representatives from some of our partner brands joined the boys at altitude for one of their weeks, living at 2,500m, as Kristian continues hunting for a second Olympic title and Gustav chases a second Kona dream.

Credits

Produced by Santara Studios
Executive Producer: Adam Acworth
Producer: Holly Hale
Directed, shot and edited by Roj Ferman

All rights reserved – Santara Technology AS

[Music] we are now in the auditorium in Sierra Nevada at 2,320 M elevation it’s week four which means like it’s into the final part of the camp s of the main stake of the camp as well where we’re doing most of the high intensity sessions before heading back to Bergen and then we’ll go to a sea level place for some intensity again before ending up being the first R of the Season we have been through quite a lot of testing we’ve been to another round of uh Laboratory Testing measuring everything from changes in efficiency to V2 Max continuing development of of the thermal power project to aerodynamics making final plans leading into Paris Olympics the results we saw in Bergen during the last lab test where that I was yeah having uh one of my better swim tests in a very very long time uh which is nice it was actually the first time I managed to finish all the steps at least since Tokyo I think like normally I’m not able to do the the final 500 M at 110 Pace I was pleased with that also the run test was a prettyy good threshold and respond around the 250 K Pace my shape and fitness around there and this ride there was uh getting better than what it was the previous time in the lab no I think the lab testing generally said that even on low volume I still have a good Improvement and my bike was significantly better than in January progression in training volume leads to progression in performance even for me who has been training almost 60% more in uh in the past and I what I did before the last lab testing I still had uh great improvements just by slowly building so hopefully I will keep on slowly building until I’m slowly getting on top again now when we up in Sada normally this would be a block where uh one would start to Pivot the training a little bit but again what is extraordinary is that the development is still continuing in short medium and long duration domain for pace and power and of course what altitude helps us do is we can shift down a little bit of mechanical stress maintain equivalent or maybe slightly higher metabolic stress so that basically when we come back to the altitude that we are going to race at it allows us to have a little bit more surus to build even more pace and power leading into the races than if we hadn’t used it altitude training is not as straightforward as one often would think if the conditions are not optimal the body won’t prioritize it but secondly also the body is incredible at regulating or and compensating in in one area compared to other area in order to sustain a certain performance calorimetry is the number one priority and hemoglobin M sit somewhere underneath here to help promote the calorie need that the athletes uh needs to sustain at at altitude we also see with a very good program there is actually no loss of hemoglobin Mass between altitude camps either with me in altitude is that I’m able to do very high or the power and the pace I’m doing here is very close to what I’m doing at sea level so uh just before we were leaving for Sierra last time and also just before we were leaving for Sierra this time we were doing blood volume measurements and I was having a pretty good test even before I’m getting up here so I’m uh starting off very well that makes it easier for me to do more of those R specific sessions up here running faster swimming faster or cycling faster or compared to what maybe what’s normal at this altitude today it was good like my own performance was good and it’s exciting to be here with a team the bike ride was very exciting I loved the part where I turned left that was really fun even though it actually was pretty fast here today I rode maybe like average 299 or 300 and power and the speed was 42 point something so pretty efficient there are some parts of the training which is univ I would say is fairly Universal uh whether you are doing long course or short course racing and of course because of the situation that Gustav is in where he is still under Rehabilitation despite some ups and downs in pain or in discomfort he’s gradually increasing all the time we are not there yet that we are really starting to specify the training for for G stuff yet he’s still growing in the short medium and long duration domain for pace and power with this training camp I am slowly building towards getting back to high performance attive again wouldn’t say I’ve been slacking but I’ve been it’s hard to always be ready and be like in the moment in training and uh I have been struggling and I feel like I have been open with that I’m struggling and also with my injury so now I’m building towards being a high performance athlete again last training camp I had basically every second day of rest day yeah it worked out pretty good I came into the good routines on the on days and could relax my mind and body on off days this training camp I have done almost normal routine but slightly less volume so uh one day off 3 days on one day off two days on I actually been uh managing okay most of my sessions has been pretty good good actually today I had a really really good session and uh it’s a good step forward Christian they’re of course now the focus is the Olympics that means also that we are gradually bringing more and more in uh race specific sessions even now at the end of the altitudes camp but which we will resume with much higher frequency when we come back to sea level again training hasn’t really changed too much it’s been a little bit the same as uh maybe we’re supposed to do going into Abu Dhabi but then halfway through this AA Camp uh early this year I got a little niggle on my foot so I had to sort of ease off a little bit and I couldn’t do the very high intensity section that I would have preferred to have done so then I pulled back a little bit and now I’m sort of back again on the gas where I’m trying to artificially get a higher uh Pace on the run and on the swim by maybe adjusting the brakes a little bit and the distance on the intervals to get a stride that is more suitable for what I have to do in Yokohama which is more like being able to be more comfortable around the 250 Pace on the run and also improving the swim shape around race Bas like it doesn’t really matter how well I’m swimming at threshold if I can’t uh lift the pace above or towards V2 Max and V2 St State and have the race bace that is needed to have in Yokohama Christian have responded very well to the training and he’s still growing in all domains indicating for me that we we we still haven’t come to that point where he’s starting to stagnate but that means also that actually we have to now with only three months left for the Olympics we actually have to start to Pivot on what I would call a little bit of an an unnatural point because we don’t see any stagnation yet and that also tells me that Christian can only become even faster 30 years doesn’t seems to be a limit uh to reach Peak Performance not for Christian not for gusta cool I’m Jordan uh head of engineering at body rocket today we are trying to get Christian ready for the Paris Olympic games uh late later this year so we’re trying to uh we’re working with surpass to try and find the uh the best suit for him we’re trying to redesign the suass suit slightly just to make it as efficient as possible for the Paris course so this is Christian special body rocket bike uh it’s exactly the same as his standard bike we’ve done a bit of work a couple of weeks ago where we’ve increased his his stem length slightly for the games we found that be really really critically a massive bonus for him uh his his CDA low is with a longer stem um so yeah this is the system so we got a body rocket sensor under the uh the the saddle here this is kind of the unique thing about the road bike this there’s a sensor inside here uh another one of our body rocket sensors this is kind of the brains of the uh of the guy uh hopefully that will go away very shortly but for now we’ve uh We’ve made it not Square anymore it’s quite nice it’s more of a an Airy bottle uh the wind uh the the air speed sensor at the front with the your sensor stuff and then obviously we have our pedals as well down here so this and this section are our most prototype parts of the system uh this is a little bit more refined and you can see cor here as well they’ve got one of the little sensors on the back as well so it’s a it’s a project where a few brains are together and we want to uh you know uh try and work on this this par Paris project with Olaf and the core guys there’s a energy for sure as well as surpass guys so it’s really really nice to work in a in a group everyone’s bouncing ideas of each other so it’s a really really nice environment to work in so yeah this week we have been testing the surpa suit both in terms of aerodynamic but also thermal regulations it’s been uh pretty exciting it’s good to for me to have like this uh product I can hold in my hands I know Ula loves to play around with the numbers but for me like to have this product and help a team of Engineers and designers to really just make a better product it feels really really rewarding yeah the team was fun to be a part of it’s just a fun group all together so that’s been uh very very cool in the very beginning of the camp I was down in Gada and doing some air testing together with the body rocket so working on my position there working on the like different stem length and the different bars to see like what’s what what’s more comfortable and what’s also more aerodynamic it’s sort of shocking to try out a system like this where with that system they can sort of give me that constant feedback that uh when I’m riding at the same power I’m actually saving like 40 or 50 seconds by changing the stem further out because then I’m stretching out more and I’m getting a lower uh back and a better angle later on on the camp we use the same system to test the suass suit both the ones we were using in Tokyo but also like different version of that one so we can maximizing out on aerodynamic as well what is really nice surpass is an incredibly lean and agile TV the same way with body rocket as well this allows us to build technology that uh where we can do testing out in the field and one of the things we do see is that the suits that we are designing and we are testing in a wind tunnel it’s is a very artificial setting much like metabolic testing the more we can bring out to the field and do these kind of direct drag Force measurements out in the field the more we can rely on the position and what’s really interesting also is to see that the position that they assume in a wind tunnel is not the same position they assume outdoors in wind tunnel you go on the bike you try to figure out a position to sit on there and then you get on outline to make sure that you fit into that one from test to test to test to test when Christian gets on the bike outdoors and he gets a little bit of time to settle in there the interesting thing is that the repeatability between laps is by a fourth decimal repeatability and that is without any outline at all it is basically just Christian getting back into the position where he feels that he should be and we see how how incredibly repeatable this is and that allows us of course now to make sure also that the suit that we are designing for Christian and gustau is working as best possible in exactly the position that is crucial for them we found Now 49 seconds that we are now incorporating into the suit uh moving forward it allows us to be very rapid also in in the prototyping or experimentation and this is somewhere I would imagine that at the end even before the Olympic we would probably have improved the suit for Christian so from Tokyo to Now by more than 60 to 70 seconds leading into Paris Olympics that is not marginal gains for uh Gustav we’re testing thermodynamics where we have uh assistance from core sensors so he has six to eight sensors on his body and also um pills in his body to measure the temperature you will see that he will be changing suits and the reason why we do this is two different suits two different Technologies we will then be able to measure the um the differences in the body heat temperature that’s that’s what we’re trying to trying to figure out now a top of working on the aerodynamic we have also been uh playing on two different Fabrics on the suit so they have both the ones we used in uh Tokyo but also a newer uh version with a new technology that uh we Tred to see if it would just a gimmick or if it was actually making a different changing it out one thing that we do see again and again again is the skin naked bare skin is superior when it comes to aiding cooling for the body and one of the things that we have been working now on together with green tag is to measure different kinds of textiles to create a suit that helps the body to cool as efficiently as possible or transfer the Heat to environment as as as efficiently as possible we’re not talking about a couple of percent increase potentially in uh thermodynamic capabilities of the suit we are talking probably of of another 10 20 or even more perc increase in thermodynamic the transfer capabilities simply because this has been an underlooked area for a very long time people focus on aerodynamics with their suits not on thermodynamics this is something we started several years before leading into Tokyo we knew in Tokyo we had the best suit by a massive difference and we know also now that the continued gain we are making this area is just going to make the suit even better than the Tokyo suit we are still continuing to learn new things improve our programs and and this is this is the fun part with it this is what really motivates me again is this continued uh journey into P performance and understanding how all these mechanisms are working far beyond what have been understood and established in research literature 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