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Building the Aerobic Engine with Dr. Øyvind Sandbakk
2 Playsin 18 hours
Steve House welcomes Dr. Øivind Sandbakk, professor at the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences and director of the School for Elite Sports, for a deep dive into the science underlying Norwegian endurance dominance. Sandbakk traces his path from competitive cross-country skier to national-team coach to researcher, explaining that Norway's success stems less from any single training method and more from three decades of shared terminology, systematic data collection, and cross-sport knowledge exchange. He walks through how training intensity distribution is not universal but must be derived from each sport's specific demands — the metabolic fluctuations of skiing, the mechanical load constraints of running, the discipline-specific quirks of swimming and speed skating — and why blindly exporting any one "Norwegian model" misses the point entirely.
The conversation then turns to the practical architecture of elite endurance development: high volumes of low-intensity work as the aerobic foundation, two to three quality sessions per week, and careful load-recovery management where the goal is optimizing adaptation signals rather than executing a plan for its own sake. Sandbakk and House find common ground on the art of coaching — the calibrated gut feeling built from lab data, training diary patterns, and honest athlete communication — and explore muscular endurance, aerobic threshold identification, and the long arc of athletic development, noting that most athletes haven't reached their aerobic ceiling until their early thirties. Sandbakk closes by previewing his current focus on young athlete development, arguing that building complete humans — psychologically resilient, multi-sport, injury-resistant — is the prerequisite for producing world champions.
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Transcript
Understanding and Adapting Training Programs
00:00:00
Speaker
The most important thing you do with an athlete is to sit down, understand the athlete. The second most important thing you is to not follow the training program 100% because you constantly need to adapt.
00:00:17
Speaker
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00:00:31
Speaker
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00:00:44
Speaker
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00:01:00
Speaker
Join us at uplossie.com slash training hyphen groups. And now let's get back into this interesting conversation.
Introduction to Dr. Oyvind Sandbak
00:01:11
Speaker
Welcome to the Upphale Athlete Podcast. I'm your host today, Steve House. And today's conversation is what I've been looking forward to for a long time because my guest is someone whose work has deeply shaped my way of thinking about coaching and endurance training.
00:01:24
Speaker
Dr. Oivid Sandbak is a professor at the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences and the director of the School for Elite Sports, both in also Norway.
Dr. Sandbak's Journey in Endurance Sports
00:01:33
Speaker
He's become one of the leading authorities in the world on endurance physiology, and his research has been central to the fact that the region cross-country skiers have been dominating their sport, especially in the last Olympics, but also in the last couple of decades. His work is interesting because it sits at the intersection of science and real-world coaching, which is exactly the reason that it really caught my attention so so intensely.
00:02:00
Speaker
I first came across Oyvind's research about 20 years ago. that point, I was a young professional alpinist and searching for training models that were grounded in actual data and and actual coaching experiences of elite endurance athletes.
00:02:15
Speaker
And I looked at a lot of different systems, but when I found the work coming out of the Norwegian endurance research community, it really clicked for me. These were scientists who were embedded with world-class coaches and athletes and studying what actually worked and trying to tease out the the why.
00:02:34
Speaker
But the thing that really changed my relationship to this research was when I started coaching about 10 years ago and began coaching building the training systems that eventually became a pill athlete. And I then went back to Oivin's work and the Norwegian school's work with kind of new eyes. Cause I wasn't reading it just as an athlete anymore. I was reading it as someone trying to solve real world coaching problems, how to build aerobic capacity and mountain athletes, how to structure training volume for people who don't have 25 hours a week, how to help athletes be patient with a process that sometimes take, well, most of the time takes years. And his research was,
00:03:11
Speaker
gave me a framework for all of that. So today I really want to get into hearing how he thinks about these things and hear it straight from the the researcher's mouth, as you
Norwegian Endurance Training System
00:03:24
Speaker
will. Oyven, welcome to the show. It's really an honor to have you here.
00:03:27
Speaker
Thank you Thank you. And thanks for the nice introduction. How did you end up in endurance science and where and specifically where you landed, which seems to be between kind of research and coaching? That's ah an unusual spot. Most people seem to go fully into the coaching direction or more into the pure research direction.
00:03:47
Speaker
Yeah, i wasn't you know I grew up as an enduro-sathlete. I was doing a first athletics and then with running and then cross-country skiing.
00:03:58
Speaker
so um So I tried my best to become the best cross-country skier in the world. That was my my dream. I didn't achieve that, but i was i was allowed to compete on a high national and international uh level so so i could train with the train with the best skiers in the world and um and learn from them and also try to reach that level myself and i could compete against the best ones in the world so so i i learned a lot although and i didn't reach my dream i became pretty good and then and um
00:04:35
Speaker
yeah well so when i When I finished, um some of my crew athletes wanted me to coach them. ah when ah They were my training partners and then wanted me to become a coach and to help them reach their goals when I retired myself.
00:04:52
Speaker
Then I went into the coaching role and was a... was allowed to work and coach some of the best, some of our medal winning skiers, which was a who another role that was ah i learned a lot from. and And then throughout that journey, the Ski Federation and the Olympic Committee asked me to support with ah work where we ah looked into training and how the best athletes have been trained and tested in endurance sports over the years.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah, last 50 years. ah Now this is 20 years ago, but ah we started to dig into the past, but at the same time, look into the future and see kind of where are we now? What can we learn from the past and how can we try to to meet future demands of endurance
Training Intensity Distribution Explained
00:05:41
Speaker
sports and... and and then the train even better in the future. So that was the start and at the same time the Ski Federation and Olympia Open challenged me to pursue a PhD.
00:05:54
Speaker
so ah Then we focused on sprint skiing which was physiologically quite interesting. ah repeated middle distance races ah in skiing. And then it was very little research done on it. So it was ah interesting to dig into the demands of sprint skiing and and how to train to become a good skier. So that was basically the start. So I kind of rolled into from being an athlete into coaching and then along the way doing some developmental work for the
00:06:26
Speaker
for the system and then doing a PhD at the same time. So them as you understand, I had to work a lot the those times, but it was very ah interesting and ah and I felt that I could make a difference.
00:06:42
Speaker
So this was my way of contributing to to make a difference in the world of sport. A little admission. of i was a pretty um fan. I was participating cross-country ski racing in the U.S. as a kid, as a teenager especially, and had a poster of Gunde Svan, so I hope you don't hold that against me on my bedroom wall. But then I became a big Bjorn Dahle fan, so maybe I'd make up for it there following the Norwegian's.
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah, I'm a fan both of Gunde and Björn. So Gunde was one of the athletes that we, no Björn was one of the athletes that we analyzed his training, his tests and interviewed him and tried to really understand the science behind his success.
00:07:32
Speaker
So what makes the Norwegian endurance training system different from how a lot of other people or countries have approached it? I'm thinking about the way you integrate the distribution of training intensity into long-term athlete development specifically. i think this training intensity distribution is a something that really um confuses a lot of people.
00:07:58
Speaker
Yeah, but I also think that people very often want to kind of, they ask me, as a what is the Norwegian method? And I see that also some people write books and hold ah presentations about the Norwegian method and Norwegian model.
00:08:12
Speaker
and they's go And then it's typically a training model. You have someone with a threshold-based system, and then you have someone who's more a polarized training system, which is very different. And both of them are Norwegian models with success.
00:08:26
Speaker
um but So I have a very different approach to it. So if you ask me why why have we done ah good results on the endurance side in Norwegian sport, um I would start in a very different angle. would say the first ah you have to do to to build a good system ah for endurance sports is need endurance.
00:08:49
Speaker
to um to um build knowledge. You need to know what the best ones are doing because ah you can't only look into intervention studies, eight-week and 12-week intervention studies. You need also, in addition to understanding those mechanisms, you need to have an understanding of what has the successful one, what did they do?
00:09:09
Speaker
yeah and And then not only one of them, but several of them. And how does it differ between sports? So you can actually... have an have an overall understanding of what have they done and alongside the development of the sport because the sport has changed a little bit. New demands comes in. Then you need to see how has the successful training changed. And if you get massive data of this, then you can start looking at trends.
00:09:35
Speaker
There's not one... You don't only look at the trends from one individual athlete but from a system perspective what they've done. But in order to do this, then you need a terminology because all...
00:09:47
Speaker
I think one of the most smartest things was but done in the 90s in Norwegian sports was to develop a terminology. The intensity zone system, there are hundreds of them out there.
00:09:58
Speaker
But in Norway, there is only one. And everyone has the same understanding of that intensity zone system. So there is an intensity scale that everyone understands.
00:10:08
Speaker
And when the athletes start ah writing their training diaries, etc., they do it in the same way and with the same understanding, basically. So then you can actually trust the data. Then you can start having an understanding of what what people trained. if If you have seven different understandings of Psalm 2, like there is out and the region in If you look at Twitter, or when they discuss Psalm 2, they discuss seven different things.
00:10:36
Speaker
um but But I think the advantage we have, we have this terminology, we have an intensity scale, we had a training diary system that was used across sports.
00:10:47
Speaker
And then you could start actually ah learning within sports and across sports. And then we also started to share that knowledge. So when cross-country skiing had success,
00:11:00
Speaker
triathlon with Christian Blumenfeld and these guys, they learned from skiing and built up their system but then they wanted to push the limits further so now now it goes the all the way around that the skiers are then now learning and are inspired by Blumenfeld but I think 30 years of kind of ah this type of knowledge exchange with a common understanding of what it takes.
00:11:27
Speaker
Then you start to both build up data databases so you actually know what it takes to succeed. And the you share, you constantly share and discuss knowledge around it.
00:11:42
Speaker
This is, for me, the secret of Norwegian
Adapting Endurance Principles for Mountain Sports
00:11:45
Speaker
endurance sports. And if you look at the studies we've done, they train very different in speed skating compared to triathlon or swimming or cross-country skiing.
00:11:54
Speaker
Even that this intensity distribution is is um is not the same. um Because ah ah and if you go in with within triathlon, for example, then In cycling and running, in cycling, you have quite long you you do longer ah training sessions. In running, a little bit shorter. That means that at low intensity, you go a little bit higher in the zone in running compared to cycling when you can do longer because it's less mechanical load.
00:12:23
Speaker
ah that Quite threshold-based, I would say, the the more intensive training. But if you go to swimming... it's ah It's a very little threshold.
00:12:34
Speaker
It's more polarized. You go a little bit low and work on the technique and you go quite high on the high intensity. let's and and that's them That means that you have three different modes and you train those three different modes in three different ways due to the constraints of the modes.
00:12:50
Speaker
And in swimming, it's because you need fast start. You need to fight in the start. You can't pace threshold in swimming or triathlete. If you jump out on the water, you need to get into a position. And it's quite tough. It's also quite short.
00:13:05
Speaker
And they're not swimming enough to to train a lot on threshold because their threshold zone is so narrow compared compared to a swimmer who has a much broader threshold zone and ken can then train more safely, more threshold training.
00:13:22
Speaker
ah so so So then you see that you you just need to analyze the demands of the sport. you including looking into how different ah exercise modes ah influence the way you can train in these modes.
00:13:37
Speaker
Same if you go into speed skating. The specific speed skating training on ice is is only probably 15% of the training. They do most of it cycling. over and And when you are on ice, you need to sit so low because it's high speed. You need to reduce drag you need to sit low.
00:13:56
Speaker
So on a muscular level, it's impossible to do low and low intensity and moderate intensity training. So you almost everything you do is at quite high intensities just because of it will be high intensity for the muscles anyway when you sit low and reduce a drag. Whereas you do go on the bike and do the longer training.
00:14:16
Speaker
I think it's the Norwegian model, the Norwegian system is is not based on one type of intensity distribution, but it's based on an understanding of the demands and then some common principles, because there are also some shared principles that you see across sports that are interesting.
Long-Term Endurance Development Strategies
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that I was, I've done in the last years is try to translate these, what we know from conventional endurance sports that you've been talking about and take those and and look at mountain sports, which are again, different and look at the demands of those sports, whether it's somebody climbing Everest without supplemental oxygen. or somebody running the UTMB final, those are very different events from ah from a training perspective. And ah you know once you start with those things, so that that framework kind of kind of clicks and and makes sense.
00:15:13
Speaker
If we think about the long duration um athletes, because we don't have people out in the mountains like crouching down to try to reduce their ah you know their their wind load on ah frontal wind load as they skate across the ice.
00:15:29
Speaker
ah if we if we kind of constrain ourselves to things like, I think, cross-country skiing, especially the the lot not so much the sprint distances, but the classical long distances and the marathons, those are much more like most of the mountain sports that that we work with.
00:15:47
Speaker
if we I accept that like you know you have to start with sort of the the requirements of this the given sport. And let's just shift like kind of to this um the timeframe and the patience that is needed to build that, kind build appropriate endurance and how you think about this. Cause when you talk about 30 years or 20 years of, of this kind of institutional knowledge that is going throughout so cycling through the endurance community in Norway,
00:16:23
Speaker
It's also a ah different timeframe, this idea of years of development. And this is something that connects directly to the first question we get from almost every new athlete that we onboard as, as a coaching organization is a question about like, you know, how long is how long do I need to train for event? That's, you know, some months out or some years out.
00:16:49
Speaker
Yeah. No, I think i think ah if we start on the top level on on training, because that's what I say, then you can see across sports. I think cross-country skiing and and and running, and and especially ah in the mountains, has many common principles. But we we see that, of course, in across um across all sports. What we've seen in Norway is kind of like...
00:17:15
Speaker
um When you come to the highest level, ah all all athletes that had success in the Norwegian system had quite high volume of low-intensity training.
00:17:26
Speaker
so so ah And an overall high training volume. And of course, that differs across sports. If you go to the sports that trains least, volume is of course road running.
00:17:38
Speaker
Because... It's so high in mechanical loading that you will get injured if you run more than 200 kilometers a week or so. And then you have triathlon on the highest level, which is, yeah, that' Christian Blumenfeld, I think, trains close to 1,500 training hours a year. But you have three different modes to train on.
00:18:00
Speaker
Swimming and and and cycling is quite... ah and It's possible to train a lot due to low mechanical loading. um And then news is probably if you run in the mountains, you are somewhere in between ah skiing and and road running.
00:18:19
Speaker
So low intensity training is is normally kind of the basis for it. And you push those volume quite high and then combine that with two to three weekly, would say key workout days.
00:18:31
Speaker
And then... it In some sports, you when you run or ski short, a little bit middle distance, too long distance, let's say 1,500 5,000, 10,000 meters, you you see sometimes they do these double threshold sessions and this type of, ah of ah of of that instead of having one long workout, kind of intensive workout. you have one you have You split it into two shorter ones. ah
00:19:03
Speaker
um so so You find different patterns there. You have the double threshold days in swimming. You have double intensive days. So you have some days that are focused on the intensive, but normally that's two to three days um a week.
00:19:18
Speaker
And then the other ways are built around getting getting high volumes of of the low low intensity training. So as I think that's that's the key.
00:19:28
Speaker
And then people of art, should I do moderate entire or kind of threshold-based or should I do high intensity? I think mostly in our sports, you see that that changes a bit throughout the year.
00:19:40
Speaker
So you go from building capacities to being more and more competition-specific towards the most important events. Yeah. Yeah, we absolutely follow this this model with our mountain athletes that you're describing.
00:19:56
Speaker
When you say ah threshold, what are you exactly talking about? Are talking about aerobic threshold, anaerobic threshold, and what does that mean physiologically to you? and Mostly when we talk in and Norwegian language, it's basically clear.
00:20:10
Speaker
You can say that you train at threshold is normally lying as close to kind of the anaerobic threshold or lectate threshold or whatever you call it as possible. ah But then threshold training is normally that you are not above, but you are at and slightly below ah the lactate threshold. butwa oh bufa And then, of course, it depending on the sport, for a cross-country skier, you go up and down and up and down. So then it's more...
00:20:39
Speaker
You're little bit above, a little bit below. It's kind of depending on the terrain. Right. But in running, you can find a sweet spot and you can stay there for longer time. So that's different.
00:20:51
Speaker
But um so I think one of the key aspects here is to to to really optimize ah the quality of the training session, which means that how you control intensity, for example,
00:21:05
Speaker
and how um high load each session should have. Because if you if you go all out, if you if you are if key sessions are too intensive, costs too much, it will accumulate...
00:21:21
Speaker
load too much. So you need kind of to find the balance between having intensity sessions ah but still allowing to repeat those intensity sessions with high quality often enough and also allow high training loads to accumulate. So I think intensity control and having control of the total load recovery balance, that's things you need to to be very aware of in order to yeah and I think this is so much of what we do as coaches, right? Is, is find the help athletes find that sweet spot because it's very hard to do objectively for yourself to, to, uh, to keep track of, cause everyone's a little different, right? And what, what they can, what they can handle for, for various, for their training load and the, the density of that intensity of those key workouts is, is highly variable in my experience.
00:22:18
Speaker
No, i agree. I agree. I think that's probably the most important thing you do is ah as a coach is to... Because if you if you if you think about it, what what is a training session?
00:22:30
Speaker
A training session is the signal that you send to the body. ah that tells the body to adapt to that specific signal. And then you need to send high quality signals. You need to get the most out of each training session. So you are really aware of what signal do I want to give the body today?
00:22:53
Speaker
So I think too many people, they set up a training program and they are very into kind of just follow the training program. But I think a good coach helps their athletes to think for every training session, what is the intention of this training session? What signal do I want to give my body today?
00:23:11
Speaker
And then you do whatever you can everything you can to to give the body exactly that signal and And then you need to be aware of kind of, okay, it doesn't help to kind of just accumulate load. We also need to recover. So we need to find a low recovery balance.
00:23:29
Speaker
So we give the body as many high-quality sessions or signals as possible, but at the same time, assure that we can adapt to those signals and build the body stronger and stronger and stronger.
00:23:42
Speaker
That's why I normally say that. The most important thing you do with an athlete is to sit down, and and understand the athlete and the demands of the sport and make a good training program.
00:23:53
Speaker
The second most important thing is to not follow ah the the training program 100% because you constantly need to adapt Because you need to constantly work to get that signal little bit better and to balance the low recovery balance. Because there are no machines, they are humans. So flesh and blood, emotions and challenges and good sleep and bad sleep and whatever it is. And if you want to optimize the adaptation from the signal, you need to take the consequences.
00:24:23
Speaker
So without losing track of your goal, ah you you do these small adjustments and you take the consequences. So instead of having the goal of performing the training plan, you have the goal, you you move the goal to having the goal of optimizing the adaptation.
00:24:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, this is the art of coaching in a nutshell, what you describe here. i think it would be useful to keep defining some of our terms. As you mentioned, you know, one of the great things that Norway did 20, 30 years ago was
Physiological Demands of Cross-Country Skiing
00:24:58
Speaker
defined the terms. however Everybody was consistent.
00:25:00
Speaker
So I want to understand when you say aerobic base or aerobic capacity or, or building capacity, what you're actually talking about physiologically, what physical metabolic adaptations Are those training states trying to build, are we talking about slow twitch fiber development, mitochondrial density, fat oxidation? What what is the, what is going, what do how are you thinking about that?
00:25:28
Speaker
physiology yeah um I think you need to start in the right direction there because first I just I normally start with asking what are the demands of the sport and if you it if we can use cross-country skiing as an example there what what is that That is basically ah going through varied terrain. You have an elevation profile and then you ski with arms and legs. ah yeah yeah It's whole body exercise.
00:26:00
Speaker
um And then sometimes you use the legs more, sometimes the upper body more, and sometimes it's more full whole body exercise. Yeah.
Utilizing Gap Analysis in Training
00:26:11
Speaker
And then and then you you go from speeds from 5 meters per second to 20 meters per second. It's got a large speed range.
00:26:23
Speaker
ah And there it's also a fluctuating metabolic demand. So on average, in a 10 kilometer, you're probably 95% of you to max, I would say, as ah as a the oxygen demand on average throughout 10 kilometers.
00:26:39
Speaker
But then you fluctuate from, 150 where you have quite high anaerobic loads to down to 40 in some downhills where you have 40% of the max because what do you do there is basically to recover and try to reduce drag and snow ski resistance resistance um while skiing down there.
00:27:03
Speaker
So it's kind of, it's a fluctuating sport. It's it's an interval-based sport. So it's from a speed perspective, from a power perspective, and from a metabolic perspective, it's a constant fluctuations and change in in the de demands. um And then you change between different sub-techniques, which is technically challenging.
00:27:25
Speaker
um And then then you can from there on, you can go in and say, okay, ah when you work at close to VO2 max on average, it's probably smart to have a quite high VO2 max in that sport.
00:27:39
Speaker
So that's something you just need to to have in order to to ski fast. But at the same time, when you when you change terrain all the time, it's the VO2 kinetics. It changes. V2 goes up and down and up and down. So so the ability to quickly meet changing demands ah is important, but also the ability to have a quite high lactate threshold where you kind of ah ah avoid getting fatigued regularly.
00:28:09
Speaker
At least you delay it. The higher it is, the more you delay. So the combination of these factors is is important. And then the ability to combine that with with anaerobic metabolic energy in the uphills, especially in the uphills, and then recover in the downhills. So you offer had the ability to produce and recover energy metabolically. i and metabolically yeah So so that's um that's the metabolic demands that you need to handle. And then, of course, you need a good technique. You need to so ski efficiently. It's not enough with energy.
00:28:47
Speaker
You also need to transform that energy into speed, which means that work economy ah efficiency is is important. And then, of course, you have the fourth factor that we talk about, the resilience, the fatigue with resistance, and It's not enough to go fast in one uphill, but you need to repeat that throughout the entire race. And hopefully, have the if you have a ah high view to max in the first uphill, you have the same view to max in the last uphill.
00:29:16
Speaker
the who ah But this you see in all sports, in marathon, for example, we all know that then you have probably, especially your economy, will reduce throughout the race. Whereas the best runners, they are able to maintain it so they have a better resilience or fatigue resistance. so So then balancing these factors, ah I think, are are ah or our key to um to succeed. Mm-hmm.
00:29:45
Speaker
Yeah, so how do you think about that physiologically and in terms of, you know, developing a capacity or base for an athlete? What do you, like, let's let's set aside a technique and some of these things.
00:29:58
Speaker
You know, all these sports that we do in the mountains are, I think, quite analogous to cross-country skiing. They're just longer, you know, but they're... they're They're varied terrain. You're carrying a backpack. There's a high technique component for climbing and and also for like descending and as a trail runner.
00:30:17
Speaker
So I think there are a lot enough parallels. So if we go to the commonalities, the physiology, um that's what I want to understand how you think about that and hear your thoughts there.
00:30:29
Speaker
I normally, it's kind of when I when i analyze a cross-country skiing race, I would normally go in and see where do you win time, where do you lose time compared to your competitors and compared to what we think is optimal.
00:30:44
Speaker
um and then And then at the same time, you have an overview of the capacity. You know the V2 max, the thresholds and these things. So you both look, that's why I started with saying that you need to look at the race because where are they losing and and gaining time compared to what is optimal.
00:31:03
Speaker
And at the same time, having an understanding of these capacities. And then from there on, you do some kind of gap analysis and then you prioritize. kind of we put a little bit that We see that you lose quite a lot in the the longer uphills.
00:31:16
Speaker
At the same time, your V2 max, ah it's not optimal. It should be... probably should be a little bit higher, then let's okay let's try to prioritize that. and then how can we And then we know that at least you need you need um enough stimuli at quite high intensities. And then we need to evaluate, is it enough to you respond enough on typical threshold all sessions? We increase that a little bit. Or do we also need to put in some extra high-intensity sessions to to target your V2Max a little bit extra in the upcoming time?
00:31:52
Speaker
um And then at the same time, you need to be aware that you don't lose anything because maybe the strength is to go good on on shorter your kinetics and up and down and handle the anaerobic energy. That's your strength. So we need to kind of balance that out so that when we prioritize this V2Max development a little bit extra, the ability to go fast and little longer uphills, then we just need to make make sure that we don't lose your strengths, that we can also maintain those. But we tone it a little bit down because in the end, you if you do more of something, you need to do less on something else. That's the balance of training.
00:32:31
Speaker
Then you need to balance that out so that you maintain your strengths, but still develop your weaknesses. And then we evaluate along the way. and Then it comes in that you try to measure this, you control it. you ah You are in the lab now and then and see how things evolve.
00:32:47
Speaker
But you also have regular training sessions where you actually have standardized profiles of those sessions and you know exactly from a weekly basis how things are moving.
00:32:59
Speaker
You don't have to wait three months to see if you improve. You can actually see the tendencies week by week. Then you have a good system. You use the physiology, you use the ah the competition analysis, you made some strategies that you believe in, and then you systematically track how how you progress. And if you don't progress, you need to make a change.
00:33:20
Speaker
yeah um So I think that's that's a good way of working with it. If you've been wondering whether one-on-one coaching is the right next step for your training, this is the month to find out.
00:33:32
Speaker
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00:33:44
Speaker
So how disciplined are the elite athletes that you're working with about staying below their aerobic threshold heart rate when that's what the training is
Challenges in Adhering to Training Plans
00:33:55
Speaker
prescribed? Do they also struggle with that and want to bump it up into the higher intensities or is that just a recreational athlete problem?
00:34:02
Speaker
No, I think it's kind of athletes ah are also humans like you and me. they i think that's what people they often mystify. I think that they do everything perfect. I think, you know, develop what I would say from a leader perspective, people say that development is messy.
00:34:21
Speaker
And it is. no ah it's ah it's ah They do mistakes. um What you need is to be close to them so that um you try to use every every failure should be ah used to learn and to educate the athletes.
00:34:38
Speaker
And hopefully you have an honest discussion with them. So if say if if they fail, if things doesn't go as planned, if they do something stupid, They are honest with you and tell you exactly what they did. i think the worst thing is that athletes start telling the coach ah what they think the coach wants to hear. and What is important is that they are honest and that as a coach, you also have a, you build them safe platform where they can, they're allowed to fail. They can be honest and say things as it is.
00:35:13
Speaker
And then then you have a platform for learning so that you as a coach, you learned a little bit from success and from failure in the training process and the athletes do the same.
00:35:28
Speaker
And the whole system you're describing the last few minutes could, you know, you could take that template and apply it to, to running a small business like I do, you know, it's like, you know, you want people to tell you the truth, not just what you want to hear. how do they do that? They have to trust you. They have to feel safe that they can voice a ah dissenting opinion or, or so give you hard news or those kinds or painful news.
00:35:51
Speaker
Um, and that kind of thing. So there's a lot of great parallels there.
Technology in Tracking Athletic Progress
00:35:56
Speaker
What tools are you typically using to determine aerobic threshold? Are you relying on lactate testing? or you just look at doing analysis of their their training data to figure it out ah where where their where their zones are on an ongoing basis?
00:36:16
Speaker
um Tell me about that process. Yeah, it's i think you you always, when you talk about testing, ah you need to start in the in um the right order.
00:36:29
Speaker
um And you have some very simple things that you, for example, most athletes use a GPS watch shanna and um and heart rate during their sessions. And that's a continuous feedback that you get so you can see...
00:36:43
Speaker
how you're responding on a daily basis. Then you have a training diary. All athletes should have a good training analysis system, training diary, ah which is ah for me it has different purposes. Of course, it's it's a daily debrief. So to sit down after every session to write down, okay, what did you do?
00:37:05
Speaker
What zones were you in? Blah, blah, blah. And how did it feel? How was kind of the the perception of effort? How was... ah the the quality of the session, the and you write some words of your your your feelings ah and how you felt before, during, and after the session. This is a perfect debrief. doesn't take more than a minute or two, but it's a very good debrief that you can do after each session where it enables you to learn.
00:37:35
Speaker
Then it's also a communication platform but because it allows your coach to... to follow you closely, both what you write, but also what you did. And then in the in the third,
00:37:48
Speaker
um as a third factor, it's a learning tool. It's easy to forget what you actually did. So you can learn from success, learn from failure, and also from a system perspective, you can kind of see the bigger picture. Kind of okay, here was a period of many athletes who didn't succeed. Okay, what did we do then?
00:38:08
Speaker
Here was a period where we had a Yeah, positive progress and what can we learn from that from a system perspective. So I think think that's the basics. And then, of course, you you you track the medical conditions. You have the daily blood profiles.
00:38:26
Speaker
I think more and more endurance sports. You should actually screen for both psychological factors, eating disorders, RADs, these type of things, so you're sure that that is functioning. I have a yearly screening maybe.
00:38:38
Speaker
Viral infections, how is your lung function? Any tendencies towards asthma, which will limit you. So to have this, but then it's more kind of an, as long as you're healthy, it's it's an annual thing. And then when you find something, of course, then you follow it closely.
00:38:57
Speaker
um And then, of course, you you from my point of view, you should now you should have them have testing regularly, both on a mesocycle system where every second month or so you're on the lab and you profile the athletes.
00:39:16
Speaker
ah But then on a daily basis or weekly basis, you have these standardized sessions where where you can yeah As a warm-up and part of an interval session, you you use the same treadmill or the same terrain so that you can see exactly how things are progressing during some specific sessions. And you can do that week by week, and you have quite good control over how things are moving.
00:39:41
Speaker
And then, of course, you have these recovery and wellness measures like sleep and stress and and and recovery measures that also yeah indicates how well you recover and respond to training.
00:39:59
Speaker
So I think yeah this is kind of a...
Combining Data and Intuition in Coaching
00:40:02
Speaker
A system where you have some day-to-day parameters, quite simple, quite easy to track. You do it every day. as's just It's just part of what you do. You don't have to think about it. This is pretty normal.
00:40:14
Speaker
And then you have the mesocycle parameters that you track more regularly. And then, of course, on medical conditions, you need to look at case you have some yearly screenings or so, but then you track the things that are beneficial for that specific athlete.
00:40:28
Speaker
the the how do you decide that the aerobic base building is for that season kind of complete for an athlete you have some markers you look for or lack a threshold or so you know time and zone you need to look at the overall a picture um And then you have some, of course, you have indications every day on training. In most sports, you you you actually see, are they running faster on the intervals?
00:41:00
Speaker
always the How is the heart rate and lactate levels at a certain intensity or speed? And then you get those. So as so if you're close enough to the athlete lead as a coach, you can see that day by day how they are responding. And then you take them to the lab. And then I think in in most cases, you look at the Vieto Max, you have some kind of threshold indicator and maybe work economy.
00:41:24
Speaker
ah And if you're interested also in some strength measures, you might have a one or two power tests. and It's quite simple, the but you need to integrate both what what does the number from the lab say and what does um what you see and observe and measure in training day to day. What does that say? In total, then you have in what I would call informed decision-making. Sure.
00:41:59
Speaker
so um But then again, it's in my opinion, in the end, as a coach and athlete, you take most the decisions by gut feeling. But it's a very well-calibrated gut feeling ah because you have all these measures and you have the tasks and you have these things.
00:42:16
Speaker
When you take decisions, it's very well-calibrated.
Advice for Non-Elite Athletes
00:42:19
Speaker
So you integrate it and then you take a decision together.
00:42:27
Speaker
Now we talk about the art and the science of coaching, right? And this is the, this is what you're talking about, right? The integration of the, the hard signals, the numbers from the testing and the, the let's call them soft signals, the, the, the comments, the tone of voice, the pop, the athlete's posture, like how their sleep was all the other things. And let's put that into, into something, something I've,
00:42:52
Speaker
been working on and have developed and I'm working on getting it to athletes. Um, our athletes don't have access to testing very easily. Like they don't, they're not professionals. Of course there are labs, but it's kind of, you know, not, not convenient to go to a lab. So we wrote some, some code and use our own internal data set to build code that will look at their training and yeah and suggest what their aerobic threshold is each week each week so we get a once a week measure and it just looks at their training and doesn't have to be all in the same uh terrain or it could be in different terrain and uh we'll see see how it works uh once we get it out in the wild with real athletes but uh that's been that's the kind of thing that uh this this
00:43:38
Speaker
understanding where they're at and their progression of aerobic development is a ah big yeah pain point for for our athletes because they're mostly working professionals with jobs and families and kids and then they also want to go you know do well in an ultra run or go climb a mountain in himalaya or something like that so it's I think this is this is a good way of doing it. It's exactly the same kind of just I like yeah running myself. So I try to train a bit regularly, both with the kids and myself. and
00:44:13
Speaker
And of course, i'm ah I'm a scientist, so I try to use my own principles. so Not because I have big ambitions, because but but because it's nice to get progression and results, what you...
00:44:25
Speaker
What do you do? hannah hi ala i but I'm basically testing myself at least twice a week. ah But it's is on my treadmill in the basement ah where I have different standardized sessions. And then based on those two sessions, I...
00:44:42
Speaker
I would say that I have a very good ah understanding of the progress or not right now, how much I how much i lose. ah It's simple, but it's very systematic.
00:44:55
Speaker
yeah And I think it's exactly the same principles as a top athlete. The difference is I don't go to the to the... Even though I have a lab, I could do it, but I don't do it. Right.
00:45:10
Speaker
I do it in my basement and it's fun. So I think with simple measures, you can work very well and systematic. Yeah. Yeah.
00:45:22
Speaker
Yeah. So interesting. so
00:45:30
Speaker
I want talk a little bit about muscular endurance. i think one of the first places I understood muscular endurance was through the lens of cross-country skiing and double pulling specifically, um where the local muscular fatigue becomes a limiter before the cardiovascular capacity becomes a limiter. and Our athletes face something pretty similar in steep uphill terrain, whether they're running or or climbing.
00:45:55
Speaker
How do you see the muscle muscular endurance specific training interacting with aerobic capacity? And how do you ah think about the timing of adding muscular endurance type training within within a program for an athlete?
00:46:12
Speaker
How do you know they're ready? And also, how do you know when it's enough? Because it's muscular and it can be a little addictive. People want to push and push it and keep going with it. But sometimes, think we both know that you can only adapt to that for so long. How do you think about that as a coach and as a scientist?
00:46:31
Speaker
I think it's it depends a bit on the sport. But i can I can use some examples. ah For example, in cross-country skiing, we of course know that... ah let's in that's saying skating, good leg work is really important. You get a lot of the propulsion from the legs.
00:46:49
Speaker
and then But then ah you want to you want to build that capacity, muscular capacity, it's very specific. um And then And then what we what we do there often is to is to train them and without pulse. You take away the pulse and then you ski. ah You go ski skating without pulse. So then they your muscular intensity or muscular load will be increased a bit.
00:47:22
Speaker
ah Sometimes we work a little bit with lower frequency as well. So you just kind of push off, balance, push, balance, push, balance, push. And then you you you put quite a lot of load in different types of models ah on the legs and you can work on it specifically.
00:47:40
Speaker
there are also some on the higher level who kind of use the weight vest to do it because then you can do it really specifically. And you use different models. But then before doing that, I think that type of training I would do anyway because it's so important for the technique. So skiing without poles is really technical, good thing.
00:48:03
Speaker
but um But if you put even more load on it and try to really kind of get muscular energy, endurance out of it, then then of course you need to be aware that it also costs a bit.
00:48:16
Speaker
so So then if you put something on, you need to be aware of the costs and then see how you can how you compensate it. so so So that I would only do if I see that this is a limitation for this athlete.
00:48:29
Speaker
For another athlete, it might be the upper body. So then I would rather take away, kind of not take away their skis, but make them double pole a bit more. Maybe do double polling in uphills, for example.
00:48:41
Speaker
um Or double polling with bit lower frequency so that they can really have focus on the polling phase, lower frequency. You can keep intensity a little bit down, but then then do different models where you you work on...
00:48:57
Speaker
on the on the upper body. So you do kind of a gap analysis, you see kind of what is needed and then than you you do it as specific to what you want to develop.
00:49:10
Speaker
um that That's how I think about it. So for me, it's a typical question, is that account of do ah do you believe in low cadence cycling, for example?
00:49:24
Speaker
It's one tool in the toolbox, but you use it when you need it. So you're doing a gap analysis, you see how well the athlete is responding to it, and then you use a certain tool trying to improve that factor.
00:49:41
Speaker
Putting on the lens of like talking to a motivated non-elite endurance athlete, you know, what is some, what is one piece of advice that, you know, I'm going to put you on the spot here. What is one piece of advice about training and building aerobic base that you would give to somebody who's a motivated, not elite?
00:50:01
Speaker
I mean, we can use this lens of, of, evaluation and, and, and, you know what is the need of the athlete and where are their gaps and, and so forth. But most of them just want to get like fitter. What should they be thinking about? What, what are the, what are the basics that they need to cover?
00:50:19
Speaker
I think it's the basic is, of course, that and if you want to have better endurance, now I think the most important thing is usually train endurance. so So start by... And then it's simple, simple in in my opinion, quite simple principles. If you want to improve your ability to ah to increase your...
00:50:43
Speaker
aerobic power, ah you need to breathe a little bit and increase intensities. and you need to find some training sessions that can make you breathe quite a lot. Call them high intensity. maybe Maybe you do a hybrid. You start while on a threshold base and then you build up intensity and you have a good intensive session a week. So I would start with that and then learn to do it.
00:51:06
Speaker
Try to build it up so that you get get the right intensity, that you can do it in a good way and maybe stop Stop before you have to stop. Because then if youre if you're you you you you could have done one or two intervals more, but you don't do them, then you recover much quicker than pushing the last ones or going all all out on the last one. But doing it hard come comfortably hard,
00:51:33
Speaker
ah and then in a way that where you want to do it again. Yeah. You don't regret doing it and you don't wait too long to next time to do it. I think start with having some regular sessions where you breathe quite a lot and then also learning to do the more easy work.
00:51:56
Speaker
ah easy, moderate intensity sessions where you can gradually increase the length of it. um and Maybe be starting a little bit shorter trips, but then when you kind of get fitter, you can do them longer, but you maintain the same internal intensity.
00:52:15
Speaker
and then And then throughout, let's say, those two type of sessions and maybe a strength session where you are aware so you don't get injured, injury prevention, and maybe you have some weaknesses that you want to strengthen in your technique.
00:52:29
Speaker
So then you build up the program around having trying to have one or two more... more threshold high-intensity sessions where you can really breathe and have good good good quality of them as the core. Then you build volume around this and add strength and injury preventive sessions when it fits you. And then, of course, you need to balance the load so that you all the time, um every...
00:52:58
Speaker
every week you should be recovered and look forward to the next week. I think it's a you shouldn't be on the limit. You should have some ah some energy those that allows you to to enjoy training and you look forward to the next training week because then it's sustainable.
Continued Aerobic Development in 30s
00:53:17
Speaker
And if you do it over longer times,
00:53:19
Speaker
Then you yeah you will get the continuity again, and that's what counts in the long run. Yeah, yeah.
00:53:31
Speaker
And, you know, so how long does it take for, like, this is this is always the the question, like, how long does it take to fully develop aerobic development?
00:53:44
Speaker
How long does aerobic development actually take? when you Are we talking years before the peak? Is it 10 years? I've heard different numbers thrown around. How did you answer that question?
00:53:56
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it's it's kind of... a I've seen data on ah endurance athletes who have peaked their V2 max at the age of 30, 35. I've seen others who peak at 20 and then there's other factors that develops.
00:54:10
Speaker
I think it depends a bit on how you train the youth and and how that goes. But I think... In all factors, you at some point, things start to plateau. That's what we see on most training studies that you you do see in research is is basically about it's it's short term.
00:54:29
Speaker
ah you I would say you you optimize a certain factor and then you get progress for a few weeks on that factor. And if the studies continue longer, you would see a clear plateau on that factor.
00:54:42
Speaker
ah And then and then um that's why most training studies, you see an effect on what you train ah for a certain time period. But in the real world, you need to train all these different factors. And then you put more emphasis on on low intensity for a period. You go more over to threshold based focus and maybe then go take in the more high intensity stuff.
00:55:04
Speaker
So you just, you do you you do everything, but you take, you emphasize a little bit more on that. And when you then change focus, you need to take a little bit down, but then you maintain that factor while developing that factor.
00:55:16
Speaker
So, so, and if you do that, you can progress for quite a long time until you, Yes, taking out your potential with that training model. But then maybe you should... that Then I would often, if I see that ah you don't progress anymore, you've done the same for several years, it's going to develop and stop.
00:55:35
Speaker
Then I would start tweaking with the training. Was he okay? Maybe we should then actually for a period just take down the high intensity stuff quite a lot and increase volume and see if you just peak on volume. Do you then get an extra...
00:55:49
Speaker
extra peak just by doing something a little bit extreme. But then I would wait until they start toying on kind of developing oil factors. Or should we paradise the training a bit different? Should we should we change the the training model instead of training more...
00:56:07
Speaker
the the same every week. Maybe we should have a very easy week and then peak one week so you can push the load and then take the volume down. Then you push the load a bit more and take it down.
00:56:18
Speaker
um So you need to tweak a little bit around with training and see if you if there is something extra that you can get get out of it. And then in some cases, if you trained a lot over many years, it might even be beneficial to train a bit less.
00:56:34
Speaker
So maybe if you trained on the limit for too long, you're actually taking training down with 20% and having more energy and and the you're being more recovered for the session, then you increase the quality a little bit of the sessions and recovery. And that is what enables you to take the next step.
00:56:54
Speaker
But that, it's the art of coaching. You just need to, and then, At least I believe most athletes can have a develop their are parts of their aerobic system until they're 30.
00:57:05
Speaker
thirty ah That's my hypothesis. So ah you most athletes are not on top before they are 30 if they stay healthy and injury-free.
Potential for Long-Term Athletic Development
00:57:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was something that in I was young in my as a professional climber, I'd been training for, I think, about a year and a half with like in a serious, like structured way.
00:57:30
Speaker
And then i learned that, like man, I'm like... i could i'm like eight and a half years away from my actual potential because i felt like a million bucks at that point right like after the first one and a half years i was like wow this is amazing i'm like reach i'm on a totally new level then ah when i realized like oh wow i could i could keep doing this for quite a long time that was very eye-opening and this long-term perspective is something i really talked a lot of athletes about and and tried to engender in them
00:58:01
Speaker
Last question, what what is next in your research or in your coaching that you're excited about that's that's coming up? what should What should we watch for? I think, um yeah, I think ah what we're doing quite a lot on now is but looking more on i would say, developing of young athletes. um Because I think it's a lot of science on what the best ones are doing and how you train us as is kind of a...
00:58:28
Speaker
adult athlete. I'm quite focused now on ah the upcoming generation and what kind of, what should you do as a youth and as a senior and also a little bit, not only from a physiological perspective, but but um also from kind of a psychological perspective because it's We're basically developing human young humans. ah And in my philosophy, it's of course, it's nice if it comes a world champion out of it. But ah first of all, you want to use sport as a tool to so young people can champion their own lives.
00:59:07
Speaker
And hopefully, if they champion their own lives, you can get one or two world champions in the long run. But I think that that process of so many discussions on early specialization, late specialization,
00:59:21
Speaker
multi-sport training is prior specializing in one ah how high volume should you have then we have a society where maybe we need to train more at the young age because because they are sitting on their mobile phones all the day instead of out playing so you need to compensate that somehow and should that be more specific training in that sport or should you kind of you need to facilitate more the kind of the base training that happened spontaneously before so so I think it's in these type of areas it's so much also with the early specialization versus multi-sport
01:00:00
Speaker
From a physiological point of view, that is one thing. You can see the physiological development. You you you adapt specifically to what you give people.
01:00:10
Speaker
But in the end, you also need to make them stay injury-free for 20 years. You want them to have a good health and immune system throughout their career. You want to build kind of a psychological system.
01:00:24
Speaker
capacity uh so maybe multi-sport is good maybe doing some team sport in young age uh helps you to work closely with a coach and learn from cool cool mates being in a different endurance sports for a while where you maybe see oh shit is the cyclists are doing this well and then you bring that competence into your your other sport so i think um I think there are there are many aspects. It's complex. I think doing different having different angles of young athlete development is ah is really something um we need to to get knowledge to a higher level.
01:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. i look forward to learning more about it as you, as your work evolves and comes out. yeah So thanks so much for your time. Your work has meant lot to me as a coach, the principles that you've you know practiced and validated are the same ones we're trying to teach every day here at Uphill Athlete training below aerobic threshold, respecting aerobic base, trusting kind of this long arc of aerobic development.
01:01:31
Speaker
Encouraging people to sometimes slow down so they can eventually go fast and and building for years, not weeks. These are the kinds of themes that we talk about all the time. So thank you for helping us get the science of endurance training right and explaining how all this works for
Closing Acknowledgements and Insights
01:01:47
Speaker
us. And i really appreciate your time and look forward to being in touch.
01:01:52
Speaker
Thanks to you. And good luck with your training, your coaching and your business. so I'm looking forward to following Yeah, likewise. Thanks so much.
01:02:19
Speaker
Hey, real quick before you go, everything we publish, the articles, new podcast episodes, and the live webinars are announced first in our newsletter.
01:02:30
Speaker
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01:02:41
Speaker
Thanks for listening and we'll see you in the next one.