Olav - Annual Training Plan

I'm Oliver Sandabu, PQM and Performance Developer, coach to Christian Blumafeld and Gustaveen. I'm Dr David Lippmann, a health and human performance specialist. Welcome to the Norwegian Method Podcast. Welcome back to the Norwegian Method Podcast. We are rolling with season three. And as people might know, we're doing two streams in our season three. We have a stream with Christian and Gustave and we have a stream of course with Ulov. A man who's season one was from. So we've heard a little bit from you recently, Ulov, but it's great to have you back on the podcast. And today we're going to be talking about annual training plans. And I think, you know, we're back and listened to series one and I would direct listeners to series one in our season one, sorry, where we talked about specifically the episodes planning and training and then Norwegian Method training, where we sort of talked a bit about planning and then a bit about training itself. And I wanted to go in a little bit deeper on some of the concepts we touched there, respond to some questions we had and perhaps sort of try and take a little bit further in general. So that's kind of framing up this episode for the week. And yeah, just welcome back, thanks for spending your time with us again, Ulov. And let's start with, when you're starting and your training plan, do you plan in a year or is it rolling for you because you have so much, you know, is it kind of like a rolling year or is it no, this is a calendar year, we're going to plan for this and how do you think about that? I would say it depends a little bit on sport, sport and how certain your calendar is. If the calendar is very uncertain, then I would maybe go a little bit more rolling, but still I would try to create an annual plan, let's say beforehand. The reason, the main reason for that is because if I don't set some expectations or let's say have an idea of what I'm going to develop this year, it's also then very hard to go back and learn, learn from basically how to optimize it also. So if it's just a rolling plan and you go by month by month or something like that, I have to try to think, okay, this is what we've done previous years and this is how it's been growing over the previous years. I think that this year, for example, we can do this much sure, we can do this different, for example. And that means that when I already do that, then I'm already creating an expectation a little bit for what is the annual plan going to be. And the reason, again, for why that's important is that when I then start to build the plan and we start to execute on the plan, I can start to measure the gap a little bit between what have we planned and how are we progressing according to that plan and that gives me learning, that gives me an opportunity to look at, okay, this, I thought this, but I have to adjust a little bit more like this and these are important steps then to learn from and then feed into the plan again next year, where I'm too optimistic, where I'm under shooting. Did unexpected things come up that I should have foreseen or basically the changes that I have to make in the plan, things that are outside of control, for example. So that's, I like, I would say, I start with an annual plan always. Okay, and we've talked, we touched on, you know, sort of what that looks like, so it's end goal, we reverse engineer from the end goal and go backwards, so that's something, stuff we touched on in season one. What I wanted to touch on here, and it's actually something you mentioned is when things don't go to plan, do you build that into the plan? Do you build in, say, do you say, listen, I think we can achieve X in nine months, but there's a very likely scenario that we're going to have a setback for whatever reason, extra travel, extra partner requirements, injury, so I'm going to build in and say, listen, let's plan for eight months, let's plan for, you know, a month of lost time or something like this. Again, depending on how crazy the target is, so obviously if you really, really want to go for a crazy target, you might, or I might compromise or trying to build in more things going on rails, but you know, there's a high risk that it might not go that way, and that's the consequence of setting like very, very ambitious goals, but I think also at the same time, then a little bit depending on what, let's say, if you are the current champion, and this is what you think is required, or you want to do something to get there, then I think it feels like a failure if you fail on that one, but if you are, let's say, a challenger, a challenger, then basically we also have to go open it, even if you don't reach your goal, you most likely with a very good plan have still had quite decent development, and that is the important part of it is as long as we develop, as long as we learn, as long as we develop, at some point, if just focusing on yourself and you develop, you will be fastest in the world, like theoretically speaking to put it that way. There's a certain limit to how much people can really improve where you come to probably what is peak human performance, and then those people are already up there, there are much less room for them to improve while the people that are growing, as long as they are growing, they are eventually getting there, and so risk and redundancy, yes, I do normally advocate for this, you should, after you've been working in the beginning, when you start working with somebody, then you don't know necessarily, because it's still a learning process you need to figure out how things are, you can take learnings from history, but we also have to be realistic about it, there are so much we can capture by data, and there is even more context that we are not able to capture by data, and we know that our memory are not the long-term memory of humans are also in these days of AI, actually also susceptible for hallucinations when we try to think retrospectively, so the learning, yeah, as you go and you learn an athlete to better know and you work over years, you also start to know more what other risk and how do I factor this into a plan, and what kind of mitigating actions do I need there to work around that, yeah, so I would not say yes, I do build redundancy, redundancy and risks into my plans, and you talked about susceptibility there in terms of, you know, the athletes, right, so is that something you look at individually, you say, listen, so Gustav's a good example these days, he's had an Achilles injury, so you are a little bit more cautious with the planning on the run and building in some redundancy for potential progress there, or would you do that anyway, and his specific scenario is not as relevant as a general scenario building redundancy in. I think one of the reasons for why we've had so little injuries, so little sickness is normally over the last decade in our program is because we have normally divided the year into, let's say, a capacity part and then a specificity part, and then also in the capacity part things have been more called internally control rather than externally control, and what I mean by that is, for example, velocity or speed power, these are components, there are external factors that you go by, so you set a certain power target or you set a certain velocity target or speed target, depending on what you're doing, or which kind of instrument you're using in order to control your intervals, but the internal part is more where you go either in my heart rate, you go by feel, you go by lactate, you go by view 2, you go by decimal 2, these kind of things, and very often there, for example, I say if you were using heart rate, the benefit of using heart rate is that these also factors in other stressors as well, for example, so let's say that you end up with a little bit just use a very, or to use one example, let's say that you one day end up with poor form, so you go out and running, then it will normally cost you more to go by the same power, and this would be reflected, for example, in higher heart rate, or if there are other things going on, it would be reflected in higher heart rate, so if you control it not by heart rate, your power has to be lowered, it has to be lower, so you factor in less stress, less it partially into the equation by using heart rate, while if you rather go by power, this is where you just now add more stress to it, so if you already have other factors there, so let's say that you have a little bit poor form, that day you are a little bit tired, there are other things that are going on, you would just see that the heart rate now becomes higher than what you would normally expect for the same power, and a good way to balance this is exactly that you have to take into account internal factors that are going in your body, you have to develop or calibrate a good sense for intensity control internally, so when you use instruments, I think we've talked about this several times before, but when you use instruments, the whole point with that is that it's not like that is the fact, that's how it should look like you should go, it's a way of calibrating, continuously calibrating your body, I like to use the analogy of GPS or GNSS systems and an inertial navigation systems, inertial navigation systems are the most accurate or precise down to the millimetre or micrometer navigation system that we have, but they are very susceptible to drift, so if they don't get an external input telling them exactly where they are, suddenly even though they are sitting on the same place, same place, they would suddenly just say that now I'm moving, I'm moving, I'm moving while in fact they don't do, but that's what you need an external input, like for example, then or an objective metric like a global navigation satellite system, like a GPS that feeds and say no, you're here, you're here, you're here, so you get that by frequent, but then we also know that the problem with a GPS is that's not that accurate, it's a little bit more like moving around all the time, so even if you're standing at the same spot, you start to GPS, you would be able if you zoom into your case, you see that it starts to move around, but you know, no, I was standing still, but you see that GPS is moving around by half a meter, back and forth like this, almost like we call like a dog or a leash, but you have the dog or the leash there, but since the INS is so fine to you, it will sense that no, I'm not moving half a meter, I'm basically here, so these two combined is really the power of the most, let's say the most accurate navigation systems we have in the world today, and that's how I see it as well, the INS is the body, that's our feeling in this country, but if we don't get external inputs for, let's say from lactate or VO2 or SMO2 and so on, power, then we won't know, we won't know when we will start to drift and so athletes, who actually live there funny, if you look at Christian and Gustav Lee's back, is that typically, if we didn't do a lot of measurements in a period, Christian typically ended up airing on, let's say higher and higher and higher and higher intensities, thinking was the same intensity, while Gustav actually won't order what he and went up being a little bit more cautious, a little bit more cautious a little bit during a little bit on the, let's say, easier intensities, still thinking it's the same intensity, so yeah, so again, how do we avoid injuries or how do we mitigate these risks are by normally, we are very conscious about what tools we use and how we prioritize the training exactly to encompass this better and we don't use heart rate is obviously or is influenced by several other factors and that's why I like normally to reduce it rather to lactate or SMO2 because then at least then yes, you have to be conscious about your feelings and other things and other things maybe you select patterns on, but when you first go out and you decide and do in a session, you would evaluate it normally by lactate or SMO2 to control your intensity and then that dictates more the power put it that way. And that links, that links to portions of the season that would be traditionally called something like a pre-season off-season or base building where you're working more in capacity and then that sort of sharpening race specificity aspect when you're close at a race day, right? So that's kind of how you'd split the year in halves, would you split that? So if you are, is that something you do for each cycle towards each major race, each peaking, or would you do that across more of a year and say like listen first, the first race of the year, we're going to be going in heavy and no one really cares? Yeah, that's, you can say that depending on how many races there are and how important the races are, this will dictate, let's say, how much specificity that is brought into the program. Obviously with building capacity, you're trying to encompass also the specificity as well, but let's say the real race amount is something that block it will maybe get, will be bigger leading into very important races while it's shorter or even to the point where maybe you wouldn't. I would say that, I wouldn't, I know that some people really like to do racing and I think racing is an important aspect, very important aspect of the training, concept moving forward. But I think too much racing is not good either, especially because you get to peak human performance because you're not able to to be equally specific on, let's say, the needs you, or as a building capacity by just doing a lot of racing. Some racing you need to do because you need to get a feel for, okay, where are we compared to where we would like to go? But the longer you're away from the important race of your year or as a two important races, you have a year depending on how many races A races to put into your calendar, that would dictate the, let's say, how long the specificity block. Like if you go into a race and you only go there by capacity, you haven't done anything specific and so on, then the question would always be like, what are you hoping to learn? You can obviously learn something to see how far am I away from where I would expect to be. And that would then dictate somewhat the content of what you're going to build in moving forward to get the more specificity to bridge that gap between where you just went in and just did racing straight off capacity. And what you saw was the demand in the race there, if it's relevant for your A race to put it that way. The Norwegian method. The reason why you want to have a view to master because when athletes or customers come there and they are doing the training, they're putting in money and hours into improving the fitness, you want to have a device that basically allows you to track their progress, but also measuring the metabolic power as well. And then on top of that, the only way to truly be able to do individualization is also to measure the utilization of athletes and there is probably no better device on the market to do that with them, for example, the view to master. If you've been thinking about adding VO2 testing to your training facility, you know our viewers get an exclusive one-on-one consultation with their product experts on how to make VO2 master work for you. Head to VO2master.com/Norwegian-method to book yours today or follow the link in our show notes. They're Norwegian method. Well, this is sort of in an answer to the question that I asked, so I'm glad you went there. So if you're going to only race once a year or peak once a year, how are you tracking progress? Is it just about training efforts? Because surely training maximum effort and training is not going to be what it is in a race. There are other factors that will allow you to go to a different place in a race. So how do you track that progress if you're already in a race once a year, say, or infrequently perhaps? There are many ways to do this. I'm not a very big fan of brute force testing myself, but you could argue that that's probably in the end the gold standard, like purely from a testing perspective, aside from racing itself. And what I mean by brute force testing is where you just, you, for example, you go out at a certain, a couple of different velocities or different power outputs, for example. And then you just see how long can you keep that unto you? Basically, you're not able to, let's say, keep that up anymore, or even remobilizing and getting back out, that you're basically just purely, it's raw fatigue on sort of raw fatigue on their own. That gives them probably, or arguably, the best way of assessing capacity, you could say, there are always nuances to that as well, like how motivated, where you really, when you did it and all these kind of things as well. So nothing is truly perfect in the end. But how I like more to do it is to take it as a part of the training and the good thing that if you use really good methods for assessing the internal system, unless it just applies out of it, how much energy is going into the system now to do a certain, certain effort, that would then give a very good indication of what is happening as you basically move along. How quickly is the different systems responding? So, for example, if you know that you need to bring up the utilization because you are converting from a shorter raise to a longer raise, for example, how do we see that utilization is moving up? Do we need to maybe increase the stimulus a little bit for that? Because the utilization, let's say that we said, okay, when we do an R-man, just to draw the number, let's say that we said, okay, we need to be at least 90% of your vehicle to max going into an R-man. Then, if that was 85%, for example, because we would be raising more like half-iraments, for example, and I had three months, obviously, that I would need to be there, not at raise day of 90%, I would like to be there a little bit before, 90%, for example. So, now in the training, obviously, that I can assess it, but what's happening with utilization now? If I see that, oh, this is progressing a little bit slower than what I would expect to be from last month and so on, or from week to week, even seeing progress there. Then, I would say, hey, we need to re-, we need to redistribute a little bit, the training load here now, to try to increase the stimulus, to move this a little bit faster. And then, you just have to continue to assess it, because it doesn't mean, as I said, that works, but this is the way that you have to work in it. You don't have any answers upfront. You can only apply best practices and science, there's a very systematic way to move this forward. So, that would be the way I would be looking at it. If I only were peaking for one race a year, you leave more to chances, because in the end, it's not a pure time trial. No race is a pure time trial. Or, as I said, most races are especially in trial long, they are depending on right race dynamics. Cone was a brilliant example of that, where you see that people end up racing very differently than what they've done in previous races before. And you can say the positive strategy, obviously, shouldn't be built on what what likely scenarios are going to be playing out. And you hope that, based on past experiences and knowing your competitors, at least, let's say, what you would say is good enough, you would be able to say, well, this guy's capacity is this guy's capacity is this guy's racing style is this and this guy's racing style is like this. And these are the likely scenarios that could play out and then factoring, obviously, in the World Championships, in the same way as Olympic Championships, plays out differently than other races, because people are more protective with the strategy and they want to maybe pull out as a races in that race. So one peaking for one race a year only leaves two risks. One, you don't know necessarily how you stack up 100% against the field you're going to race with. So I would say trying to target maybe one race where you know they are, you at least get a very good feel for where are they. And the second part is that you also leave a risk with if you don't, if you only peak once a year, is that how do you know that your peaking strategy really is working well as well. So peaking is obviously a part of the game too. So no, let's say, no how much time you really need to peak, how you build in peaking into a program or tapering into a race. So that you really bring out your best performance on race day. And that is also something that you can't go by the playbook. You can go by the playbook or by practice the first time, but obviously that's in the same way as everything else. It is a little bit where you need to systematically troll an area a little bit. See what you're able to build up. And I can say at least do need different kinds of peaking because there are different both psychologically and physiologically meaning that what brings out the best on race day is never necessarily the 100% the same program for them. Yeah, one attention to a couple of things there. I mean, as an example of race dynamics, I know Christian and Gustav, well, more so Christian was talking about pre-cona that he thought that bike was going to be very surgy because of things like race ranger. And I think we saw that play out when he pulled out and had to follow Magnus. I think that's a great example of having to put down big power for a small period of time as he sort of suggested. You talk there about, as an example, you used extraction and saying, is it tracking the way we think just to clarify or crystallizes for listeners, you're basically talking about, you know, say a capacity phase, you would be tracking progress via looking at external work done for the internal metrics you're using as rate limit is or as prescriptions. And then vice versa in our peaking phase where you are using external loads, right, you're using race pace, race power, you would then track progression via maybe changing capacity in terms of pure output. Can you do that for longer or are we progressing and or are you using or is your lactate lower for the same output, right? That's roughly what you're saying. Live with depending on how stable your conditions are and the danger of course with getting into the details is that when you play around with this for one and a half decade then you don't only know what's going on in the body but also you know the strength and weakness of the measurement methods but you also don't have the weakness of the technologies as well and how it is influenced also because plenty of things we measure in the body which we don't measure, we don't measure the course, we measure the effects of something that's one and we also maybe don't measure it at the source, we actually measure it fairly quite a bit downstream from where it actually happening in the body too. But yes, I would say that the gold standard to assess this is for example when we are using the VU2 master so you would say that one you would be looking at the gross efficiency of an athlete, how is this basically changing a little bit throughout let's say that's one but more importantly is more importantly more important but it's more is more important for an Iron Man versus shorter races is to have a very highuclication so you would need to basically quantify for example the VU2 max versus for example their utisational race pace or let's say the utisational maximum maximum metabolic steady state for example and that gives you a very clear picture of okay how are things moving now compared to that because in the end you what you can do for short duration puts a completely different demand on your body than what you can do for a long duration and we also did the difficult part with a complex part with with with Iron Man is that you don't do Iron Man training every day you do it isolated and put into pieces and bits and pieces and it's never the low that you do in a race so in contrary to for example an Olympic distance track or a sprint distance track on where you would basically encompass all distances in your training every day more or less and the only thing that maybe the intensity is you even go higher but you bridge it up into basically into what's instead yeah so it's not 100% but you would encompass it more or less every day that's the same thing also with track and feel with swimming many of these sports as well the distance that these athletes does compare to what they do in competition are basically encompassing what they do in a race multiple times in a training session while when you go to the ultra events like for example Iron Man you don't do it you you are at the point where basically you are trying to get close to something there or simulate something that but it's never a real simulation or never an encompassment before you actually do it on a race day itself that gives you really the answer yeah how things are yeah no that that that's a really astute observation and I think I think we touched on a little bit before that the bizarre nature of specifically an ultra running that you do a lot of your racing at intensities that are much lower than the majority of your training so you know that it's an idiosyncratic nature of events that take that long you just can't replicate the event in training unfortunately yeah the duration the duration is much shorter than what you do yeah so that's also the same thing I think we mentioned we used this as before because if you if you look if you take Christian in in in I would say that the power outputs or the pace is swimming or the power output or the running that he does and you let's say that you target at Ironman specific marathon running for example so let's say you went and decided to run 30k so let's say you run 30k now out your your let's say the target the target pace you are aiming to go by if you ask Christian how he feels now when he is half into this session he wouldn't maybe say oh this feels like a six five or six or something I did towards the end of the session maybe he says like it's a seven or something like this now starting equity ask him in a race when he have been swimming and biking before he does the running it's a flat out it's a 10 and I think the the videos that were from from for example in in in the Kona 2022 for example shows how exhausted and and he was but also with what kind of core temperature you come in at the end of it and you don't have that you don't have that on on on on on a training day so it means basically again that Ironman is it is a different beast that the most other thing simply because it is a place where you don't encompass what you do in a race in in train situation and that actually is the normal thing for most of it at least they they do the distance they do in racing multiple times over almost every day in their training of what they do in racing yeah so you've touched on a few things that really dovetail nicely here so one of the things we touched on is race frequency we talked about you know single peak has its risks it's probably not ideal talked about multiple peaks being shower or rather multi frequency of racing being a challenge in terms of race specificity so how do you think about selecting race frequency you know is there an optimal how do you think about it obviously this changes across an athlete's career and their goals right if you only have to validate and then race Kona that's very different to you need to qualify and you know we need to get you some race experience since your first year as a pro but those factors aside if we can the specifics of the athlete but how do you think about race frequency um race frequency again depends on the needs I would say for an elite athlete elite athlete where you have warm races so let's say for for for Christian and Gustav as an example then I think that you can bring down the phrase frequency quite a bit because you know what it takes to win and as long as you keep yourself you do racing nothing massive is gonna change normally from basically over half years time so if you race two times a year for example that's what you do there's not gonna be some like a massive yeah they do they do they do happen Cosumel was a good example of that when Christian the he did his first race obviously that is somewhere it's it becomes like a shock but most cases I think and especially the closer you get to really to peak human performance the smaller these kind of nuances will be so it's more like you obviously you need to do a little bit of racing but you can keep it to very few races you know what it takes physiologically you know what it takes psychologically to do this kind of races for athletes that might have a really like they're producing massive numbers super strong and less on paper it's almost like you're surprised they are getting fairly down on the list I would maybe wonder okay how they mentally when they're racing and maybe you figure out that actually I'm stressing out I'm making poor choices in the race situation is gonna then I would say the hey that actually that's what you need to power the size into your plan you need actually to do more racing and actually come to a place where you get start to get more comfortable you trust more in your own strategy and you are even to the point where you have clear goals for what kind of strategy you want to to to test out a little bit to get different different to get experiences and this is a part of building towards the becoming a world champion and I think here also is it's easy maybe to get too impatient when you get really close there you just have to do it one more time or something like this and you stop being systematic or let's say you become not so systematic especially since we're talking about psychology which seems to be a very muddy muddy or gray area it's less tangible but I would say that this time it is even more important to be systematic in the process and where you just have to accept that it's gonna take time you know parietal rule it takes 20% to get to 80% of the wrestlers and then the last 20% got to take 80% of their effort but we can also say that basically putting a little bit on the edge it takes 1% to get to the 99% and it takes the last % 99% effort it's just a matter of how close are you really to become the world champion when it comes to details and so on and here I think that it's easy sometimes to underestimate how important all like many of these basic things are and one enough choosing art or chasing the quick fixes on magic tricks that don't exist instead of just trying to do things just a little bit better and accept it's gonna take longer longer time to make progress the closer you get to world championship level so again how much racing should you do during a year depends I would say how confident you are let's say in in your ability to win a race and then I think that okay if you're if you don't win races and you're confident you still would win races maybe you are over confident that you reassess a little bit the things that if you have you already are world champion and you are winning races and you know what it takes the data well then you could probably do less races yet focus exactly on really building the last very bits that you would lose when you start traveling doing races a recovery and other things that are there so again it comes down a little bit to you tomorrow but don't underestimate the importance of having almost prioritizing psychology and building almost sessions or things where targeting psychology doesn't need a psychologist psychology only means basically that you are more also looking a little bit on your own strategy how do I how do I put myself in an environment where I can test out the things that stresses me psychologically and actually start to practice them practice them and work on them in a in a structure manner and you can think of this almost like interval building where you where you do it as a part you build enormous as intervals in your training or workouts into your training or you do racing exactly to practice things that you feel are holding you back to really get out your full physiological potential yeah that's I think people underestimate the skill or the craft of triathlon and overemphasize perhaps the physiology of it the physiology is obviously the the bedrock in which everything exists but you need to execute on race day and you will not be able to put out the powers and the whatever's if you are not in the group and you won't be in the group if you don't know how to transition properly you know we sell people struggling to take wetsuits off at certain times we sell people you know do shoes come on quickly do I put my socks on when am I doing that all those stressing factors when do I rack my bike how stressful is that all these things that you just need to get comfortable with and I remember I can't remember exactly which race it was his T100 that Christian did and he didn't actually know the course and he was so comfortable he I think he still won it or he did very well in it and he was like yeah I didn't even know the course and like that speaks to how relaxed he is around racing and how confident he is in his ability to just go out and execute in that and that takes time as well I think we tend to see you know we tend to look at Christian Gustav as people as fully formed athletes when they started winning races and we miss the you know the previous Olympic cycles right and all that racing they did to get to the you know the previous Olympics we tend to to forget that when in actual fact they'd spent the best part of a decade developing as in race craft right and then now the physiology gets laid on top of that again now all of a sudden they look like you know it's the overnight success that took decades to make so yeah I think that race race tactics all those things are super important to people especially even age group as you talk last season in the swimming episode we talked about getting out to the water and getting used to swimming in a pack in open water and being swam over and I think something like that is that's a perfect example of it is you know everyone spends their life in a pool cutting laps and doing that thing and pushing off the wall at very 50 meters when an actual fact getting swam over is completely different and swimming around buoys and sighting and all those things so but I think but just add to that as well I think here also like if there are seldom somebody being so dominant that they're winning every race that is there I think this is something that we were very strategic and we saw we we saw our opportunity to disrupt let's say the armen world first Olympic but then the armen world but then eventually people catch up as well and then we've been very open and sharing whatever we do as well and a little bit to make sure that we don't get too comfortable with what we do but then someday you also stop winning as well and that can sometimes freak people out as well or they get very suddenly uncertain like what what what change now you don't necessarily understand and then this is starting to take energy from your from yours as well and then I think exactly this is the place where you just have to put yourself back a little bit back into the challenger mode again and thinking okay what how do I know actually because if you start looking through your past I'm just looking to find back something that was in the past well it's not a past anymore it's the present and the present is different than the past is and that means that you maybe have to go into a learning mode again and and do this again but this is sometimes that I know I've seen so many times throughout in different sports where people stresses out and it basically comes the end the end of their career more as yes they do good and these kind of things but some are able to bounce back and they are really good at basically reintroducing or taking the position of being the challenger again and being very structured and focused and don't just getting distracted by what other do and and let's say improving their strategy again to to get back bounce back but then you have those that basically just look they're just trying to recreate the past and it's yeah they continue to be good but they are not they're not the champions anymore yeah there's a saying that no man walks to the same river twice because the man has changed and so is a river perhaps it's no man walks to the same river of lactate twice but the the thing here is you need to go back to basics make sure the fundamentals are correct and ensure that you're doing yeah what what you did to get there to some degree but but your body's changed and so is the racing and so are the competitors so you sort of need to there's a term that I've heard talked about in you know in and around the Norwegian sports sciences of intelligent failures and I think that's it's a really good way to think about this is like let's let's make intelligent experiments and be happy to fail with them right we need to evolve but at the same time yeah we may not you know you can't wholesale change everything you can't throw out intensity control because all of a sudden yeah I need to go faster because I'm not winning anymore some of the principles need to remain the Norwegian method the reason why use molten with the boys is because it reduces the GI stress and the reason why it reduces the GI stress is basically because carbonates are packed in a hydrogen and why that is important again is because if you can then take more carbibrate per time it means basically you can train faster or race faster which ultimately is the goal in our sport to benefit from the one-time code and get 20% off your next purchase on Morton.com simply enter the code TNMS1 at checkout the code is applicable once per customer on all products except the Morton Bicub system valid until the 31st of December 2025 then Norwegian method we talked a bit about peaking I want to touch on this again so if we're using two peaks right if we're going to use a two-peak structure which is a lot of what people will be doing right so we can talk about you know they may need more race craft and they may throw in a couple more races to learn race craft they may not need to peak for them but if we're using two peaks we're using a world championship and we're using a key qualifier perhaps where would you want to put that key qualifier with respect to the the world championship and we don't have to talk about kind of specifically we can just talk about if that is month 12 where does the qualifier sit at six months do you want to be a full capacity phase shut in then you know a specificity do the race and then go again and use it as a half year block or would you prefer to push that closer to the and do a longer capacity block initially and have that qualifier race closer to the the championship I think it depends a little bit on how how much variation there are in the scenarios that you are going to see in a race if you feel more confident again if you're a champion like we talked about and it's more like you are racing every a half year whatever you are in the field with the same competitors that are there and you get out you keep you keep fairly current with what is changing or how things are moving there then I think that you can move this closer to your race as you use it more like really as you're building up testing your peaking strategy and so on and you but you still leave enough room that if you need to make adjustments you have room to make those adjustments again but we are talking now about adjustments if you're more uncertain about your strategies you're still less you're in a developing phase and it's more about learning there are you you expect maybe that will be larger larger changes to your program then I would push it earlier less a more space in between as it gives more space also for making adjustments adjusting both capacity how you build capacity but also how you then be more room for both the race specificity and tapering period as well going in there but you can't change too many variables it just means that you you're still sticking to a couple of things that you decided that these are the most important places to to to to build on but you just said I need I most likely I'm I might be more off off and I might need more time to really make the necessarily changes to those few or what one single variable or characteristic that you have said that this is what we are very uncertain about and we need to test it and that gives us a little bit how close how far away I would normally say that if if you if you if the race day is month 12 probably three months out three to four months out is where I would put it for an elite potentially three months out maybe even two months out again depending on how confident your new strategy if you're less confident I would probably say it's any more than six months basic splitting in half a year makes no sense because it would be basically you just restarting the whole process all over again and then building towards in there because you have moved it that far so between two to four months is probably where I would I don't think you if you if you if you need more than four months then I think that you're you are probably in such a early development stage anyway that's okay if it was six months of four months then then that's not what's really going to make the difference but I would say that if the goal point is a qualifier qualifier and then it's it's your a race so this is a b race with a race for example then then more than four months I'm not sure if it really would make any Saturday yeah no that's helpful that's super helpful I think people get a lot out of that so we did touch on previously sort of strengths and weaknesses and how we think about those in in previous season again those episodes are highlighted at the beginning of this episode I guess how do you address them at different times of the year is it a simple as weaknesses get addressed in a capacity phase and then strengths get emphasized in our specificity phase or is it more complicated than that and how much are you apportioning time to those like how how difference do those programs look I guess from our if we're trying to develop strengths or weaknesses what what are the proportion differences yeah so our very systematic approach that I would preach is that first of all you need to sit down and you need to decide on what's your goal for this season and a goal for season means basically you need to set a date and you will need to set how you what what what is your target the target does have to be be winning a race it can be equally much that you said that I'm gonna be 10th place in a race for example that's what you're targeting because that's what you feel really is realistic or you basically just move it completely away from a from something that is external and you just say that I want to improve this much for example and so that you do your racing you raise your way and you just say that in the last year I did this in this race this time in the race this year I want to improve my time by 15 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever depending on on where where you are and when you have done that and you set the targets you and it's important two things important you need to set a target of very specific targets and then so and targets so that means basically what you're gonna what what's your goal time and what is the event what kind of event like what's what's kind of race type is it second part is where you yeah you could say that basically that that's you just need to set a very specific goal date date and goal time you could set for a certain event then when you have done that that's where you can start to break it down into requirements that means okay how do I need to race this in order to get there or to to to be able to do that and then gives a requirement that is that so you're set a goal you set the requirement now the next step is to do a gap analysis and make is as simple as possible I would say take three to three to six characteristics I normally do six characteristics uh where you basically said okay I need it in order to do this I have to have this kind of capacity uh so I have to be able to do this in training for example so I have to do this be able to do this power for this duration for example or this pace for the swimming uh and it can't leave me exhausted for example so I have to be able to do it oh you said that just fair bit higher so you have to be able to do that in your training uh it can be that I need to be able to do let's say this kind of specificity so surges or whatever I have to it can be tactically it can be like you just have to decide on if I'm going to describe uh what it would take as the six most obviously it can be you can choose 200 different characteristics of thousands or 50 or whatever want to do but the point is to make it tangible you need to make it tangible because the next step for you when you have defined these characteristics and you looked at where do I stand today versus where do I need to be on a race day that gives you two things the how much time you've got to work on these characteristics and also how big are the different gaps in those let's say six characteristics five characteristics or whatever that is there and now when you have that the next step is to understand how much time will this different characteristics takes to develop or how much time we know that it takes to develop these if characteristics so let's say that you need to improve your race power by five percent then you can already probably say okay if I'm going to increase my power by this much you will say okay likely I'm going to need six months to do that well that already and if you see then that there's a big like to be able to reach your target is as a high priority because I say the gap is big you define this as one of the biggest gaps when you look at the requirements and where you stand compared to those requirements today then this would give you also where do you need to prioritize this in your prioritization as well or how important it is in your prioritization that's why this should only be handful of characteristics really yeah so if if everything's a priority nothing's a priority exactly so goal understanding or having an idea because nobody can have a better idea of what is going to take the new in the end like asking somebody else that's just fine to maybe get a second opinion but in the end you have to really own and understand and believe in what the requirements are and then it's about making assessment of where the gaps are this gives again the prioritization when you know now where do I need to put different things into the my plan here this is when you can start to build a program and work on models that you think are the optimal ones to really address these different characteristics depending on how far or how close you are to the race yep that's crystal clear super helpful thank you on on this and it's a very similar sort of no we had a question from some of our previous discussions we talked about different power profiles and we're going to do a you know as a teaser for what's coming in the season we're going to do a sort of worked example of different profiles right a very vertical or steep profile a very flat profile or horizontal profile so but can you give an idea of these profiles we talked to previous series we sort of used a five 20 and 60 minute as an example power durations or speed durations can you give an idea of proportions that are I guess let's I don't want to use this term is good and bad but I think we have to so maybe optimal or sub optimal across say Olympic distance half iron man and iron man and the reason I include Olympic distances because I think it'll be illustrative I think the iron man and half iron man are going to be very similar so I think the the Olympic distance would be very different so can you give an idea of those just so that listeners can I guess when they're thinking about some of the stuff we talked about previously about this you know I'm going to go do a profile and do they need to understand I guess where they are and where they'd like to be so is there any I guess could you share any light on a rough idea yes I think you would be surprised but actually Olympic and half iron man are closer to each other than basically half iron man and iron man is to each other and it also comes down to that actually are a half iron man this it's actually something that you can encompass actually fairly good in most of your training sessions a day it's 1900 meters swim and that you will do in let's say most of the swims even for I would say amateurs they are normally getting more than 2k in the pool every day 4k then then you're getting a little bit more into the lead domain so for some people that you're not that often really touching up on 4k in the pool our treatment 8k but then you have then you have the cycling 90k that's a fairly okay ride for even I'm sure you don't have to be an elite to do that 180k then this is starting out to get a fairly big ride again for evening day yeah even for elites and then you have the running which is the most crazy one like in iron man but running a half marathon that's something actually we do even in the Olympic training even Olympic training if you take both including the warm up and the cool down plus the sets in in between that we are getting fairly close to the half iron distance or actually even encompassing a little bit quite frequently I would say so and we see we see the success in T100 of the of the Olympic athletes right stepping stepping up and succeeding you know even post Olympics right the likes of Julie Doron as a good example of somebody stepped up and being very successful very quickly so it's a point well made yeah continue on sorry so I would say that in terms of utilization you're looking at if you took we can we will come more back to this because it's about all about about practicalities because the problem is that to get people to do one all out so if you had a let's say if you had a view to master this is fairly simple this is very very simple because basically what you can do now you can do a couple of different different intensities versus your max and you will actually just look at the utilization versus your max that's it that's simple I know so with combined with with SMO2 but and you don't have to do brute force testing but let's say if you are doing a critical pace or critical power profile so meaning that you would need some shorter duration versus longer duration to assess this the difficulty with this is that yes shorter duration is fairly easy for most people to just go out and they hammer it out but asking somebody to do a 60 minute all out that's you can you can always argue how easy is it to pace yourself for for an all out for 60 minutes most like you gonna either over pace yourself under pace yourself and it becomes more variation within let's say those 60 minutes but you don't need a five and 60 minute you can also do shorter durations because normally this would follow the same function it would follow the same curve curve it is just that if you theoretically speaking we're able to have a 60 minute all out and a five minute all you would have more information available in the 60 minute all out and you would be able to do in a 15 minute all out or a 10 minute all out for example like that like you're not able to get the effect really of temperature build up in your body which will be a problem of 60 minutes whether it will not be a problem of 15 minutes for example you will not have other factors of fatigue and whether it's mental but it's physical kinds of fatigue into in the same way into 15 minute part as it will do into 60 minute part but again they follow normally the same function a function then with some variation but we could call them either as variation or noise or whatever that I know natural variations are occurring there but let's say that if you took five and 60 minute power and you were looking at the ratio between the two I would normally say that you are aiming for at least for an Ironman that your five minute your 60 minute power sits in around maybe 85 percent 85 percent of your or a maybe even higher but that's a 85 percent of your five minute power if it were shorter durations then you would normally see where it maybe it's closer to 80 percent of your five minute power for example but we'll come back and use much more practical numbers and much more practical tests in the upcoming episode because I know you have planned that this is exactly some of the topics we will be looking at like where we break down exactly more vertical kind of profile versus a more horizontal kind of profile and how do we bridge this then into the program and what kind of ratios would be looking at there but that's one the other part the way you can do this to be more concrete already at this episode is right you rather just operate with delta so you would then just look at the absolute number but actually how the five versus or show the duration power changes are compared to medium duration power so let's say that if you did it doesn't really matter what it's a three-minute power and a 10-minute power or if it's a five-minute power and a 15-minute power or five and a 10-minute power ideally it would be three-point because it adds a little bit more robustness to the curve the more points you have the better but keep it practical it's not about testing in the end it's about doing good training and just see how things are changing but where even what you would be looking at is that they say you you already have done this you do a race and you see I'm not able to sustain the same kind of I'm super good at the crimes can keep up with everybody that is here but on the longer I'm not able to keep up the same pace as let's say my peers when it really gets longer out into the race this is what you could say then well okay let's see then in the next next round now I'm gonna maintain my short duration power so let's say that that was my five-minute power and what you were really doing now is in your training when you reassess it as in a month's time to see that your 15-minute power gets up higher versus your five-minute power that will already indicate that you are improved your you indicate that you have improved your utilization and this is where you're trying to nail in the ratio where where should this ratio between the five and 15-minute power be the problem with throwing out an absolute number for this is that this will be different depending on how many hours or the volume of training you're putting into your training program if you put in the hours the Christian Gustav Caputin then you have a much larger range to play play with and depending on strategy the less hour you have to you have available you need to pivot it into a more perfect curve and a much narrower band narrower band than than than than than what you can essentially so to give an example Christian could probably get away with a lower ratio lower or poorer ratio between his five and 60-minute power for example or in terms of utilization then for example what an amateur could do which had to push it much higher up which gives it less room for let's say playing out different scenarios as well so you could say that purely the fitter you get the more room you have to to you can encompass a couple more scenarios well if you're not as fit then you have to more really really try to narrow down okay if I want to have a chance at the podium or if I want to have the top 10 here have a chance at top 10 I really need to think that okay of what the difference is I think here I think this is the most likely one and you you try to narrow in a profile that that targets that but yeah that's that's how you would go very systematic about it in the end and tune this yeah and so previously we talked about growing a curve which is everything getting bigger right and so with more volume as Christian good stuff have you have a bigger curve right it's grown and as a result it's a little bit you've got more capacity to play around as you've sort of mentioned whereas if your curve is smaller you don't have that same thing and I guess this was illustrated at least to me by Christian and Frankfurt right like he didn't he didn't really have to do much specific work towards that and ran you know ran an amazing marathon right regardless of the rest of the race the marathon was the thing it was really interesting because it was so fast and he'd done so little longer works doesn't need to right and you've talked already about the marathon is probably the the biggest outlier in terms of the training particularly in difference probably between Olympic distance and an iron man because you you need to develop that load tolerance and you can cycle 180k's you know they don't maybe don't do that but the difference between not having done that and stepping up to that is much different to only running a half marathon and stepping up to a marathon from a durability component to sure but that's that's also where we could say that for Paris as well Paris where is it like swim course a Paris we knew from the very beginning that's it's not a swim course that necessarily is good for the Norwegians to put it that way because we normally have not been the fastest in the swimming less in the swimming yeah and then you know that okay the the course in Paris as well as a TT course to a very large extent it's not a very technical course it's gonna go at high paces on meaning that if you want to bridge out the gap that is between as a first group and a second group it's gonna cost much much more power if it's a technical technical race then basically you get more speed and lost the out of every power you put into the into the bells the higher the average speed goes for the course now every power that you're gonna put it because the pace is already quite high it's gonna cost a large large portion for that that was actually the strategy like moving into permuda for example we course through this was in 2018 when we had both Christian Gustav and Casper on the podium went up course through a hill there very steep hill we knew that if they went with hard power nobody's gonna go in a break way up the hill there but if they just keep it up the top there they go they go as a hard enough they keep control they just have to make sure they come into course through in the lead then they can go up there if they now opens up a gap there we know that if they just continue that power because if you exhaust you too much yourself now you're gonna start resting going downhill but if you just keep up this power you stay basically raising out 380 watts something like that 400 watts keep around out the two going downhill there if they're now as a gap then of 10 seconds you want to catch up with somebody is pushing 400 watts or as a 350 watts comfortably downhill there it means basically even to catch up a gap that of 5 to 10 seconds means you need to pull out 650 watts and not for 5 to 10 seconds to bridge up that gap because they're going in front this moving as well so it's gonna take you minutes to basically close the gap that is there and that means basically already you can just forget it because you're gonna blow up even trying to get there if you need to rather try to bridge the gap all the places in the course unless somebody sits in front and they push fairly they're trying to keep up the distance well Paris this is a place where average speed was really high you can just look at the times that basically was for the for the right for the for the by part of the race there meaning again also that if there's already a gap there it means it's gonna cost a lot for people to really bridge out the gap to this there and that will also then dictate normally that you said okay that means I need to keep a higher average power output and less basically less basically stop counting racing that will also then say that well naturally you need to then I would say bring up your utilization but the danger of that is when you bring up the utilization you're also still burning you optimize things but it also means you you're also bleeding a little bit off on the top speed as well when you get out on the run part in the end of the race too so it's it's Christian and coming into Frankfurt yes he already has a good utilization as a result of the training that led into into Paris and you see basically yeah he doesn't have to do arm and training when he has the capacity has and also his utilization already have been brought up and then he can then he can get quite a lot for call it for free there without doing a lot of specialization obviously with more specialization he could have gone faster but again it just like comes back to the point that you you you you basically his capacity leaves him more room to play different scenarios from short to long course while if it's if it's if you have less capacity it means basically you you just have to aim exactly for what you're racing for and maybe one or two scenarios is what you can build into your build into your program yeah the last one I wanted to touch on was and it relates to our proportions that we sort of just touched on which is how do you know if you're in shape too early and how do you course correct if you already have probably done some racing you're probably done several races already you've done several blocks of training before and so on so it means already that you have an idea or probably that this is a block where I put in a lot of training and it was close to the maximum I don't think I could have built very much more in of course you can do two things now try to be a little smarter about it to see how you can build a little bit more load into the program there but that already give you a sense of where you have to build towards next season for example or this season depending on what you're looking at what you what you really are trying to do is that to get there and then maybe a little bit more for a short period that you can call it survive with good quality that's the keyword good quality and then you release and you get that shape early now if you're already getting to that point two early in the season you're bringing on too much load and all things and you need to take extra rest days or other things like this unplanned rest days you get sickness this is a function of your load and other things like this then you are peaking to early in the season it is really purely a function of what can you sustain over years in terms of training what can you sustain over shorter periods of training and then building in exactly what you can sustain for a shorter period of time at the peak in your block so that you have when you when you start tapering it's just before you really would almost be forced to to need it brute force put it that way yeah i'm not trying to it is written so many books on this that it is on one side it is a complicated topic but it's not that complicated when you also understand this it's it's uh yeah yeah i think the other thing to to know if you're a young athlete and when we do have some young listeners is don't get greedy with it like the the the the fundament on which everything sits is consistency so you know if you add a new peak load and you coach wants to de-load you and you're still feeling good that's a good thing not a bad thing de-load for a little bit and then come back because ultimately the goal is years down the track it's not in months you know no matter how important you think that next competition is the the the the most important competition is is years away for you if you want to be a successful athlete yeah and i think well i think then also what i would say normally there if they if you need to de-load so you put in suddenly a de-load on unplanned de-load i would say that that's where i would say that then you have room optimization for let's say later on because i would rather say that i would call it the optimal way would be almost where you'd rather put in stabilization instead so you would come up and then rather you see okay we put in a little bit of stabilization here now instead before we start continuing to build instead the moment you need to de-load you will actually get an involuntarily let's say taper it's it it acts as a little bit as a taper or to get a little bit of surplus but then you can also say that there's a lot of practical training person let's say you have a four-week peritization or three-week peritization the whole point obviously with this is to use one week to absorb a little bit give room for absorptions you get ready for the next next meso cycle that you put in there or next block that you put in there but in general you are still looking to build every of these blocks on top of each other and if you need to suddenly plan with de-load and rebuild de-loading yes then do at least I control de-loading but in the ideal scenario it would be where you can say okay if it you call a de-loading or absorption or whatever and it's already planned that you do that do that that's good that's where you want to be you want to be in a place where you see that okay we know there's going to be de-loading in three weeks time or something we're going to bring down the volume a little bit in that part or let's say the intensity a little bit there to absorb now quite a lot of load that is here and you get used to these kind of cycles but uncontrolled de-loading or basically you need to schedule let's say now some de-loading into the program then you've come to the point where you probably went a little bit too greedy already there in your in your programming but I would rather say that I won't rather want to add it and I coach that maybe it's a little bit too greedy and then they learn quickly moving forward and always say oh we need to be very controlled because that's going to take longer time to learn where maybe things are but then again going too crazy that's that's it's an optimum then it you know this is it is it is complicated and there are many many many many things there to do to yeah to yeah it's difficult to talk in generalizations but I think the to sum it up intelligent failures you want to be making intelligent failures not stupid failures right so don't break yourself but certainly be you know dead dead to dead to experiment as you said before so that's it for another episode of the Norwegian Method podcast thank you so much to all the listeners please do subscribe if you haven't we do have many episodes coming this season as I said we have we'll love joining us many more times we have Christian and Gustav joining us so subscribe if you haven't please share this episode with people that you think would enjoy it and of course please rate the podcast it is greatly helpful to us so thank you and we'll see you next time thank you David [BLANK_AUDIO]