Norway is a small country, with a population about equal to that of the state of Wisconsin. But you wouldn’t guess it from how Norwegian endurance athletes perform on the world stage. They’ve won far more major championships in the past few years than Wisconsinites ever have.
It all started at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, where twenty-year-old Jakob Ingebrigtsen won the men’s 1500 meters, and Kristian Blummenfelt won the men’s triathlon. Ingebrigtsen went on to win eight additional medals in Olympic and World Championship events, setting five world records and world bests along the way, while Blummenfelt won the 2021 Ironman World Championship and the 2022 Ironman 70.3 World Championship.
In 2025, Norway’s global dominance in endurance racing reached a new level, with Norwegian men placing first, second, and third at the Ironman World Championship and Solveig Løvseth winning the women’s race.
So what makes this tiny Scandinavian nation so darn good at endurance sports? To answer this question fully, I’d have to write an entire book. And fortunately, Brad Culp has already done so. The Norwegian Method: The Culture, Science & Humans Behind the Groundbreaking Approach to Endurance Performance explains the Norwegian wave and places it in its proper historical and cultural context, and I highly recommend it.
But for the sake of time, I’ll break it down into its basic principles, how to structure workouts, and why I believe this style of training isn’t a “fad” and is here to stay.
What is the Norwegian Training Method?
As you’ll discover when you read Culp’s book, there’s more to the Norwegian Method than a certain style of training. But on the subject of training, two key elements receive the most public attention:
- double-threshold workouts, and
- blood lactate testing.
Double threshold (or “double T” as the kids call it) involves doing two big interval workouts on the same day. Blood lactate measurements are taken frequently during these and other workouts to ensure the athlete doesn’t exceed the lactate threshold (LT), an intensity that an athlete can sustain for 45-55 minutes in competitive conditions.
In reality, it’s not just about “double-T” or lactate testing, though. The idea behind Norwegian-style training is to spend more time at threshold intensity without overtaxing the body, yielding greater fitness with less overall risk.
Very few non-elite endurance athletes have any business doing two interval workouts in one day. Unless you’re already training twice a day throughout the week, a sudden jump to doing two hard workouts six hours apart would break you down, not build you up.
Likewise, very few nonelite athletes have any desire to draw blood during workouts.
So does this mean the Norwegian Method is only for the elites?
Not at all.
Distinguishing Principle from Practice
It’s important to distinguish principles from practices in emulating elite methods in endurance training.
Pro marathoners might log 120 miles per week, but everyday marathoners don’t need to match that number to benefit from elite training methods. The underlying principle is simple: run a lot relative to your own capacity – a standard any runner can apply.
The same idea applies to the Norwegian Method. Double-threshold days simply reflect a broader principle: prioritize more threshold work than traditional endurance programs typically prescribe.
Structuring Norwegian-Style Threshold Workouts
When structuring your workouts, keep the underlying principle of the Norwegian Training Method: prioritize threshold work. For example, if you’re an athlete who trains six times per week, applying this principle would mean doing two to three threshold interval workouts per week, rather than just one, but never two in one day.
The same idea extends to the actual structure of the workouts. Typical workouts for Jakob Ingebrigtsen are as follows:
- 10 x 1000m @ LT with 1:00 rest
- 20 x 400m @ LT with 0:30 rest
These are big sessions—too big for a lot of runners. But that’s okay. Again, it’s about the principle, not replicating exactly what the elites do.
Traditional workouts targeting lactate threshold intensity feature prolonged efforts (often referred to as tempo blocks) at LT.
An example is 2 x 20:00 @ LT. By dividing these tempo blocks into shorter intervals separated by very short recoveries, you’re able to spend more time at threshold, yielding more fitness.
This is the principle you need to apply if you want to train like a Norwegian. The only difference is how much you can do without overtaxing your body. Perhaps 6 x 1000 meters and 14 x 400 meters are more appropriate.
Training Tip → Build structured workouts in TrainingPeaks and sync them seamlessly to your device. Combine blocks (warm-up, intervals, recovery, cool-down) with targets (like power, heart rate, pace, or RPE), and set them by time or distance. Also, you can save each workout to your library for easy reuse!
Lactate Testing: Is it Necessary?
As for lactate testing, even those who engage in this practice admit it’s not always necessary. No less an authority than Olav Bu, the former coach of Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden, told triathlete.com in 2021, “We could probably remove a lot of the tools I have today and still get to where we are.”
A Few Thoughts on Testing
Some people believe lactate testing enables athletes to dial in their intensity very precisely, but this isn’t always the case. That’s because lactate measurements are usually delayed; by the time the blood sample reaches the test strip, minutes have passed since your muscles produced the lactate it contains.
The most you can do with the result is make a correction in the next interval, but even this isn’t an exact science; you just try to go a little slower or a little faster depending on whether your lactate level was higher or lower than the target.
What’s more, there is no universally accepted definition of lactate threshold, which is more of a mathematical construct than an actual physiological phenomenon. The commonly used 4.0 mmol/L value is “one size fits some.” On top of all that, if you underwent a formal lactate threshold test every day, you would get a slightly different result every day because your body is a little different every day.
For all of these reasons, in-workout lactate testing doesn’t always enable athletes to train any more precisely than training by pace, power, or heart rate. But it does encourage athletes to perform their interval workouts with greater discipline than most would in these types of sessions.
So how do you know if you’re training at threshold?
You can find your lactate threshold in a few different ways outside of a lab setting. One popular method is the “talk test,” where lactate threshold is identified as the workload at which you can no longer comfortably talk. You learn more about it, and other ways to test your threshold, here: The Importance of Lactate Threshold and How to Find Yours.
It’s important to note that when you’re doing Norwegian-style interval workouts, they might seem too easy— like you could run each rep a lot faster. But that’s the point. It’s only as the intervals pile up that the session becomes challenging.
How I Became a Believer
When the Norwegian wave struck in 2021, I was sick with long COVID and couldn’t run. And a lifelong endurance athlete and an experienced coach, I’m accustomed to using myself as a guinea pig for new training methods.
With its sound logic and elite pedigree, the Norwegian Method seemed well worth a try to me, but it wasn’t until 2024 that I was healthy enough to begin incorporating Norwegian-style interval sessions into my training. And when I did, I experienced the same benefits others talk about.
The workouts themselves were very doable. I always felt great the next day, I could tolerate frequent doses of threshold work, and I got fitter quickly.
On the basis of this experience, I started applying the Norwegian Method to the athletes I coach, and the results were similar. On the basis of these results, I teamed up with my colleagues at 80/20 Endurance and built a selection of training plans on TrainingPeaks that are now accessible to everyone.
There are currently 56 plans available in TrainingPeaks. Plans range from all different distances and ability levels, from 5K to the marathon. You can also choose between pace and power-based training, or meters and yards for swimming plans.
I’ve been a student of endurance sports since the mid-1980s, when I ran high school track and cross country. I’ve seen a lot of training fads come and go, and I’m proud to say I didn’t fall for any of those that failed to deliver on the early hype. But I will say that the Norwegian Method is the most significant innovation in endurance training that’s happened in my lifetime.
It’s not a fad and it’s here to stay because—when properly scaled to the individual—it really works. I will continue to practice it in my own training and apply it with the athletes I coach, and I strongly encourage you to try it yourself.
