Norwegian Method: The Culture, Science, and Humans Behind the Groundbreaking Approach to Elite Endurance Performance

by Brad Culp

Find out how a sparsely-populated country came to dominate the world of endurance sports and get a blueprint for high performance. 

Norway has long stacked the field with champions in sports like Nordic skiing and sailing, but a new generation of athletes has arrived on the endurance scene, smashing records and grabbing medals in running, cycling, and triathlon.

Sports journalist Brad Culp unpacks the rise of the Norwegian method and its meticulous scientific protocols, which upend long-held beliefs about training and performance.

With its rugged terrain and harsh weather, Norway has a way of hardening competitors for any test. Culp explores the how the Scandinavian culture imbues a unique biopsychosocial approach to performance. He also introduces the athletes, coaches, and scientists who are shaking up the world of endurance sports. Their secret? Plenty of volume at low intensity, punctuated with hard-fought double-threshold workouts, which seems to turn workhorses into winners—they know when to hold back and when to go all-out.

The Norwegian Method is a real-life story of how discipline and determination can be employed to overcome seemingly impossible odds and achieve breakthrough performances. Culp drives this point home by introducing U.S. pros who have reconfigured their training to look more like that of Norway’s Jakob Ingebritgsen and Kristian Blummenfelt, and how endurance athletes can adopt the same methods in their own pursuit of high performance.

Genres: Fitness

230 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 22, 2024

Reviews

[Jere · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very little Norwegian Method, too much filler sotries. An entertaining read nevertheless, that will leave you somewhat motivated to train more. I wish I could give it a better score, but the prose is average at best, and at times it just read as someone trying to reach a page goal.

Not that many things to take home, tho: increase volume, decrease intensity. I have taken some notes that I'll try and see if they help me in my own training (both in running and lifting), but that could have easily been a blogpost.

[Arif · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book to understand the breakthrough training system

Liked the flow, definitely interesting to look at norwegian success holistically. I recommend this book if you likecendurance sports and see if you could beefit adopting from the best athletes these days.

[Primo S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The end of the 2025 season was definitely the right time to read this book. From Jakob Ingebrigtsen's utterly dominant and record breaking indoor season (we're not gonna talk about his nonexistent outdoor season, but hey, he broke 2 world records in one race during the indoor season, who else does that?), to the podium sweep by 3 Norwegians in the Ironman World Championship (2 of them heavily featured in this book, and the other one is their training partner), and not to mention the fact that a Norwegian also won the women's world championship.

In other words, if you're a fan of endurance sports (especially distance running and triathlon), it's hard not to notice the fact that Norway has been punching above its weight these past few years. And this book gets to the possible reasons as to why that's been the case. One of those things being the threshold training that's been very popular recently.

Honestly I only read this book for the threshold stuff, because as someone who likes endurance training but hates training hard, threshold training has always been very appealing as you don't have to try as hard compared to if you're training using a more conventional training method, or so I thought, but of course it's all more complicated than that. And that can be said about this book in general.

Not only will you get a pretty clear explanation of what threshold training is according to several people who are pivotal in popularizing the whole thing, but this book also contains a short history of the Vikings, life in Norway, and most importantly, other parts of the Norwegian method that are maybe not as popular as the double threshold craze that's been taking over social media.

It's a well written book, very easy to understand even to someone who doesn't know much about exercise physiology. And it feels like a thoroughly-structured book, encompassing many important figures in the history of the Norwegian method, and it shows how it's not just all about the Ingebrigtsen family, although they're perhaps the ones who popularized it the most.

Even though the specifics differ depending on who you're talking to, the book makes it clear that keeping intensity under control during hard sessions in order to enable quicker recovery and maintain high training volume is the key tenet of the Norwegian method.

Could the book have gotten more in depth about the method itself? Maybe, but that would probably sacrifice the readability of the book in favor of science that most people won't understand, and the book points to places where readers can find stuff like that, like Marius Bakken's website.

So, overall, while it might not be as in depth as some readers want, this book is still an excellent overview of the people involved in the Norwegian method and the long history behind it.

[Jared Beasley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fast-paced book that begins with the "pagans from the north" and takes you into the Olympics of the '70s and right up to today. Full of diagrams and charts, Culp delves into the blueprint of The Norwegian Method. But he also shows the humas that brought it to life: the Mother of the method, the Godfather, and the Mastermind. From Greta Weitz to Ingrid Kristiansen to a blogger in 2020, this book is a fantastic 360 view of high volume, low intensity workouts. It also gets into concepts such as Live High, Train Low and double-threshold days. It's a great book for top-tier athletes but also helpful for beginners to better understand what all those numbers on their watches mean.

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed learning about the triathletes (I was very unfamiliar with them), but in my edition of the book there were some mistakes about the runners.

Coe is the president of World Athletics, he has never been president of the IOC (he recently lost in the election).

Cheruiyot was not the defending Olympic champion in Tokyo 2020/2021 (he didn’t win in Rio 2016): he was the reigning *World* Champion (he won in Doha 2019).

Jakob doesn’t live in the suburbs of Oslo. He lives in Sandnes, in the West of Norway.

The brothers broke up with their father already in early 2022, not in the fall of 2023 (that’s when they made public their allegations towards him).

[Joshua Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow down, double up, and get out the door

There’s a lot more than training wisdom and profiles of some of the best and most interesting athletes in the world in The Norwegian Method. Many coming to the book will believe the method is the double threshold and higher volume at lower intensity, but the buried lede is the method is really a lifestyle of cultivating contentment along with competition, tolerance to an ever changing world and environment, and waking up each day curious and committed to your own potential.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cool that he went beyond “double threshold”. Instead he explored the psychology and cultural aspects that surround Norwegian athletes and the general population. He also grounded the allure of the Norwegian method and how it’s unlikely everyone would benefit from adopting their training methods. With that said, the principles he outlines goes beyond training methods but rather focuses on a holistic approach to life and running.

[Kallin · Rating 4 out of 5]

More about the athletes that use versions of the Norwegian method than about the method itself, which was enjoyable, but not what I was expecting.

[Abaseen Afghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helpful building a better understanding about Norwegian training principles and was also fun to read. Particularly enjoyed reading real life stories of coaches and athletes.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it

[Merc Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The culture is why Norwegians are dominant.