15 Ways Jakob Ingebrigtsen Has Unlocked Human Potential

There are things out there if you just open your eyes and, and, and you can, you know, you can keep that competition intensity going, you know, if you wanted to, week in, week out. And, and this really is a good segue to what Inga Britzen does so well. He keeps his intensity by, by keeping on putting a number on. So, so I just really encourage everybody to, to just not go in their shells and to look for, for events that, whether they're just, you know, little short club races or they're big, big national marathons or trail runs or whatever, just keep your eyes open for what you could be doing in the next four weeks, next eight weeks, next 12 weeks.

This podcast is brought to you by Trivalo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. What Jakob Inger Britson is doing in athletics right now is insane. He's the current 5000 meter world champion, the 1500 meter Olympic gold medalist, and last weekend he obliterated the rest of the field in a world record for the two mile by a massive four seconds, where he was so far out in front of the rest of the field it actually looked like a high school race. And he's only 22 years old, meaning we could be witnessing the start of one of the most historic athletic careers in history. So how is he so good and what is he doing differently to all the other athletes out there? The Ingredson family, including his father, who's his coach, are renowned for some of their strange or unique methods and approaches to training and racing. And today we're going to discuss 15 of their known training and racing principles that have propelled him to this level. So, dad, awesome episode coming up, we can't wait to discuss this athlete, one of our favorites. But first, let's go with our starting segment. What are you grateful for?

Yeah, it sure will be a great segment because this guy is just outstanding in everything he's doing at the moment and he's hitting the mark everywhere. Everything he does turns to gold. So I can't wait to discuss what is enabling him to do to achieve such success. So it's a great topic. What am I grateful for? This week, this sort of dawned on me a little bit that I've gone from no grandchildren to three in a row really quickly. And it has been amazing to see the journey that the three little kids are on. The eldest, Eden's nearly three years old. And then we've got Archie and Banks and they're between three and six months old. And so their development is incredible to watch. Their intelligence, the way they grasp things, the way they learn things, and from what coaching point of view, it's just phenomenal how quickly they learn things from language to happiness. Sadness, crawling, walking, rolling, making sounds is such an amazing thing to watch kids develop so quickly. And some of the things they come out with are hilarious at times. And just, they, they just pick you up on things that you're doing wrong. In their own little way, you. You say things wrong. And Eden in particular, she says, instead of saying, no, that that's not right, Papa, she says, and then corrects me with the right answer. And it's quite hilarious watching her do that. If I say, well, look at the red ball, she'll go, ah, it's green, Papa. And you know, she's not picking on me, she's just telling me black and white. That, that, that's. You've got it wrong. So it's. Yeah, it's a really great. A great period to be a grandparent and I'm really enjoying it.

Awesome. That's a good one. My gratitude is quite simply just for exercise. There's a few people around me, including yourself, who are currently injured or can't train. And it just definitely reminds me of how grateful I am to be able to exercise and use my body daily. Definitely grateful for it. Moving on to what's caught your attention and we want to start this by giving you a quick update on your recovery. You're now five to six weeks post surgery and everyone's following along the journey and this week hasn't been a good one. So give us a quick update.

Yeah, it's great. Your gratitude is the fact you can exercise. I'm nearly at the point at six weeks where I'm supposed to be allowed to walk quite a lot and eventually I'm going to be able to start to ride the stationary trainer and do some movement patterns where I can start to stretch a little bit. So I was fully prepared for this slow progress. As I've told everybody right from the beginning, I've got a good mindset and I'm really looking forward to the days when I can actually do exercise where I'm getting my cardiovascular system to actually be working and that means getting my heart rate above 100 and actually breathing where I'm puffing. And I'm looking forward to that. That seems really minor, doesn't it? But I Am really looking forward to huffing and puffing and getting a sweat up because that has not happened in six. And I suppose the update I'd like to say is yep, the journey's going, but I really had a very average week and it was almost bordering on quite depressing because I was getting, getting along with my walking, you know, able to walk 20 or 30 minutes and all of a sudden I did a slight strain on my calf in, in the walking phase of my program. And so now I can't walk because it hurts too much. And I tried to walk through it, but it's actually quite painful. And then just walking around, generally when I'm not actually meant to be doing a walk, walking around hurts. So I've actually had to stop any walking and let the thing heal. And it's now been day eight of no walking. And so it became quite, almost depressing to think that you've been restricted from what you can do and then when you can do it, you're actually restricted because you've injured yourself on top of an injury. It almost sounds comical, doesn't it, when, when things just go from bad to worse and, and I laugh, but it is, it is really annoying and it's very minor, but you know, it'll be right within a few more days and I'll be able to walk again. But, but yeah, you do go through highs and lows and I just want to, I just want to make the point that, you know, as prepared as I am and I'm on board and motivated mentally, really strong. It was quite tough to feel sad and sorry for yourself about what's actually happening in your little world, even though it is very minor.

Yeah, and it's such a good point that any journey is not linear. You know, we, and this is just so key when starting a program. We just expect our progress to be linear. We're just going to keep going straight up, straight up with no interruptions. And it's just never that way. You're always going to have a setback. You might have a few good weeks of, you know that classic adage of take two steps forward and one step back and you might have a few weeks of two steps forward, two steps forward, two steps forward. But then you might have a week where it's two step backwards or one step back and you've just got to expect that and prepare for that.

Exactly. So, yeah, so it's not a winch. It's just, I'm just trying to keep everybody across the actual, the fluctuations that can occur. And so if, if you happen to be in a similar situation, be prepared for them and, and just, just ride them out.

One of the other things we wanted to touch on was we, we have spoken about this a little bit in other podcasts is as we come into this winter period, we've spok there sometimes can be a lack of motivation with the weather. It definitely isn't as fun training in the cold and wet compared to the sunshine. But one thing that we've noticed is there's plenty of things to look forward to and, and get yourself kind of geared up for and, and motivated about in terms of, in terms of racing and the opportunities out there.

Yeah, it's, it's so important to, during the periods and obviously the people listen to this in the northern hemisphere are coming into their summer season and all the races are on and the people in the Southern hemisphere are coming into win winter. So there seemingly isn't a lot to on offer but I beg to differ. And it's just a matter of you going and looking outside the box and even doing some cross training stuff if you had to. But you know, just in the last week or the next week or this weekend, we've got Ironman Cairns, we've got the Australian Duathlon Championships in Canberra, we've got one of our riders who's overseas and you could do that as well leave the southern hemisphere and go to the Northern hemisphere and she's doing the Mon Fontou Gran Fondo. We've got cycling individual time trials got for those of you who are stuck inside, we've got the Trivalo Zwift Winter series that we put on which is an eight week series of races every Thursday night. There's park runs all over the world every Saturday morning. We've got guys doing progressive 30k runs this week and in preparation for the Gold Coast Marathon in the Sunshine coast in Queensland which is on in a week or two, we've got a three stage tour in one of the country towns locally here in Victoria, the Bendigo three stage tour. We've got a staircase run up one of the tallest buildings in Melbourne. We've got a 50k trail race down at Torquay. There's gravel races going on each weekend. So there are things out there if you just open your eyes and, and, and you can, you know, you can keep that competition intensity going, you know, if you wanted to week in, week out. And, and this really is a good segue to what Ingebritzen does so well. He keeps his intensity by, by keeping on putting a number on. And what do we mean by that? You know, entering or entering a race is putting a number on. So, so I just really encourage everybody to, to, to just not go in their shells and to, and to look for, for events that, whether they're just, you know, little short club races or they're big, big national marathons or, or trail runs or whatever, just keep your eyes open for what you could be doing in the weeks.

Yeah, spot on. And before we move right into Ingeritson, we did want to quickly touch on the event where his world record took place, which was the Diamond League in Paris, because it was one of the most incredible Diamond League races ever and Diamond League events ever. And we do talk about the Diamond League a lot, especially the last three weeks. I think we've spoken about it every podcast, but far out, it is a great example of, of what is happening in the world. And there was three world record records broken as well as a whole bunch of national and area records. And Faith Kip Yagon, one week after breaking the 1500 meter world record, breaks the 5000 meter world record, steps up, hasn't done the distance, you know, race in racing format in a long time and breaks the world record in what was just an incredible performance. The 3000 meter steeplechase world record was broken. And then Keely hodgson in the 800 broke her own national record and ran a blistering 155 and was so far ahead of the pack, it was just a ridiculous season opener for her. It's going to be a very, very exciting upcoming season.

Well, the thing that astounded me was those three world records, the rest of the field were not in the picture for the majority of those events. And you know, the 800 was, was not that close. The 3,000 steeplechase, you would have thought that he was on the track himself doing a time trial because, because the other athletes had not hit the steeple. The water jump, which is 150 meters behind the world record time, they were 16 seconds behind. And, and of course the 5,000 meter, there was only one other female within 20 meters, 30 meters. And the rest of the field were at the start of the start of the front straight. So, so all those efforts, so that, that talks a little bit about are the rest of the field so far behind because their form is poor coming into the start of the season, or are these three athletes, four athletes over the last couple of weeks just outstandingly cut above the rest of the world?

I encourage anyone to go and watch those races Go find it on YouTube or something because they are just so exciting to watch. And I, I watched them live again and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And once again my jaw was on the floor watching all these things unfold. It was, it was honestly insane. And then yeah, to top it off, all of them were just as impressive, pretty impressive as each other. But we really want to focus on, on Yakov IGA bits and day and his two mile record was, he beat it by four seconds. The two mile record was 758. He ran a 754 and that is sub 230 for three K's in a row plus the extra 200 meters. Really just incredible. So we're going to go through what we know about his training and racing principles now. They've, they've been pretty guarded in, in what they do in training and racing for a long time and they've slowly revealed little bits of information here and there. They're still quite secretive about their, their racing tactics and some of their lactate testing methods. But we've got 15 training principles and methods that we found that we really want to discuss. And for pre context before we talk about this, we really want to hone in on the fact that this is the top of the crop, you know, this is the best in the world and how he's gotten here. And his story is very unique and these athletes don't come around every so often so you don't need to copy every single thing he does. But it's great to look at in detail what he's doing and pick the parts that we can pick and choose and learn from. And I think the main point is that for most people a lot of training methods will work and there's a wide variety of training methods out there that you could do to help you. You could do a lot of endurance training with not much high intensity. You could do the classic 8020 rule. You could do if you're short on time, a lot of high intensity and not much else because you've only got a few certain hours in the week. And so what you need to figure out is what kind of athlete you are, what, what can, what can work for you and try and take some of these principles and methods and apply them to you. And as long as you're getting training overload, you know, basic principles of progression, basic principles of endurance and training and adaptation and forcing your body to grow and adapt to response, then you're probably going to improve. Uh, and I guess the main Point is, there's, there's many different ways to skin a cat, but I think if you can, yeah. Take some of these lessons with a grain of salt and know that he is the absolute top. We're not saying model exactly what Jakob does, but we do really want to touch on these because they're pretty interesting to look at.

They sure are. And I think you have to also take into consideration that we're talking about a runner and we're not talking about a triathlete or a cyclist. You know, a cyclist is, is not really pounding the pavement, so to speak. He's got a bike underneath him. And so therefore the load is different to being a runner. And as a triathlete, you're spreading the load between three events. So I think, I think this is a really important point for, for the everyday athlete out there who, who is a triathlete or is a cyclist runner that, you know, depending on what your sport requirements are, running is probably the most detrimental to, to your body recovering quickly because it is the hardest, you know, hardest activity on the body. The load is huge for running as compared to, to cycling, for example, or rowing or even triathlon, where it's spread. There is a running component in triathlon, obviously, and you know, it is a marathon or half, a half, Half Marathon or 10K or A. They're quite impacting sports, but you're not running them at the same intensity as the elite runners are. So don't think that if you're a triathlete trying to improve your running that you should be taking exactly what a runner is doing at this high elite level, because that would be a mistake. And so I just think you need to be very careful about when you see what other people are doing. Exactly what you just mentioned in your introduction. You've got to understand where you are and in your journey as a. In this particular case, as a runner. And I was actually having a conversation during the week with a couple of the athletes that I'm coaching who have only been on board for 12 weeks. And, and I was explaining to them that the things that, that they would be doing compared to the athletes I've been coaching for five or six years as runners are completely different because you will have the, the load on you that you've never had before. And especially if you're new to the sport, compared to someone who may have been running like Jacob Inger Britzen since he was eight years of age, he's just been doing that his whole life. And he's got other brothers who have been pushing him along that journey. That has negative and positive influences on it as well because of too much stress on the body. But you've got to be careful that you don't just jump into a running program without having first given yourself the, giving your body the time to adapt to the load because you will undoubtedly injure yourself straight away.

Yeah, and it's, it's great that you made that point because principle number one is their, their overall arching principle for training and improving is volume based. They want as high volume as they can possibly handle. And in his case, he can handle 180km a week of running, which is just massive. It's absolutely monstrous. And if anyone knows professional runners, that is way or pretty high above a lot over what a lot of professional runners are doing. I think Kipchoge, the goat marathon runner, I think he on the averages 140 to 160. So for Inger Britzen, a track runner, a 1500 to 5000 meter specialist, to be that volume base is very interesting. And so I guess the principle can apply to all sports. And the fact that he's doing it in running means that, you know, you can be volume based in cycling and suing. Now, once again, we're not saying you need to go and aim to build up to 180km, but he has said multiple times in interviews he believes that if most people could progress and do this slowly and conservatively, but progress to get their volume as high as possible, they will become a stronger, much stronger athlete.

Yep, agreed. And look, knowing the history of his brothers who are very injury prone, it works for some. And in the one family you've got it working for one and not so good for the other brothers in the family because they have actually been injured a lot. And he's been able to build up to this volume over a long, long time. And it's not something that he's just done in the last 18 months, he's been building that running volume seemingly forever. So I'm a big believer in volume as you know. And I think most of the data that we have from the improvement for people who are doing PBS as a 5k or a 10k or even up to half Marath and of course at marathon level, it's because the volume is increased and they've been able to adapt to that load. And the people who, who are not able to do that endurance run, they're the ones who are kind of stagnating with their improvement. And there is a high correlation between being able to get lots of running into your legs in terms of time on your feet and then starting to see and not, not at intensity and not, not just, you know, long slow running, but variations with, with different, different tempo, different terrain, getting that, getting that into your body. And then you can start to run fast if you don't have that base. And funnily enough, I heard, I heard in your Brits and use the house analogy, you know, you know, if you don't have the base, you can't, you can't, you don't have the foundation, you can't run fast, you can't build a really good house without a good base. So you've got to have the foundation. And that means spending not a few weeks building your volume, but a long time. I'm talking years. So don't be too impatient with that. And if you've got a long term view in terms of your running career, if you're a young 20 year old, don't be trying to run a marathon in year one. You know, build yourself up from, and you know, I've told you this, the same thing. You know, your motivation to run a marathon or half marathon is really high. But it's, it's not, you're not in the shape to do that yet. It's not good, it's not a good load for your body unless you've had years of, of adaptation to that. So you, you will actually try to keep running four years without having periods of four months off with a stress fracture or, or you know, some other injury, foot strain or navicular or ach that are going to stop you from doing that. Consistency. And therefore you'll never reach your potential because you're just pushing yourself ahead of your time.

Yeah, it's such a great point to start off with and, and it's principle number one and such, such an important point to get right because it's, it's the foundational structure. And then that leads into point number two, which is what we always talk about. And, and principle number two from them is consistency. And they're just so much about consistency to the point where he doesn't have any rest days. And you have to, you have to understand the approach they're coming from with consistency here. And what they're trying to say is don't, you're not trying to train so hard no matter what that you, you never miss a day. And no matter what they're saying, train so that you don't have to miss a day, you know, so that you can be as consistent as possible because they want to train every day. And. And he's actually sitting a quote. He doesn't understand why athletes would need rest days because their training program should be good enough that they can train every day. So that's super interesting.

And almost the next step on that is if you need a lot of rest days. And I'm sometimes a believer in rest days, depending on what your load is and the experience of the athlete. But if you. If you at his level needs to have a rest day, it may be that he's training too hard to warrant that. So if he's that exhausted, he needs to. You know, we're not giving advice to Ingridtson here, but we're giving advice from his interpretation of what he thinks consistency is. And, you know, you should be able to maintain some sort of, you know, training exercise on a daily basis where you've got variety, so that at the end of the day you maintain consistency rather than training so hard that you have to have two or three days off. And having one day off here and there is absolutely fine. But the fact that consistency will be blown out of the water if you're so tired from the previous training that you can't actually front up. You're not injured, but you're just too tired.

Yeah, let's make a clear distinction here. He's not saying you're not allowed to have any rest days. Cause this leads us to principle number three, which is they are super conservative. So their health is their priority, the consistency is priority. And so whenever they're on the edge of injury or sickness, they take a rest day.

So.

So that point number two is no rest days means they're trying not to program any scheduled rest days into the program. But point number three, they're super conservative. There's been plenty of times where he's actually pulled out of a race because he was either just on the edge of sickness or something like that. I shouldn't say plenty of times because it doesn't happen often, but they are willing to have a rest day or pull out of something because their overall health is a priority to make sure they can stay consistent in the long term.

Yeah, that's a tough one to get across. Because the motivated athletes, probably the worst athlete in the world to coach, because they just ignore all the signals, and that's the big mistake. So you're still better off being conservative and. And try to prioritize. Am I feeling, you know, less than 5 out of 10? Less than 6 out of 10. And if you are when you wake up in the morning, you know, that's a good indicator that, you know, maybe you're going downhill rapidly and you could end up ill. You know, the immune system is amazing. If you, if you don't give it the respect and you just push on regardless, you will get sick. And, you know, there's a lot. There's still covert going around the world. There's lots of flus going around the world and you'll pick up and that will ruin your consistency and that will prevent you from getting the volume. The first two points will be ruined if you're not conservative enough and not looking after your health as a priority.

Yep, spot on. And there's one story that is well documented and he's actually said in an interview where he woke up one morning to do a 10k race and had the slightest sniffles and head cold, very, very slight. And he pulled out. And they asked him about it and he said most athletes would probably just race because it's so minor. And he was willing to pull out. So that. And this is all combined with the next one, which is principle number four. And this allows you to do principle number two and three. And you actually touched on this already. And that's don't go too hard in training. And he said this over and over again. He said athletes just go way too hard in training and that means that you sometimes can't be consistent because you're too tired, you risk injury higher. And he said training is not the time to go flat out and go too hard. He said racing is.

Yeah, I want to say something about this. This is a. One of the things that I love, I heard him say is he was actually trying to work out why athletes go so hard in training. And his reasoning was that they lack confidence. They lack confidence in their ability to race well, because if they haven't done it in training, how am I going to do it in a race? And once you start to race well, then you actually don't have this problem because you know that some sessions need to be run with intent and others don't. And that's the thing that he's feels like he's mastered is I don't need to run harder than race day in training. And, and I loved that when I heard him say that was, you know, don't think about training as the, as the days where you've got to really push yourself and, and you feel good about it in training. If you've had a great training session, it's fantastic because you've hit the numbers that you're wanting to hit and the coach would be happy with that as well. But if that's actually caused you to be exhausted in the process, then it's actually not a good thing. And that goes back to, you know, conservative approach is better. And then if you're that exhausted, you won't maintain the consistency, then you won't be able to do the volume. So they're all intertwining with each other. And, and so make the days that you intend to go hard as your race days and make the training a preparation day rather than actually today. I'm going to blow this session out of the park. That's actually not what the intention of, of practice as we like to call it, rather than training practice is practicing things in training so you can actually execute them on race day.

Principle number five, this is a great one because it's so in line with, with one of your main theories in and that is that he does minimal track sessions. And how does this apply to, to triathletes, cyclists, swimmers is track sessions are real speed sessions and they're the real fun sessions for, for athletics professionals. But he does absolute minimal track sessions in his training program until he's getting close to a race. Then he'll start to do some real speed work to, to really sharpen up and make sure you can get that speed in so he can run fast in the actual race. But for triathletes, we rarely want them doing this speed work, especially Ironman and half ironman athletes. And look, even Olympic distance, they're endurance sports. And so this is a real key one that we love.

Yeah. And people would often ask where am I getting my intensity from if I'm not doing the hard sessions on the track? As a triathlete it's easy because you can just jump on the bike and train quite solid and get your intensity there where you're really trying to push your cardiovascular system to its limit. And you can recover quite well because the load isn't on your legs from running. Running with intensity. So doing minimum amount of track sessions has a whole lot of positives because it's going to limit the opportunity for you to injure yourself. It's going to also prevent you from going into poor health because you are so run down from running yourself into the ground Then we've heard these legendary sessions over the generations of, of 4004 hundreds and 5100 meters. These are sessions that are great for the mindset, but they're probably not that good for Your progression as a runner, they're going to be more detrimental. Probably if you're going to be exhausted or sore for days and possibly weeks post these sessions, then you're actually ruining your whole season by doing, by doing too much of this, this type of training. So, so yeah, definitely the minimal track sessions is a key component that we want to, that we want to steer clear of and especially in the endurance events that we're talking about for, you know, for a marathon runner, for an Ironman triathlete or an endurance Gran Fondo rider, as, as three sports I'm grabbing here. You know, the high intensity stuff is important, but you can get it where you don't have to run short. Two hundreds, four hundreds, eight hundreds. They're just not sessions that I would be doing for an Ironman triathlete and I wouldn't be doing it for an age group marathon runner. The risk is too high for injury and the fatigue factor is just massive for the next session. And then it comes back to the consistency is going to drop stop because you can't do the next session and therefore you're running. Volume, which is key, is going to disappear.

Yeah, you'll love principle number six, dad. And that is you must do hill repeats. Hill repeats are a cornerstone part of their program and basically every Saturday is a hill repeat session. An example of what they do is, is 20 times 200 meter hill repeats, which again they've, they've built up to that load. But that is just a key principle that you are totally on board with.

Yeah, and look, what about hill repeats that is so good about them. And my simple summary is when you're in an event, Whether it's a 1500 or a 5K on the track, or whether you're doing a time trial that's 20, 20K and you're in the last 5K of that time trial, whether you're a marathon runner and you're in the last 7k of the marathon, what are the things that are going to be helpful to you to maintain the pace or the power or the intensity that you want to keep going from start to finish? Well, it's your ability to be strong at the end. And how do you get that? Well, you would get that from doing things that require strength, which is, you know, getting some uphill running into your legs. And you know, we can go to the extreme like the, the legendary Percy Saraty used to do hill repeats on the sand dunes down at, down at the Peninsula and here in Victoria. And you know, he would be flogging these guys, doing hill repeats in the sand, doing he repeats on solid grounds hard enough, but doing it in, in soft sand is, is got to be the hardest thing you'll ever do. It'll either make or break you. And as we all know, Herb Elliott became, you know, the Olympic gold medalist over 1500 meters and won that race by probably 15 or 20 meters. So, you know, he was a super strong athlete who could hold his pace from start to finish. And that's the value of having strength in your legs. And that's where the hill repeats come in. And you know, we do hill repeats where we're doing a gradual gradient. We do hill repeats in our undulating runs where it's not actually repeating the same hill, it's just doing an undulating run. But we're getting strength from two sessions of our running program each week, which will make you incredibly strong in the part where you're starting to tire and the stronger athletes will be able to maintain the pace. And that's why, that's why it's an imperative part of a training program. And it's also part of a cycling program and a swimming program where you're, you're trying to, trying to build the strength so that you can maintain the pace that you're selecting. And that's the key you're trying to do. The stronger you are, the less likely you are to fade.

Principle number seven. And this is, you asked this question before in terms of, you know, if you don't do any intensity on the track or any speed sessions, where are you going to get your intensity from? And there is answer for this is quite simple and that's, you need to front up consistently enough to races and use races for intensity.

We want to use, we want to use the races for our intensity rather than our training sessions. And, and you know, that is, that is such an obvious thing, but it's not really obvious because, because most people want to save their races for, for winning and losing. But, but if you're, if you're heading to your next Ironman, I don't want you to do no events between that race and now. So I would want you to have some stepping stone races that are going to enable you to practice the intensity that you might be looking for on race day rather than trying to do it in training sessions. Use some of the races that you get to practice specifically at the race intensity that you're intending. And if that doesn't mean, for example, an Ironman coming up in eight weeks, you should do an Ironman eight weeks earlier that's not what we're saying. We're saying use maybe an Olympic distance race or a sprint race or even up to a half ironman race if it's sufficiently far away from the main event to practice. All of your three chosen sports, your transitions and your execution of your race plan. They're things that you could use as well as the intensity factor where you probably be doing the intensity of that particular event higher than you would in your, in your Ironman race. So, so these are really good ways of getting intensity into your program where you're not. Not actually doing track sessions or, or stuff that's, that's, that's kind of okay, but it's not really specific enough for what you're trying to do on race day.

Yeah, and there's plenty of options and solutions available. You know, as you said, you can. If you're training for a half or a full Ironman, an Olympic distance might be a good option. But even an Olympic distance is a heavy load on the body so you've got to be careful about how many you do. And that's where you can break it down even further. And you might sign up for a 10k fun run to get some race intensity. You might sign up to a 40k bike time trial or you'll do a 90k solo time trial where you put your full race kit on full race wheels and do that. You might sign up to a teams event in a half Ironman's and you, and you do the ride portion or the swim portion to get used to what it feels like to race that distance but not have to do the full half Ironman. So there's plenty of ways to go around this to get yourself in those race environments and practice getting that intensity. Principle number nine is because their training is set up like this, their goal is to be able to step up and race all year round and not have such distinct periods of on season, off season where they're at completely out of form. You know, their volume based training consistency allows them just to have small blocks where they can step up and be able to get themselves in race form quite quickly by doing some more intensity in training in that lead up which we've just spoken about. And also getting some races in in a lead up to a potential by a race.

If you can use the analogy of lighting a fire, if you get the fire roaring and, and then when you, when you go to bed you, you don't do anything about going all night. You wake up the next Morning, you have to start again. As a training principle, we want to just keep the engine burning where we're not going over the top training, but we're maintaining some sort of volume that'll allow us to step up. Say there's a six week period between. I see a race that's just come on the calendar six weeks away because you've got such good fitness aerobic capacity already. You can step up with some, some short, sharp intensity using some other little racing sessions and then you can actually get to that race without having to do a 16 week program or a 20 week program where you're basically starting from a low base. So keeping that high base up all year round. Not necessarily the intensity but the volume and the consistency, they're the things that enable you to step up in any given part of the season when you might change your mind about things. If your form's better than it should be and you want to do some races that look like that are good for you now, or the opposite where your form's not so good and you want to step away. So being able to keep the engine burning or the fire alight for longer is a really good, good way to think about keeping, keeping your ability to step up when you want to.

Yeah, spot on. So the first, the first half of the principles have all been training based and principles 1 to 8 are all around kind of their training staff. And the second half, the back end of these principles is where we start to get into racing principles and how they go about their racing and what makes them so successful so consistently to the point where Jakob's father actually said if you watch, Jakob doesn't have many bad races and there's a lot of reasons for that. He's training so good the way they approach races but well, when it's time for a championship race, he, he doesn't, he rarely has a bad race. One of the only ones was the 1500 meter world champs last year where he, he came second and they were furious about that because they, they know that he should have, he should have won that race. But to quickly summarize the, the training principles, I want to go through an example training weekend. Through a lot of data we've been able to see what a potential example training week looks like for, for the Ingu Britons and Jakob. And this is how he spreads out his week. So on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays he's technical. Off days it's simply a 10 kilometer jog Morning and night. And for them this is classic zone two running very easy running. It's funny, his zone two is said to be between 3, 45 and 4 minute pace. That's how fit he is. But the point is he's doubling up and it's just 10k Monday morning, 10 kilometer morning, 10 kilometer night, and then he's Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays are his hard sessions with a Sunday long run. So it's a very standard kind of, of seven day running structure. But what's interesting is what they decide to do on the Tuesdays and Thursdays and they're very much classic Norwegian style based on lactate and these intensity sessions. And the Tuesday morning is threshold work. So it's, it's lower intensity trying to stay below that lactate threshold point. And they're doing an example is 5 by 6 minutes below that same below that, that first threshold point. So making sure that they're right at the tip of it, but staying below with one minute recovery. So that's some threshold work. And then at night they're doing some real intensity. So it's an example might be they've they've done before 8 to 10 times 1000 meters. And that's really high lactate, that's VO2 max work with about 30 seconds recovery. Wednesday like we said, morning and night jog. 10 kilometer zone 2 Thursday morning session example is 5 by 2k in the morning again it's kind of threshold work, but staying in that, at that below that lactate threshold. And then the night is something like 20 times 400 meters. Again VO2 max work, high, high speed work off 30 seconds rest. So this is just insane volume on these Tuesdays and Thursdays. But it's such a funny mix between threshold work in the morning and then really high intensity at night. Friday again it's 10k jog in the morning, 10k jog at night. Saturday is that hill repeat session that we spoke about 20 times 200 meters. And then Sunday is the long run. And I talk about consistency. Jakob has said that he does 20 kilometers every Sunday. He's the long run is key to his program. But he says he's never ran over 20 kilometers. He never pushes more than that. He never goes for 25, 30, 35. That's all the distance and volume he needs or he feel he needs throughout his week as well as in terms of the longest run he needs to do for his distance of events, which is 1500 3K 5K. So pretty interesting example training week to go through there.

Well, it's funny that last one you're talking about with the with the long endurance run. Well, I mean when you, when you've got that amount of kilometers into your legs, you're, when you don't need to go for, you know, three four hour runs. And you know, I always like to use the examples of the swimmers, swimmers who are swimming 50 meters, 100 meters, two hundreds and four hundreds, they're swimming twice a day and their volume is incredibly huge for such short actual races. And the load on the shoulders is quite massive, but, but it's not the same as running. And so you know, you, you really do need to think about how much is too much sometimes. And when you look at his program, he's, you know, he's running pretty much twice a day every day. And, and when you come to do your long run, you don't really need to do much more than you're already doing, especially when your key event is 1500-5K. So, so they, they're good examples of, of, of, of what, what a hard program could, could look like and where you can get the volume from. But it's interesting to note that there are a lot of Zone 2 runs in, in this program and you know, the majority of it is based, really built around that. You know, those Monday, Wednesday, Friday sessions where it's just Easy running for 20K, where you know, I can, I can imagine they would be chatting the whole time and you know, they're getting there in, they're getting their intensity from, from their Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday hill repeats and, and getting that endurance. And I imagine they'd be running through forests and trail runs on those, those endurance runs. I don't know that for sure, but I can imagine that's what they want. Some variety and some strength. But it is really almost agreeing with what we were saying earlier on before we looked at this particular program. And sure, there's intensity there and, and they can do this intensity because their body has been able with this load and, and of course they are still at risk at injury and, and their brothers have been very injured as we documented earlier on. So, so, you know, just because you're, you've been doing this a long time and you're an elite athlete doesn't mean you're immune from injury. Most, most people who are runners will have some sort of injury that they've got to deal with in their journey as an athlete. So, so, you know, this is a, this is a program from a guy who's been running for, you know, decades.

Yep, spot on. Let's get into some racing principles and this is some cool stuff to hear how they approach racing mentally and physically. And principle number nine is prioritizing sleep and the week leading into the race. And you know, Jakob emphasizes at least, you know, five days out, you really need to focus on getting good quality sleep. And I think this is more true for age groupers because, you know, in the week leading to a race, you probably don't have that much time to rest. You've probably still got to work, turn up to work each day, get through your normal work week or life week, week. So it is a bit harder to prioritize rest and good sleep, which is why it becomes more important.

Yep. And we've, we, we do bang on about sleep a lot. And, and you know, I know from my own experience when I'm sleeping better, I'm actually performing better just as a normal human being the next day. So imagine how, how much impact it's going to have on whether you're a runner or swimmer or a rider. You know, it is, it is got so many valuable things around it. It is great recovery but you know, it's where all the restoration happens when we're sleeping. You know, the repair of all the damaged tissues is happening when we're sleeping. So these are the things that if we don't get enough of it, we are actually limiting our ability to improve and to become a better athlete all around.

Yeah. Principle number 10, nutrition wise, just really make sure you're eating easily digestible food leading up to the race. And that's quite a general principle. But I think his point is one, you should practice this and know what foods agree with you. Two, get educated on what foods are good for you leading into a race and make sure that your body isn't trying to spend time digesting crap crap in the, in the lead up and you're giving yourself the best fuel possible in the lead up to a race. And once again, this is more appropriate for endurance athletes, Half Iron man and Iron man because you will be using every single last bit of fuel source in those races.

Yeah. Good example. Jordan is one of the guys we love to, to follow Lionel Sanders. He's just been well documented on his YouTube channel about how poorly he's been eating over the last two or three seasons. And, and he thinks there's a high correlation. He's, he couldn't have trained any harder in his opinion. And he's done everything. The one thing that he thinks he's done very poorly is, is his food consumption and his nutrition. And, and it's, it's going to be interesting to see whether he starts to turn around his form by changing one thing and, and that is, you know, eating so much better. And he's actually going, as usual, to the extreme level here. And he's, he's, you know, he documents, he's. He's now at the kitchen cooking stuff and it's all, you know, really wholesome vegetables and it's fantastic because it's actually what should be happening, happening. But you've got to work out, as you said, what is going to be good for your functionality as an athlete. And there are some foods that, you know, that will agree and won't agree with you, and you've got to work your way around those. And especially pre race day, the weeks leading into it and the getting enough fuel for your actual training sessions as well as race day. So it seems like just one of the many points, but it is, is, you know, if, if you don't put petrol in a car, it won't go. If you don't fuel the body properly, you will have less than. You'll have a very ordinary outcome.

Principle 11 conserve as much energy as possible in the days leading up to and on race day. And he's just saying, save all your energy for the race. You want all, everything that you're going to put into, into the race and just. And as much as possible, conserve. And I love George Hincapi's quote on this, where he says, as a cyclist, you know, he says, if I've got the chance to take the elevator or the stairs, I'll always take the elevator. And if I've got the chance to sit down instead of stand up, I'll sit down. If I've got the chance to lie down instead of sit down, I'll lie down. If I've got the chance to fall asleep rather than stay awake, I'll fall asleep. Because he's just outside of training and racing, he's conserving as much energy as possible. And I really love that mindset.

Yeah. The principle in a race of conserving energy also is outside of the race. When you're in a race situation on a bike and you're in a peloton in a pack, you want to be hiding and conserving your energy till it's really the important moment in the race. And this is the same with every single day leading up to your main race. Because fatigue is the nemesis of most athletes. Their performance is normally poor because they haven't managed their fatigue properly. And it could be in the Taper. It could be in the previous three weeks prior to the race. It could be a whole lot of reasons, but absolutely conserving your energy when it counts so that you can go full bore with all the energy consumption you can possibly muster on the day that it counts.

Principle number 12, I really like this one. He says pre race nerves, you really want nerves to focus. He said your nerves will keep you alert. They'll keep you focused on your goal, focused on your plan. They will give you that kind of adrenaline spark you need. But you've got to practice being able to calm yourself. He said pre race, you've got to be able to find that balance. And that comes from practice.

Yeah, and I think if you have a fear factor of racing, I think that heightens the nerves because of many reasons. It could be that you're not confident in your preparation, it could be you're not confident in your race plan. It could be you're not confident in practicing a whole lot of aspects about your actual race and in your confidence in your ability to react to certain situations and scenarios. So it's kind of important that you do understand what the nerves are there. Why do you have the nerves if the nerves are. You're excited, guarded and wanting to race? They're good nerves, nerves that are causing anxiety about your preparation in any of those aspects I just mentioned, they're not so good nerves. They're going to take your focus away from. The important thing about what you should be there for is to race. Well. Certain amount of adrenaline is absolutely crucial and important for every athlete, but there is also too much adrenaline, which is, is the bell curve, which is over arousal, where you've just gone way too far and, you know it's detrimental to your performance. So there's a fine balance. But yes, you want to have nerves, but, but, you know, in the right, in the right way. And trying to remain calm on the outside is also a good thing because when others see you vulnerable, then that's also a time for them to, you know, to, to pounce on that. And, and, but if you're a person who shows no emotion, I think that's a really good thing. And a lot race is where you get an opportunity to look at each other's face, to see, you know, whether they're, they're suffering or they're not suffering. And, you know, sometimes you can be suffering massively internally and, and put on the brave face externally, and your, your opposition are no. What, no more wiser than the fact that you could be about to drop off in the next 10 seconds. But they don't know that. So, so these are, these are things that you want to be out of control and definitely be in control of those things is going to help you, you perform better.

I personally love experimenting with myself with, with kind of pre race that getting that bell curve right of over arousal and under arousal. I just find it so fascinating and I have two clear examples that stick out in my head. And one was when I ran a PB and I'd been trying to run this PB for a while and in races previous I'd been so worked up, I was definitely on the wrong side. I was definitely over aroused. And then the time I actually did the pb, I remember I was incredibly calm the last three or four minutes and I kind of was asking myself, am I too calm here? But I felt fine about it and ended up running a PB and I. And that was cause I'd had real confidence in my preparation. And there's another time when I would turn up to a bike race and the same thing, I was super calm. But I said to myself, is this okay? Am I too under aroused here? And I like the answer that came to me was you're calm because you know you're not prepared for this and you know you're not going to do well. And so you just resigned to the fact that this is going to be a sucky race. And I was too under aroused because I just knew I wasn't going to do any good. So it is, it is great to experience with yourself in different contexts. And I wasn't nervous because I knew I was going to be shit anyway.

The nerves disappear when you absolutely know that it's going to be a crap outcome. But yeah, it's a great point.

Yeah. Principle number 13, you need to have a race plan. You need to know what you're going to do in a race, but you need to be open minded and to be flexible. And I mean, he's saying this coming from a track perspective where anything can happen. The track is so tightly dense, you need to be watching every 10 meters to what's unfolding. But yeah, this is just so key.

Yeah. A general race plan is what everybody should have. And if you go into a race without having thought about what your expectation on yourself is, let alone everybody else around you and you know, being well prepared, part of that is having a race plan and knowing your opposition, that's being well prepared and that could be part of your race plan. I know that in this particular day. I've got these people, if we take Inga Britzen for example, he knows how each of the runners that he's racing against, what their strategies are and they all know what his is. And generally it's run everybody off their feet from, you know, from anything from 300 to 600 meters out from, you know, depending on the distance he's in there, a 5k or a 3k or a 2 mile, it's just basically running people off their, off their feet and, and everybody else in the race knows that, but they can't do anything about it because you know, know they're not actually at that level. So, so it's really, it's imperative that you understand a strategy that you could implement to give you the outcome that you're, you're after. But, but that doesn't always go to plan. And so being able to be open minded, as you said, but be reactive as well. And some people who are, you know, I've got great examples of some of the athletes that I coach. One particular guy who's before you've even thought about reacting, he' reacted because he's just so race savvy that he's seen this scenario play out so many times. And while you're thinking about should I jump, should I follow that he's already on the wheel of those riders who are going up the road. And that that takes a lot of skill and a lot of anticipation and understanding what, what is happening around you. So, so yes, the race plan is important, but you have to be able to react to changing the race plan according to what is actually panning out in, in the race situation. So being flexible and being able to adapt to, to whatever is happening in the race. If someone goes out, for example, in an 800 and they get through and you're trying to run a 159, it's a good example, you know, 430 second, 2 hundreds and if someone goes out the first 200 in 24, you know that that's not a race plan that's going to be suited to your outcome, your best outcome. So you're better at off coming through 15 meters behind in a 28 second time. And that's you understanding your race plan based on what other people are doing around you and not getting sucked in. And so they're the things that, that we're talking about here.

Yeah, and I love these principles, dad, that we've gone through today because basically every single one of them we've spoken about ourselves as, as coaching tips over the length of these podcasts that we've done. And it's great to hear that the Ingritzen follow the almost the exact same principles, but specifically these last three. So obviously that one, you need a race plan. We've talked about race plans for a long time and the importance of them. And these last two especially, I know you'll love. And this, this principle number 14, I cannot believe no one has picked up on this. It's just, it just baffles me every single time Jakob Ingebritzen races. But he says let everyone else rush off. You just focus on getting to your race pace as fast as possible. So he doesn't mean sprint off as fast as possible. He means get, get up to speed to where you need to be and stay at that speed at your race pace as fast as possible. And when you watch him race, race, everyone takes off the first 100 meters and he is always at the back. And then between 100 and 200 he moves through because he's getting to his race pace. Somewhere between 200, 300, 400 meters, he settles into where he needs to be. And if he can do it in a track meet where it's so hard to jostle and 5 of position, we can do it in any sort of race. And he is the winner of every race. He's the fastest runner in the world. My thinking is, is not one person should be in front of him at the start. In the first 100 meters, there should be no one going faster than him because that means you're running too hard, you're putting yourself into too much of a lactate zone and you're going to suffer in the last lap because of it.

And you see all of those runners who run the first hundred. For example, if each, if each hundred meters in a 400 was run at 15 seconds, they're all running their first hundred in 12 and their next hundred in 18. Sure, they've averaged 15 seconds for the first 200 meters, but that's actually not looking at the data properly. And you are burning matches by increasing the lactate instantly. And sure, you can be prepared for that by warming up well, but even a good warm up, you don't want to be running above your race pace until it counts, which is in the last, probably 50 meters where you want to be pushing. And even then you're probably not going to be running at the same pace you were in the first 100 meters. So, so there's, there's a whole lot of evidence to tell us that, that the Longer you can stay evenly at your race pace, the better the outcome's going to be. And I, I think There was an 800 meter, and we might have talked about this in the first couple of episodes in our podcast years and years ago, where one of the, one of the Olympic 800 meter was either a national title, I think it was an American guy was literally 30 meters off the bat, back of, of the field after 200 meters in an 800, and he won. And, and that to me was like the classic example of understanding his ability and that the rest of the field had got it wrong.

Yeah, Last principle. Principle number 15, you will love this. Jakob says aim for a negative split. And I mean, this ties in with 14 as well. Principle 14 is that he says you can't negative split if you go out too hard. You know, if you, if you rush off like everyone, you won't be able to do it. And so he aims for a negative split and he, the way he's gotten all his records is he's done that. He's just ballistic home at the end and he's got the strength to do that because of his training. So it's a great principle to finish on.

Yeah, it sure is. And it's such a hard thing to do. And yet, yet we, we, we as athletes, we think that we're doing the right thing at the start of an event. Event because we feel fresh and it doesn't, you know, even if the event's not endurance, I'm talking 1500 or 800, you know, the amount of times you and I have poured over your data as to what. Because we took your 200 splits for an 800, there's four of them. It's pretty simple to do. And, and every time you went too hard early, you could not bring it home. And was that because you lack strength from the training? Probably. It might have had a contributing percentage, but it's more likely that a 26 second 200 doesn't suit you. When you're trying to run 4 times 29 seconds or 29.5 seconds to run the first one at 26 is most likely going to mean you're going to run the last one at 32 or 33. And I stood at the ASTRAC meetings week after week, month after month, taking the times of other athletes in other races, timing their first 400 and 800 and timing their second 400. And almost 99% of the races were run in a positive split. And then all of a sudden someone would run a pb and I could hear them say I negative splitted. And that's the exciting part. If you get it right. I'm a big believer in if you can actually do that, you will actually get a pb.

Well, we were just talking about the fact that in his 3, 2K world record last week, his 3K splits for each K were 229, 228, 227 or something like that. Just absolutely absurd. And he came home just an absolute blistering pace. And more specifically for Ironman athletes, how often do we see someone has the race plan of they need to run 5, 45 to 6 minute pace and they want to get through the whole marathon part of the Ironman jogging and running well and just time and time again athletes will run just faster. 4, 30, 4, 40 in the first 5k, they're feeling good, they've done so well to stick to their bike plan and stay within their power range. And they get to this part and the first 5, 10, 15k they, they feel okay and they, they don't want to go too slow and they, they just run that fraction quicker. And we've seen this in the Data where it's 10 seconds quicker, it's not massive, it's 540 paces at a 550 pace and then come come 25k, 30k, 35k, they're running 6:30 or walking 7, 7, 30 pace because their body just couldn't handle it and it's just such a disaster. Whereas had they gone conservative, had they just ran that six minute pace, they might have been able to jog the whole thing. And that's such a small difference for such big change in results.

It comes about from knowing what your ability is and so your race plan, if your range is, you know, on that example you gave 5, 40 to 6 minute pace, you know the advice in your Britsman would be giving from what we've learned is it start at six five point minute and if you can finish at 550 pace and if things go well, which in an Ironman as the example I was talking to one of our athletes today about this, it's highly unlikely you're going to run faster from 30k to 42 in an Ironman, you're not going to holding on is going to be your goal to the pace that you've set. So start conservative and stay conservative until you feel like you're in control of the event and then try and hold it. You know the range is there for a reason. So don't have a range of 540 to 6 minute k pace and run the first 5k at 520 and then be okay with, with coming back to 540. But the fact is you will, you will at some point be running 6 plus and it could end up being 7 or 8 minute K pace if you get it horribly, horribly wrong. And that's not, that's not just a fictitious thing I'm saying. I've seen it countless times. I've, I've seen people walking, you know, the slow, the walk of death as I call it, you know, and yet they were running out of transition, almost yahooing with, I'm so happy to get off the bike. Here I am running. But you know, the majority of people towards the end of the night in an ironman are actually walking, yet they started off running at a pace that's nearly, nearly half the pace they're doing at the end of the night.

And the range thing is so important because not everyone know how to pick their range for a running race. But for any of our athletes listening, you know, it's, let's say Your range is 540 to 6 minutes. That's your range. But we're never going to say to someone, start at the top of your range. So some people might say, well, I started at 542, that's within my range. You would still say, no, that's still not the plan. The plan is still always start at the bottom, you know, and if at the end you can go to 542, that's it. But we would almost never say, okay, here's your range, start at the top of the range, you know, and so people might think they're doing the right thing by going 545pace.

It's not a range, is it? If you start at the top, that's just an actual exact number. You're not, you've given the range away. The range is 540 to 6 minutes and you've started at 5:40. Where else is the range got to go except backwards?

Yep, spot on. That's a way, a great way to finish off this episode. It's been a packed one with principles we hope you can use. Use Jack in Brson's advice to apply to your own training. There's some pretty cool things in there that he said and we're so stoked that it's in line with what we think. So that's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you in the next one, Sa.