This is a Norwegian to English translation of the podcast "I det lange løp" (In the long run) which is hosted by NRK. The interviewer is sports commentator and running enthusiast Jann Post (JP) who talks with Gjert Ingebrigtsen (GI) for about 50 minutes. It was released on the 10th of December 2021.
JP: Today we're hosting a very interesting guest. He's in the spotlight with the release of his new book, and the premiere of the 5th season of the show Team Ingebrigtsen.
JP: Welcome, Gjert Ingebrigtsen. Did you just reveal all your secrets (with this book)?
GI:Ehm, that depends on the eye who sees. Working methodically can't be a secret for anyone. Most people have a life and a job, and seeing the link to the importance of having a structure and a method... I would argue in our case that's been the more important part of our results... The 'how' is more important that the 'why'.
JP: That's quite a peculiar thing to say, that the content of the training is less important than the system governing it, why do you mean that?
GI:There are lots of people who have written volumes of papers and done lots of research on 'best practice' for everything related to training, and measures, lactate, profiles, heart frequencies, all kinds of stuff. But rarely do we see that utilizing these findings... the people who write these books are rarely able to create results by using their own knowledge. More often do we see that people with a practical approach, less theoretical, often create better results than people with lots of theoretical knowledge. Based on this experience I believe that having a good structure and method is more important than focusing on the theory behind what you do in a given session.
JP: The things you say about background is interesting. Tell us a little about your own background with regards to sport and becoming a coach. Before you had children, what was your connection to sport?
GI:I would say that my relation to sport, before my children started (for real), was the same as all parents. I followed them around. Drove them to football practice, swimming, handball, all kinds of things, a bit of cycling. They were trying all kinds of sports without any further involvement from us (parents). We just supported our children like everyone else and drove them here and there, football tournaments everywhere... It wasn't before the boys expressed that they would like to take it up a few levels that I became more involved, and it became a collaboration. This engagement was kind of forced on me, so I had to find a structure, a system, a way to work. And I didn't know anyone who were into sports so I couldn't ask about anything. The cross country skiing thing came first. We never knew anyone else. We weren't affiliated with any training groups or teams. It was only us, my wife and I. We live in Sandnes (southwestern Norway, mild winters, bad conditions for skiing), so there were no one else. In the start we did everything by gut feeling and it went quite well, which also contributed to us not asking anyone about things, we followed our own method. It wasn't well structured. It wasn't before we had been running for a while that we really got structured, and made the structure we use today.
JP: We have to delve into that structure. But first, you trained Henrik into winning Hovedlandsrennet (nationals for 14/15 year olds), then he won Junior-NM (nationals for juniors), and then he decided to quit and start running instead. He's already a decent runner at that point, but you say you have no experience with running. What do you do first? Who do you contact? You're starting from scratch.
GI:I didn't contact anyone. And it wasn't an immediate switch from skiing to running either. It took a while before our collaboration in running became as serious as it was at the peak of skiing. With skiing we had a close collaboration and worked together towards the goals the boys had set. Then there was a bit of a vacuum between skiing and running because I was clueless about running, but it was only a matter of time before the boys' ambition levels rose to a level where I once again was forced to involve myself to a higher degree. I remember the first person I called was Marius Bakken. And if Marius Bakken picks up the phone when you call him he can talk for hours on end. You don't even have to ask him questions as long as he's got started. He spent most of the time explaining everything he had done wrong, which was a lot, and that was very valuable information to us. I spoke with him a couple of times mostly about things that went wrong, and he was primarily interested in training part of running, and not so much into competition side of it. My boys are the other way around. They would rather compete than train. So the interval based approach has always been our thing. When we were skiing it was extremely interval based. We rarely did what you associate with skiing (long continuous distance skiing). Every day it was some form of interval. Only intervals, but not that hard. We transferred that approach to running. It's feels rewarding and it's more of a racing-like kind of training.
JP: How long did it take before you arrived at the structure you use today?
GI:The first time I laminated a training plan was for the season 2013-14, before we traveled to Moscow WC 2013. This was after a 2012 where Henrik had set a national record, placed 5th in the Olympics, and we were like "how the h*ll did we do this?" So we looked back at what we did in an attempt to replicate it for 2013, but we didn't succeed. We were unable to recreate the performances of 2012 in 2013. I remember asking Sindre Buraas during WC Moscow, he was Henrik's roommate at the event, "How do you work, Sindre? Do you have a plan? Do you have training logs? If your coach disappeared, would you know what to do tomorrow?" The answer to every question was no. "Wouldn't it be smart to write a few things down, so you have some data to support your decisions?" "Yes, perhaps", said Buraas. And then it struck me, this is the crux of the issue. Two things. Using and accumulating knowledge along the way. Remove the things that don't work, do the things that work, and try to replicate performances by doing the things that work year over year, and becoming better and better by doing the right things.
A couple of years later I encountered a well-known Norwegian runner, I'm not mentioning any names, and he told me he's going to run a HM before running his next 5000 because that worked so well last year. Then I said," do you remember anything else you did the same period last year?" He replied, "Yes, I was sick for a week. I said "Well, that part will be hard to replicate?". After thinking for a couple of seconds, he said: "Yes, you're right about that". Then I said "It might not have been the HM that worked. Maybe it was the week of sickness that worked. How can you really know when it only happened once?" You have to do something more than once, to know empirically, because random events can affect the result and they are often hard to replicate. You have to make a plan that eliminates as much randomness as possible and makes the results predictable.
JP: You've been working in logistics for a long time. To which degree has that business and systems knowledge helped you in sports?
GI:Logistics is systematics, systematics, systematics, systemized. The mindset has been beneficial in sports, but at the same time there are many things in sports that also apply to logistics and business. For example, the relationship between responsibility and and authority. To understand that if you're supposed to be responsible for something, then you also need the authority to make the right decisions. You can't be responsible for the result if someone else makes the decisions.
If you as a coach don't have the authority to decide what the athletes do, maybe because they have too much freedom to influence 'the what and why', then you can't be held responsible for their results either. I've seen many coaches who are reduced to pure facilitators and bottle holders. It's dangerous. You have to be aware and not slide from coach to personal assistant. You have to be the one who makes the decisions. If not you'll just be an assistant, and everyone in the world can fill that role. And we see that when it's time to make decisions the athletes start second guessing everything. "What's up with that? Am I not allowed to do what I feel like this session? If I want to train at 12AM instead of 10AM, shouldn't that be up to me? If I want to do the session in the afternoon instead of the morning, shouldn't I get to decide that?" Then they switch coaches because they don't get to decide. It's about the totality. It's about taking responsibility for the things you're responsible for. I don't get mixed up with setting goals. My responsibility is making sure they reach their goals. Neither am I involved in how they race. Lots of people do that. "We discuss tactics, races et cetera..." But that's removing responsibility for the outcome from the athletes. The athlete is responsible for what happens in a race, independent of whatever the coach might think. Two things are very important to me. One is making the boys independent from me. Meaning, that if I 'take a rock to the head one day' and can't be present, the boys will do alright for the rest of their lives with all the knowledge we have accumulated together. My boys would be 100% autonomous if I wasn't there. It's important that I make myself superfluous. Second, the responsibility for setting goals, execution of races, and execution of the training program is all on the athlete.
JP: Lets talk about setting goals. What is a good goal in your opinion, and how do you find a good goal for each individual?
GI:We don't decide goals. The boys do that themselves. I only provoke them to think, because I can't make a plan, not for the totality nor for the details unless I know which goals they're working towards. A strong and clear goal is required for me to make a plan for reaching that goal, and you can't be vague. This is exclusively the athletes' responsibility and I don't interfere at all.
JP: There are two types of goals. A purely result-based goal, f.i. becoming world champion next year, which is dependent on what your competitors are doing, and then there are performance goals, f.i. setting a world record, which is all up to you.
GI: For us it has mostly been about performance goals. In 2019 I don't think we even mentioned Doha WC until the month before it happened. It wasn't on our minds. We wanted to travel the world and race as fast as possible. The Olympics is different. It's more like a pipe-dream for most athletes. There are so many things that have to go right in order to get there. The things you control is one thing, but you have no control over what everyone else is doing. This means that result based goal are rarely used on our part.
JP: I see. And when the goals are set you enter the planning phase, and we know that's where you come in. We've heard about the lamination machine, and when it's laminated it's settled in stone, but there's a process towards getting there as well? Do you plan everything yourself, or do you get input from others?
GI:That part of the job is done during the season break. That's when I enter the planning phase, towards the end of the Diamond League season and into the season break. Then we go through the plan before training starts again.
JP: Do you face a lot of resistance upon revealing the plan, or do they just accept the plan you hand out?
GI:They know quite a lot about what it looks like on beforehand, so there's not a lot of surprises. That's the good thing about long term plans: many things are given, with few structural changes. Therefore there are no loud arguments. Some things have changed, such as the lifted ban on simulated altitude training which implies that we could stay more at home. But overall there are mandatory activities and optional activities, with races in particular being optional. One athlete may want to do 2 races, and another may want to do 4. Some differences there.
JP: How much is decided when we are in October / November? How much is decided week by week, and day by day?
GI:Everything is set in stone. Absolutely everything.
JP: Detailed, day-by-day, until WC 2022?
GI: I'm talking about the structure and my laminated plan. That's settled.
JP: The one that says when you're at altitude camp, which races you're doing, et cetera?
GI:Yes. When are we home. When are we away. When are we competing. It gives you a total overview over what the next 10 months look like. That has to be the foundation, because you can't make a detailed plan unless you know the structural plan. Then the plans become more detailed as time goes by. I make an overall plan on a weekly level which says how many kilometers they're running, how many intervals they're running. Like, what do the next 40 weeks look like with regards to training. The content of the training is variable, and the volume too. Like, these weeks you run X number of kilometers, and Y number of intervals, and those weeks you do run Z amount of intervals on these days, et cetera. I make an overall plan (for 40 weeks) with volume, intervals, which days have what, et cetera, and then I break that further down into weekly plan (7 day plans).
JP: When does Jakob know what he's going to do the next week?
GI:I send him the weekly plan on Sunday evening or Monday morning before he wakes up. It makes no difference to him whether he gets it in the evening or in the morning. In some instances I will send a longer plan, like before Euro XC I might send a plan that goes over 2 or 3 weeks so they know what the structure looks like over the next few weeks, but the normal is 1 week.
JP: We observe that in some training groups that the coach is 'supreme leader' and the athletes don't know what they're going to do when they show up for training, particularly in the US. I've heard you're not a fan, why is that?
GI:I do the same on occasion. Before the Olympics I did it a few times, and it was very frustrating and stressful for my athletes because they're not used to it. The last and most important session before traveling to Tokyo is one example. They only knew we were going have an interval session, and based on that they could kind of deduce what the options were. They got to know what we were doing only after warming up, and I always have to make sure that their individual levels are considered. Jakob needs one thing, Filip another, Narve (Gilje Nordås) something else, and Per (Svela) likewise. When it's a hard session I have to consider how they've performed and looked for the past few days before I decide what they do. During ordinary weeks and base training, everyone knows exactly what they're going to do in each session.
JP: And that is because they should be as well prepared as possible?
GI:I see that the mental preparations, and physical too, all the choices they make leading up to the session, are much better if they know what they're going to do. The approach where you consistently withhold information about sessions is very negative for the athletes. How are they supposed to prepare physically and mentally for something they know nothing about? I think it's absurd. If I went to work every day and my boss came outside and said: "Gjert, this is what you're going to do today", then I would probably do a bad job and have issues with making sense of it. It's the same for athletes, and I don't mean that they're supposed to analyze the content of the session, it's just about being well prepared.
JP: Some coaches don't even say when the session is over either, so the athletes don't know the amount of intervals or what comes next.
GI:That's borderline abusive. What if the coach 'took a rock to the head', what should the athletes do? Just go home?
JP: Yeah, hard to say. Execution of training programs, that's where I feel like you're in the extreme. We've seen in the Team Ingebrigtsen TV show that Henrik goes straight from the maternity ward to training, which is a display of commitment to training. What are your thoughts regarding execution?
GI:What can I say. We are probably relatively extreme. It's probably because we've never bothered looking at what everyone else is doing. So we don't know if what we do is more extreme than what everyone else is doing. That goes for both what we do and how we do it. We only know what we do and how we do it. And in my world the doing-part is something I've always done my utmost to enable. I always do what I can to make sure my training programs are practically possible to execute. If there's snow I will remove it, if there's sand I will brush it away, et cetera.
JP: What are the athletes' responsibilities when it comes to making sure the training goes as planned?
GI:The athletes are responsible for showing up as well prepared as possible. Mentally, physically, clothes, shoes, everything you need to do the session. My job is to facilitate the session. It's hopeless if my athletes are well prepared if there's 10 centimeters of snow outside. They can't do anything about that, so it's my job to ensure that the athletes can do their programs.
JP: When it comes to training we've understood that intensity control is important?
GI:Yes, there's no mercy. If a session is supposed to be of a specific kind, then that's how it should be. That has to do with the total structure, and we can't risk that someone rushes off too fast or too slowly. I'm not that concerned if the intensity is too low, that's more a discussion about speed, but you should definitely not have too high intensity in training because it affects the road forward and we have to make adjustments depending on recovery.
JP: An interesting tidbit from your book regarding intensity control was the fact that each athlete has a speed limit during late fall into Christmas. They are basically forbidden from running faster. What's the deal with that?
GI:That has to do with 'how fast is good enough, considering the goals you've set?' Which negative impacts may arise from running faster? Both concerning injury risk, and... you can say, if you run fast enough in training to reach your goals, and you can run that tempo with lower risk, then it's self-explanatory that you opt to run slower in training if it's fast enough.
Many athletes and coaches struggle with understanding that "good enough is good enough". The more kilometers you can run at a speed that's good enough, with low risk, the larger becomes the probability of reaching your goals. The more risk you seek and the more you push, the lower goes your recovery rate and your injury risk will increase.
JP: Why isn't the limit just set at a given lactate level, like 2.5 or 3.0, and if you're improving you'll run faster at the same lactate level?
GI:Lactate doesn't say anything about injury risk. Lactate is about energy output. In the area we maneuver there's always injury risk. We are willing to take risk, lots of risk, but we need to ensure that our training, in total, is sustainable so that the boys are able to have a livelihood from running over time. Some athletes can run insanely fast with low lactate, but that isn't always purposeful because you can't directly translate that into winning races. Then it's about finding the 'good enough'-limit. I see people running overspeed in training, and I ask "Why are you doing this?" and I get different answers. Some say "because we can", others say "because we think the athlete is capable of running faster than he has done in races so far". "We think the athlete is capable of XX:XX" is an answer I get often, especially in Norway for some reason. They have a PR of... 3:55.0, and then they run intervals as if they're a 3:45.0 athlete, and I ask "why are you doing this?" to which they reply "because I think I'm capable of 3:45.00", but they're not, they're still 3:55.0 runners and they don't understand. That's how it goes.
And then you have to understand this thing about lactate. If you have a training profile where do you high volume and long runs, then you'll never be able to create the difference-lactate needed to perform. That means you're usually operating in the zone between 1.4 and 2.2, and based on that you believe you're below threshold. And I say "Below threshold? That's the dumbest thing I've heard in my life. Of course you're on threshold. You have a threshold at 1.8 so when you're at 2.2 you're above threshold.". They reply "but isn't threshold at 3.0?". I reply "no, your threshold is definitely not at 3.0 because you're running a profile in training which means your threshold is considerably lower.". Then there's people who don't eat well enough before training, and if you don't eat properly before training then you don't have enough glycogen in your system to produce the required energy to measure true lactate. True lactate, which is a measure of the actual physiological load on the system. People eat a yogurt and a couple of crackers before training, then revel in joy after measuring 1.9 because it's below threshold, and that's the stupidest thing. You haven't eaten before training. You can't produce energy without food. You have to eat in order to produce energy which then shows up in lactate measurements. There are so many elementary things that people overlook because they think lactate is lactate.
JP: Now we're talking about your book, Gjert's metode, and when it comes to training it seems everyone has tried to copy what you're doing. We see it in Norway, in Sweden, outside of the Nordics. Do you get a lot of questions?
GI:None.
JP: None?
GI:Nope.
JP: Not from foreign competitors at all?
GI:Nope.
JP: But we know some domestic training groups have been enquiring. Some skiers for example. The Aukland-brothers have been curious.
GI:People who are genuinely interested and have experience with training don't spend much time adopting our principles of training. They have the history, experience and knowledge, and to a certain degree they can make use of it immediately just by changing small things. They get it.
JP: How is it that I can call almost any aspiring runner in Norway and say what he does on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays et cetera without ever having spoken to this person before, because I know they're trying to copy your standard week. What do you think about that?
GI:The whole point of my book is that this is a method, not a training program. What would be worse is if coaches would obtain information directly from us without revealing their intentions for doing so, and then use it to train their own athletes, that's entering a shady area. But that being said, we're out in the open, we train among people in public spaces. People observe what we do in training. We would have to hide somewhere to avoid it. As long as you can count and measure you will understand what we're doing. But when we look at what other people are doing, when we travel and at training camps, we don't see anyone doing the same as us. And many of them are just as good as my boys, so there's many ways to reach a goal. Many ways to do things that provide the same result. Our way wouldn't necessarily yield the same results for someone else. Our method is structured to our preferences.
JP: Lets talk a bit about development/progress, which is where the post-season evaluation comes in. What should one talk about in an evaluation, and how do you find something to work on to improve in the future?
GI:Structurally we basically stay the same, but the things we do in training is subject to change. The last two seasons in particular have had a lot of changes. 2019 was the first season we started to do big changes, because I noticed that he (sic: Jakob probably) stagnated a little. He did the same sessions easier and easier without seeing any improvements in races. We found it necessary to switch it up at that point.
JP: So what did you do?
GI: I just told you. We switched it up.
JP: Haha, ok. Is that as specific as you can go?
GI:We changed some things. The content of the training.... a LOT. We don't do what we used to on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays anymore. We became extremely good at doing the things we had been doing for so long, sort of a performance-memory that didn't generate a better race result.
JP: So it's like the body adapted to that kind of specific strain and stopped developing?
GI:So therefore I switched it up. Now the training is way more differentiated which enables us to keep evolving. If not we would have stagnated in 2019. The changes were absolutely necessary.
JP: But how do you do the evaluation, from a practical point of view? Is it like a general meeting where anyone who has something to say just raises their hand?
GI:We meet often during training and spend time discussing a lot of these things during easy days. Things regarding the overall structure. When it comes to details, which is tailored to each individual, those conversations are done in private either on the phone or physically. I have a good dialogue with all of them (Henrik, Filip, Jakob, Narve & Per), and an objectively good overview of 'the lay of the land'.
JP: Speaking of changes, now that simulated altitude training is allowed you have to discuss what you're going to do with that, whether you're going to use it or not. Who has something to say about that?
GI:It depends on the individual athlete's situation first and foremost, but also whether it's even physically feasible equipment-wise. So far we haven't really looked at whether there's equipment and locations available. But I imagine that athletes with families would want to stay at home as much as possible and reduce the time spent on training camps, and simulated altitude could therefore be used both pre and post of a (shortened) altitude camp.
JP: Where do find the information on how to do this right? Simulated altitude has been banned in Norway since 2003.
GI:I don't know right now. We haven't got that far in the process yet.
JP: When things happen. Injuries, sickness, other things. How good are you at making plan B, plan C et cetera? It seems like you're working intensely when such situations occur.
GI:Small issues may evolve into big problems if you don't deal with them early and have an alternative plan ready beforehand. We have usually already thought about it, "if something happens now, how do we react?". We don't talk loudly about negative things like that, but I keep a plan in the back of my head at all times. We aren't "the boy who cried wolf", but the day we need to act we have already evaluated several scenarios.
JP: To me it seems like you're very alert, like you're willing to turn the world upside down in the matter of hours if necessary.
GI:Well.... yes. I'm willing to go as far as necessary, but you can't solve everything. If someone gets a sore throat the day before Bislett Games, all kinds of sudden things can happen, but it's always good to have evaluated your actionable options beforehand.
JP: In your book you're telling about one specific workout which piqued my interest. 400 meter intervals. Jakob felt good and went hard. It says he ran between 52 and 56 seconds per lap. When was this session, and what happened?
GI:It was after Gateshead. Between Gateshead and Florence. I'm not exactly sure, but I have it on my computer. It was serious stuff.
JP: So what happened there? Usually we hear that you run with strict intensity control like we talked about earlier, and then he says he feels good and ask for permission to go faster?
GI:It was a hard session that was supposed to go between 55.5s and 57.5s.
JP: How many laps are we talking about?
GI: A good amount. (sic: Gjert becomes elusive at this point). 15 laps. 20 laps.
JP: With 30 seconds of rest?
GI:No. A little more than that. But it's done in sets. 5 laps per set with a 3 minute break in between. It went so fast that I just had to step on the sideline and say "this is a hard session so just go as hard as you want". But there's a rule that says the last interval must be the fastest. The average speed of any set shall always be faster than the former. The same for intervals. If an interval is slower than any of the former, you have to stop. That's our mantra. There has to be an unambiguous form of progression in the session. That's a damage control mechanism. And when you run the first lap on 55.7s, you've set the bar pretty high when you have 15-20 to go. The last one was in 52.2s or something.
JP: So he doesn't only shock us in the commentator box, he shocks you too sometimes?
GI:Yes. That was something of the wildest I've seen. And he did it alone.
JP: One last thing we have to talk about is responsibility. You've said that if you get to decide the training, you also take responsibility for the results. That's quite a heavy burden to bear, isn't it?
GI: It's always been that way with us. When the kids went on training camp the first time Filip was 13 and Henrik 15, and they went alone. And by alone I don't mean just without me, I mean the two boys on their own. In that situation I had to trust that they did the training as planned. They understood it very early, to take personal responsibility for doing the program down do the smallest detail. That allocation of responsibility has always been the baseline, they spend 4 weeks in South Africa, 4 weeks in the US, and they know what they have to do.
JP: I'm thinking a little bit about your situation in this scenario. You've said you take responsibility, and before the Olympics Jakob says he's unsure if this is the right way to train, and you just say "we do it like this. I take the responsibility". That has to take a mental toll on you?
GI:Certainly.
JP: How does that really feel with 3 athletes and that responsibility?
GI:What can I say. It's part of the game. We have shared the responsibility. They are responsible for setting goals. They are responsible for racing. Creating structure and plans is my responsibility. But they have the responsibility for doing the training as I've planned it. Not only what they should do, but also how they should do it, with regards to speed and lactate and such. Nothing in training is subject to their personal interpretation.
JP: This weekend it's time for racing again. Euro XC. This podcast episode will be launched two days before race day, so how are Filip and Jakob feeling about competing again?
GI:Filip is on his way back to normal. He's had a rough 2021. Got a pretty adverse reaction to the covid vaccine, but now he's getting back to normal. As a rule one should never shy away from strong competition by just doing local races thinking we're great, but rather seek strong international opposition and get a reality check. We have to compete and have realistic expectations regarding results. On Filip's part it's just about doing races, facing adversity, and finding himself along the way. That's the purpose of Euro XC for him.
It's the first time Jakob runs a senior 10K, and I don't think he looks forward to it. Filip has done it before, so he knows what's coming, but Jakob hasn't and I don't think he really wants to do it. At the same time he respects the event and is loyal to the system (federation), but if he had a good excuse not to go he'd probably grab it with both hands.
JP: So even an Olympic champion can feel like that?
GI:Being an Olympic champion weighs more heavily on you than you'd think. If you reach the highest possible goal as a 20 year old, it's not hard to understand that everything else becomes a bit of an anti-climax.
JP: Nevertheless, we're looking forward to seeing the race on Sunday. Thanks a lot for talking with us, and I'm sure that "Gjert's Method" will be under many Christmas trees this year. Good luck this weekend.
GI: Thanks. Talk to you later.