Human Performance SECRETS Behind Norwegian World Champions: Olav Aleksander Bu

My 14 key takaways: -Culture Culture is the fundament of the Norwegian team. Culture comes with work ethic, habits and passion for each other. -Personal values Being a good human has inherent value. A gold medal is something we give value to. Surround yourself with people that consciously and subconsciously make you a better person. -Transparency Transparency creates a work environment for growth. Being transparent about yourself as a person builds trusts. Being transparent about ones advantages builds a stronger training environment. -Evaluating A race analysis needs some time to mature. There is less emphasize on data and more on the evaluation of the performance by the athlete. -Curiosity Olav has been curious since he was a kid. The drive to learn and understand separates him. -Competitive Being competitive does not only apply to sports. Olav wants to become the best in the things he does and expect nothing less from the people he is working with. -Physiological The physiological systems operate like a black box between input and output. Physiological numbers don’t explain the whole picture and there are still a lot of concepts that are not understand fully, such as: maximal lactate steady state and glycogen uptake. -Performance and technology Today much more of the research can be done in Vivo. This creates holistic training programs and stops obsessing over details. -Quality work If you work toward a specific goal, every session should be separated by quality instead of intensity. You should always be able to answer the question: what is the purpose of this session. Don’t be a workout hero and race day zero. -Lactate production Lactate is produced in the muscles and released in the bloodstream. The amount of lactate that is produced gets influenced by a lot of factors such as: blood volume, blood plasma and hydration. The body can use lactate as fuel. -Core body temperature The body turns around 20% of the energy uptake into mechanical power. The rest is turned into heat. When the body overheats, blood flow will be directed towards the skin instead of muscles which will reduce performance. -Heart rate variability HRV can be influenced by activities such as breathing techniques or a warming up routine. Readiness for training should therefore not be determined by the HRV but rather the perceived fatigue of the athlete. -Recovery Doing a hard session when not fully recovered will have a negative impact on future performance instead of a positive one. Listening to your body is important. -Nutrition Eating a variety of foods with enough calories is important for performance. Supplements can be used to fill gaps that require some additional attention.

One if the most innovative minds in sport right now. Hopefully Kristian and Gustav can continue to elevate and dominate.

I love that his philosophy is that what is important is to be a good PERSON!!!!

Wow, one of the best conversations I’ve heard, Thank you so much Rich for always bringing such great energy and insight into your podcasts

Just wow, incredibly fascinating conversation! Soo much to take in. This is one of those pods that needs to be consumed to multiple times. Can't wait for part two ;)

Thank you so much for this podcast! Thank you, Olav for your openness, and thank you, Rich, for letting him go into details! Yes, please do a part 2, and part 3, and part 4 etc! As an age grouper triathlete, this is so fascinating and helpful.

Such a fantastic interview you can really see how he applies his engineers mind to his coaching, it’s almost like he’s taking a lot of approaches from Formula 1

Awesome episode it was worth the wait. This is a man that is just bursting with knowledge in endurance training and articulates highly technical principles in a understandable way. I enjoyed how you got into his past before this career path and this has major replay value. It’s not a surprise his athletes are dominating especially when he touches on the human element as the most important aspect before the science.

Next level endurance conversation, without a shred of ego in sight. A fascinating insight to what it takes to take the sport of triathlon by the scruff of the neck, shake it up, and spit it out, creating the new baseline for everyone to copy or build upon.

One of your best episodes. Learned so much from this. Thanks Rich.

I am loving this talks with Olav Aleksander Bu. He is awesome.

I never saw something so empowering for me and so human and technical at the same time, thanks so much.

Wow! What a guy! Definately a new huge approach to everything in sport. Looking forward part two

please tell this guy to write a book with all this content!

Only 10 mins into this and the pod is next level culture values and data. Brilliant listen

Great conversation! Thanks to both of you for letting us watch. And I cannot agree more about ignoring the Whoop before heading out for a big training day and definitely before races. So many times I’ve also gone out and then dumped out only to find I was high green or to have an amazing day and find out I was red. Great to hear that perhaps it is perhaps not the clear marker of what is to come as much as it is something to look at over time.

Finally!!! Been waiting for this interview to drop. 😊

Love it…. This is one interview I have looked forward to so thank you so much! But Rich, this reminds me once again of the interview with Lance a few years back. The table you used then was way, way better. More personal. This one now is insanely long. Why??? Please go back. 😬😳😎

Great episode...always love when you have endurance athletes and coaching sharing how they are elevating human performance. When is Goggins coming back on?

Lo esperaba hace meses, Thanks you Nice job and interview