Norway’s Olav Aleksander Bu gets to say that he coaches one of the best triathletes in the world, current Ironman World Record holder and Olympic Champion: Kristian Blummenfelt. In an extensive interview with Global Triathlon Network, he shares his coaching philosophy and explains how it’s possible that the Norwegian athletes are performing so well all of a sudden.
There are two main things that he believes contributed: lactate testing and individualization. About the latter, he said: “One of the philosophies that changed when I came in is that we need to individualize the training for the athletes. That was one of the main things. Of course, that’s one of the things that they really enjoyed, it was not individualization for the sake of individualization, but it was also rooted in science. We do different kinds of tests to understand their power, capacity, and their strength and weaknesses and so on.”
It didn’t take long before the more individual approach started to show its benefits, with Norwegians getting onto the podiums in many international races. “Of course, the athletes also really noticed this. If you look at the athletes, you see that Kristian, Gustav (Iden, ed.) and Casper (Stornes, ed.) are highly different athletes. You just look at their physics…”
Check the full interview below and learn all about Aleksander Bu’s take on Blummenfelt’s development, the battle with an athlete like Jan Frodeno and much more.