Marius Bakken: Norwegian Method Applied

Marius Bakken is a medical doctor and a former 13:06 5000 m runner who spent about ten years, from the late 1990s, building the training now called the Norwegian method — double threshold days, lactate-controlled sub-threshold work, really easy days — later used by Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Andreas Almgren. In a 2026 interview on The Triathlon Show about his book The Norwegian Method Applied he described it in detail, and above all said it is a method for any level, 'low risk and high effect', as long as the control is right. The most common mistake, in his words: going too intense on the threshold days. This collection is his week and his sessions, sized to his own advice for non-elite runners — 30 to 36 minutes of threshold work per session — with every number marked as his, from the research review of his model, or ours.

• —How to read the percentages: steps are % of your threshold pace, higher is faster. The threshold reps sit at 93–101%: the long ones at the slow end, the 400s near threshold pace — Bakken controls them by lactate or heart rate, not by pace, so treat the pace as a starting point and let the lactate or the heart rate decide.
• —Scaling it down: keep each threshold session at 30–36 minutes rather than cutting it short; that is what he gives most runners. At 48 he runs six times a week, once a day, with 25–30 minutes on threshold days. Older or injury-prone runners: two threshold sessions a week instead of three or four. Beginners: walk-run first (Walk-Run Threshold).
• —Without double days: run the morning session only, Tuesday and Thursday, and keep Saturday's X. Under about eight hours a week the base's own framework puts no double days at all — two quality sessions a week, threshold one of them (SYNTH-03, B-).
• —Marathon: Bakken would not stack a hard marathon session on top of two double-threshold days. Use the method before the marathon-specific block, then drop the double threshold for 6–12 weeks of specific work.
• —Explosive, fast-twitch runners: favour the shorter reps (400s, 1 km) over 6–10 minute ones — longer reps wear more on stiffer legs.
• —His views beyond the sessions: strides do little for runners who already run a lot, except to settle heavy legs after a hard block; heavy lifting is hard to combine with this running — do it year-round or not at all; every change of surface, shoe or session type is a risk; the stair test — how heavy your legs feel on the stairs each morning — is his daily check.
• —Honesty note: the sessions and numbers are Bakken's own words from the interview, unless marked as from the research review (REF-301, B+) or as ours. His central idea — that muscle tone, not heart and lungs, is the runner's limiter and the reason for the whole structure — is his clinical view, not a tested finding. He also says plainly that he is no expert in cycling or swimming; this collection is running.

The sessions