Swim Tips with Coach Olav Bu
It’s not often that coaches become as equally well-known as the athletes whom they train.
In the case of Olav Aleksander Bu, his name is synonymous with Olympic and 3x World Champion, Kristian Blummenfelt, and 3x World Champion, Gustav Iden. Bu has pioneered “The Norwegian Method”, a scientific and data-driven coaching approach that has delivered top-of-the-podium performances at all major triathlon distances and races over the past decade.
At present Coach Olav is working closely with Kristian Blummenfelt who is now making his final preparations to defend his Olympic triathlon title from Tokyo at the 2024 Paris Games this summer.
As part of their scientific and data-driven approach, Olav, Kristian and Gustav use FORM Smart Swim Goggles in their swim training, finding unparalleled benefit in the accuracy and real-time ability to see key performance metrics to monitor and track when swimming, which they continually test and push themselves against.
Olav shared his thoughts in the following short video series on how to improve your swimming. Focusing on how heart rate, head position and intensity data can improve your swim efficiency, strength and endurance, and ultimately make you a faster swimmer.
Episode 1
Kicking off the series, in this first episode Olav talks about the value of collecting data specifically from the head, why the head is a great place to gather data from, and how this data can be leveraged for coaching purposes.
Episode 2
In episode 2 Coach Olav shares his thoughts on how tracking heart rate is the best way to measure stress on an athlete's body against performance, where you can notice drop-off points in performance in real-time, and how to correct this.
Episode 3
In the final episode, Olav discusses how heart rate is a great real-time metric to control your intensity against, how seeing real-time stroke rate can show you when you’re fatiguing, and how you can reach peak performance through leveraging real-time metrics.
You can follow Olav and his unique coaching approach here, while he and the team at Santara Tech also produce The Norwegian Method podcast that’s certainly worth listening and subscribing to!
