Arild Tveiten - from triathlon to swimming, and reflections on Paris 2024 | EP#458

Arild Tveiten is most well-known as the head coach and sport director of Team Norway, and has overseen countless triathlon successes with Kristian Blummenfelt's Olympic Gold in Tokyo 2021 being the jewel in the crown. Arild is now the High Performance Director of the Norwegian Swimming Federation, and joins us to share insights into what he's bringing to swimming from his triathlon experience, and what he's learning about swimming in his new role. 

HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY TOPICS: 

• The reasons for moving from triathlon into swimming
• What has surprised Arild about the high performance setup in swimming and about the way swimmers train
• The stark differences between training for distance events and sprint events in swimming
• How the swim training methods used by the Norwegian triathletes compare to Norwegian (distance) swimmers
• Is Arild changing anything in how he coaches swimming for the triathletes he's coaching based on his work in swimming? 
• Looking back at the Olympics in Paris, what went wrong, and what could have been done differently
• Training tips for age-group triathletes:
  • How to improve your technique
  • What are the key workouts to include in your program (including detailed example sets)
  • What to do more of and what to do less of
  • What kind of testing to do to measure progress

DETAILED EPISODE SHOWNOTES: 

• We have detailed shownotes for all of our episodes. The shownotes are basically the podcast episode in written form, that you can read in 5-10 minutes. They are not transcriptions, but they are also not just surface-level overviews. They provide detailed insights and timestamps for each episode, and are great especially for later review, after you've already listened to an episode. Naturally, as great as they are, they do not cover absolutely everything in as great detail as we can do in a 45-90 minute podcast episode.  
• The shownotes for today's episode can be found at www.scientifictriathlon.com/tts458/

LINKS AND RESOURCES: 

• Arild's Instagram
• Olympic gold medal training and preparation with Arild Tveiten | EP#304
• Arild Tveiten – coach of Kristian Blummenfelt, Gustav Iden and Casper Stornes on triathlon training the Norwegian way | EP#223
• How Norway became a triathlon powerhouse with head coach Arild Tveiten | EP#154

WHAT SHOULD I LISTEN TO NEXT?

If you enjoyed this episode, I think you'll love the following episodes: 

• Triathlon swim training with Russ Barber | EP#310
• Open water swim training with Olympic gold medal coach Marcel Wouda | EP#246
• Swim training talk with Ian Armiger | EP#263
• Technique improvement and swim training for triathletes with Brenton Ford | EP#320
• Paul Newsome | EP#389
• Olav Aleksander Bu | EP#369
• Applied triathlon science with Olav Aleksander Bu (Norwegian Triathlon Olympic team) | EP#264

You can find our full episode archives here, where you can filter for categories such as Training, Racing, Science & Physiology, Swimming, Cycling, Running etc.

You can also find separate archives for specific series of episodes I've done, specifically Q&A episodes, TTS Thursday episodes, and Beginner Tips episodes. 

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