Twelve weeks of base
Twelve weeks that build the engine: long easy sessions, one interval day, two strength days and a weekend outing that grows from an hour to two and a half. Five sessions a week, all outside.
Base is the boring part, and the part that decides everything. Twelve weeks of mostly easy work, outside, with one hard day a week and two days of carrying and lifting. It is not exciting to write down and it is the single thing that separates people who finish long races from people who enter them.
The programme assumes you can already do the last week of four weeks to start: a 35-minute walk/run, a 40-minute carry and climb and an hour’s walk. If you can, start at week one. If you are fitter than that and have been training two or three times a week for months, you can still start at week one; the first block will feel easy and the Sunday outing will catch up with you by week six.
The interval day in this programme is genuinely hard. If you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, or any medical condition that affects how hard you should work, talk to a doctor before you start it. The rest of the programme is easy and steady, and most of it is walking.
The shape of a week
Five sessions, two rest days, one hard day. That last part is the rule the whole thing is built on: one hard day in three, with everything else easy enough that you arrive at the next hard day ready for it.
Tuesday: intervals. The Norwegian 4×4, done as the intervals chapter describes: ten minutes easy, then four minutes hard, three minutes easy, repeated, then ten minutes easy. The first block starts with three repeats of three minutes and builds to the full four by four by week six. Hard means you can say a few words, not a sentence, and the last minute of each repeat is a fight. On a hill, a bike, skis or a treadmill, as the season allows.
Wednesday: strength. Thirty to forty minutes with what the strength chapter gives you: a pull-up bar, something heavy and the ground. Squats, press-ups, rows or pull-ups, a carry, a hold. Steady effort, never to failure.
Thursday: easy. A run, a walk/run, a ski or a ride. Easy means easy: full sentences. This session grows from 40 to 60 minutes and is where most of the engine gets built.
Saturday: strength and carry. Twenty minutes of the Wednesday work, then a walk with a loaded rucksack. The bag starts at five kilos and ends at ten. The carrying chapter covers how to pack it and how to walk with it; the short version is: weight high and close to the back, normal walking pace, uphill where you can.
Sunday: the outing. The long one, easy, somewhere good. It grows from an hour to two and a half. Walk, run, hike, ski, paddle, whatever the ground offers; mix them if you like. Take water from week five and food from week nine. This is the session that makes the rest make sense.
The programme
Minutes are the whole session including warm-up and cool-down. Easy: full sentences. Steady: short sentences. Hard: a few words. Every fourth week is a down week, with the volume cut by about a quarter; that is not a mistake and not optional.
| Week | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rest | Intervals 35 min, hard (3 × 3 min) | Strength 30 min, steady | Easy 40 min | Rest | Strength 20 min + carry 20 min (5 kg), steady | Outing 60 min, easy | 205 min |
| 2 | Rest | Intervals 35 min, hard (3 × 3 min) | Strength 30 min, steady | Easy 40 min | Rest | Strength 20 min + carry 20 min (5 kg), steady | Outing 70 min, easy | 215 min |
| 3 | Rest | Intervals 35 min, hard (3 × 3 min) | Strength 35 min, steady | Easy 45 min | Rest | Strength 20 min + carry 25 min (5 kg), steady | Outing 80 min, easy | 240 min |
| 4 (down) | Rest | Intervals 35 min, hard (3 × 3 min) | Strength 30 min, steady | Easy 40 min | Rest | Strength 20 min + carry 20 min (5 kg), steady | Outing 60 min, easy | 205 min |
| 5 | Rest | Intervals 40 min, hard (4 × 3 min) | Strength 35 min, steady | Easy 45 min | Rest | Strength 20 min + carry 25 min (7 kg), steady | Outing 90 min, easy | 255 min |
| 6 | Rest | Intervals 45 min, hard (4 × 4 min) | Strength 35 min, steady | Easy 50 min | Rest | Strength 20 min + carry 30 min (7 kg), steady | Outing 100 min, easy | 280 min |
| 7 | Rest | Intervals 45 min, hard (4 × 4 min) | Strength 40 min, steady | Easy 50 min | Rest | Strength 20 min + carry 30 min (7 kg), steady | Outing 110 min, easy | 295 min |
| 8 (down) | Rest | Intervals 40 min, hard (3 × 4 min) | Strength 30 min, steady | Easy 40 min | Rest | Strength 20 min + carry 20 min (7 kg), steady | Outing 80 min, easy | 230 min |
| 9 | Rest | Intervals 45 min, hard (4 × 4 min) | Strength 40 min, steady | Easy 55 min | Rest | Strength 20 min + carry 35 min (10 kg), steady | Outing 120 min, easy | 315 min |
| 10 | Rest | Intervals 45 min, hard (4 × 4 min) | Strength 40 min, steady | Easy 60 min | Rest | Strength 20 min + carry 35 min (10 kg), steady | Outing 135 min, easy | 335 min |
| 11 | Rest | Intervals 45 min, hard (4 × 4 min) | Strength 40 min, steady | Easy 60 min | Rest | Strength 20 min + carry 40 min (10 kg), steady | Outing 150 min, easy | 355 min |
| 12 (down) | Rest | Intervals 40 min, hard (3 × 4 min) | Strength 30 min, steady | Easy 45 min | Rest | Strength 20 min + carry 25 min (10 kg), steady | Outing 100 min, easy | 260 min |
The weekly total grows by about ten per cent from one build week to the next, which is the oldest rule in endurance coaching and still the safest. The World Health Organization’s guidance for adults is at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week plus muscle-strengthening work; by week one you are past that, and by week eleven you are doing more than twice it, most of it at an effort you could hold a conversation at. That is what base means.
How to adjust
Fewer days. With four days, drop Thursday and make the Sunday outing ten minutes longer. With three days, keep Tuesday (intervals), Saturday (strength and carry) and Sunday (outing), and fold ten minutes of strength into the end of the outing. Three days still works; it just builds more slowly, so plan on sixteen weeks rather than twelve and repeat each block’s third week before its down week.
A missed week. One week missed: repeat the week before it, then continue. Two weeks missed: go back to the start of that block. Three weeks or more: start the programme again from week one. It will go faster the second time, because the first block will feel like a warm-up, but the Sunday outing needs to be rebuilt rather than resumed. Never make up a missed week by doubling the next one.
Illness. Head cold only: easy sessions and the outing at a gentler effort, no intervals, lighter bag. Anything with a fever, a chest, or feeling properly unwell: stop entirely, wait for two normal days, then one easy week before the next hard day. The first intervals back should be three by three, however far through the programme you were.
Tiredness that does not lift. If the easy days stop feeling easy, your sleep goes, or the interval day is slower two weeks running, take the down week early. Then carry on where you were. The programme is a shape, not a contract.
Making it Nordic
None of this needs a gym, a track or a membership. The intervals are a hill or a forest road; the strength is a bar in a door frame, a log and a rucksack; the outing is a lake, a ridge or a coast path. In winter the easy days and the outing move onto skis if you have snow, and the chapter on winter running covers studs and darkness for the days you don’t.
The weather will try to interfere around week seven, when the outing is nearly two hours and November has arrived. Go anyway, dressed a little colder than you want to be at the door. A two-hour walk in sleet, finished, does more for the person who will stand on a start line in May than a dry one skipped. If you need the reasons, the chapter on training outside all year has them.
Next
The sixteen-week race programme picks up where week twelve leaves off and takes the outing to four hours before a taper. If you have not entered anything yet, now is the time: the races and challenges page lists what is on, and the chapter on your first Nordic race explains how to pick one you can finish and get the entry in before it sells out.
Questions
Do I have to run, or can I walk, ski or cycle the easy sessions?
Any of them. The base programme is about time outside at an easy effort, and the engine you build on a bike or on skis is the same one you use on foot. Keep the interval day and the two strength days as they are, and do the easy sessions and the Sunday outing in whatever you have snow, water or roads for.
What does easy actually mean?
You can talk in full sentences the whole way, and you finish feeling you could have gone on. Most people go too hard on easy days and then cannot go hard enough on the interval day. If you own a heart-rate monitor it can help you check, but the talk test is the rule here, not a number.
Can I do the intervals on a bike or skis instead of running?
Yes. The Norwegian 4×4 method does not care what you are on: a hill, a bike, skis, a rowing machine or a swim all work. What matters is four minutes genuinely hard, three minutes easy, four times, once a week.
I have a pull-up bar and some weights. Should I do more strength?
Two sessions a week is plenty in a base phase, because the long outing and the intervals are already asking a lot of your legs. Use what you have in the two sessions and make them a little heavier over the twelve weeks. More sessions is not the lever; a slightly heavier bag on Saturday is.
What comes after the twelve weeks?
The sixteen-week race programme, which keeps the same shape and grows the Sunday outing to four hours before a taper. If you have no race in mind yet, repeat weeks nine to twelve and pick one; the races list has everything from a 10 km trail to a 90 km ski race.