How Nils van der Poel Trained for Olympic Gold and What You Can Learn

“If you want to be good, you must love the work. If you don’t love it, you won’t last.” – Nils van der Poel

In 2022, Nils van der Poel won double Olympic gold in long track speed skating (5,000m and 10,000m) and broke the world record in the 10k. Then he retired and left this 60-page manual we will be discussing today, showing exactly how he trained to get there. Raw principles.

When Nils dropped his manifesto “How to Skate a 10k”, the endurance world lost its mind. Everyone was talking about it.

Photo: Klaas Jan van der Weij

That’s how it always goes…

A champion shares a path that looks brutally simple, people get hyped for about 5 minutes, then try it for a few weeks, maybe a few months, in the best case a year… and then hit the wall early and quit.

Because the story we tell ourselves is always the same:

“Either this only works for an Olympic champion… or it is too simple for me”

And maybe in a way, it is only for an Olympic champion. But in another, most of what we will discuss here is exactly what you and I need, the parts that travel from the ice rink into sport, work and life.

Because “simple” doesn’t mean “easy.” Simple means boring. Repetitive. The kind of hard that burns your ego, not just your legs.

And that’s why most people walk away.

Well… here we go again.

On paper, Nils manifesto looked like a strange mix of self-made rules, hard discipline, and training notes so simple they almost looked too basic to matter. But it wasn’t coming from just anyone.

Behind his words, you can feel the influence of endurance legends outside skating, especially principles refined over decades by Gordo Byrn: ideas of huge aerobic work and deep patience. Nils pushed those same concepts to the edge, especially on recovery, where he wasn’t afraid to go as hard at resting as he did at training. All of it shaped under the steady guidance of his coach, Johan Röjler.

What Nils wrote, and what he actually lived for four years, was not really about skating. It was about life, and about endurance, the kind we all need in one form or another.

You see it in the kind of man he is.

Nils gave his 10,000m medal to Angela Gui, the daughter of Gui Minhai, a Swedish publisher jailed in China for criticizing the same regime that had just hosted his Olympic victory in 2022.

For him the medal was just metal. What mattered was standing for something bigger.

By giving it away, he showed integrity, compassion, dignity and courage, while protesting human rights violations.

Photo: AFP / New York Times

He remind us that true strength is about standing for something bigger than yourself: a value, a principle, a truth you won’t compromise.

Courage doesn’t end on the ice or at the finish line.

It’s how you choose to live when nobody is watching: in training, at work, with your family, with your community, even with strangers you may touch without ever knowing. Through money made and lost, failures endured, lessons repeated and wins celebrated.

Playing your own game. By your own rules. Living the life you want now, not later.

That, to me, says everything about his human quality. Success fades. Values stay.

But back to the corridor of endurance and Nils process. I will break down, among other things during your reading:

• How Nils trained at the extremes, from super general to ultra-specific, and what that means for you.

• Why his aerobic engine was built more on the bike than on the ice.

• How he used some running and why the bike is a metabolic weapon for almost any endurance discipline (not just skating!).

• His 4-year, brutally simple approach to periodization, and why most of us think too short-term and overcomplicate training for entertainment instead of efficiency and enjoyment.

• His radical 5:2 recovery rhythm, with wild stories of 14-hour sleep days and 7,000 kcal eating days. If a double Olympic champion isn’t afraid of eating or resting, why are so many athletes, at every level?

• Why monotony, pacing and joy became his strongest weapons.

• And the one truth that cuts through it all: endurance is not about suffering, it’s about staying the course.

The point isn’t to copy him. The point is to take the principles, the ones that hold up anywhere, and make them yours. Understand them, adapt them, and apply them to your reality. I’ll help by breaking down each of Nils’ key points with actionable ideas you can use in your own training, work or life.

1. Specificity and choice (or sacrifice)

Nils built his success on one hard rule: train like you race. But not all the time, and not in every way.

For him, that often meant skating every lap at competition speed. Every rep had to look like the real thing. No shortcuts. No “easy laps.”

It also meant solitude.

In the 10k, no one else could skate for him. So he trained alone, drilling lane changes again and again, rehearsing race scenarios until they were automatic.

He once described skating endless 25-lap efforts at pace, saying that if his body broke down, at least his mind would still know exactly what to do.

Specificity sounds simple, but it always comes with a price: sacrifice.

Not the cliché version, but the practical one. Sacrifice of variety. Sacrifice of comfort. Sacrifice of group sessions.

On the ice or in training, there was no debate. He admitted he sometimes questioned the very idea of being an ice skater, but not while working. Doubts and reflections happened off the ice.

When it was time to train, there was only commitment and execution.

From the outside, his training looked almost boring: repetitive, routine, harsh in its simplicity. What looks like sacrifice from afar is actually the trade-off that makes performance possible.

World-class performers in any field live inside the routine. They don’t see it as punishment, they see it as the path. Nils was no different: he even enjoyed it. He didn’t chase novelty. He chose to show up for the same work, day after day after day.

Simplicity is often the hardest path because it removes all excuses. It forces you to face the work as it is.

And that’s where sacrifice shines in a good way, not as suffering for its own sake, but as the conscious trade-off of choosing this over that to serve the bigger goal.

I prefer to use the word “choice” instead of “sacrifice.” Sacrifice sounds like loss. Choice reminds us it is deliberate, we give up one thing to pursue another we value more.

Most athletes, and most people in life, try to keep everything.

But if you want to sharpen one blade, you have to put the others down.

Specificity is not about always going hard. It’s about knowing exactly what your event demands, and having the courage to cut away the rest: the rush to test yourself, the temptation to race too much, the habit of copying others, and the constant search for novelty.

Nils understood this early in his journey. And over the years, he became the best in the world by doubling down on it.

What you can do?

• Define the demand. Write down what your race, project, or challenge truly requires.

• Mirror the demand. In practice, build a piece that reflects the real challenge you’re preparing for.

• Do stuff solo. Learn to trust yourself without external pressure.

• Cut one thing. Drop the session, habit, or distraction that doesn’t serve your main goal.

2. The aerobic engine is non-negotiable

Nils separated from his peers by doubling down on the boring stuff.

In the middle of winter, when every skater was obsessed with speed work and racing, Nils would hit pause and launch what he called his “Base 2.0.”

Imagine that his season was halfway through, the competitions are heating up, and instead of racing himself into form, he deliberately stepped back. He stripped his training down to the most basic element: long, steady aerobic work and rebuilt his engine again. Mostly through the bike and some running and cross-country ski. Mostly in Zn 1 and some Zn 2.

That decision looked crazy to outsiders.

Why step away from intensity right when it matters?