Do You Have What It Takes to Be an Olympian?

Marit Bjorgen of Norway competes in the women’s 30K cross-country skiing competition at the 2018 Winter Olympics.Becoming the most decorated Winter Olympics athlete in history requires snow, fortitude, technique, squats, more squats, a team of dedicated physiologists, a stable body weight, running shoes, high-intensity intervals, about 940 annual hours of exercise — much of it conducted at a surprisingly light intensity — and a willingness to substantially shake up training when it is no longer working well.

Those are the findings of a new study published in Frontiers of Physiology that analyzed 17 years’ worth of records about the workout routines of the Norwegian cross-country ski racer…