Last Summer, we first learned about NRTHRN Strong a cross-country skiing inspired method when they were doing a pop-up throughout the Summer in the Hamptons. We also learned that they were having a permanent studio in Flatiron and attended their preview last Fall to check out the studio. We went back a few weeks later during the Food Network NYC Wine & Food Festival, and we took an early morning class and it was great to see how this low impact workout is a total body workout!

Flash forward to this month when we held our Athleisure Mag Summit® Series event on Apr 6th where we had readers and members of our community, to try out a class! We took some time to chat with Founder, Nicoline Roth to hear about the method, why she created it, and her studios here in NY and in Copenhagen!

ATHLEISURE MAG: Tell us your background and how you came to the fitness industry?

NICOLINE ROTH: So my background is originally not within the fitness industry. My background is in business, but I grew up as an athlete. I played golf at a relatively high level and I played handball as well on a high level. So I’ve always been into sports. I’ve always been into doing things outdoors. I’ve just in general always been very active. My whole family has always been very active. All of our vacations, we’ve never done like a sunbathing vacation. It’s always been like hiking or biking or skiing.

So I just always loved movement. So, being active and also just you know always being interested in various concepts. When I came to New York 10 years ago to go to Columbia University, that was my first introduction to boutique fitness and I was so mesmerized especially by SoulCycle. It was about the design, the lights, the instructors, and the sound. I like when you walk into a space, just like a restaurant, and you feel that there’s a purpose to everything in the space. And they’ve been very intentional about that design.

So that’s kind of like the way I’ve gotten into fitness. During COVID, I was living in Copenhagen. My brother had this machine that was developed for cross-country skiers that we today know as the Northern Trainer. He was training on it at home for a 90 kilometer cross-country ski race called Vassaloppet in Sweden. I started training on it myself and I just instantly felt that it was the best training I’d done for my life. I’d never try to work out where I simultaneously uses, so many muscles. I never tried an endurance training that really pushed me without making me feel like crap!

You could do it, but you didn’t feel like it was like running you know a marathon. You could do it and you got a really good endurance, but it didn’t kill you. You could work on your balance. I loved all these slow movements I started doing that was giving me the sculpting effects of it. It was just so fun. So I got in touch with a Pilates instructor and we started trying to do some programming around the machine. The machine had existed for 15 years before we took it over and then kind of like an idea started to grow in me. What if I owned this machine and I changed the design of it and then I created a workout around the machine that went beyond just like a workout for triathletes or cross-country skiers and that was the start of it. So it’s kind of like my background in business, seeing what was happening in the U.S. taken together with what I already knew of fitness that led me to NRTHRN Strong.

AM: We thought you were a track girlie. But hearing your story, we see that too!

NR: Yeah, no, I was a handball girl.

AM: Wow.

NR: Which is not a big sport here, but it’s a huge sport in Europe. I actually miss playing.

AM: What led to the creation of NRTHRN Strong?

NR: Well that was my former experience and then finding the machine. Then during COVID, I started thinking about what if we created a concept that would be rooted in Nordic values. It should be rooted in my relationship with nature. Of course, it should be centered around this incredible machine.

So my family and I, we acquired the global patent for the machine and we bought the company that manufactures it. And then I spent a year learning manufacturing, redesigning the machine, creating the interactive tablet that there is on the machine. And then we knew the goal with the concept was to take it to the US. But since I had no experience of running a studio, we wanted to do a proof of concept in Copenhagen first, which we opened in 2022. And then shortly thereafter, we started looking for a location here in New York City. It was really about bringing kind of the Nordic feel to the US, but of course still... do it in a way that speaks to the American people. So our Copenhagen studio is very international the way that the instructors teach is also in a very American way. So we try to do that first there and people love it!

AM: It’s great hearing how all of this came together.

How do the Nordic principles of balance, connection, and resilience come together in NRTHRN Strong?

NR: I think in the Nordics, people have a very deep relationship to being in nature and being active in nature. It’s just a part of like how we grew up. You meet together with people and you create communities not to train your bodies, but to be outside and all the joys that come with that. I think we try to kind of bring that into the studio. Resilience shows itself through the machine and the training. As you know, it’s developed for cross-country skiers which is one of the most complete and hard workouts that you can do. It trains the full body, but besides cross-country skiing it’s transferable to so many other sports. You have strength aspects, you have coordination, and you have endurance. You can transfer that to biking, to swimming, to running. In that way, we kind of bring the resilience together. Balance is also at the core of Nordic culture. We bring that through in our workouts by saying you don’t have to go all out every single day. That’s also why we have different formats. So you have the Sculpt format that’s more like resetting, slow, working on mobility, working on your balance, working on your course ability, but it’s not like you walk out of the class and you’re dead! You feel really good after that class.

AM: High endorphins when we left!

NR: Exactly! In terms of connection, we’ve tried to be very intentional through our studio, how we build our community, and how we speak to our members. I personally try to be very present in the studio here and to get to know people, like truly who they are, get to know their names, where they come from.

And then it’s obviously also through a lot of the design choices that we’ve done. I find the Northern Lights to be one of the most beautiful natural phenomenon that you can find. We’ve tried to capture that in the studio room where the lights are changing in the purple, the blues, the greens kind of hues that come from the Northern Lights. And the rest of the space we’ve tried to make it very, very simple, minimalistic - yet warm. So it doesn’t have a lot of things in there you know you come in, you’ve got exactly what you need, but the coloring and the materials is done with that Scandanavian minimalism in mind, but it doesn’t seem cold.

AM: Exactly.

NR: It’s a warm gray, but it’s also like a mountain color. So again, we’re thinking about how it is in nature and bringing that into the studio.

AM: Well, you’ve talked about the machine. It feels like the first time that we were on the machine, we used it in a number of different ways because we were even standing behind it and doing the pulls from there, and then this time we’re doing a lot of cross.

Can you tell us more about the machine and the poles? It’s interesting because it seems to be 3-4 different poles that can be used.

NR: Yeah, so the machine has more than 15 different exercises. The foundational move on the machine is called Double Pulling. That’s a classic cross-country skiing technique. And the machine mimics this with a near perfect correlation. So that would be, like, you on the slopes. Same goes for Diagonal Pulling. It’s also very similar to Diagonal Pulling on the slope. The rest – when we’re working, we push with the poles, we pull with the poles, we do sides with the lateral and we do rotational moves. So the machine kind of works in the way that you would move your body on a normal basis.

So it’s in a multi-planar motion. So it’s a full range of motion around. All of the exercises that you do at the front of the machine, you can do it at the back of the machine in the opposite direction. If you’re working your triceps at the front, you turn around, you’ll be working your biceps.

Same goes with your Double Pulling. So you’re using your core. If you do that at the back, you’ll be working your entire back. If you did a workout where you did 10 tricep extensions at the front, followed by bicep curls, right? You’ll have a very balanced workout. So that way it’s super good for your body.

AM: For those who’ve yet to try it, what are the class offerings that you have?

NR: We have three.

We have Strong, which is our signature format. That’s strength infused with cardio. You’re 60% on the machine, 40% floor. So you alternate. It is heavy on resistance. There are small cardio intervals throughout the workout and on the floor, you do use heavy dumbbells so this is a high intensity vibe. It’s still low impact.

Then we have our Sculpt format, which is Pilates inspired, but it integrates a lot of mobility work and balance work as well. You do a lot of exercises standing on one foot so you’re working all the smaller muscles on our knee for example. This is all about mind to body connection. You always start the workout with a small breathing exercise. And then you end the workout with a small breathing exercise. So it’s kind of like a full circle moment where you’re really trying to center yourself.

Then we have our Cardio format, which is endurance training. So this is 70% on the machine. A lot of interval training, a lot of Double Pulling. This is all focused about training your VO2 Max. Your VO2 Max is how well your body uses oxygen during exercise. It’s one of the most important longevity markers for your body. There’s so much focus on strength training but that must not be overlooked. It’s so important to train your VO2 Max and that’s what we do in the cardio format.

So they’re very different the three formats. What’s similar in them is that it’s all low impact. There are no high impact moves in our workouts at all.

AM: It’s great that there aren’t large jumping movements.

NR: No, exactly.

AM: A number of our readers are athletes, semi pro’s etc. and they have acquired injuries in their knees, lower back, and wrists. And the fact that you can do the workout and when you leave, you may have I have certain parts of your body that you know definitely got a workout, but it doesn’t feel crazy. Because there’s certain workouts where you leave and you know you will have to strategize how to lift a glass of wine and to get your legs up on your couch!

NR: Oh yeah!

We actually get a lot of people that have running injuries and then they thought they could never really push themselves endurance-wise again. And then they realize you can here without feeling that impact.

AM: We were speaking earlier about lighting and even the music. Can you talk about, what your focus was in that area?

NR: When I work out, I want to be in a zone. I want to get outside noise and everything from your daily life, I want it out of my head and I want to be there in that moment.

AM: Right.

NR: When you’re in a dark room that’s immersive, it has this effect on you where you just get into your zone.

AM: Absolutely!

NR: I find that if I am in a very light room training, it takes nothing for me to get distracted. You’re looking around and so on. When you’re in that dark, immersive room, you really get into your zone. The movement on the machine is so fluid. You have that flow when you’re going.

So it’s so easy to get into your zone, especially when you have the lights around. I am personally very inspired by the Northern Lights and so that’s why we chose those lights. The lights are a little different from every class. So when I chose the colors from the Northern Lights, I tried to match them up with where you are heart rate-wise. So you have a higher heart rate in our stronger cardio classes. So if you look at the heart rate zone colors, they’ll start in the green and the blue, and then they go up, and you have the orange, your pink-orange, and then you go up to the red, right?

AM: Wow.

NR: So we kind of match the lights in every class with the heart rate zone. In our Copenhagen studio, we actually have a full-on red for our cardio class. We don’t do it this year because the red is not in the Northern Lights and it needs to match. But we have one that’s very close to it here. We still have the interactive tablet so you can follow your stats, but I don’t want it to become a driving force for the entire room. You would need to be able to choose to look at it, but you can also just like be in your zone, right?

AM: So you have themed classes. What are the theme classes that are coming up for the Spring and Summer? You’re currently in a challenges going on right now for April.

NR: So right now we have a two minute Double Pulling challenger in every Strong class. We are planning a very fun event coming up. It’s going to be a marathon challenge. So it’s going to be outdoors in New York City and it’s going to be like a 4 hour event. You do 42 kilometers Double Pulling on the machine. We’ve done it 4 times in Copenhagen and it is the most fun workout. So we gather around 20 machines. You sign up with the crew as a team of 1 up to 5. So, most people can’t do a full marathon on the machine. I would go in a team, right? And I do the workout for us in the office. So you can sign up in a team and do it. But it’s such a fun event. So that’s a big thing that we’re planning. We will have challenges coming next month as well in every class.

And then we sprinkle in fun. In March, we had a lot of themes in terms of music in the classes, we’ll bring that back again that was very popular. The Taylor Swift were obviously sold out. So maybe we bring Taylor Swift back again.

AM: Last Summer, you launched in the US with your Hamptons pop-ups. Are you going back to the Hamptons this Summer?

NR: We will go back to the Hamptons, but not in the same way. We’ll focus on unique events throughout the Summer. So we have some fun partnerships coming up. We’re not ready to announce it just yet, but we’ll be at various beach clubs, hotels, outdoor events close by water.

AM: Our readers and community travel. For those who are going to Copenhagen, can you tell us more about the Copenhagen studio?

NR: So we have people, when they start here and go there, they’re like, why don’t we live there? So the Copenhagen location is quite big. It’s on the water so we have a sauna club. We do guided sauna sessions as well. It’s on the canal so you cold plunge and then you go back to the sauna. So you go back and forth, but it’s compared to going to a sauna here in New York, you can’t even compare the experience because you’re jumping in with a morning view or an evening sunset. It’s a totally different thing so we have that. Then we have this concept here - the Strong concept, we have a recovery room, we have an open gym space as well, we have a café, and then we have a studio that we call Revival that’s more focused on breath work, meditation, and mat work. So it’s quite a big place. But it’s incredible. On a Saturday or a Sunday there, you’ll see people that are there for, I’m not even lying, like 3 hours.

AM: We can imagine that.

NR: They go from concept to concept, and then they hang out in sauna. They buy coffee in the café and they hang out with friends. It’s like a wellness oasis.

AM: Are you thinking about additional locations for NRTHRN Strong?

NR: We are looking around the city. We haven’t found a location yet, but it is something that we’re considering.

AM: When you’re not in the studio, how do you take time for yourself?

NR: I like to go golfing on weekends. I go to Chelsea Piers, they have a driving range there. I like to spend time with my friends here in the city. I like to be outdoors. You know, it’s New York, I walk everywhere. In Copenhagen, I drive everywhere. Here, I walk everywhere. I never get uninspired by walking around the city. I think that’s what I do more, mainly. And then on some weekends, if I can, I love going out to the Hamptons and just relax. If I go there, I make sure to do a lot of ocean swimming. It’s what I miss the most about Copenhagen. So I do that when I’m in the Hamptons.

IG @nrthrnstrong

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | NRTHRN Strong