We do love a protocol in the fitness world, don’t we? Norwegian 4x4 intervals. Zone 2. Sprint intervals. Tempo runs. Threshold work. Every few months there’s another method promising to build a bigger engine, improve VO2 max and slow your resting heart rate to a crawl.
Though variety is indeed the spice of life, the truth is that most genuinely effective conditioning methods share just a handful of common traits: consistency, progressive overload and just enough discomfort to force adaptation without killing you off for the rest of the week.
One of the simplest (but most brutally effective) examples of this is ‘Mikko’s Triangle’.
Popularised by Finnish CrossFit legend Mikko Salo, the workout has become something of a benchmark test of aerobic fitness inside the functional fitness world. Salo, who won the 2009 CrossFit Games, built a reputation for brutally simple training sessions executed with frightening consistency and pacing discipline. Mikko’s Triangle is very much cut from that cloth.
The protocol itself is straightforward:
40-Minute EMOM (Every Minute on the Minute)
Repeat for 10 rounds
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Minute 1: Row
Minute 2: Bike
Minute 3: SkiErg
Minute 4: Rest
The trick is choosing a calorie target for each movements and holding it consistently for the entire workout. Strong athletes might aim for 18-20+ calories per minute across all three machines. Mere mortals should start considerably lower.
And take it from me – lower is wiser for your first outing.
The first few rounds (should) feel more than manageable. Then somewhere around the halfway point your lungs start to struggle, your transitions start to become sluggish and the SkiErg feels like it has a personal vendetta against you.
That’s the beauty of the protocol. Because the workload rotates between different movement patterns – upper-body dominant skiing, cyclical rowing and leg-heavy biking – you can sustain a much higher overall cardiovascular output than you could on a single machine alone. The heart and lungs become the limiting factor, not just local muscular fatigue.
If you’re tackling Mikko’s Triangle for the first time, we'd suggest you leave your ego in the changing room. Spend your opening session establishing sustainable numbers rather than trying to impress the gym.
Your goal should be finishing every working minute with roughly 5-10 seconds left to transition and recover.
As your fitness improves, gradually increase calories while ensuring you can still maintain consistency across all rounds. The magic here isn’t found in smashing a few epic rounds, it’s in not falling apart in rounds eight, nine and ten.
All told, Mikko's Triangle is simple, brutal, and effective. The trifecta for conditioning work that's actually worth doing.
With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
