Why did IGLOI's methods produce any results at all?

Who said Igloi's training wasn't continuous.

Hard 200, slow 200. Repeat for 3-4 miles. Guess what? You've just run continuously for 3-4 miles.

Did you know you can create the same stimulus (capillaries, mitochondria, ie: aerobic benefits) by strength training? What is your body's response to running? Increased heart rate. Increased breathing. Increase sweating. What is your body's response to circuit training in a weight room? (example: circuit of 10 reps power clean, bench, bent over row, squat, push press, pullup) Increased heart rate. Increased breathing. Increased sweating.

Think in broader terms. What is happening during a 5 mile run, a 5 mile interval session, or a 35 minute strength training routine? You are taking your bodily systems away from homeostasis. Let's say during the course of a 30 minute run you average a heart rate of 140bpm. Ok, now let's say you are interval training running 1:00 at 160bpm and 1:00 at 120bpm. Guess what your average is? 140bpm. Now, go do a circuit in the gym which consists of many multi-joint and power exercises. Your heart rate response will be very high.

In a nutshell Igloi's methods worked because it got the heart rate up and took the body away from homeostasis. And that type of training is the best for improving neuromuscular coordination.

Alan

Runningart2004 wrote:

Who said Igloi's training wasn't continuous.

Hard 200, slow 200. Repeat for 3-4 miles. Guess what? You've just run continuously for 3-4 miles.

Alan

Alan,

Thanks for your response.

But, from what I understand they didn't do many workouts like that. They would often just rest or walk across the field between efforts.

What you said in your other paragraphs makes a lot of sense.

I was an Igloi drop out because his training was so hard. How many coaches can match Coach Mihaly Igloi's results? His Hungarian athletes had all of the distance world records, except in the marathon, before he had to leave the country in the mid 50s. You do not know enough bout his training to judge him. To learn more read the 15 page thread entitled "Mihaly Igloi" started by dc449 on 6/5/04. In fact, Bob Schul has posted on that thread.

because not all runners respond to the same type of training. what destroys one runner can make a champion out of the other.

OrvilleAtkins wrote:

...... You do not know enough bout his training to judge him. To learn more read the 15 page thread entitled "Mihaly Igloi" started by dc449 on 6/5/04. In fact, Bob Schul has posted on that thread.

I'm not judging Igloi negatively at all. In fact, it seems like he was a smart guy who got good results with his method. I'm just wondering about the actual physiology involved with WHY his method worked with some people. I would think more people should try at least a modified version.

Thanks for the link.

Alan,

Thanks for your response.

But, from what I understand they didn't do many workouts like that. They would often just rest or walk across the field between efforts.

What you said in your other paragraphs makes a lot of sense.

You'd be wrong. Igloi was very big into having his athletes jog in between harder reps. There wasn't much walking going on.

Good, I was hoping Orville would weigh in. Definitely check out the thread to which he directed you.

To my outsider's understanding, Igloi's men--including the third man to break 4:00 in the mile--were putting in more miles than anybody else (with the possible exception of some Czech guy) in those early-/mid-50's years. They were just doing a lot of them in an interrupted fashion.

If you have roughly as much talent as your opponents, you're doing more quantity of training (and more quality) than they are, and you're able to survive that regimen, you're probably going to outrun them.

curiously wrote:

You'd be wrong. Igloi was very big into having his athletes jog in between harder reps. There wasn't much walking going on.

I checked the other thread and it sounds like some athletes jogged between harder efforts but some walked. For example, it's mentioned in that thread several times that Schul would WALK between his 100's at least when he trained the couple years before the 64 Olympics. 90% of his training was 100-150m intervals with walk breaks supposedly.

I find this very fascinating.

The technical answer here is that Igloi introduced a sizeable number of short intervals in SETS, i.e., 3X20X200. There is a fairly short (but not a jog) rest between reps and a longer rest between sets. This provided a higher stimulus to type IIa and IIb muscle fibers than previous training--that is, a higher volume at a pace to cause stimulus to 11a/11b fibers). There was very little continuous running (from what I've read, something like a 4 mile run on Sundays). Sebastian Coe did some similiar training (3X10X200 in ~27 with 45 second rep rest).

Besides holding multiple WRs in the 1950's in Hungary, at the time of Schul's gold, the Los Angeles Track Club held every American record from 800 through 10000. Bob Schul came into the 1964 Olympics as the WR holder at 2 miles (and barely off the 5000 WR) and he ran 13:36 ON A DIRT TRACK. He won the gold by outkicking the defending olympic silver medalist in the 1500 (Michel Jazy, who also set WRs in the mile and 3000m) by running the final 300 in the 5000 FASTER than Peter Snell ran the same portion of the 800.

Yup, the whole thing doesn't work!

Obvious is right. Kenny Moore has written about how Bowerman found that while the intense Igloi-like interval work usually produced the steepest improvement curve for athlete, it also for many runners (not all) resulted in a bell curve. Many hit a point where due to do injuries or burn-out their progress eventually flattened out or declined, with harder work just accelerating the decline.

I know little about physiology or the technical aspects of running. That is why I had coaches. They gave me my workouts. I just loved to run. I was not there while Schul was running for Coach Igloi. Schul was training on his own for the year before the 1964 Olympics. As I said before I do not know what others did while training for him. I do know that my monthly mileage in 1966 went like this: 474, 543, 519, 500, 475 and I did not walk although I would stop after sets sometime to find out what was next in my workout. The marathoners often did a lot more than run 100s, 150s or 200s. In 1966 long time Igloi runner Norm Higgins was 5th overall and first American in the Boston Marathon in 2:18:26 and then won the USA Marathon Championship less than a month later.

When Igloi fled Hungary Laszlo Tabori left with him. While in Hungary Tabori was the third runner under 4 minutes and was the coholder of the world record for 1500 meters along with a teammate. Even though he had just left his family and country for good Laszlo ran in the 1956 Olympics placing 4th in the 1500 and 6th in the 5K. All of this is on the Igloi thread. Igloi knew physiology. I do not. Coach also had been a world class 1500 meter runner in the mid 1930s and ran in the 1936 Olympic Games.

[quote]lease wrote:

Good, I was hoping Orville would weigh in. Definitely check out the thread to which he directed you.

what Orville forgot to mention is that he didn't train very long with Igloi, as he was always getting injured.

I was completely out of shape when I started with Coach Igloi. I was there for 20 months. I do not remember always being injured but do remember having the back problems that I have had since I was 12 years old. My legs were often dead. I agree that I did not run twice a day workouts or stay long enough to blossom. Actually, Igloi gave me an excuse to leave by moving training to Santa Monica. I stayed at Dorsey High for 7 more years. While with Igloi I ran 2:39:30 on a hot day, 2:33:47 in Culver City, and 2:42:13 in Yonkers on very dead legs.

I consider Coach Mihaly Igloi one of the greatest running coaches of all time.

Walking or not, work is work and Igloi's athletes were doing the work. A 13-14' race is really not a long race, and continuous is overrated when it neglects the gears required for racing. Most of what Igloi was doing was years ahead of the times. Even in the marathon now we're seeing athletes more comfortable with gear changes than steady paced efforts. You can expect to see more of that, since the ones with the track speed to run 205-206 are gonna be fine w/ variations, and find it actually extends fatigue resistance.

The muscle recruitment of the Igloi's training would pretty much leave you with very powerful IIa but also type I ready to go. The volume would pretty much convert any IIb you might start with, but in their place would be a well prepared system for producing and maintaining power. Those who had problems with it would be those best suited for the long slow distance, who have the limitation on the speed side.

It is an interesting post and I thought I would state a few things about training under Igloi and then training on my own starting in september of 1963 through 1965.

First when I trained with Igloi we did not walk any intervals. If we were given 12 x 150 we would jog 50 meters between each one. After the set we would jog a lap and return to Igloi for the next set. We did not stand around very long as he would immediately give us our set.

The intervals were normally 150's, 220's, 330's, 440's, 660's and once in a while 880's. Yes we were on a 440 yard track.

Most of the work was done with 30's and below but Igloi wuld give us 440's in a series of ten or twelve and at the time I was doing them in 63. We would walk back 60 meters and then jog easy back to the line.

When I returned to Ohio in 1963 I used his theory but did some adjusting. I decided to walk the intervals to take the tension off the muscles but I cut the interval. I worked on the grass and would do 300 meters in a straight line with 40 meter interval and later cut the interval to 20-25 meters.

All my other distances were done the same way with short walk intervals.

In the year before the Games I never did anything above 400 meters and starting in May of 1964 I started to run 20 x 400. I was in good shape and would run three in 60 seconds with each fourth in 58. On the twentieth I would run all out and was able to run 54 something all through the months leading up to the Games. I would do this workout on a Sunday every two weeks if I had not raced on the Saturday.

Igloi was a great coach and I learned to push my body under his training. It was very difficult training myself in the year before the Games as there was no one else around. However, I was able to listen to my body and if I felt I was pushing too hard I would ease up to allow my body to relax. At least in that year I was able to give myself the necessary workouts and keep myself from injury.

Let me say when an athlete pushes as hard as he must to be one of the best he is placing tremendous strain on his muscles, tendons and joints. Those people who have near perfect bodies are able to keep from being injured compared to those who have some idiosyncracies. In my case I had flat feet which caused problems with my achilles as they were always sore. You must remember we did not have flats whch could be used for training as they were too stiff. We had to use spikes which did not have heels in all our training. (By the way I was the first person to place heels on the spikes and I wore them in the Spring of 1964 and in the Games.)

I was a good friend of the late Igloi, he was a quite reclusive person, but he had talked to me about his ideas and reasons. I am also a good friend of Tabori, who was the 3rd men under the 4 minute mile (he has been training Duane Solomon USC - 3rd at USA's 800 2007). If you would like to chat more send me your contact info to igloifriend@freemail.hu

Mr. Schul, thanks so much. I've always enjoyed your posts.

But its not lydiardism. How on earth did it work?

Onlydiard wrote:

But its not lydiardism. How on earth did it work?

Getting away from the dumb comments, this thread has the potential to teach people a few things about different methods.

If I remember correctly, the repeats were not always really hard. The athletes might have run intervals each day, but some days were easier than others. Isn't he the one used terms like easy, moderate, etc., had his athletes run by feel, and would say, "When it is easy, you must feel easy. When it is hard, you must feel hard?"