Pardon me for using the entire quote! Once again, believe it or not, I do kinda understand what you mean. A couple of years ago, Dave Martin called me and said that we need to write a book on Lydiard training. He said a friend of his from Germany was staying over the weekend and said that it's a pitty that there's no "good" Lydiard training book in recent years. I told him that there was a guy who had been working on that it's almost ready to go but had been rejected from various publishers including Meyer & Meyer. I asked Dave who he was and he said "Mr. Meyer!" So that's how HIT came about. At the time we had been talking about old Lydiard method explained. So in a way, I wouldn't be surprised if (one of) Keith's objectives being incorporating "science" to explain Lydiard training. At one point at least, the criticism is always; "Lydiard is outdated because he never uses modern terms like AT or LT or v-Dot; instead, he still uses 1/4 effort, etc." Hence, Keith's book. Not that it explained everything but I think a lot of young people love it because he translated "Arthur's terms" into todays terms. Personally, I like to stick more closely to the original.
I'm not 100% sure if your point(s) of criticism is because, with Lydiard program, we don't do lots of fast runs in the first half of the program. You may call it "outdated" or "not modern" but I still think a lot of it is to do with situational issue rather than efficacy issue. Suppose there's no money involved in today's Grand Prix track and you have 6 months to prepare; would so many athletes still stay sharp year-around? I don't know; they may. Lydiard came up with race-week/non-race-week schedule not so much because it's better; he still said that, IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO DO IT THIS WAY, to build up first and don't mix things up so much. Why? Because, in his mind, racing too much, or doing too much race-like training all the time would pull your condition down and you get jaded or stale. I've seen a letsrun thread a while back, someone asking if there's any scientific proof or reserach on too much racing and staleness. I doubt it but, as a coach, you should know. And you KNOW the timing when the athlete had it enough throughout the season. So what do you do? You even said you'd take that runner out from racing and do some regeneration type of training (mostly nice easy run, I'd assume???) for 2 to 6 weeks. I'd assume you wouldn't continue to push that poor runner to do hard(er) track workout and expect him/her to do better the next time around. When you're cooked, you're cooked. Hard race-like training would push him/her further down. With Lydiard, the solution was to take some time off and do some longish easy jog or do some long run. If you don't agree with long runs, fine. It may not be long but still it's not going to be race-pace training.
Deek did the same kind of a pattern all year around and I had a chance to talk with him briefly about that at Boston this last month. His coach, as you may know, is Pat Clohessy who was one of the biggest Lydiard followers. He put together all the ingredients from Lydiard program "in a balanced way" to come up with this "Complex System". Deek told me that, if he didn't do any "speed training" for a while and then put spike shoes on and started running fast, he always faced some aches and pains to overcome for some time. But, instead, if he did some sort of track workout year-round, he didn't. So he stuck with it. However, his belief was such that long runs are the ones that gave him "strength". He actually told me that "far too many people overlook the strength and SPEED you gain from going far..." I have vide-taped this general comment and will eventually post it at Lydiard Foundatioin's website (though I missed that last comment because I was running out of battery!!). I also have comments from Bill Rodgers, Gelindo Bordin, Hanson brothers, Dave Martin (on Coe's training)... Now you may criticize that I only interviewed those who would agree with Lydiard. But here's the thing though. I run LYDIARD Foundation; NOT ANTI-Lydiard Foundation. I would talk about Lydiard training; not UN-Lydiard training. A group of us got together and decided to start Lydiard Foundation to pass on Lydiard training/message. There's a reason why we did that; there's a reason why we believe Lydiard training worked and still works. Some of you may not agree but that's fine. I wouldn't stop anybody to start anti-Lydiard foundation or Canova foundation or Igloi foundation or Cerutty foundation or Stampfl foundation or whatever to pass on THEIR wisdom. I'd be visiting their sites and studying. Again, if you accuse me of always talking to people who believe in Lydiard, I guess I'm guilty as charged. But, really, who wouldn't? I mean, would you take your wife who hates hocky to a hocky game to have fun? If I'm trying to convay Lydiard training that it's a good way to go about, why interview someone who trash Lydiard training? Doesn't make sense. If you want to call that act "being cult", well, so be it. I guess we are ALL cult of some sort.
I met with Coach Canova at Boston last month. A super nice guy and I was very impressed. I introduced him to Toshi Takaoka and Toshi asked him some training questions. Canova gave his time to answer in depth which we really appreciated. Afterwards, Toshi looked at me and repeated some points to make sure. He just said; "If we tried that, we'd get injured!!" Yes, he didn't go beyond 2-hours. So you may point that out that he "didn't do Lydiard." Well, he also DID do 150-miles a week (lots of volume) at 8-minute-mile pace (VERY SLOW for a 2:06 guy). He didn't do hill training; but he probably trained a lot more Lydiard than anything else. He didn't know Lydiard; but it turned out that his coach's coach, Mr. Sadanaga, was one of the original group who joined Lydiard training camp. Also, his coach handed out a copy of "Running with Lydiard" to all the runners who joined his team (including Toshi but he confessed that he just tossed it away and never read it!! ;o)). You mentioned De Costa. I remember hearing something about his coach being a sprinting coach (his agent's partner was ex-Kiwi runner). So he trained hard/fast everyday and ran the world fastest marathon. Great. But I'm sure Lydiard would have said that where did he go after that run? Now I'm sure there were more than just one (training) factor to his career being so short. But in Lydiard's eyes, training hard/fast day after day after day, week after week, is one of the quickest ways to burn out. Scientific proof? I don't know if there's any. One of the reasons TO ME that I don't buy into all those "reseraches" is because, to conduct research, you'd have to ISOLATE one aspect and compare. In real life, EVERYTHING interacts to produce results.
I appreciate you calling me "a crystal glass" (I take it as a comprement, right? ;o)); but do make NO mistake--I wasn't admitting Lydiard being wrong in some of the accounts (not all, right!). I first agreed about "cooking" and mixing ingredients in a different order resulting different outcome. I don't think Arthur would have said mix them in any order you want and you'd get the same result. It was rekrunner who said that. Then I agree with you that it ain't all "art" either. Arthur used a lot of "art" of coaching--no doubt about it. But HE was the one who always said it's got to be science (not all of it). He always said "scientific one always beat non-scientific one." Of course he was referring to East Germans and he was VERY naive and wrong about them being "just" scientific (well, in a way but; you know what I mean!). But his point was that, in his view, "crap-shooting training" never works. You may run ONE good race (even set a world record!) but if you can't come back and duplicate that run ON THE DAY THAT REQUIRES, then it's not the right training. That's a big part of Lydiard training.
In Lydiard's eyes, it is possible to "formulate" this success pattern. At first, he came up with a certain combination AS THE IDEAL CASE SCENARIO. Of course, not everybody can get that ideal case scenario. We may not have 24-weeks but 16. In his eyes, you can still "formulate" the ratior within the context of that same pattern. It's not really; "Well, if you can't do that, do this" or "you don't need to do long run in this situation"... There ARE some important elements that he never gotten away from. Long runs are always important and he just picked the number, 2-hours, that worked best for him and his "boys". It was at first 20+ miles but then he realized, if you're not as fit, 20-mile may take more than 3-hours and he found it's too much. Then he came up with 2+ hours (or total of about 10 hours a week instead of 100 miles a week).
Believe it or not, I had kept all your criticisms over the years while you may or may not have used various names. To me, we'd need to be able to at least have some sort of answers to all those criticisms as long as the criticisms are reasonable (there had been some rediculous ones coming from whomever). To us, to carry on Arthur's legacy means to explain what he tried to convay to everybody. He used to say that his principles can be applied to a 4-minute miler to a 4-hour marathon runner; young and old and men and women. When we came up with our on-line training program, Master Run Coach, we (basically me, Lorraine Moller and Dick Brown along with consulting various people like Peter Snell, Dave Martin, Greg McMillan, etc.) went back over and over and over and ask ourselves a question; "What would Arthur have said to this?" Duration of Aerobic Conditioning Phase, pace for interval training, progression of time trial (we called it Out-and-Back)...and duration ratio of each phase depending on the individual's experience and background... Sure, for you, it's "only" 1500 BASE programs and you criticized that we should have more. Absolutely! Granted, with the "formula", we do have almost infinit number of combinations with the duration and pace according to each user's calculated VO2Max. It's just we have "only" 1500 different BASE programs to branch out. And all these 1500 (actually 1475) programs were constructed with very specific reasons. Is it "perfect"? Absolutely NOT!! Just as we have not been able to make a robot that can RUN on 2 legs or a computer that can duplicate our brain functions; there is NO way we can substitute a live coach with an on-line training program. Moreover, I DO admit that this may NOT be a perfect program for EVERYBODY. Absolutely not!! It is IMPOSSIBLE. BUT (and I would emphasize this BUT), I can confidently say that this IS as close to perfect explanation, or idiot proof formula, of LYDARD TRAINING. I can confidently say, for anybody who is interested in trying out Lydiard training, this IS the easiest way to go with. I would still strongly advise people to try it out several times and try to read their own pattern and readjust it to best suit their own needs though--just as Arthur used to always say to his runners.
There IS a certain pattern to Lydiard training. Whether you want to follow that or not is totally up to you. I happened to believe it works and that's what I'd suggest to ANYBODY. But I would NEVER force anybody, if he or she is totally happy with some other program, to use it because I also believe that, if someone absolutely believes in a "wrong" training program, it would work better than using a "perfect" training program that he or she does NOT believe in. This may be where this "art" of coaching come to play--how to convince your athletes to absolutely believe in it. Some may use science; some may use praising; some may use "prediction"; some may use, well, love?
Lorraine and I had worked on identifying these PRINCIPLES of Lydiard training. You may not like them because some of them are quite vague. But, again, we tried to see if we can apply each and every one of them to training a 4-minute-miler or a 4-hour marathon runner. Lorraine had written an article on that a few years back to Running Times. If you haven't seen it, you may be interested:
http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=18121So we identified the following as Lydiarad Principles:
* Aerobic development
* Feeling-based
* Response regulated
* Sequential training pattern
* Peaking
Like I said earlier, "timing" or "peaking" is a big part of "Lydiardism". There's nothing wrong with running fast during earlier stage of the program. But, in Arthur's eyes, he didn't see much point of sharpening too much waaaay before the most important race. You ask some enthusiastic young runner why they are doing repeat 200m as fast as they can in February, and ask them when their target race is; and if the answer is, say, July, Arthur would just shake his head. You can still do it; but, to him, spending one day doing that sort of workout when you can actually go for a hard 10-mile run DURING CONDITIONING PHASE is one day lost to raise your oxygen carrying capacity. BUT (again, important BUT), if someone needed to work on their speed, it wouldn't hurt to do some of that; but, again, it's got to be "Response-regulated", meaning, and you should agree with this too, if you do, say fast 200s, you should be ready for that; otherwise, you'll hurt yourself. This means the body's response should regulate the actual workout. If your "response" calls for "Not yet!!" then you shouldn't move on and do that.
I guess I've taken up enough space here but let me say one more thing; you have criticized Lydiard "intervals" being so vague. But (2) and (3) should answer that--and what Gary pointed out about intervals actually explain it perfectly. In Arthur's mind, the actual "form" of intervals didn't matter at all. The "purpose" of intervals is more important. He didn't care if you did 400m or 800m or 513m repeat as long as you did that till you get tired. Actually Frank Shorter was the one who totally agreed with this point. Arthur didn't care too much for ladder intervals. But I personally love it and it works really well for some people. I'm not necessarily diagreeing with Arthur here. I'm still covering the core of what he preached.
Okay, I laid; one more thing. Again, I konw one of the common criticisms to Lydiard is his being wrong with physiology. I'm sure for some people, it seems very important whether a certain exercise stimulates slow twitch or fast twitch--and it's quite evident if you follow this thread. And I know Arthur tried to explain it that way as well and, well, some times it didn't go too well. He basically took whatever is easiest to explain--I do respect and like the way Peter explain on the other hand because, if some things are not quite clear, he would come out and say that he didn't know "for sure". Arthur would try to convince you that the snow is black. Whether that approach is good or bad, I wouldn't try to discuss here. But the only thing I can, and would like to, say here about that is; that he used hill training just the right way in the context of his training program to achieve whatever he had desired. Incidentally, I think he explained it as "to stimulate white muscle fibers and isotonic exercise is the best way to do it" and also said that "the slower you go up the hill, the more resistance will be felt and get the better RESULTS"--and here, results mean preparing your body to do more race-specific training that follows. When Snell and Magee and Baillie were bounding up Whitney Street, I'm not sure if even physiologists knew the difference between fast twitch muscles and slow twitch muscles but that didn't seem to hurt them none.
I wonder how much of this page I covered...