Mihaly Igloi

fwiiw,

Igloi's weekly pattern looked some like this:

Monday:

am-intervals medium

pm-interval medium, long

Tuesday:

am-intervals medium

pm-repetitions hard

Wednesday:

am-easy running

pm-easy running, strides

Thursday:

am-intervals medium

pm-intervals medium

Friday:

am-easy running

pm-easy running, strides

Saturday:

am-intervals hard

pm-repetitions hard

Sunday:

am-easy running, strides

Ghost of Igloi

Ghost-dude,

was that done throughout the year, or only close to (and in) race season? How hard were the interval and rep sessions?

Mtn Dew,

Some people forget that Igloi was a high school coach. I do not know the length of his tenure at Loyola High School, but I ran with several of his high school athletes. On the whole, they were pretty good. One in particular, Mark Rafferty, ran around 4:10 in high school, and 4:00 later at AZ State. I started training with Igloi after my junior year in high school. I would imagine, around 30% of the club were high schoolers. In fact we had shirts printed with the moniker "Igloi's Boys," and we were quite proud of it.

I didn't notice Igloi's injury rate being any greater than other programs. I base that observation on forty years involvement in the sport.

Ghost of Igloi

Pete,

In the Fall during cross country season we ran interval workouts on the grass median of San Vicente Blvd. The intervals were gentle and relaxed to begin with, and increased in intensity over the season. After about October we were at the track most of the time. We did get two weeks off from training in August. We did not train on Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter. We usually ran a 1200m hard, followed by an all-out 400 meters on New Years Day morning. That was interesting for some of us.

The hard days were tough. For example: AM: 30-40x200m good speed/good swing and hard speed; PM: medium intervals, followed by 3-4 sets of 4x400m @ 63-63, every 4th 59-60/200m btw 400, and 400m btw sets; or medium intervals, followed by 3x800m @ 2:02-2:03, 2:05-2:08, 2:02-2:03/400m; many times these hard sessions ended with hard 150m-200m repetitions with full recovery.

I tried to give you a general picture above, and not the all time toughest workout I ran. There were times that the interval session was long but not hard. It was not uncommon to have an interval session take two hours. A good portion of this was warm-up and cool-down, but you could easily cover 12 miles, and with a morning session of 6 miles have an 18 mile day.

There was a progression to this, and you just didn't start double training until you can handle it. Likewise, the less prepared ran the timed repetitions less frequently.

Ghost of Igloi

I posted this one another thread (but I don't think anyone saw it). Here it is again:

-------------------------------------------------------------

The week before Bob Schul ran his WR for 2 miles, the below were his workouts-

(and these appear to have been very typical weeks for him. He said that in leading up to his gold medal at 5k, he virtually stopped ALL regular non-stop distance runs)-

(I am condensing this material as much as possible, rounding some things off, so it doesn't take forever to write, also these are TOTALS of the different reps he did, not necessarily listed in the order he did the reps during the workout. Generally he started and ended the workout with 10 x 100. But I am jus totaling the 100 reps into one row)

* MOST workouts started with an approx 10 minute jog ( if I don't list that, consider that that is what he did).

* Usually there were was an 880 jog or two between one or 2 of the sets (but not all of the sets)

* My understanding is that between each rep, he did an approx 40-50 meter walk/very easy jog.

* While Schul would change the intensity of the different reps he would do, he lists MOST of these weeks' reps as done "fresh" (meaning quite relaxed), and some as "good" (meaning slightly pushing harder). He does a only a few at what he calls a "hard" intensity.

Sun am-

20 x 100

14 x 150

6 x 200

10 x 300

----------

Mon AM

40 x100

10 x 150

6 x330

-

Mon PM

20 x100

26 x220

8 x 150

2 x 260

----------------

Tues am

60 x 100

-

Tues Pm

20 x 100

10 x 150

20 x 200

-------------

Wed am

3 mile jog

10 x 150

10 x 100

-

wed Pm

20 min jog

20 x 150

10 min jog

-----------

Thurs am

40 x 100

10 x 150

-

Thurs PM

18 x 100

20 x 220

15 x 150

-----------

Fri am

20 x 100

10 x 150

-

Fri PM

20 x 100

3 x 220

----------

Sat am

30 x 100

-

Sat PM

Two mile race: 8:26 2-mile WR (on dirt track), beats Billy Mills by a very large margin.

I feel great pleasure cause there many who think and want to know about coach Igloi.Unfortunately he past away and he did not make to published the only book which wanted to write about his training.In Greece coach Igloi stayed almost twenty years and the Greek athletes run under him 256 National records.Some of them won medals in European Championships but nobody could manage to have full potential because did not like the hard training.The quote of coach Igloi was "every day a hard day must make".

I was meeting him when he had retired from coaching but we have many discussions-i was then graduate the Sport Academy and was a runner of 3'50'' -14'50'' 1500-5000.He told me a lot about his life from his childhood, his years as an athete (he had run in Berlin Olympic Games and also he was a good athete in Gymnastic), about his banishment at Sibiria, his training career at Hungary and after at USA.Coach Igloi i believe was unlucky because if Russians did not invade at Hungary just before Melburne Olympic Games his could make win many medals.I remember a story about Jim Beaty when had his first great win.A reporter asked him whatis his name and he said "Beaty".The reporter said "I know you beat it but what is your name?" "Beaty, Beaty" said again.There many stories about coach Igloi, i will continue later.

I do not know where to start .About his training there are some special characteristics:1)Every session was unique and individualize to athlete shape to this day.e.g.coach Igloi before training had prepare training schedule for every runner but through the session coulde change this depend of how the athlete respond.2)Every session had mainly three parts.The first was the warm up including 15min jogging, 10*100 easy some times 10*200 easy on grass, the second –on spikes-had many sets of 120, 200, 150, 300, 400, (some on grass and some on track).The third was the hard with some runs very fast or all out.Every set had his own pace, like shake up, good swing, good speed, speed up, hard speed, all out.3)When the athlete run always gave him technical orders like short strides, lift the knee, straight the body, relax your arms.4)Between every run there is not walk but always was yelling “please jogging” or “no talking party”.5)He had under his training almost 30 runners and each of them had his own program and coach Igloi knew exactly what had done.The most astonishing was that the athletes finished every part almost at the same time and they could run after 2 hours training the best at the end of the session.6)There were 13 sessions/w which 10 of them done with spikes and at the stadium except the Sunday morning run(called “play run”-50min. easy run)7)The morning sessions started 7am. But some times there were runners, cause their studies, run earlier with coach present. On these sessions usually there was not chronometer and lasted 1,5 hour.On afternoon sessions usually Wednsday and Friday were easier and without chronometer, of course coach Igloi was unpredictable, nobody knew what he will run, and that was psychological much better.8)About his training periodition the athletes after the two first months could run quite fast and the heavy (25-30km/day) training became easier only the race week.The athletes wanted to compete often for getting less training.

So you needed a coach experienced in this training method.

Interesting.

Coach Igloi had watched and studied the training of many at that time great runners like Zatopec, Swedish runner-Hagg and Anderson, soviet runners also studied many athletic sciences like human phisiology, biomechanical but the most important was that his continuasly depend of the athlete improvement. Every training was recorded and analisizied.He had great observation and he knew exactly the time of the run every time without the use of the clock.

ancient runner wrote:

Coach Igloi had watched and studied the training of many at that time great runners like Zatopec, Swedish runner-Hagg and Anderson, soviet runners also studied many athletic sciences like human phisiology, biomechanical but the most important was that his continuasly depend of the athlete improvement. Every training was recorded and analisizied.He had great observation and he knew exactly the time of the run every time without the use of the clock.

burp

great coach in his day, but was surpassed first by Lydiard with his endurance training, and then, tragically, by Hermans and Rosa with their epo.

i want a poster of mihaly igloi for my room

Orville Atkins wrote:

It is obvious from the results he achieved that Coach Mihaly Igoi was one of the all-time great running coaches. It is to bad that his contributions to the sport are being forgotten.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It would be nice if a book, or even better a movie, could be done on Mihaly. The dedication of the man to have left his home in order to "do his thing" is inspiring. It's a shame very little has been recorded about his methods and biography. The number of world class runners he coached has to be in the top 5, all time....

In the L.A. area, Joe Douglas, Santa Monica TC and Laslo Tabori, San Fernando Valley TC are the 2 main coaches that I know of, using the Igloi system of training. It is not easy and takes dedication. Not for the casual, part time runner.

when did Igloi quit coaching in LA and move to Greece, and Joe Douglas took over the SMTC? When I came to LA in '77, Douglas was running the SMTC....no Igloi around then....

quote: I can remember that we high school runners acted as pace setters for his experienced runners. unquote

yes, I remember a couple of poor saps that M.M. used to sacrifice in order to train Johnny Gray on his 'really fast' interval sessions. Used them up; they ran faster in workouts then in races..burned out....but helped Johnny become the great 800m runner that he was.

been there and back,

Igloi was very upset by the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Shortly thereafter I began to notice him studying Greek and talking about leaving for Greece. He left for Greece in July of 1970. Joe Douglas began working with a group of athletes within two years of Igloi's departure. At the time Joe was a successful track and cross country coach at Westchester High School in the Los Angeles area. I started running with Joe in the Summer of 1972, and by that time Joe had a small cadre of runners. By the following Summer the Santa Monica Athletic Association (Igloi's Club)was resurrected as the Santa Monica Track Club with Joe Douglas as coach. In the early days Bruce Dern, the actor, was very active in helping the club get a sound financial footing. He did so by arranging premiere screenings of his movies to raise money for the club.

Ghost of Igloi

how did Merle MgGee, who coached Johnny Gray, end up teaming with Joe Douglas, under the SMTC umbrella in the late 70's, even though they had separate groups? Did Merle, who I think coached Gray at Crenshaw High, simply him and West, another sub 150 guy, over to SMTC and set up shop? Is Merle still there, coaching?

When I moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 1964 Merle McGee, Joe Douglas and Ron Larrieu were being coached by Coach Igloi and sharing an apartment. I moved into that a apartment. About a year later the four of us split up, with Joe and Merle sharing one apartment and Ron and I in another one in the same building. As long as I have known them, Merle and Joe have been close friends.

I understand that Merle is now retired and living south of Los Angeles. I see Joe now and then. He is still actively running the SMTC and coaching.