Has anyone trained fully to the general specifics a la Percy Cerutty?

You can't train "fully" to the "general specifics" of Cerutty. I think I came pretty close. I had a very good relationship with the man before he passed away. What do you want to know?

It's my belief that you just can't follow the book or any book. The coach is greater than the system. Cerutty was an incredible motivator, innovator, enthusiastic, spiritual, etc. But he was also a prick, loudmouth and general jerk many times. Source for all this is the book Why Die? The Extraordinary Percy Cerutty, which I own by Graem Sims.

Cerutty had an extraordinary presence and energy he was able to transmit to his athletes. He would have been succesful whether training his athletes with his own system, Lydiard's system or Igloi's system if he fully believed in them.

ray wrote:

You can't train "fully" to the "general specifics" of Cerutty. I think I came pretty close. I had a very good relationship with the man before he passed away. What do you want to know?

Hey Ray, thanks for responding.

It is quite remarkable that you were able to train with the man - his coaching is very inspiring to me as I have had a similar journey, if you will.

I would like to know more about his personal advice on early, life-changing endeavors that will result in being fit for running. I know he was laid up sick in bed before he became a devotee to extreme health foods and mileage.

If I wanted to do that same where should I start? How extreme of a start does he recommend? I want to run very long distances AND be able to run a mile as fast as I can and be competitive at every distance in between.

- How did Cerutty himself start on Marathon training? Did he go LONG as soon as he could? Was his success in his own career based on the teachings he shared? Or did he have failures in himself early on?

- What mileage recommendation would he give to a ~ 3 hour marathoner who wants to go A LOT faster?

- Would he encourage people to quit their desk jobs and go full blown into training or nature or did he like the way some of his runners maintained 40 hour work weeks in the city?

- What was his injury prevention advice besides strength training or did he weed out injury-prone runners through tough and long running?

By the way, I already understand his principles so I'm just trying to find some unknown details on his early career and maybe how he viewed runners of less-than-world-class potential.

Thanks Again, I hope I gave you enough questions to work with!

Cheers

Take the K out of Wacko wrote:

- What was his injury prevention advice besides strength training or did he weed out injury-prone runners through tough and long running?

There wasn't any "injury prevention advice" and the "injury-prone runners" would "weed" themselves out.

If you talk to anyone who knew or trained with Percy then you'll discover it was a case of survival of the fittest. You don't hear about the ones who didn't survive his training and never made it. You can decide whatever "it" is, some were happy just to train with him and to be able to say they had, so in their eyes they had made "it". Be interesting to see what Ray thinks.

Suggest you try and get hold of his books.

Cerutty wrote six amazing athletics books between 1959 and 1967. They are all currently out of print. Try to find these books. In 1977 Larry Myers from Colorado wrote Training with Cerutty, also very good. Cerutty was an eccentric genius with a wonderfully quirky personality. He was an inspirational deep thinker whose athletes broke records.

I never trained with Percy. I contacted him through Fred Wilt in the spring of 1973 after reading an article by Perc in the school library. I wrote to him with questions I formulated after reading "Athletics". I was surprised he wrote back and we continued correspondence for almost two years. My ex wife threw out all my letters which would probably be worthy of a book now. We had an interesting series of letters that I would forward to Fred for input for fear of upsetting Perc. I do remember that when I had told him that I had suffered my third stress fracture he went off on a two or three page rant on poor diet, weak feet and lazy Americans.

He appeared to be quite happy when I told him I had been offered a teaching job in Australia. I was due to arrive in August of 1975. My last letter from him was some time before, and may have even been January of '75. At that time he invited me to Portsea to spend time with him so he could properly teach me the techniques I was lacking. One week before my departure for Australia, Fred wrote to tell me that Perc had passed.

I went to Australia, competed, taught and coached there for almost 7 years. I got to talk to a lot of people that knew Perc. Albie Thomas, Frank McQuade, and Betty Cuthbert offered invaluable insight. I myself managed to coach with Cecil "Chicks" Hensley who related many stories about the rivalry between he, Franz Stampfl and Perc. I became friends with Pat Clohessy, Barrie Almond and several other members of the group that came to the US to go to school and compete.

Perc was unique. I think he was branded a trouble makermostly because he would not tolerate weakness or incompetence. Many of the topics he wrote about in the 70's that he formulated in the 50's and 60's would be considered ground breaking today. That we all knew, but some of the stuff went unpublished. I recall having a conversation with one of the top hurdle coaches in the US about a letter from Perc in which he talked about breathing patterns in the sprints and hurdles.

One thing that I do recall Perc talking about was an admission that the strength work on soft surfaces may have made his runners stronger than any others, but may have robbed them of some foot speed.

To the OP, send me your email address and I will send you more info.

Percy, like others have stated, are all about survival. "No weaklings allowed." You either man up, or you go home. I guess this came from his military background. In saying this, Percy was very philosophical in his teachings and approach to training. People in Australia nowadays, including my coach, often states how Percy was batshit crazy, but got results.

To answer your questions Take the K out of Wacko:

1. Military background. Philosophical. Hard running made fast runners.

2. 3 hour marathon? Who cares, too slow.

3. You work hard, you train hard. Percy took top blokes away for weekend training 'camps' were they would run sand dunes, tempo runs, trail loops etc. Focus was on running HARD. Everyone worked back then.

4. Strength training made strong runners. I think he said, "if you cannot lift your body weight then you are a weakling". Tough attitude due to military background. Stretching etc, running on softer surfaces = lesser injuries.

To be the best you had to train hard. No shortcuts. You run hard, you hurt, and then you hurt some more.

Ray wrote:

My ex wife threw out all my letters

Tragic.

Take the K out of Wacko wrote:

I would like to know more...

Link to a short bio on Percy: