Percy Cerutty, does anyone have more info on his training methods/principles?

There's numerous LR threads on PC. Just search.

He was a self promoting nut case. I'd stay away if I were you. If you are a distance runner, stick to Lydiard. Read Cerutty for entertainment only.

Lartfek wrote:

There's numerous LR threads on PC. Just search.

He was a self promoting nut case. I'd stay away if I were you. If you are a distance runner, stick to Lydiard. Read Cerutty for entertainment only.

He may have been a little crazy, but that doesn't mean his training was wrong. From what I've read he seems like a more well rounded, more advanced version of Lydiard training. Touch on speed year round, steady amount of base mileage year around, and advocated that runners lifted 2 to 3 times a week, back when most people thought it had no benefit for distance runners. Advocated for a healthy diet, back when most people thought you could eat like crap as long as you ran it off. A man truly ahead of his time.

Whenever I tried hanging limp on a horizontal bar it felt like my intestines were going to rupture. Not sure why that would be recommended.

Lartfek wrote:

There's numerous LR threads on PC. Just search.

He was a self promoting nut case. I'd stay away if I were you. If you are a distance runner, stick to Lydiard. Read Cerutty for entertainment only.

Good thing no one told Herb Elliot that.

Rag Doll on a fence wrote:

Whenever I tried hanging limp on a horizontal bar it felt like my intestines were going to rupture. Not sure why that would be recommended.

Probably to stretch the back and strengthen the forearms.

Read WHY DIE: The extraordinary Percy Cerutty. My copy is on sale at Amazon under Tremendum Books. $148.00 Lowest price for Like New condition or above.

Please be aware though that John Landy became good after leaving Cerutty behind and using his own methods of training and mechanics(abandoned forefoot landing, changed to slight heel or flat foot landing, added some cushioning to his heels like the Europeans). Much of which he learned while competing in the 1952 Olympics and talking/observing Zatopek and the Finns.

Lyle Stanton wrote:

Read WHY DIE: The extraordinary Percy Cerutty. My copy is on sale at Amazon under Tremendum Books. $148.00 Lowest price for Like New condition or above.

Please be aware though that John Landy became good after leaving Cerutty behind and using his own methods of training and mechanics(abandoned forefoot landing, changed to slight heel or flat foot landing, added some cushioning to his heels like the Europeans). Much of which he learned while competing in the 1952 Olympics and talking/observing Zatopek and the Finns.

Excellent point. Landy went to a traditional base phase/interval phase/race phase. His base phase was typically an 8 miler, 5-6 days per week done anywhere from 44:00 to 50:00. His interval phase was EXTREME. 5-6 days of anywhere from 8x600 to 15x600- very monotonous work. That transitioned to 8-20x400 friending on the pace for the day, ~5 days per week with an occasional 1200m or 800m trial thrown in. He would do the odd 8 miler during the interval phase. His race phase was plenty of racing (2-3 races/wk) and e occasional fast 400m or 200m session sprinkled in. With that training, he eventuality ran 4:02 in Turku, and then eventually broke RGB's WR.

There's this article, although I'm not sure there's anything new in it for you

http://www.scienceofrunning.com/2016/11/percy-cerutty-the-eccentric-stotan.html

Remember that Murray Halberg also spent some time in the camp in Portsea as well.

He wrote several books like 'middle distance running' and 'athletics: how to become a champion' and two or three more.

The original copies from the sixties are hard to find, occasionally you can get one for 30 $ but often much more expensive.

However, reprints are available now from PMA Books.

You'll be disappointed if you are looking for hard and fast examples of schedules. He emphasized the need for spontaneity rather than being constrained by some fixed schedule (hence he hated Stampfl's ideas). Read some of his early material and you just want to go out and run - HARD. I found his books very motivational / inspirational

"Seek suffering, as I do" Cerutty famous quote, and indicative of how he trained his runners.

Thought I'd ad to this old thread.

Some pointers on what training with Cerutty in Portsea would be like from the opening chapters of How to become a champion

Three running sessions per day, before breakfast, lunch and dinner, each is 1 hour to 90 mins long, for a total of about 20 miles per day.

Nearly all running is on soft surfaces, beach, grass oval, golf course, dirt trails. Rarely training on a road, and never on a track. Training is also mostly barefoot.

Mostly fartlek approach to runs, with some high speed circuits. Running is continuous, with slowing to walk between hard efforts being frowned upon as weak. Lots of running up sand dunes.

Heavy weights training.

There is a 2 hour nap after lunch. And splashing about in the sea between runs.

Eating lots of fruit, vegetables, chicken, fish, brown bread, walnuts, oats and ... also French fries? You have to be hydrated before breakfast because no milk allowed with your oats. Milk with dinner only. [Mixture of good and eccentric dietary advice there]

Mostly sounds pretty good to me.

"There's numerous LR threads on PC. Just search.

He was a self promoting nut case. I'd stay away if I were you. If you are a distance runner, stick to Lydiard. Read Cerutty for entertainment only."

He was certainly self promoting - he had to be to get the necessary attention in order to get his centre at Portsea off the ground. If you want details of his methods and philosophy his two best books "Athletics; How To Be a Champion" and "Middle Distance Running" are now back in print and reasonably priced.

He does sometimes contradict himself even within the same book, some of what he says is unacceptable in today's climate but if you carefully read his books the 50% that is good is pure gold. To my mind he is the neglected coaching genius of the modern era; a lot of runners who resolutely cover their high mileage at comfortable paces and don't improve their performances could learn a lot from reading him.

He was definitely a self promoter and an opportunist. He was not for everyone. Ron Clarke couldn't stand him and privately called him a "dud." There was quite a feud between him and Franz Stampfl who was the "other" big influence in Austra;ian coaching and some of that was probably due to Cerutty's jealousy at Stampfl being sort of the "inside guy" in Australian athletics at the time which probably did force him to self promote and be fairly outrageous.

A lot of the difference between Cerutty and Stampfl had to do with the value of precise, kind of scientific training (for the time) and a more spontaneous, effort based approach, Cerutty's approach. For that reason it's really hard to talk about Cerutty's methods and principles as we mostly do it today. A reporter once asked him about Elliot's training and he said that he had no idea what Elliot did, he was interested in making the man. I expect that was an exaggeration to make a point.

If you can find training profiles of some of the better Aussie's of the era you see that many of them list Cerutty as their coach or their main influence but that what they did looks quite different at least when they were on their own and not wih Cerutty and a group. His main principles seemed to be challenging yourself, pushing yourself hard, harder than you believed possible, not accepting limits, stuff like that rather than specific kinds of training. Bill Baillie, one of Lydiard's guys, spent some time early in his career in Oz with Cerutty. He said there was not much difference between what each coach did.

Cerutty's own biggest influence was Zatopek. He idolized him and if you look at the training of a lot of the Aussies who list Cerutty as an influence, you see that what they did looks more like Zatopek than anything else. The group that Ron Clarke trained with had assembled before Ron made his comeback. One of the guys who was in it told me that when the group started their biggest influence was Cerutty and what they did as a consequence was a lot like what Zatopek did, i.e., fairly slow reps, mostly 440s, with short and fairly fast recoveries. Over time they slowed and lengthened the reps even more and shortened and quickened the recoveries even more so that eventually they were doing fast steady runs and not intervals. But it was really about effort, mental toughness, stuff that's hard to quantify or describe precisely.

I recently read The Perfect Mile, by Neal Bascomb, and Cerutty comes across as as absolute tool in his training of John Landy. Landy got fed up with him in pretty short order and then trained on his own, but Cerutty was quick to take credit when Landy had success. It made me wonder if Cerutty modified his methods later and/or became less tyrannical.

how about Delilah? wrote:

I recently read The Perfect Mile, by Neal Bascomb, and Cerutty comes across as as absolute tool in his training of John Landy. Landy got fed up with him in pretty short order and then trained on his own, but Cerutty was quick to take credit when Landy had success. It made me wonder if Cerutty modified his methods later and/or became less tyrannical.

From talking with people who knew him or knew others who did, I'd say this is one of the episodes that underscores the "self promoter" comments about him. Unlike Lydiard, who never pursued any athlete, Cerutty pursued runners that he thought would help make his reputation and tried to claim credit for successes of runners he'd had some contact with but who he coached only briefly. He did advise Landy early in his career but Landy went his own way. But Cerutty claimed, with some technical accuracy, to have coached Landy and been responsible for his success. Evidently he did the same thing with Bill Baillie once he became world class and tried to get him to say that he, Cerutty, was his coach rather than Lydiard. He badly wanted to coach Ron Clarke at the start of his career and seems never to have forgiven Clarke for going with Stampfl.

People were never neutral about Cerutty. Elliot has always credited Cerutty for the success he had and has never, as far as anyone seems able to tell, had a bad thing to say about him. The same seems true for guys like Dave Stephens and Les Perry. On the other hand, Ron Clarke had nothing good to say about him and late in Cerutty's life Runner's World brought him to the US for a series of talks. Joe Henderson described to me what it was like to meet Cerutty and it was definitely not the highlight of Joe's career.

Pretty interesting. Thanks.

The price for "Why Die" is outrageous. But if you haven't read it you might be able to get your library to get it somewhere. It's a good book.