LYDIARD OR DANIELS?

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Beware of Dogma

RE: LYDIARD OR DANIELS? 1/9/2006 12:29PM - in reply to Nobby

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Nobby wrote:

When Lydiard first came to the US, most people were interval-trained. He told them that his runners did 100 miles a week of training. Some people tried it but, because they weren't as well-conditioned as his runners, did it slow (just to survive). They figured running this slow would not make you a fast competitor. So Lydiard training is no good. For decades, Lydiard had to fight against such thinking by telling them also that "Snell and Davies did 20X400 in 60 seconds or faster. How much speed to you need?"

Marathon conditioning, or aerobic base building phase, is merely prerequisit to more exacting training phases. Because his runners were so much stronger than others from all the miles that they ran, they could do much more faster or more race specific training than other runners. This is the whole principles of the Lydiard program that has been applied to other sports like rugby or kayaking--those who have developed their stamina can do more competition-specific training than others. While others might practice "passing of the rugby ball while running as fast as you can" 20 times, if you developed adequate stamina, you do that 40 times.

I completely agree with that Nobby.

I think one of the main reasons why Lydiard is misrepresented is because he was reacting against the extreme interval training of the late 50's by Zatopek and Pirie. They took Gershler's ideas to the extreme and it was their downfall after their amazing initial success.

So people thought that Arthur was anti interval training, when in fact he was just trying to make more sense of what works and what is too much.

Nobby

RE: LYDIARD OR DANIELS? 1/10/2006 8:36AM - in reply to jataylo

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jataylo

I personally don't think there's anything wrong with what you're doing and how you're doing it. As long as you feel comfortable and strong, there's no need to slow it down too far. I've had my share of "hitting the wall and mileage drops" situation and, the way I made my mistake is, thought everything I'd done is down the drain and I'd have to start everything all over again. I would have been much better off to stick with it and carry on. Later I learnt that even Peter Snell had some bad patches and sometimes his mileage dropped in half. When you hit a bad patch, just jog nice and easily for a few days until the strength and urge comes back (and it will).

Another thing is that it really takes some time for most of us to adjust to a full cycle of the Lydiard program. I don't think any of the original bunch just jumped into the program and started running 100 miles a week with 10-milers in 5.5-minute pace. It took them several years and, considering they complete two full cycles a year (one for Cross Country and another for Track), it sometimes takes 5 or 6 cycles to really get the benefit from it. Naturally you might have some hard time adjusting in the early going. Times will come down generally. Earlier cycle, you may have to take easy jogging on shorter days instead of shorter faster runs as indicated in the program (remember, the long runs are the more important ingredient at this point as Kim Stevenson advised many times on this thread) and you're barely surviving on the third or even fourth day to have another long run (90 minutes or more). By the following year (second or third cycle), you may be running an hour in between and feel quite strong. By the second year you might be cruising those shorter runs and even try out to do "tempo runs" or "time trials" on those days.

Times will come down generally but the rate depends on the individual. For some people it may not come down as quickly at all. Remember, though, some people tend to do those long runs quite slow, others do them quite fast, and they don't seem to have clear indication of what their final times might be. The important thing, for base building phase, is to have those long runs in--if you can handle faster aerobic pace, great. If not, just chug along. After several cycles, you should be able to find out your own personal pattern to the program.