Mihaly Igloi

that interval were either short(alactic) or slow..just fartlek running.that kind of alactic speed training is very good for running economy, when you take for example Zatopek..looks very inefficient on his upperbody but his legs..through lots 100s and 200s he made his stride powerful and efficient.

54 sec last lap on a muddy track for winning gold..impressive, also his pb of 13:38 on these track, in these times..amateur athletes..very impressive.

Look at the Ethiopians, how much drills,plyos and sprints do or the El-G group.Jim Ryun...in terms of efficient running stlye in one league with El-G, Coe, Cram and the Kenyans, not only great biomechanics by nature he also did a lot of work for it.

that 54 secs and 13:38..is reference to bob schul of course and not zatopek

You should talk to Joe Douglass at SMTC, he and Schul and probably the last two coaches to run that system.

I was coached by Mihaly Igloi for about 20 months (1965-66). The majority of my training was either on the grass infield of a 440 yard track or on an extension of that oval that was about 660 yards long. I was interested in marathon training. I did sets of repetitions from 100 yards through 1,000 yards. The pace on any given day could be a mix fo anything from easy to very hard. As the seasons changed and as the athletes shape came up the intensity and mix changed. All workouts were taylor made for the individual athlete. It was complex. I wrote down each workout the day I did it and intend to record it for transmission but am currently recording a history of my training, workouts and race results while being coached by Fred Foot in Canada (1960-64). That my take another few months.

write Bob Schul who is out in Dayton, still advocating the interval method. He has a training book "...running and training" and there is a good bio on him "in the long run"

my only problem with this method is that practices take an excruciating long time

You forget Laszlo Tabori who was with Igloi in Hungary and the United States, shared a world record in the 1,500 with a teammate, was the third person to run under four minutes in the mile and place 6th in 5,000 and 4th in the 1,500 in the Olympics upon fleeing his home country in 1956.

Tabori has a running store in Burbank, CA. He also coaches runners a couple of days a week. If you drop by his store, he'll tell you all you need to know. Very cool guy. The license plate on one of his cars reads "355IN59".

So they interval lengths would make some days more like a tempo work out, while other would be sprint work, with others at 5k or so pace alternating days? Interesting idea. Do you feel that the amount of long slow intervals ws able to make up for the lack of long runs and total mileage? Seems to be what the coe methods advocate as well with 5k paced intervals. thanks

Interestingly, when you look at the schedules of a lot of great american runners, they seems to have a lot of long interval workouts. Ryun did the famous 40x400, Steve Scott did 40x100, 10xmile, 20x800, plus many hill reps (20 or so?), Mills did a shitload of 110's, almost every day. It seems like the trend now is to do workouts like 12x400, 6x800, etc. Is the lack of voulume at fast paced preventing people from developing the efficiency that the older guys got through the long sessions?

He would give you one set at a time and you never knew how much more you were doing that day. He set your workout as you went along based on how you reacted to each part of the work out. He had an uncanny knack of knowing how you felt and how much you could do.

There was nothing wrong with the mileage. My monthly mileage during the first 7 months of 1966 was 367, 474, 543, 519, 500, 475, 432 of very hard work.

Tere were times that during the warmup runners would be hardly moving at first. I note that during the early fall of 1956 we were instructed to take "two weeks off-run 90 min each nite-vary the pace once in a while". So we ran on the grass around the larger field for 90 minutes and then did 10-20 shake ups and went home. My log also states that after about 10 days he commented "you move very well". I also wrote that I felt loose. You never worked out without Igloi being there watching and even if I was there well after the others, he stayed and observed.

My first workout after this vacation period: 30 min warm up-10 shake ups-30 x 260 with 180 jog-10 fresh speed, 10 fresh swing, 10 fresh speed-3 lap jog-20 x 100-1 shake up, 1 hard speed build up The next day was harder with the main portion being 25 x 220 fresh speed and then 12 x 440 good swing (drive). I did large repeat work outs for 5 days in a row before a couple of easier days.

please define "fresh speed" and "fresh swing". also, how did you make out in the end with your racing under his system?

I was coached by Mihaly Igloi from 1968 to 1970 at Loyola High School in Los Angeles. I remember well his workouts. I ran both cross country and track (1 and 2 miles). My workouts were either on grass (mostly) or on the old cinder track. Coach Igloi's system for us was slow build up runs. We would warm up (little stretching)by running. He was a believer in getting the muscles warmed up slowly. We would run for about 20 minutes nd then begin our workouts. Our workouts were divided into three categories of "swings" - hard, good and easy. A typical workout would be 10x880 (good swing) 4 x440 (hard swing). In between we would be given 220 easy swings. We used to run down by USC and Coliseum during cross country and out by Santa Monica for track. As mentioned in an earlier comment, Coach Igloi would always watch us. The same could be said of his high school runners. Our biggest treat was to be invited to Santa Monica City College (SMCC) and work out with his best runners. I guess this was the early days of the Santa Monica Track Club. I can remember that we high school runners acted as pace setters for his experienced runners. We used to get similar workouts. However, if one of his runners was given a set of 4 x 1 miles, we would only do the first three laps (1320) at hard swing. We would watch in awe as these older runners would then pick up the pace significantly for the last lap.

I can provide as much information as you need as I have trained under Bob Schul before. Do you have any specific questions you need answered?

There is no way I can give my views on the answers to your questions in the time or space I have today.

Coach Igloi based his workouts on two leg actions. Workouts would be a mixture of the two leg actions each of which had 6 tempos. I have never seen those two leg actions described in writing. I always feel that by using two leg actions one develops stronger muscles. The actions depended on how one moved the femur. I would think that one of those who coaches strictly by Igloi's methods could provide a definition.

The six tempos are easy, fresh, good, hard, very hard and all out. I have heard hard defined by a distance runner as race pace. I will have to search my logs tosee if I was ever told to run all out.

I am very slow (57.6 440) with mainly slow twitch muscles. I did not thrive on this much all fast work but did I give it a chance? Coach needed 6 months to get me in shape. I was not there long enough for the future to come and I went into marathons with dead legs. I did better with 75 miles week of mostly relaxed running. Granted I do not think I had as many injuries as I had previously in a Winter climate where I also had done a fair amount of speed work.

Please remember that Coach Igloi had great success and his athletes set a great many world records. The three biggest names from his Hungarian club of world record breakers were Tabori, Iharos and Rozsavologyi. In the US he had Schul, Beatty, Grelle and others.

How periodized was his system? Did you have a specific "base" phase, or anything like that, or did the workouts basically stay the same, just with smaller changes in intensity, etc, given the time of year? Also, looking back, is there anything you would have done differently? I am interested in this because I tend to thrive under intense workouts, while a long, mileage phase (ala Lydiard) never seems to work so well for me. I feel that Im one of those who needs high intensity year round. And yes, I know Lydiard wasnt all lsd, and all the common misconceptions...

I got Bob Schul's autobio and his training guide (largely based on Igloi principle) from bobschul.com a while back. That website appears to be gone, or perhaps it's just down today. Anyone know?

Bob sells his book direct and autographs each. Quite nice. But I think the autobio is on Amazon too.

I got Bob Schul's autobio and his training guide (largely based on Igloi principle) from bobschul.com a while back. That website appears to be gone, or perhaps it's just down today. Anyone know?

Bob sells his book direct and autographs each. Quite nice. But I think the autobio is on Amazon too.

I just noticed an article that stated that Mihaly Igloi introduced Jogging half the distance of a repetition irrespective of what speed it was run in. It goes on to say that Igloi was the first coach to introduce training in sets. I found that those two features were an intricate part of his program.

I wanted to be a marathon runner. What I have in my log are the workouts I did. They do not represent the workouts of any other runner.

I often did 35 repetitions in one workout and there were weeks when I ran 3 or more hard workouts in a row.

All my running was on the grass. The repetitions were often on the track infield. Where I mention big laps I refer to a 657 yard oval which included 330 on the track infield. I often repeated 440s, 880s, 110 or 220.

Mon am 20 laps-5 easy then alternate 1 with 330 good swing then 1 with good speed

pm 10 laps, 10 shakeups-5 sets-1 of 10x260 good speed with 180 jog, 1 set of 5x660 good swing with 220 jog etc--2 laps between sets, 14 shakeups after (a 26 mile plus day in a 133 mile week)

This went on day after day. We ran twice a day except for Sunday.

An easy day consisted of 20 laps (7 miles) easy in the morning and an hour easy in the evening followed by 20 shake ups.

Putting this on paper does not do it justice. Coach knew how to administer the work on an increasing basis so that one could increase mileage and handle it mentally and physically. He watched all workouts and changed them as you completed sets usually only giving you your workout one setion at a time.

Bumped in partial response to Jack Frost