Lydiard or Cerutty?

I only see Cerutty as low volume in the weight training HRE. I'm aware the 10 miler was a standard daily run for most of his athletes and runs of 20-30 miles appear to be common enough. Dropping the athletes off 20 miles in the way down to Portsea on the Friday afternoon and Elliott dominating Pirie over 30 miles was also a good indicator of what Percy was developing i feel.

Thanks for some new info. I didn't know Cerutty liked Newton, i thought that was lydiard. I also didn't realise about Baillie. I saw his name connected to Lydiard once and never resolved that glitch until now, so thanks for that.

Personally i feel if an athletes arms are too weak then this acts to hold back that athlete from their potential. I see this a little in Halberg for obvious reasons but it is quite common in distance runners. Due to the relative weakness they possess two main detriments occur. Firstly, the weakness translates into a reduced range of motion and secondly, there is no ability to drive the arms to assist the legs when change of pace is required, most markedly with sprinting intensities. Probably the greatest negative effect of weak arms on a distance runner is when the shoulder range of motion becomes limited enough to begin to limit the leg and hip range of motion. This doesn't seem to be something that is talked about as far as i can tell.

As a side note i tend to promote Lydiard and Cerutty's ideals whenever i have the opportunity, as i understand them that is. So i tend to push the idea of low intensity/high volume as the way to develop capacity. I have an example most recent.

A long time friend of mine who coaches has a few athletes in the throwing area that are quite good. Male Discus at 64.50. Female hammer at 67 and a new female discus 21 year old at 57m. It is the new one we have been discussing. She began 5 weeks ago and i will just list what her training is this week to show the direction this is taking.

m - 20 min continuous run + endurance exercise circuit

t - some throwing stuff i didn't ask for specifics

w- as monday

t- as tuesday

f - as monday

s - as tuesday

s - rest

She is 87kgs and 175cm and has already dropped 2kgs, and the continuous running only started last week.

The circuit is 8 exercises and has increased from 20secs to 30 secs per exercise. It took 3 weeks to complete one set of this circuit at 20 seconds. Week 4 required an increase to 30 seconds. The rapid improvement in weeks 3 and 4 seemed to be once her basic endurance has been triggered. It is also due to motor learning factors kicking in.

Once my friend saw the rapid change in the new athlete from 10 sessions of circuit training he decided the jogging had to be a part of it as well. He talked to me about how her posture has already improved as well as her ability to do her discus skill training for longer amounts of time. But it was his comments on her increased attention and in his words 'basic life energy' that made me realise once again what Lydiard and Cerutty must have really been looking at.

I guess i should identify what i personally think is important in all of this. When this athlete in question began to develop what were her 'weakest links' her overall system leapt forward very quickly. This is probably hard to measure quantifiably just yet, but the qualitative effects on the remainder of her training are impossible to ignore. She can now train for longer, with more focus and energy and the quality of her skill training has increased markedly.

So i managed to convince a long time friend and athletics colleague as to how developing endurance was going to help his athletes. It wasn't the easiest of tasks and it shows me why it is so hard to convince strangers to change their mindset and look in the other direction. Still one success surely will only lead to more.

Halberg was very important to the way Lydiard thought about upper body development. He would tell you that Halberg was a great runner and one arm was totally useless so why spend time developing arm strength? Lydiard also had been a pretty decent runner and he also had some sort of shoulder/arm problem, it kept him out of the NZ army during WWII. So it would have been hard to convince him that upper body strength was worth spending a lot of time developing.

You mention similarities between the two approaches and it's worth noting that both were strongly influenced by both Zatopek and Newton.

HRE wrote:

Halberg was very important to the way Lydiard thought about upper body development. He would tell you that Halberg was a great runner and one arm was totally useless so why spend time developing arm strength? Lydiard also had been a pretty decent runner and he also had some sort of shoulder/arm problem, it kept him out of the NZ army during WWII. So it would have been hard to convince him that upper body strength was worth spending a lot of time developing.

You mention similarities between the two approaches and it's worth noting that both were strongly influenced by both Zatopek and Newton.

Ok awesome. You have given me the impetus to explore those connections and find the influences, cheers.

I just watched Halberg again, probably properly for the first time. This vid

.

I was wrong about Halberg and i just saw something very important. Halberg uses his shoulders very strongly. It is just the elbow joint that isn't active. The thing i just saw ties in something technical i think Lydiard created, but have never seen mentioned. It is the connectedness between the hip and shoulder actions. Lydiard runs with his shoulders and now i see Halberg does the same. Snell in fact also does but it is obscured because he also uses his arms correctly, so the specific shoulder action doesn't stand out.

Can you see what i mean or am i tripping? Also does Lydiard ever say anything about shoulders other than keep them relaxed?

Separate ways wrote:

Neither. You won't run 3:26 training like Elliott or Snell. Coaches of today's best learned from Lydiard and Cerutty and others, and came up with a better approach. And the future WR holder will learn from the best of today.

I'm of the firm belief that, apart from Snell 4 years later, nobody since would have beaten Elliott in any Olympic 1500m final, given all other things being equal, like tracks, shoes, relative standard of the competition, access to preparation races, different goal setting due to different world bests ... etc

Separate ways wrote:

Neither. You won't run 3:26 training like Elliott or Snell. Coaches of today's best learned from Lydiard and Cerutty and others, and came up with a better approach. And the future WR holder will learn from the best of today.

A man steeped in the illegal drugs that produce bullshit times..........

dhdsf wrote:

Separate ways wrote:

Neither. You won't run 3:26 training like Elliott or Snell. Coaches of today's best learned from Lydiard and Cerutty and others, and came up with a better approach. And the future WR holder will learn from the best of today.

A man steeped in the illegal drugs that produce bullshit times..........

Are you suggesting what I think?

he actually said to do low reps big weight for all weight training except the dead lift

Lydiard was a fantastic coach. Olympic gold medallists, national champions, very influential etc... Cerutty was another great coach.

But let's face it, the best coach can be found here in this forum. Renato Canova

has produced more champions, more records, more medals than those 2 coaches combined.... and please don't use the stupid argument that he works with talented kenyans because Lydiard and Cerutty both coached very talented runners too

thebestishere wrote:

Lydiard was a fantastic coach. Olympic gold medallists, national champions, very influential etc... Cerutty was another great coach.

But let's face it, the best coach can be found here in this forum. Renato Canova

has produced more champions, more records, more medals than those 2 coaches combined.... and please don't use the stupid argument that he works with talented kenyans because Lydiard and Cerutty both coached very talented runners too

I've already decided, for many reasons to only focus on Lydiard and Cerutty from now on, whilst retaining a small interest in the remainder of the pantheon of coaches.

read a lot about herb wrote:

he actually said to do low reps big weight for all weight training except the dead lift

What reps did he advocate for that exercise and why was it treated differently do you know?

from memory do 3 sets of ten reps that you could do a max of for 20

i think this was an exception because it is a dangerous exercise to perform

read a lot about herb wrote:

from memory do 3 sets of ten reps that you could do a max of for 20

i think this was an exception because it is a dangerous exercise to perform

I think it is the second most dangerous exercise in his arsenal, behind the clean and jerk imitation exercise he uses. Is this true in your opinion?