Wow, Lydiard training seems ridiculously hard

Kim Stevenson wrote:

Apologies Malmo, I was trying to point out to Khadaffi exactly what you have written. I just did not do it that well. That is why I said it is the bigger picture we are dealing with.

I may accept that i was innapropriate. Next time i try to be more criterious the way i say things. I also ask to HRE to accept my excuse.

Now, if you please, i ask you to read my last post about my own opinion about specificity and what i think that Lydiard doesn´t.

One more thing. I accept and see it as no problem that you consider yourself from te old school. This is a good thing. Sometimes i also do my own way despite i imagine that not all is perfect, and i open the door to other kind of training.

Sometimes i say, i´m atheist thanks to God ! You can say, i do the long run, i think it´s ok. It doesn´t trouble me at all.

rekrunner wrote:

...(and sometimes even an infamous Canadian)....

Ha!

Great thread. Carry on! :)

(Does anyone know how/where Nobby is???)

Kadaffi out of power wrote:

I write in one paper the top class runners that i know very well their training method, their schedules and each one Pb´s. Hundreds of top class runners, olympics, WR, titles, top in the word rankings. Then i sign what from all that runners what are the ones that do long runs and the ones that don´t. The conclusion is that, with one or another exception, for same distance event, most of the top performers don´t do long runs and they are on the very top of rankings.

Might be that the top performers do best because several training approaches, but obviously it´s not for the miss of long run.

What paper was that? published?

Mr. Khadafi:

A serious question here. I have used Lydiard training with relative success. My coach’s friend is a big Lydiard fan and he asked him to help me out with my training. I improved my 1600m time from 4:48 down to 4:32 using Lydiard’s long aerobic running and hill training and time trial and 50-50 kind of workouts. I have been reading this thread with interest and I would like to give your “modern” training method a try. But I’m not sure if I understand it correctly. You seem to continue to emphasize SPECIFICITY a lot and the fault of Lydiard training is to get away from this specificity. It sort of makes sense to me. I’m trying to put together my training and here is my dilemma.

So if I try to do this specificity training, would it look like this?

M-1600m in 4.45 with 1 mile warm up and cool down

T-1600m in 4.40 with 1 mile warm up and cool down

W-1600m in 4.45 with 1 mile warm up and cool down

Th-1600m in 4.40 with 1 mile warm up and cool down

F-1600m in 4.45 with 1 mile warm up and cool down

Sa-1600m in 4.40 with 1 mile warm up and cool down

Su-1600m in 4:50 with 1 mile warm up and cool down

At first I tried to alternate some repeat workout like 3X800m in 2:20 with 100m recovery or 10X200m in 33sec. but you said interval is not specific enough. Is throwing a 2000m run too far off from SPECIFIC? And I also thought about doing an 8 mile run on Sunday (I did 10 to 12 mile previously as my long run) but then you said long run is counterproductive. I wasn’t sure if it’s okay to do all the runs at the same tempo so I alternate the time slightly but I didn't know how much faster or slower we can get away and still stay SPECIFIC? So this would give me about 21 miles a week but is it better to do them faster and every other day? I think I can do 4:35 or even faster every other day. This would look more like the First program or something Power Runner in other thread is talking about – 5k tempo and 10k tempo and a long run done at MP. Is this something Dr. Li does with Lagat so he stays relatively low mileage as suggested? If he does 5k every other day with 2 mile warm up and cool down, that will be about 25 miles a week give or take.

When you say PROGRESSIVE SPECIFICITY, how much slower can we start in the beginning of the season and how much faster should I bring it down a few days before the race? Can I start at 4.50 and still stay specific? Can you please be a little more specific on your concept of specificity? How much further, or shorter, in distance can we go and still be specific? 10%? 20%? What about speed? Can we get 10% slower or is it too slow? 10% would give me about 28 seconds for 1600 and that will be almost 5 minutes and that feels a bit too slow to be called specific??? 10% more distance will only give me less than 1800m and that's why I didn't include 2000 because I felt that might be too far off from specificity? Any SPECIFIC guidance on SPECIFICITY will be helpful. Thanks.

I don´t read your posts totally. i don´t advice individual training on boards, and i don´t intent to do individual schedules. I just send my opinion about training methodology.

If you have one coach what i think you shall do is follow your coach advice. The runner that don´t trust on his/her coach is one poor runner. All the top class runners that i know they trust onn his coach. If they have soem trainng doubt they ask his the coach directly.

The more if your question includes questions about Lydaird training i´m not the coach that can answer your questions.

Skuj

Innapropriate comment and it´s not funny. The greatness of one individual is high moral and high ethic.

I´m an humanist you see.

Mr. Kim Stevenson suspects that might be that Nobby relatives, friends etc they fall on the japanese earthquakes/tsunami effect, and the best you can do is play with one man that is unhappy by life tragedy ?

Don´t play with the unhappiness of one individual. The moment is so serious that all training debate is vain.

The moment is so serious that is the time to shake hand and be solidary.

I wish mr. Nobby the best on this sad moment sincerly. I would like that the worst thing that could happen to him would by my training disagreement.

Long life to mr. Nobby and their relatives and to all japanese citizens or the ones that lives there.

If I may... (I don't like speaking for others, but then again, maybe I do.)

So far, he took a deep look at SPECIFICITY, but made it clear that that is only one thing different, out of many. Maybe by page 100 ...

The criticism about SPECIFICITY is that with Lydiard's classic periodization, it is neglected for a long time. If we spend 12 weeks of only aerobic running, followed by 4 weeks of hill bounding, followed by 4 weeks of interval training, that's nearly 5 months of training different elements that aren't closely connected to getting the body used to race pace. Such long cycles might be OK for high school athletes, or recreational athletes, but elite athletes want to race 8 months out of the year, so want to get "up to speed" quicker.

Renato Canova threads talk about these things in greater detail, with real examples of some of his athletes, but some of the long threads seem to be disappearing. I note here that Renato once said that African athletes can start with high levels of training, because they already have 12-15 years of experience with long fast runs, without coaching.

A different approach is to describe training in terms of how it is connected to racing speed, and work from GENERAL towards SPECIFIC, building up to race speed first, and then extending the distance you can maintain it.

So a steady state run could be SPECIFIC for a half marathon, but GENERAL for a 1600m.

You may still have a phased approach, calling it something different like FUNDAMENTAL -> SPECIAL -> SPECIFIC.

The difference being that some of the earlier phases, while you do Aerobic Conditioning, violate Lydiard's order, by bringing in Hill Circuits, and Interval training, that start preparing you for SPECIFIC work later.

SPECIFIC speed is well defined as 95%-105% of race pace.

Before you do SPECIFIC training, you must have already done SPECIAL support training, and before that FUNDAMENTAL or GENERAL training.

You wouldn't ever do 7 SPECIFIC miles in a week. Don't follow this as a plan, because I'm just making it up now, but I think this example illustrates what progression would look like:

1st week: 10x100

2nd week: 8x200

3rd week: 4x400

4th week: 3x600

5th week: 2x800

6th week: 1x1200

7th week: 1x1600

Each workout is close to race pace, but with each progression, you extend the distance which you can maintain the pace.

8 miles is not a long run. The day after a workout you might do an 1 hour run at 8:00 pace (~8 miles), for REGENERATION or RECOVERY purposes.

WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT???

I'M SERIOUSLY WONDERING HOW NOBBY IS. JESUS CHRIST.

I am sure Khaddafi Out Of Power is Antonio Cabral. And I am so angry with him right now that I renounce any former friendship we may have had. How can anyone, ESL or not, conclude from my previous post that I was somehow making fun of Nobby or this situation in Japan? There is absolute blinding malice burning in your soul, Sir!

He's fine, Skuj. He's in Minnesota. As you know he doesn't post here much anymore.

Thank you for that post HRE. That is great news!

Mr. Skuj

I didn´t post the 2 last posts signed with the Khadaffi out of power nickname despite it´s my style of writing.

It happens that as I post with no password from times to times other person posts with the same nickname. You may confirm if it´s true or it don´t while try to post with the same nickname i use actually. I really don´t care. If it´s anonymous I don´t care who else posts by the same name. I`m satisfied to post and to say what I think about training and that´s all. I might do soem comments about individual posts that are identified persons suposedly, but it´s on the context of the training debate, not +personal consiedartions.

On this thread, and many others, it´s not the first time that someone else posts by me. I may confirm that on this board I only post about training and it´s all.

If you read about training debate, a chance it´s me the one that discusses Lydiard training, if you read about something else, might be another person.

Let´s see if i´m able to continue to post about the subject that brings me on this thread. The training method.

There seems to be a lot of ego's flying around. I really respect Cabral training method but why is he masquerading around under this pseudonym? Or at least if it isn't him, let him come on here and defend himself.

HRE wrote:

I've done a reasonable amount. That's a large part of why I said what I did. Until we know what "talent" is any answer to this is pure speculation.

But as you seem to know more than I do, why don't you explain to us what talent is as it applies to distance running, how we can measure it and then identify if, for example, Keino had more, less, or the same amount if it than Snell or Jazy had?

Or have you not done enough coaching to have a clear answer?

Right. We can´t measure talent with accuracy, with precision or with one figure, one number. We can´t estimate what percent of the talent is part of one result, of one runner performance of the runner Pbs.

But IN DISTANCE EVENTS we have 2 things to what might contribute to one runner performance: training and resistance ratio. Remember that I don´t talk about top class runners, I talk about every kind of runner.

The training, everybody knows what is. Organized activity to enhance the physical condition of the runner, and to a certain goal that is the performance.

The RESISTANCE RATIO, is the capacity of delay the speed while length the distance. For example, one individual, is able to run 100m in 10secs. In theory, and just if he is able to do one superior result in 200m that same runner isn´t able to do 200m in 20secs. The decrease of speed is what is resistance ratio. The resistance ratio is the best objective estimate to what enhance the training of that runner is good or it is not. This is very important relate to SPECIFICITY. While in distance runs, the main factor of the specificity is strength endurance, the less is the resistance ratio the better is the training. For example. One runner is able to run 400m in 50secs. If he runs 800m in 1:50. The ratio is 0,4545 (50/110=0,4545).

Another runner does 400m in the same 50secs, but he does 800m in 1:55. The ratio is 0,4347 (50/115=0,4347).

Might be that the slower 800m performer is one 400m specialist, and this is the reason he can´t perform as good as the other 1:50 800m runner. But when we relate top class runners we are talk about specialist of the same distance events. Following HRE names, we relate peter Snell with Michel Jazy.

But if in the same example of 400m/800m ratio imagine that another runner does 400m in 60secs, slower than the first two. However this 3rd runner does 2:04 in 800m, what is a ratio of 0,4838 (60/124=0,4838).

Let´s forget the talent of each runner to run 800m. What is the runner that does best training method from the three ? Of course that is the slower runner, the one that runs 400m in just 60secs but 800m in 2:04.

This is the reason why to say that Kenenisa Bekele does good training because he did 26:13 is highly speculative and subjective and it´s not an objective argument. Right that he is the all time fast performer but we can´t say that is because his training that is his the world’s best 500m and 1000m performer that is training is the best. To say that Bekele training is good or say that the Lydiard method is good because did produce 1:44 Peter Snell, some others, whatever, is speculative. Most of the Lydiard runners that I did study his ratios, my conclusion is that they did nothing special performances related to the ratio and consequently Lydiard training method doesn´t offer no better performance enhance than some others.

Just one last example. I know 1:46-1:48 runners that did 3:30. Peter Snell with 1:44 wasn´t able to run best than 3:36. Talent ? we don´t know, but the training method of the 1:46-3:30 can be worse than the one of Peter Snell. One last detail, the 1:46-3:30 is slower in 400m than peter Snell, what enforces the conclusion that the best runner coached in ratio of resistance is him and not Peter, what is to say that Peter doesn´t better training than the other runner.

Oh…with one parenthesis. HRE says we can´t relate performances…

I agree with most of what you say. The major exception I take is the part where you quote me as saying that you can't relate performances but leave out, as you've done before, the second part of that statement which is "done in different eras."

So, no, I don't think you can decide if Zatopek, Viren, or Gebreselassie is the better 5,000/10,000 runner simply by comparing their times. Therefore you can't compare the effectiveness of their training either. You obviously can compare performances of runners who were contemporaries so it's easy to say that Jim Ryun was a better 1500/miler than Jim Grelle was. It's harder to say if he was better than Elliott or El Guerojj.

I also agree that you cannot look at a single athlete and say that his/her training is the best simply because they're beating everyone they race against, so I don't think we can assume that Ryun was better trained than Grelle. However, I do think that you can begin to evaluate a type of training by looking at the responses of sufficiently large groups of runners to it done over sufficiently long stretch of time. Figuring out what "sufficiently large" means in this case is too big a job to do here.

While nothing may stand out about Lydiard's athletes in terms of their speed to distance ratio compared to other top competitors, what impressed me about his coaching was the really small population that he got to that level without recruiting anyone because of their talent, though I know that local athletes with promise were sent to him, but they were VERY local. Similarly, I always admired Bill Bowerman because unlike virtually every other successful US collegiate coach, he was very restrained in the area of recruiting thinking that it was sort immoral to "kiss some 16 year old's ass so he'll come run for you."

By contrast, Cerutty, for example, pursued Elliott who moved across Oz to train with him. Lydiard's guys were all from that three square mile area that Kim mentions and then he went to Finland and duplicated his successes, then he came back to New Zealand and was duplicating his success again with girls who went to the school where his wife taught.

Certainly other coaches have had multiple successes though I can't think of any who've had them in as many settings and over as much time as Lydiard did. Igloi might be #2 on that list. I have never argued that Lydiard's methods were perfect or even superior despite my partiality to them and I don't think the rest of the "Lydiard gang" here has either.

I've simply said that nothing ever worked for me until I started doing training that was along Lydiard's lines and then I ran faster than I had ever dreamed possible. That motivated me to try and learn more about Arthur's approach and now, when that approach is discussed, it bothers me to see people who only know it as those "Run to the Top" schedules criticize it based on that limited knowledge.

Kadaffi out of power wrote:

What is the runner that does best training method from the three ? Of course that is the slower runner, the one that runs 400m in just 60secs but 800m in 2:04.

I LIKE this argument. With a pathetic 400m PB relative to my 800, it makes me feel better.

But aren't you assuming that the athlete developed their sprint/400 potential reasonably well (weights, speed work etc), and had a few serious attempts at the distance? There are quite a lot of people who came in from the cross country end, and either never realised their 'speed potential', or never did the races to measure it.

HRE wrote:

You know what? I'm going to throw one more card on the table and see if you can play it.

Lydiard's original runners was a group of 15-20 guys who lived in his neighborhood in Auckland. In his neighborhood, not from the entire city.

Today's Africans come primarliy from two countries on the east coast with some add ons from some neighboring countries. Which do you think is the larger talent pool?

Kim Stevenson wrote:

Actually the neighbourhood would be lucky to 3 sq miles !!!

Some of those "old" guys still live in the area !!!(eg Magee and Baillie)

This is enough proof that Lydiard was a very inspiring coach, surely much more so than any on the list of coaches posted by Antonio Khadaffi?

I want to say the same to you as i try to say to Kim Stevenson. There’s nothing wrong that you follow Lydiard training. It´s your option, it´s your individual decision and the Lydiard training does his merits. It´s a good choice among so many poor training methods of the present.

Yes, in my opinion, and from the training data I can scope, some present training are worse than Lydiard. I hope that my poor English – that some of you always tend to refer – might be as good that you might understand my position. I don´t think Lydiard is poor training. What you mean by “local athletes with promise were sent to him, but they were VERY local” is a fact. Then Lydiard, with his training puts most that local runners on the very top of the rankings, medals, champions all that good results. It´s undeniable that what the Lydiard runners did have the touch of good training and the good Lydiard training. It´s always weak to define one period but I think that Lydiard training in the late 50s-60s-early 70s was the very top, but not just the very top, but one reason of that Lydiard method supremacy is about the breakthrough over the other methods of that period.

Simply what initial was one step further to progress, from the past to the present, as everything else tend to decline and be crystallized, and actually tends to represent the same role than the other methods that the Lydiard one challenged. Simplistic, I may say that the Lydiard born as new, young, vitalized, but after some decades with the progress of the training methodology refuses to be reenergized and don´t want to lost the supremacy place that get in the past. There, the several attempts, or to refuse to admit that not everything is perfect the refuse to accept that some premises be put in question, and when the wage of time and modernity (the good present training, not the poor one of the present) starts to question , he gets emotional, conservative, with premature inadequate criticism about the other, refuses to discuss, accuses the other of just build negative comments, and sometimes runs ways in the moments of decisive parts of the debate, enclosed in a shell that´s debate one with each other in soft blogs, in friendly sites. I guess i´ve been read that conservative position, that sometimes uses the strategy that is the indifference, and other times uses the strategy to be hard, to be untouchable, impenetrate.

Finally, I repeat my argument. Lydiard training is outdate somehow. Don´t expect that I will show other variants that the existent ones: aerobic, anaerobic, speed, endurance, strength endurance, mileage, volume, quality, quantity. This don´t change. What changes is the organization of that variables, the modern in.-date training uses that same variables different way than what Lydiard training does.

I guess that you aren´t right about to base one training analysis one training by the results that you got with that training. It´s weak evaluation. I might understand and be sensible to the fact that you did enhance your performances by Lydiard training and you get esteem for the training method, you want to be generous for the method that able you to improve your performances, and from what you felt more confidence. But from here to claim that no methodological argument can have a better approach than your one, you might change your opinion. Whe I say You, it´s not just you, HRE, It´s you, every other Lydiard adept.

HRE wrote:

it bothers me to see people who only know it as those "Run to the Top" schedules criticize it based on that limited knowledge.

I hope that despite you confess that is hard for you to read and understand what i write, but you don´t think that i´m the kind of guy that what i know about Lydiard is a few schedules that he read on Run to the Top. I did read Run to the Top in the early 70s...

Might be that the problem with some Lydiardites is that because my poor english write, early they taught that what i know from the Lydiard methods are one or two schedules from Run to the Top.