LYDIARD OR DANIELS?

Gaymond:

What a coincidence! I was just listening to Ron Daws' clinic this afternoon (tape). He was a big proponent of exactly what you're suggesting; start out with short recovery with tons of volume. He was saying he'd like to start with 2X400 + 2X600 + 2X800 + 1200; recovery; and repeat! Some total of 14 miles on track...with relatively short recovery. He said, coming off from volume of conditioning and hill training, capitalize what we have (stamina) and restrict speed (if you do it in this volume with short recovery, there's no way you can, or want to, do them too fast. I like that.

Now this structure thing; what we mean is that you just cannot follow predetermined formula. Too many people like to say things like 15X400 or whatever; and the speed of such-and-such seconds added to your mile pace or 5000m pace or whatever... Well, here's the truth though. I'd be very much structured and precise....in a way. I do reps around this loop (on the road) in Wayzata. It's about 3/4 mile but I'm not 100% sure. It's got a bit of a uphill in the middle. I do this with the girl I coach. I'm right there, watching her form, listening to her breathing... I usually start out with 5 minutes and 3 reps. This winter, when we first did this, she did it too fast. She came in something like 4:40 so I stopped her after the second rep (she was laboring). From then on, we shoot for 5-minutes and end up doing about 4:45~4:50. If it goes faster than 4:45, I may stop her after 3rd one. Of course, it all depends on how she handles it physically AS WELL AS her mental state. If she seems to get disappointed or discourage by finishing the workout prematurely, then I may even have her push a bit; but probably a second or two slower pace and "lie" when I call out her time (yes, I don't like her wearing her watch but I take times for every lap).

When I was more competitive myself, I used to do repeats on this stretch nearby my place. The approximate distance of this happened to be about 530m (just happened to be that distance which I sort of "measured" with my steps) and I seem to have "hit the wall" after about 8~11 of them. Lydiard used to say the total of fast runs of about 5000m or thereabout. And he termed it "till you create enough oxygen debt". Now it could be physiologically incorrect; but basicaly, you "hit the wall with speed". I have NO idea just exactly what's happeneing in our body and I'll leave it to lab scientists to explain to us; but you know it, we start to struggle. The form is gone; you tense up; you're working harder but the time is slipping... Now you're hitting the wall. To me, at that particular time of my running career, if I did that stretch (530m) somewhere around 8~11 times, I hit the wall. That's pretty much "whatever"--distance wise, and # of repeats is concerned, isn't it? Or the repeats would have to be 400M? Or whatever the set distance? Does it have to be done on track? No, I don't think so. So "whatever".

Obviously you have to use a bit of common sense. If you're trying to run well for 5,000 meters you want to incur your "big oxygen debt" by doing something like you'll do in the 5,000 meters race. Yes, you could run an all out 400, jog 50 meters, then do another all out 400 and you'd have your big oxygen debt.

But it doesn't necessarliy follow that you have to go into every interval sesion with a plan to run each repeat in a specific, predetermined time.

Bill Baillie spent a long time trying unsuccessfully to run a sub 4:00 mile and did lots of sessions of 10x400 in 59-60. Eventually he slowed those 400s to 70-72 and ran 3:59. In 1980,

Frank Shorter had given up on the idea of making the Olympic team in the marathon because he wasn't healthy enough to run the mileage he thought he needed. So he decided to try to make the team at 10,000 meters. He said he'd run under 28:00 and his reasoning was that he was doing the same interval sessions in the same times as he'd done in 1972 when he'd run 27:51. But he didn't run under 28. He didn't even run under 29.

Brian Berryhill went to New Zealand during Christmas break of his senior year at Colorado State and ran a 3:56 mile and 1:47 800 meters. He did that on his distance work from cross country and one time trial at each distance done at 80% effort, according to Track and Field News. Ron Clarke did NO specific work at race pace in his entire career and ran ok.

I could go on and on. Cerutty didn't have his guys do much specific pace work at all. It was all about adapting to hard efforts. Even Igloi didn't, from what I understand, prescribe times but also taught various efforts.

Lydiard once told me that you could get very good results by "racing yourself fit" with no repetition work at all. If you do that, and that was my preferred method, you obviously are doing some pace specific work in the races, though I just always ran as hard as I could with no real attention to pace. I tried to learn to identify the maximum effort I could maintain for the entire race. Of course I was "working toward" something and if a race was slower than I'd run for that same distance recently I was disappointed.

Oxygen debt isn't really the right term HRE, but I know what you mean. The term Oxygen debt is an old idea that has been disproven, but the term is still used because it seems to describe what is going on at the end of races such as a 5000m

Tinman used to talk about how the concept is false, but now he seems reluctant. I understand that he wants to simplify things, but I don't agree with teaching ideas that aren't true.

Lydiard's ideas are conceptually very sound, however the terminology isn't. If we update the terminology, then no-one can make false accusations about the concept.

The rantings of a certain poster on another thread are nothing more than jealousy directed mostly at Nobby, and should not be taken seriously, which I don't think letsrunners do.

Tom, I wish that in the past, you had paid more attention to what I was trying to tell you, because you have a brilliant mind that is muddled by conflicting information.

You contradict yourself constantly. You need some direction, but you won't accept it.

I disagree with the idea that a race has to be this meticulously planned, scientifically devised effort.

What if you spend three months planning on opening up your mile in 2:05 and the race goes out in 2:11? You can't plan a race- the best most runners can do is have a vague idea of what they want to do and be able to adapt that idea to the situation as it changes.

I don't understand the "need" for a special, magical specificity to training. Training for a race requires two components:

1) getting the athlete fit for a race

2) making the athlete FEEL fit for a race

If I go out and do 11 400s in 66 with a minute break, I feel like I'm ready to roll a 4:20 mile. For me, it's less important that I can do 65 quarters and more important that 66 second quarters feel pretty easy. If you tell an athlete "to run 4:20, you gotta be able to do 10x400 in 65 with a minute rest" and they go out and do 10x400 in 66, feeling like shit, that's going to demoralize them.

Whenever I did race prep in high school, my coach would go by effort. "Do a 400 at about mile effort" etc, etc.

Now, athletes aren't carbon copies of each other. If, Gaymond, in order to feel fit, you NEED to hit specific paces at specific times feeling a specific way in order to feel fit, then Lydiard anaerobic training is not for you. And you know what? That's ok. There are many ways to achieve racing fitness.

But just as you, as an athlete, NEED specificity, many other athletes avoid it like the plague. Many athletes have trouble hitting race pace without race day adrenaline- to them, struggling to run 400s in 60 when their goal 800 pace is 58s is just demoralizing.

I don't understand your compulsive need for concrete stuff, but then again, I don't have to. As long as YOU understand that need, and make sure that element is present in your training. I would say if you need to be that specific, then you shouldn't use Lydiard's anaerobic phase. It's not for everyone, and that's not a bad thing.

Just keep in mind that, yes, that very "anaerobic anarchy" that fills you with distaste is exactly what other athletes (like myself) find so appealing and effective about Lydiard's program.

wellnow -

I guess you'll just have to teach me what is right and wrong. Then, I won't be so confused!

If you only pick up Lydiard in bits and pieces on a noisy, anonymous public forum, it's easy to conclude that it's all about anarchy and just doing "whatever".I thought this point was made pretty clear already, but I'll try to summarize it in words I understand. There is a clear goal to run as hard as you can, yet maximizing the volume of work that you do in repetitions. How many reps that is may be 10 different things for 10 different people.The problem with a goal like 15x400 at 65 seconds, is it may be too much for one, and not enough for another.Ask yourself:- Why 15 and not 13 or 17?- Why 400, and not 600 or 800?- Why 65 and not 63 or 67?- Is 15x400@65seconds determined by some magic formula to be the optimum for all athletes at that stage of training?All of these answers depend on the athlete. Don't confuse adapting to the athlete with anarchy. And don't interpret "the athlete does what he feels like" lightly. The athlete who listens to his body will do the right thing by feel.The goal is to expose the body to high volumes of speed, so that it can make adaptations -- how you do that doesn't matter.Regards,

Gaymond wrote:

I just dont get some of you "experts". In any race we have to pace carefully and plan ceraefully but for some reson when it come to Lydiard intervals well anarchy rules the day. 400? 800? Pace? WHATEVER. If I'm going to do 10 key workouts in a season I want them to PROGRESS. I want them to LEAD TOWARDS SOMETHING. You dont get that with WHATEVER. Or "until you get oxygenated".

You seem determined to correct some errors, but I just wasn't getting enough information -- I just wanted to figure out what the heck you were talking about, so I could determine to ignore you or not.Thanks for the link.Credit where credit is due: that statement about SID came from the Wikipedia "discussion" tab on "lactic acid"

wellnow wrote:

WOW, you really have been doing your research haven't you?

Yes I have seen that Wikipedia "discussion" someone posted it about a year ago.

Lindinger's arguments about physical chemistry are amazing. He says that there is no such thing as PH, and no such thing as Hydrogen ion transport, rather we have to view these metabolic changes in chemistry and in our muscles as chemical reactions which happen in water, in this case the water environment inside the muscle cell namely the Cytosol.

He agrees with Robergs that there is no lactic acidosis, but he says; to paraphrase: "so what? why change the literature"

I agree with Robergs, why say something that isn't true. lactate is good, lactate is our freind, helping us in so many ways. So let's tell the whole world.

Letsrun, is a hugely influencial website. If you want to get information out there, this is the place to do it.

My purpose in posting all of this here is to point out the conceptual brilliance of Arthur Lydiard, whilst pointing out the errors in the science of his approach, and some of his ideas, such as the one where he states that once you start "anerobic training" you cannot increase your aerobic capacity.

This isn't true, you can increase your aerobic capacity at any time in the training plan, and you can add speed at any point too, without sacrificing endurance.

These problems are small however, and I want to write about them in a positive way. The ideas of this great mann who told us that an ordinary runner with seemingly little talent, can become a great runner if they train with passion and common sense and purpose.

I felt the Lydiard vibe more than 30 years ago, because it swept accross the whole world of sport, until the name Lydiard was ingrained in my consciousness about 10 years later.

Thanks for all of your intelligent posts, keep em coming, we all seek The Light.

Tinman wrote:

wellnow -

I guess you'll just have to teach me what is right and wrong. Then, I won't be so confused!

Erm yes well, er, let's see now, how's about this Tom: I read your info, check the sources, and put it all into hisorical context, i.e. the chronological order of discovery, hypotheses and their subsequent approval or debunkification so that their is no conflict or contradiction?

I have always been good at the conceptual level, now I am working on the molecular level, improving my understanding of biochemistry, so that I can hopefully work with others to sort out much of the confusion in the literature and try to explain it in layman's terms.

Thanks for the past five years of debate.

From Tinman:

"I guess you'll just have to teach me what is right and wrong. Then, I won't be so confused!"

From wellnow:

"Erm yes well, er, let's see now, how's about this Tom: I read your info, check the sources, and put it all into hisorical context, i.e. the chronological order of discovery, hypotheses and their subsequent approval or debunkification so that their is no conflict or contradiction?

I have always been good at the conceptual level, now I am working on the molecular level, improving my understanding of biochemistry, so that I can hopefully work with others to sort out much of the confusion in the literature and try to explain it in layman's terms.

Thanks for the past five years of debate."

-------------------------------------------------------

Rebuttal:

If you are going to be critical of my posts, be sure to clearly state your ideas and opinions, please. Try putting something of substance in your posts instead of "you guys are wrong or you guys haven't studied or you guys (inferred) are just dumb."

Thank you,

Tinman

That's quite funny and ironic coming from you, Tinman. Check page 20 of THAT thread and rediscover why so many letsrunners abhore your hypocracy:

Tinman RE: Mr. Renato Canova: Could You Please Answer a Question About Effective Ways to Improve the Lactate Threshold? 8/2/2005 4:01PM - in reply to Andy Renfree Return to Index | Report Post

Andy:

Be careful, you are citing scientific research. This forum discourages truth. Only experience counts, so expect Cabral or his friends to hammer on you. Their experience is better than your knowledge of science. Tinman

Racer 1 was quite correct when he responded:

Racer1 RE: Mr. Renato Canova: Could You Please Answer a Question About Effective Ways to Improve the Lactate Threshold? 8/2/2005 4:01PM - in reply to Tinman Return to Index | Report Post

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Tinman wrote:

Andy:

Be careful, you are citing scientific research. This forum discourages truth. Only experience counts, so expect Cabral or his friends to hammer on you. Their experience is better than your knowledge of science. Tinman

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Tinman, do you expect you deserve respect when you spew verbal diarrhea such as the above?

This thread, now 400 posts long, has the advice of many top coaches with athletes that medaled in Olympic finals.

You, on the other hand, have in the last day contributed a slander of a good coach simply because he does not agree with you.

And actually, you metaphorically shot yourself in the foot with the statement "Experience is better than science." Though your intent was obviously sarcasm, that statement is true; experience BLOWS AWAY science in every case at every level.

JK wrote a fantastic article posted on this site several months ago about the many problems with running science studies, how they are misinterpreted, and how they are fallaciously substituted for real world TRIAL AND ERROR.

After reading so much mourning for you in other threads (where, I might add, your childish "I'm leaving the forum because I am too good for these immature posters" was actually supported by some) I can now see the extent to which many posters (or perhaps yourself touting yourself under a different name) lack reading comprehension.

One need only revisit an earlier page on this very thread to find ample evidence of your aversion to reasoned debate of any kind and your willingness to have ZERO discussion in the event someone's feelings may be hurt.

Just for others to see, here is a little glance at your blatant and ridiculous hypocrisy:

Page 4: (AFTER RENATO POSTS A VERY LONG EXPLANATION OF A CIRCUIT USED BY HIS ELITE KENYANS LIKE SHAHEEN AND ANOTHER POSTER COMPLIMENTS RENATO) "I have only said this, in various forms, for a year and half on letsrun.com, but I guess it takes a guy with Renato's reputation to make it stick. I am humbled by Renato's influence. How long will it take before people forget this key principle and hammer away at lactic acid interval and disregard threshold? History repeat itself, unfortunately! Tinman"

Page 6: (TINMAN AFTER GETTING HIS FEELINGS HURT BY A KNOWLEDGEABLE DISTANCE RUNNING COACH)

"Antonio:

For a guy who thinks that science has no place in training, you sure do a lot of talking about lactate this and that. Why don't you just tell people the workouts you advise and let them get the idea of what you are trying to say. I am sure many would appreciate your training schedules and benefit more from looking at the schedules than any explanation could give. Take care and thanks for your input. Sincerely, Tinman"

Page 6: (TINMAN INSULTING A FOREIGN COACH ATTEMPTING TO CONVEY IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (ENGLISH) VERY COMPLEX PHYSIOLOGICAL TERMINOLOGY AFTER COMPLAINING ABOUT HOW HE DOES NOT LIKE FIGHTING WITH OTHERS (HYPOCRISY?). AS AN ASIDE, I WOULD LOVE TO READ TINMAN'S TREATISE ON LACTATE BUFFERING WRITTEN IN PORTUGUESE. WAIT, HE DOESN'T HAVE ONE. FUNNY THAT HE ATTACKS ANOTHER THEN FOR TRYING AND SUCCEEDING.)

"Regarding Cabrals messages the way they are, they suck royally. He doesn't know English well enough to clearly convey his expertise. That is why I suggested that he just write out the training he prescribes. Tinman"

Page 7: (TINMAN ATTACKS ANOTHER POSTER WHO POINTS OUT TINMAN'S RIDICULOUS ATTEMPT TO ARGUE WITH CABRAL ABOUT NOTHING. TINMAN ACCUSES ANTONIO OF A "BAD TEMPER." APPARENTLY DISAGREEING WITH TINMAN ABOUT RUNNING MEANS YOU HAVE A "BAD TEMPER." HE FURTHER TAKES CHEAP SHOTS AT OTHER POSTERS0

"Antonio:

It seems your temper is out of control and it is not at all productive to deal with someone in your state of mind.

I will give you a clear path and avoid interacting with you. I am sure that makes you and dunes (your kiss-butt buddy) happy. Tinman"

Mercifully, Tinman disappears for a while and attempts to gain a following on Run-Insight, sadly returning and striking up another argument that again highlights his own absurd debating tactics and childish attempts at attacking others.

So there you have it in black and white for the Tinman cult followers. Seems to point to an obvious conclusion indeed.

I wasn't arguing for or against Lindinger, but saw that little blurb, and wondered how that fit with your investigation.

Generally, I'm in favor of calling things by their correct name -- it should avoid a lot of confusion down the road.

Didn't Lydiard achieve his great results, and then add the science later, because everyone told him he should add the science so it could be better understood? I'm in favor of taking the science out -- at least until it stabilizes -- because it is just like a bad stain on his proven concepts. I also like the idea of making up new terms which may or may not exist, but convey the idea (like "leg viscosity"), succeeding while making a parody of science.

Speaking of keeping terminology correct, did Lydiard actually say somewhere "once you start 'anerobic training' you cannot increase your aerobic capacity"? I thought he said "aerobic development", not "aerobic capacity", which are quite different. I thought the idea is that it's best (i.e. you get better results faster), to do base, then add speed -- but you can't do both at the same time, because at best, you develop more slowly, and at worst it's counterproductive.

I will keep posting -- I hope others find some of them intelligent.

I have to side with Tinman on all counts.

First, "wellnow" has a tendency to come up with black-and-white statements that something is true or something else is now known to be and widely considered false. The older I get, the more I find out that life is not so black and white -- and particularly so in human physiology. I find these statements should only serve to introduce the colored statements which should follow. Standing alone, black-and-white statements have little weight. In mathematics, a single point has no thickness.

As an example, "wellnow" tells is quite pointedly that the idea of "oxygen debt" has been disproven. This could be in interesting point to follow up on, but what can I read to see what's behind that statement? Previously he did reference an older posting which he said explained the idea better (coincidentally by "Tinman"), but the best support I could find there was that the oxygen debt "model" was wrong -- that it over-estimates the magnituded of oxygen-debt. This doesn't disprove the idea, but just calls for a need to update the model. Can we just update the model, or is there another compelling reason to discard it as disproven? I don't know because the point hasn't been made yet. Life is in color, and discussions in a discussion forum should be too.

And finally, it is not insulting to say that bad English makes it hard to be understood. For native English speakers, it is just a statement of fact that should be possible to make without insult. In face-to-face conversations, you can add non-verbal cues, but in a written forum, all you have are the words. It is no more insulting to say you can't understand someone over the phone because of a noisy phone line. And since when did writing a treatise in Portuguese (is Antonio Cabral Portugese or Spanish?) on lactate buffering become a prerequisite for recognizing when someone has great ideas, but they aren't being communicated fully because of noise in the medium?

If you take away posts written in self-defense, I have only seen Tinman come up with interesting discussions, and helpful formulas to help zero in on the paces or efforts he's talking about, only to be bashed by others, not because of his words, but because he hasn't posted his credentials, or coached elite athletes, and uses a pseudonym. In an anonymous public forum, posts should be judged by their content, not by unauthenticable credentials. No amount of muckraking old posts out of context can change that.

wellnow wrote:

My purpose in posting all of this here is to point out the conceptual brilliance of Arthur Lydiard, whilst pointing out the errors in the science of his approach, and some of his ideas, such as the one where he states that once you start "anerobic training" you cannot increase your aerobic capacity.

This isn't true, you can increase your aerobic capacity at any time in the training plan, and you can add speed at any point too, without sacrificing endurance.

wellnow

What you say it’s inappropriate. You take the risk to be banned from Lydiardism consideration. What you write is to turn on positive comments into negative comments.

No way that once you start "anaerobic training" you cannot increase your aerobic capacity. No way. This means that in the early endurance/100miles/marathon training block you may do workouts, repetitions, track workouts ? Go back to an old post and you get the mr. Nobby Lydiard expertise answer ”may be that’s good, but that’s not Lydiard training”. The Lydiard method doesn’t prescribe anaerobic workouts. Actually by the modern physiology we know what we knew from training experience. What was considered anaerobic training – intervals and repetition workouts - aren’t as anaerobic as some did imagine and that Lydiard did imagine and that Lydiardists they still imagine. This means that if we wish and we consider effective we are allow of running anaerobic workouts during the season. We can run that anaerobic long before the Lydiard anaerobic block period or long before the hill block with no major danger or stagnate our aerobic condition as long as we keep with the aerobic training. But don’t you know that Lydiard method is the perfect combination of aerobic and anaerobic training ?

Top class runners they don´t do anaerobic training during the introductory block. They wait some 8 months before going anaerobic. 6 weeks before the peak run that´s enough.. Borzakovsky doesn’t. Bekele doesn’t. Mottram doesn’t.

Tinman. He is a good guy really. But it happens he have double personality combined with coach megalomania. One day he says that he create the formula of the anaerobic threshold pace, the other day he will send you an e-mail with a different calculation, Few days later he will say he will quite out LRC. The other day he will come back to LRC and says that Jack Daniels stole him some training concepts.

Ok Tinman, you want me to point out where you are going wrong and contradicting yourself, well hows about this:

http://therunzone.com/VB/showthread.php?t=404&highlight=mitochondria

The first process, alactic, depletes creatine phosphate stores rapidly and so other processes must take over the responsibility of generating and liberating ATP. The first major helper is anaerobic glycolysis (ANG, as I call it). ANG breaks down sugar in the center portion of your muscle fiber, called the cytoplasm. It doesn't use a mitochondria organelle to create ATP, and thus is has a nasty by-product called lactic acid - which causes muscle fatigue.

* When running the 400m to 1500m event you use a lot of anerobic glycolysis, genarting a lot of lactic acid, and so you experience a lot of leg fatigue in a hurry!

The next contributing process is aerobic glycolysis. Though it really starts at about 5 seconds into a run, it doesn't become a major helper of generating ATP until about 23 seconds of running (Rudolf Margaria, Ph.D, 1953). Thereafter, it is the primary source. (Caveat - If the pace is slow from the get-go of your run, then aerobic glycolysis (ARG) helps right away, more.)

Aerobic glycolysis (ARG) produces ATP within mitchondria organelles, and thus it is more efficient than ANG. So, you get a lot of ATP energy without as much fatigue. The amount of energy created per unit of time is fairly high in ARG, but not as high as alactic or lactic processes, yet still much faster than the final process to be discussed.

The final and slowest generator of ATP is aerobic lypolysis, the use of fats as an aerobic energy source. The best part of about using fats as a source for generating ATP is the fact that no acid byproducts are produced. So, your legs don't get tired from this process! The drawback, however, is aerobic lypolysis is very rate limited - meaning the amount of energy you can generate per unit of time is quite low.

Why are you talking about "a nasty by-product called lactic acid - which causes muscle fatigue."

when you know full well that Lactate is an aerobic fuel?

There is nothing nasty abuout it at all. Lactate is an extremely efficient fuel source that also has the capacity to reduce muscle acidity.

You have written many times over the years about lactate as a fuel source. Why on Earth would you want to dumb this down for the layman?

Muscle viscosity was another idea attributable to A.V. Hill, which adds more fuel to my debate that Lydiard based his scientific ideas on Hill's ideas. People jump on this as Lydiard spouting bad science without knowing the facts.

However, in The Light of recent advancements in physiology, the last 30 years or so, I think avoiding recent research is bad science, something which is not in my mind, the true spirit of "Lydiardism."

I am against the idea that "Lydiardism" should be set in stone. We should endeavour to test Arthur's training concepts and show them in relation to what was known and what is now known.

Aerobic Capacity and Aerobic development are terms that are used interchangeably, they essentially mean the same thing in most discussions.

You can do any type of training at any time, and gain a long term benefit if you do it progressively. It is the balance that is crucial to development, but Lydiard wanted his runners to concentrate and focus on building fitness gradually to avoid peaking too soon. I think that was why he was so adamant about adding speed endurance and speed gradually.

IQ100, why are you misquoting me and then agreeing with what I have already written, but saying that you really disagree etc etc blah blah blah?