Mihaly Igloi

Funnily enough, Ralph Tate once said in 1973 that Dennis Shultz was the greatest White sprinter ever. We all chuckled about that, remembering Valeriy Borzov's great races in Munich. I recall Chuck Stiley getting a terrible muscle pull his freshmen year. His entire hamstring was black and blue for months afterward. I graduate shortly thereafter and don't know if that continued to trouble him.

Boy, did the Big 8 have some great distance talent back then or what? Guys like Jerome Howe, Rick Hitchcock, Jay Mason, Randy Heierding, Ron Fick, Jim Hawkins, Mike Kelly, Bob Unger

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Do you think today's runners, used to the joys of logging mileage on the roads, trails, etc, could submit to Igloi's structured workouts; all on the track?

Note that only a small percentage of mileage with Igloi was actually on the track (and generally none on the roads).

But I think the main thrust of your question is whether today's runners could handle having their workouts almost entirely under the master's eye (and with multiple changes of pace and "action"). My honest answer: some.

In fact, I think there are always (some) athletes who don't want to have to put the mental energy into planning workouts and would be more than willing--happy!--to have someone else completely in charge.

re: Tabori, an Igloi athlete - it would not be unusual for him to throw in some 400s or 300s @ 60s (400) pace sometimes twice during workout in the middle of the workouts. Track work as mentioned could be 3-4 hrs+. Tabori said that the measure of a good workout was "If you 'peace' blood." Several days later after a particularly grueling track 'session' - he came up to me as I was 'hands to knees' gulping for air - he whispers in my ear "You peace blood yet?" Ah the good ol days.

I was kind of sloppy when it came to documenting workouts and runs - wish I would have. My bottom line was - "did it work" - was I winning was I running faster - and on the other side was I getting injured a lot.

I also had the opportunity to train with a variety of top notch coaches - Olympians in their own right.

I wonder if Tabori and Igloi ever mended fences.

Okay back to the rocking chair

your posts are outstanding. thank you.

any other old SFVTC folk out there?

I was LATC from 1963-1966.

I still have my training diaries.

If I can answer questions from anyone, please feel free to ask.

Any other LATC people around?

I remember Dave Babaraki and John Sutherland on the road racing scene in LA, in the late 70s early 80s, running for the SFVTC and Tabori and doing well.

Living in the Past wrote:

There was another guy who was a top distance runner in California in your era whose name escapes me. You probably raced against him and can provide his name. He had black hair (and looked Italian), wore a white singlet with wings on it, and wore white shorts. His first name might have been Norman. Does that jog your memory?

that might be John Vitale.....I thought he was a foreigner too, for a time. He did look Italian.

well, i have been following this thread since it started. i met with a former coach of mine today and talked to him for a while specifically about Mihaly Igloi. my former coach ran for Igloi for a few months. when you get to the part about Mt Sac, he is competing against Bobby Seamen (sp) from UCLA who was being coached by Igloi at the time. my coach was not under Igloi's methods at the time.

notes from the interview:

Mihaly Igloi

August 6, 2007

Background: the conditions in Hungary were conducive to his style of training. Communist regime, with a lot of snow, barely any track facilities and no trails. They would take a snow plow and plow off 200m of snow on the airfield.

Philosophy: anyone can run world record pace for any given distance (800m through marathon) for a given amount of time. The idea is to teach the athlete to run that pace without stopping for the duration of the event.

“Countless runners would fall by the wayside. I was one of them. The cartilage in my knee gave out after several weeks of high intensity training.” Igloi was famous for his athletes running international caliber times within 3 months of training. Usually, 5-6 out of 10 athletes would break from his training, but the ones that didn’t break, were the ones who ran well.

Some of the athletes that he coached include: Laslo Tabori, Jim Beatty, Tracy Smith, Jerry Brady (Chaffey College, 1:50 800m and 47 400m). Brady broke down.

1952 or 1956 olympics he and other Hungarians went to Melbourne, but never went home. They came to the US. Igloi settled in Santa Clara, CA (close to San Jose) and founded the Santa Clara Youth Village. Later, he started the LA track club in the early ‘60’s.

Typical training looked followed an every other day model. Didn’t really care what happened during the days he didn’t see you. Mondays and Wednesday s were high intensity—we’d run 3+ sets of 20x100m or 200m. “how fast?” “Sprint!!”

“we worked out twice a day, same type of training each time. In spikes. “‘what do you race in? well, that’s what you practice in.’” mornings workouts were about 5:30 or 6am, and then again in the late afternoon; Mondays and wed’s. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, “what do you want me to do? Do you want me to run?” “I don’t care, whatever you feel like.”

He taught his athletes to depend on him 100%.

At the Mt. Sac relays, I raced one of his athletes, Bobby Seamen (sp?), a 4:04 miler. Bobby came up to me before the race started and said, “I have to run x pace for the first 3 laps. The final lap it doesn’t matter. I have to go through ¾ in this time. I passed him with 300 yards to go, and won the race. Igloi didn’t care about all the sweaters, watches and dishes we got when we won races like that. I needed that stuff so I ran to win.”

trained a couple of summers with Igloi in late 60's at Santa Monica City College

--no one has mentioned when he would come out to the track and act like he was sharpening his index finger and point to the cementary across the street. You knew you would die those days--no language barrier in that case!

--couple people of significant improvement fairly young

believe it was Russell Braile (sp?) from LA Hamilton HS who was about a 10:10 2 miler in late 60's who I believe went to under 9:10 after a year with Igloi.

--Ole Oleson was from Palisades HS in LA area - about 9:36 HS 2 miler - started with Igloi and less than 2 years later was NCAA Indoor Champ I am pretty sure at 8:36 for USC - nice minute improvement for back then a decent prep two miler (only about the second year we ran that far at the prep level in Calif) in less than two years.

--The Pierce JC All-Comers were amazing - was it Ted Nelson who raced 3:58 for a mile leading a pack of Igloi's boys and Bob Schul had an amazing two miles in there in basically sand box dirt track conditions (they would have like 20 sections of the 100 with folks going back to run again after they ran in one of the early heats and many heats of other events destroying lane 1 as the evening wore on).

--Tracy Smith (now up in Oregon) kept pretty good records of his workouts under Igloi and may still have them (I snooped through them for a day or two once) - he was up in the Bend area last time I heard.

Doug Speck

http://DyeStatCal.com

Mihaly Igloi and Laszlo Tabori came to the US after the 1956 Olympics by way of the Melbourne Olympics. Even though Laszlo was fleeing his country, which had been invaded by foreign tanks and people there were dying, he was 4th in the 1500 and 6th in the 5K in those Games.

Coach Igloi had many great successes. He also had dropouts and rejects. One of those who stayed long enough to improve was Bob Seaman. Bob was the 8th American to run a mile under four minutes. In 1962, in London Seaman ran 3:58.07. Seaman's best time in 1963 was 3:59.1.

Coach Igloi often said "Must have big goals". Many of Coach Mihaly Igloi's runners did have big goals. Many of his runners ran big times.

Respect to all the elders who have conributed wisdom and memories to this thread.

Remarkable stories about remarkable people (Igoli and Tabori, Schul and Beatty, and all the others.) Why can't there be more of this on here?

It is a truly unique system that Igoli developed, but for the uninitiated (like me), trying to keep track of all the new (old) terms, I think I missed some obvious details.

Forgive me for asking, but 1. what are "shakeups"? I saw that they fit in the "warm-ups", but how are they different from strides?

2. Between reps in the sets, what is the recovery say for eg. after a 200 "good speed" in the middle of a set?Generally, were recoveries active, or walking, timed or based on distance? I know the answer is somewhere, buried in the thread.

3. How does the Igoli system lend itself to more "traditional methods of training? Can we put a period of Igoli style intervals into a typical training plan, and what purpose would it serve (instead of doing it year-round)? Would you do these workouts in a build-up phase, or do we substitute these intervals for traditional repeats (5*1k, ladders/cutdowns etc.)?

4. Extension to the question above: Are there some similarities between some of Igoli's interval workouts and the Lydiard "sharpener" 3k or so of 50/50s? I mean, if the idea is to control the pace throughout the workout, then a "tapered" Igoli workout can accomplish the same thing?

Many thanks to anyone who offers a response, it's my first foray into requesting this kind of advice.

For those who didn’t train with coach Igloi , it is quite difficult to understand his training methods. Of course was coach Igloi who didn’t want to share his training knowledge, as other great coaches did, (Geschler, Lydiard, P. Coe, Canova etc.) and that’s why no one can gives you the best answers that you want.

I ‘ll try to give you-as best I can-some general thoughts about his methods.

A. Coach Igloi training has nothing to do with Lydiard one. Igloi had many influences from European training system, like Swedish (Hagg-Anderson), German, and put all these things to his own scientist knowledge and experience.(You have to know that Igloi was a very good athlete-800m. and 1500m.-before B world War, he competed at Berlin Olympic Games).

B. Through his coaching years , he had many times change his training system. The first years at Hungary , with the great athletes-Iharos, Roszavolgyi, Tabori-tried to use vary training methods, and then in California had already clear his training plan. Finally in Greece used a more complicated training system because the circumstances were differents.

C. Someone who has watched coach Igloi training can tell you that the athlete may run for two hours continuously ,using many different speeds and many different technique . Athlete stopped running only when coach Igloi gave him the next training orders. Usually that happened three times in every session. For example the athlete warmed up 20min.,no stretching, 10*100 shakeups and then the first orders, usually some laps with 120 speed up/80 jogging, 150 good speed/50 jogging and between them maybe some laps with 300fresh on grass/100 jogging. Then the athlete took from coach new orders, like some sets of 4*400at specific time /100 jogging 3 times and after each set 9*200 good swing tempo/50 jogging on grass and at the last came back for the last orders maybe 1*400, 1*300, 1*200 very fast with 2*600 fresh on grass and 3*120 all out /120 jogging. That is maybe an evening training session. You can imagine that all time coach Igloi talked to athlete how to run, how to move his arms, his body straight, his strides long or short and always running-no walking .

D. Coach Igloi had no periodization . The athlete could run fast all season , running on spikes all year.

E. Coach Igloi build up a great aerobic base through many km in every session with too many speeds inside. When the athlete was running fast then had to run some easy laps and then the same. Of course every day was a hard day and I think that is the point of coach Igloi training system for discuss. His athlete could very soon to peaking up but the next step was sometimes with injuries, or at the same level.

You see there is a big question about his Hungarian athletes, I mean if they could run in Melbourne Olympic Games, and then the American athletes, like Beatty, Seaman, Grelle, they had great times but only Shull won an Olympic medal.

I tried some times to have a conversation with coach about these but ever had some good answers, coach himself was a very closed man and on the other hand I had so great respect on him that I didn’t want to depressed him.

I learned so much from your excellent response ancient runner. It helped put things together. Thank you for posting.

Now for some comments for awestruck. Coach Igloi's training and even each workout for each individual evolved constantly as his ideas and the situations evolved. I do not know what a 50/50 is nor have I ever called any running that I did strides. My dictionary defines tempo as "rate of activity" and "pace". Everything we did with Coach Igloi had a tempo and he often referred the pace to be run by the term tempo.

We never walked except for a few steps between shake ups or 100s. I continue to enjoy and also continue to learn by rereading this thread and what I call the "Bruce Kidd" thread. You may want to take a look at pages 6 through 8 on this thread for a very little about Igloi workouts.

For stories concerning a different Coach and approach and very different athletes, you might want to read the 6 page thread that was created between 1-10-07 and 1-30-07. That thread was started by Steve Hoag (a 2:11 marathoner who was 2nd in Boston in 1975) and entitled "What Happened to Bruce Kidd, Canada's Phenom of the 60's". Making the thread even more interesting is the fact that both Bob Schul and Gerry Lindgren have posted there. I will add a post and bring it back to the first page sometime today.

Thank you Ancient Runner and Mr. Atkins for taking some time to answer me. I'm reading and re-reading this thread, anitiod your explanations are very helpful.

I recognize that Igloi was very different from other coaches, and there is no real comparison. Intuitively, the idea of running many reps and intervals changing speeds all the time makes sense, and it is easy to see how volume can accumulate each session. But because his method was based on such intense training every day, maybe this is why few people are willing to try it these days?

Ancient Runner, in Point E in your response, you said that his athletes could peak quickly under one part of his training, but then the next part sometimes brought injuries or even saw no improvement. Based on this, I wanted to ask you and Mr. Atkins' opinions on this variation.

Do you think if I ran Igloi-style workouts every day, or every other day as another one of the veterans said she does with her high-school runners, for a period of time eg during a competition phase, instead of the usual interval training, I would be able to see some benefits? It's kind of like a "part-time" Igloi system. Or is it better as a year-round method?

The method and the man seem to be so amazing - he adapted and modified each workout to suit each individual athelete, every day, day in, day out? I am truly awestruck, and sincerely grateful to you both.

There is a reason why top runners don´t train like this nowadays.