Lydiard or Cerutty

The purpose of training is the condition your body to run faster. Therefore, it make sense to train as hard as you can without getting injured. There is room for science and there is room for experimentation. In truth, I think a combination of Cerutty and Lydiard would produce the best athlete. Starting with some solid base work and then ending with the curcuit training over hilly terrain, would be all that was needed.

The methods that Cerutty used were unorthodox, I would not argue that, but they worked from at 800/1500m (Elliott) and 6 miles (Stephens). This is fact.

Read Toby Tanser's "Train Hard, Win Easy: The Kenyan Way". He was with them, training, for months and they are doing something closer to what Cerutty did than what Lydiard did. Three sessions and day, many runs at varied paces.

Furthmore, the Fartlek work is the best way to train. Even Lydiard would agree. "Lyduiard was the one the ressurected the Finn's historied program" - how do you think that great Finn's trained? FARTLEK.

Lydiard would say that there is NOT any single best way to train, whether it be fartlek or any other type of workout. He understood that fartlek training develops your ability to run long and hard without tying up. He also understood that running long and steady developed your aerobic capacity. Science has since discovered that raising your anaerobic threshold allows you to use more of your aerobic capacity (vo2max). Fartlek training by itself is not the best way to raise your vo2max, nor is it the type of running that you should do on an easy day.

Running as hard as you can without getting injured is not the best way to train. Anyone with a smattering of exercise physiology knows that the body rebuilds during periods of rest. Too much hard training without rest is counterproductive. As for the circuit training over hilly terrain, you need to do hill repetitions for a number of reasons, but improving your speed is not one of them. For that, you need interval training. Hill training increases your leg strength, which allows you to do interval training more effectively. But it doesn't increase your leg speed by itself.

I am not sure why you so strongly think that there were never easy days in Cerutty's system. Had there not been, Elliott would have never recovered from the work and we would not be speaking of him on this message board.

Cerutty suggested and used interval training during the track season for his 1500m runners.

As for training 3 - 6 milers, Cerutty suggests, on page 176 of "How to Become a Champion" - up to 100 miles a week at slower speeds. For the mid-late 50s, that is high mileage. For marathon runners, he suggests running 400 miles a month, but cautions against more.

Furtermore, he suggest mileage run at slightly faster than marathon pace (LT), marathon pace running, and running at slower speeds to train for the longer distances.

Maybe he should have devoted a chapter to Honey sandwiches and LSD to make you happy.

Also, you can run too slow. If you should be running 6:30 pace on your easy days and you are out there running 8:00 pace, all you are doing is training yourself to run slow.

Cerutty quote I find interesting and timely:

"The inability of the USA to produce a series of world-class distance runners is not due to the college system but to the lack of clubs for graduates. ... When this factor is remedied, if it ever be remedied, then the USA, with its numbers, climate, and resources, will equal or excel the world in distance performers ..."

This happened in the 80s at the peak of the running boom (Athletics West - Daniels, and other clubs)

It is happening again now with the establishment of many new "clubs" and the results speak for themselves:

Team USA Running produced 2 Olympic medals (Meb and Drossin) and the excitement about a group of Americans, for the first time a group, approaching sub 13:00 for 5k.

Cerutty cautioned against marathoners running more than 400 miles per month.

That is one of many reasons Derek Clayton decided to pass on Percy Cerutty as his coach.

Your statement that running at 8:00 pace only trains one to run slowly is just one more sign that you don't understand long-distance training. It's untrue that you can run too slowly. Lydiard understood that running for long durations at any easy pace fostered vascular development. Cerutty never bought into this, but science has proven Lydiard right.

Nobody is saying that a runner should run slowly all the time, only that it can play a vital role in raising one's vo2max. Cerutty didn't know this. Why does this point make you so defensive?

I do not claim there is a magic number for marathon runners or that Cerutty was correct in his 400 mile "rule". What he simply states is that running more than 400 miles a week a person should focus on longer races - 50 miles, etc. He wasn't against the volume, just thought that it was better for longer races.

The only reason I posted that was because "Living in the Past" continues to suggest that Cerutty never had his runners complete long runs. This is simply not true.

I do not think Cerutty is the greatest coach. I would guess most people more than likely decided to run for someone else (after considering him) because he was a jerk to many during initial meetings, as was his "strategy" - I guess he didn't think first impressions were important.

At any rate, I only started this post to generate some discusssion. Cerutty is often overlooked and was one of the great coaches in history. His methods were different, but he got results.

What I find most interesting about Cerutty is that he promoted a lifestyle for distance running:

Training with like-minded peers, eating a healthy diet, using weight training to enhance running performance, training on varied surfaces to avoind injury, and more play and less structure in training. Overall, this approach would prove successful - with appropriate adjustments to the training periodization for any distance runner.

I am not defensive, we are having a discussion. I understand distance training well enough. I do not train athletes using the Cerutty system - I do suggest the "Cerutty Lifestyle" as explained in my post above. I believe in the long run, interval training, LT training is the basis for my program as I agree, as does all Vigil's research suggest, that LT training is more important than VO2max, once VO2max is developed.

This is just a discussion. Cerutty suggests bread for high iron intake for crying out loud. He suggests avoiding red meat. I do not think lifting your body weight over your head is needed for success, but developing strength is needed. There are many, many problems with his overall philosophy. Heck I coach mainly women and he would laugh his ass off at me for wasting my time with the lesser sex.

Most coaches talk about the hard training in their books. There are no charts or graphs defining who did what and when for Cerutty. His books were more about his life philosophy with training ideas thrown in. I am not sure that anyone could know for certain what Cerutty did with his athletes unless you read their training logs. Had they kept them and he found them, he probably would have used them to start the camp fire.

Cerutty is was a bit crazy, but I think that is what I like. I think there should be fewer clipboards at practice and runners shouldn't be ruled by the stopwatch. Here Lydiard and Cerutty agree. Runners should have some freedom to run fast when they want (within certain guidelines) and slower when they want. Fartlek is great for this.

I am sorry, but I think running slower than your appropriate recovery pace is a waste of time. You are only practicing running slow. I know you can find tons of research to shoot right through that statement, but I just don't approve of runners putting in that kind of effort. They might as well do a day of cross training in the pool or on a bike and avoid the impact stress.

I am not saying that Cerutty never had his runners go long. I even provided an example of Elliott's training that included a 15-mile run.

What I am saying is that Cerutty did not understand the vascular benefits of running long and easy. Consequently, Cerutty's athletes did not do the extensive base training that Lydiard's runners did. And even during Cerutty's conditioning phase (equivalent to Lydiard's base training), Cerutty's athletes were doing a lot of anaerobic running.

I also agree with Vigil about vo2max. Once your network of capillaries is extensively developed, any future returns from that kind of training are probably marginal. Your vascular network develops slowly and is limited by genetics.

Your anaerobic threshold, on the other hand, is far more responsive to training. But you still need to develop your vo2max, and Lydiard understood the importance of devoting several months to running long at a variety of intensities in this development.

One of the difficulties with following Cerutty's methods is that he never left a good description of what he did. He was, as you mentioned, as much a philosopher as a coach.

Most of us have this general idea of a bunch of guys running hard on hilly, off-road surfaces but that's about all.

I'll try to see where I read this, but I recall Herb Elliott saying that the whole sand dune thing was actually just something that Cerutty had his guys do when there was a newspaper photographer at Portsea. I also recall Elliott saying that once Cerutty thought that a runner had attained a mental grasp on what Cerutty was teaching, the runner was generally left alone to do things his way.

Now, I happen to think this is a great approach. But it sort of defies description, at least in the sort of specific detail people seem to like now. Heck, we've got a 90 plus page thread that's largely about trying to explain Lydiard to people who find him too vague. I can only imagine how people would react to Cerutty.

There's a book called "Arthur's Boys" which is about Arthur and his original athletes. If someone were to do "Percy's Boys" it would be a good thing because I suspect the best way to understand Cerutty would be to read or hear descriptions from people who trained with him about what they did.

For one reason or another, Percy's boys don't seem to be nearly as forthcoming as Arthur's. We have several regular posters to Letsrun that were either trained directly by Arthur, trained by one of Arthur's boys or at least tried by mail.

It seems like Graem Sims posted a bit here soon after his book, Why Die, was released, but I don't recall much else.

I just finished 'Be Fit or br Damned' which was printed in 1967. There are more specific description of lifting weights in that book than running training. Some of the lifting suggestions seem to contradict the suggestions in 'Training With Cerutty', which was written by Larry Myers, supposedly with Percy's blessing.

I don't know if Albie Thomas or Les Perry are still with us, but Herb is. Surely several of the not so famous Portsea trainers are among us still also.

Maybe this thread will come to the attention of someone from the above and we will get some better insights into Cerutty's methods.

HRE is right. We don't have a lot of detail.

I know one guy who spent some time with Perce in the early 70's.

Eccentric would be the word.

I asked about the Hall circuit and it like similar running courses around the World is just that. Another good running course.

Just as Arthur had the "Waiatarua" as his most famous course. Percy had the "Hall circuit".

I wonder if now the Hall Circuit is like Waiatarua and been encraoched on by suburbia?.

Both Cerutty and Lydiard were primarily operating in an era before much science was available in the field of exercise physiology. Lydiard learned by trial and error and experimenting on himself to develop his "green thumb". Much of his methodology was subsequently confirmed by science.

The real question is: if both men were alive today, which one would you choose? My vote is for Lydiard on the assumption that he would look for the science to confirm his theories more so than Cerutty.

I think you are wrong in saying Cerutty wouldn't look for the science. He studied animals for years to develop proper running form in humans. He was an avid reader and quotes some off the wall sources in his books. If it was proven he would believe it, he was in to "facts and facts alone." - that is a Cerutty quote.

Les Perry just died a few months ago. I'm fairly sure Albie Thomas is still around.

Again, from interviews I've read with elliott, Cerutty did study science to some degree. I think you'd call it sort of "layman's scisence." He looked into diet quite a bit and as you mention, he studied the way horses ran and tried to apply that to humans. I think a reasonable question to ask about that is whether that sort of thing is good science or pseudo-science. After all, humans and horses have quite a few differences and I'm not sure how good an idea it is to try to get a person to run like a horse. I am fairly sure that doing it the other way around wouldn't work too well.

I more or less considered Cerutty and Lydiard on the same plain until I read Why Die? I then realized that Cerrutty certainly wasn't good enough to be mentioned in the same sentence with Lydiard.

He always had to be the center of attention. If one of his athletes grabbed the spotlight then he'd do something crazy to get it back on him.

I don't think he was that good of a coach but was a great motivator. Of course this is a part of coaching so there is balance between the physical and mental of which he was very heavy on the mental aspect.

His biggest contribution, IMHO, was making Australia more fitness conscious, which was a very good thing.

He totally disregared the altitude factor and castigated Ron Clarke mercilessly after his 'failure' at the '68 Games.

ahhh, thanks, I didnt know that. I had the wrong impression apparently.