Japanese Marathon Training Methods

If 20-year-old runs better than 40-year-old on the corporate team, they'll have no hesitation taking the youngster. They don't necessarily praise a 40-year-old 2:15 marathon runner; it is "who's a good runner in the OPEN race, not a master's race." In that respect, it is pretty cut-throat over there. At their (team's) prime when they had 5 sub-2:10 guys, Asahi-Kasei, where Soh brothers run for, had a policy that, if you reach 30 years of age, you need to automatically leave the team (because lots of young aspiring runners were coming in). I can recall only 1 who proved them wrong by running well after he left the team when he turned 30. Takeshi Soh actually ran really well even when he turned 40 (as an assistant coach for the team) and ran this one marathon and actually beat all the youngsters (I think he ran 2:14) but he was more disgusted with his coaching and his runners' performances than happy with his own performance.

Again, as they get old(er), some of them change the training pattern. Seko did say something about he used to have 3 days in a row of hard training and toward the end of his career, two in a row; plus longer recovery days. That's a natural progression and, once again, they try to do what works, not some set-formula (I should use a word "they" because I'm sure a decent sensible runners/coaches around the world would do the same). I don't think Takaoka is quite approaching 40 yet (maybe 34???) but I think he's struggling with some nagging aches and pains. That eventually let him to forgo Osaka World Champs--the shortest way to get to Beijin.

I think the biggest problem with Japanese corporate team program is female runners retiring waaaay too early. There are probably only handful of women who's running beyond 30 (Obata who finished 2nd to Ndereba at last year's Osaka is one). As you probably konw, some even retire at the age of 23 or 24. Pity...

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I mostly run on that short loop in the Tsunogoro/Hachiman area by the Hirose river. It's too short and pretty boring but thats pretty much the usual thing here...where exactly were those trails you mentioned?

If you follow the bike path along the Hirose river up stream near the Hachiman area. You will be on the right side of the river. When you get to the bridge you cross to the other side of the river go along the river past the bus parking area to where it looks like it dead ends. There is a nursing home like building ...go up the hill past that and you should see a trail head that starts with some stairs. Climb up the stairs thru the woods and there are quite a few trails in that area. Tell me if you don't understand my directions.

Hello Nobby

Do you have any information on how the fast Chinese trained under Ma Junren. Like Junxia and Yunxia?

Hoarse:

Hey! I’m Japanese!! Why do you think I know anything about Chinese training? Sure, you think we all look alike! No delivery for you! Just kidding…

Coach Yasunori Hamada, who was a very good 10k and marathon runner himself in the 70s (incidentally the only Japanese who stuck with a group of foreign runners including Shorter, Clayton, Farrington, etc., in the 1972 Fukuoka marathon won eventually by Shorter in 2:10:30), now coaches a handful of talented female runners. Ichikawa, who ran, I believe, 5000m at Atlanta Olympics and moved up to the marathon, won the Asian Games half marathon last year, is one. Another one is Ichihashi who finished second at Sville World Champs marathon and 10th (?) at Sydney Olympic marathon. He took both of them to visit coach Ma for a period of 1 month in 1993 (3 years before Wang won gold medals at Atlanta (am I right?) and kept a detailed record of what they were doing. I have a book written by Ma, Hamada, and one other guy who knew coach Ma personally. In it, the detailed record of a month worth of training was revealed. Unfortunately, it was between 12/22 through 1/23, when the weather was like that of Minnesota (;o)) and their training is “marathon conditioning”; nothing for preparation for actual racing season; which is a pity. But still, it reveals basic principles of Ma’s Army’s training.

Their basic winter training is to run 20km in the morning, 20km in the afternoon. Sometimes less but sometimes more. Most of them are run between 5-minutes/km to 4-minutes/km pace but sometimes it will be increased to 3:30/km (basic “build-up” which Japanese use a lot). Most of the runs are done on the road (they get up at 4:30 and start running at 5:00…in the heart of winter in China! I know exactly how THAT feels!) but sometimes they run on indoor track—around 10 miles around 200m track! The pace would start out at 10:00~10:30 per 10 laps (2000m) and get it down to sub-8 minutes for 2000m (again, build-up).

Here’s some sample training days:

AM: 30km in 2:05

PM: 21km build-up indoor (5:05/km --> 3:50/km)

AM: 22km in 1:30

PM: 18km build-up indoor (5:20/km --> 4:00/km)

AM: 19km (80 minutes)

PM: Rest

AM: 21km (88 minutes)

PM: 20km slow jog

AM: 22km in 1:41

PM: blizzard and road too icy to run—no run

AM: 21km build-up indoor (4:30/km --> 4:00/km)

PM: 21km build-up indoor (4:30/km --> 4:00/km)

AM: 21km build-up indoor (4:30/km --> 4:00/km)

PM: 20km easy jog

Total: 256km (160 miles)/week

Also interestingly, this is the same schedule for anyone from 1500m up to marathon. This is not the place to debate whether they were on to some performance enhancing substances or not; but one thing is clear—THEY RAN A LOT. We (Lydiard Foundation) weren’t too happy about Arthur going around telling people that he influenced Chinese. I guess there was some connection but it’s hard to say that Ma or anybody else studied and did “Lydiard method.” However, it is quite clear, whether they actually followed the Lydiard program or not, during the conditioning period, they simply ran a lot at pleasant effort (except for running at 5AM in the Chinese winter!). 20km in AM and 20km in PM sounds very similar to what Henry Rono was doing at WSU at his prime, going up and down the Snake River valley. It’s easy to call Chinese and Japanese “Lydiard junkie” but that won’t get anybody up close to where they are/were. You can cry it’s because of EPO or doped-up turtle blood or whatever, but that alone is not going to make you able to run 29-minutes 10000m (for woman). You have to have certain base line and they seem to have acquired that from RUNNIG A LOT.

Hello Nobby.

I know you from a different forum were you said you were going back to Japan and by a book about MA`s army. I know you are not Chinese. I also know that China and Japan are not good friends becuase of their history. So I am sorry if I offend you.

For me this was extrordinary information. I have looked for the specific of the Junren training group becuase of their extrordinary result.

Most extrodinary is that the same runner can run inside the old worldrecords for all distances from 1500-10000m. No Male has ever done that expect Paavo Nurmi 80 years ago but JUnxia ran faster than Nurmi.

I agree this is not the place for discussing drugs it has already been done.

But I wonder do you know the traditional Chinese medicine which Ma Junren himself used on the runners?.

When you run 250k a week I know diet is important for the restutition, what did they eat and do to cope with the stress?.

I once read about their 40k run were Junxia did the last 10k in 33min. And I also heard Ma adapted his metodes so that the not so strong runners did less then the well trained. But they were allways progressing to longer.

Did you know Junxia only trained two years before she ran world records. She was talented. On the Iaaf homepage ther is an interwiwew with Ma were he revalvs a little of his princippels

Another thing I see about the eastern training is that you are wery conserned about dicipline and mental strength. Some sorces say Ma beat and threatned his runners to preform harder.

I have heard that a book `Inside Stories of Ma's Army' by writer Zhao Yu gives details about the program. Do you know this book?

I would also like to please ask you to post the rest of the information you have on the group??????

Thank you very much for the revalations.

bjoblak@stud.hisf.no

Nobby,

I apologize for breaking up the subject of this thread, but if I can ask a favor of you to weigh in on the training for 10/11 year old thread and Lydiard's take on training for kids I would appreciate it. I know you will be better able to shed light on what Lydiard's teachings were on that subject better than me.

Ah, now I remember you! And by the way, I did put "Just kidding" so NO I was not offended at all; I took it my opportunity to joke around ;o)

The book I have is called (in Japanese title) "The Path to the Multiple World Records" and is written by 3 people; Ma himself, Hamada and I believe the promounciation being "Tei"??? His first name consists of a letter for "leaning" and "govern(?)". I don't know if this book was first written and published in Chinese and then translated in Japanese or the other way around (particularly with the presence of coach Hamada).

In a way, I personally think that the stories of coach Ma abusing the athletes are actually over-rated. Not that I approve it, but depending on the individual, sometimes some form of "discipline" may or may not involve. There have been some case of American coaches who use verbal abuse. There certainly have been some stories of Japanese coaches as well! In general, Western society uses "praise" a lot more than Eastern society, at least Japanese society. My wife, who's an American, thinks that Japanese are very mean to each other. Again, there are some "praising" type of Japanese coaches (Koide comes to mind) and there are some "mean" Western coaches as well.

I like this book a lot especially it contains chapters written by the third party; Hamada. Like I said, he visited the group for a month and he wrote his observation. If it's written solely by Ma, there might have been some sort of "exaggeration" but 1/3 of the book is through the eyes of the third party. In it, Hamada seems to repeatedly mention how "happy" girls seem. He says the that laugh a lot, act like a family and help each other. Of coach Ma, he says that he (Ma) is very tough on athletes but also tough on himself. He has a sense of humor and very kind as well. Very tough indeed but, he says, sometimes he provides a short-cut for runners who are not as strong. He also observes that these girls "don't live in fear." Well, I think that's heck of a lot better than some US corporate culture! We also all heard that how much tougher these girls lives could have been if they are a runner. It's a matter of choice. People with soft background may think it's a mental and physical abuse to train 40km a day but, for some, it could actually be a way out (from tougher environment).

In terms of diet, Hamada observes that they "eat a lot". Lots of eggs (5 or 6 each for breakfast); lots of milk. The rest is basically same sort of balanced food; different typs of meat, vegetables... He says that they stir fry or deep fry most of them. They take lots of carbohydrates as well as oily (greasy?) stuff. He observes that they seem to take in plenty of carbs and oil-soluable vitamins and minerals but questions vitamin B group. Now, Hamada visited Ma's house once and was offered a "special drink" with dark warm liquid with some sort of dark stick in it. He thought, "I'll ask him what is it later..." Well, he never had a chance so couldn't figure out what it was. He says that they had lots of Korean carrots and suspects that they supplement other vitamins from these "special" diet things. There has been a talk about turtle soup and and dog stew but Hamada says he never saw them. Says they had snake soup, not at the training camp or Ma's house but at a restaurant near-by. He says he couldn't eat it but Ichikawa and Ichihashi ate it fine and said it was tasty. Hamada says Ma's philosophy is to "eat a lot and run a lot."

I believe Ma has commercialized some of his "special" drinks in China. I don't know what they are but I guess they do have some sort of special "drinks". Coach Koide told me that he observed Ma and his runners (Wang?) at Stuttgart WC and they would go run around for 30 to 40 minutes and come back and take some drink; then go out some more, come back and take more drink. He didn't know what it was but he said they were drinking it quite frequenty. I guess if it was some sort of illegal substance, unless it was the masking substance, that close to the championship where there would be a drug test, it would have shown.

Again, it's not my place to "suspect" and nobody knows enough to say yay or nay. Suspicious? Sure. But so are A LOT of other athletes and performaces. People say nobody has come close to breaking 30-minutes for women's 10k (except for Paula) in years. Well, I have the same feeling toward most of men's distance world records. When Dick Quax ran his WR of 13:12, he ran 13:14 or 15 shortly before the Montreal followed closely by Hildenbrand. In other words, there were quite a few performances and other runners within 5 or 10 seconds of the WR. When's the last time we heard 12:30 or 26:30? Right before BALCO incidence, I thought it was very interesting that none of the top competitions had men's 100m winner under 10 seconds. C'mon...! It's easy for us to say that they were all drugged. But the fact remains that they really ran a lot and they were highly disciplined. If we get a group of young runners who wouldn't question every other day, "Why do we have to run 12 miles for our long run?", or question too much about LT this and threshold that, and simply train them very hard for 2 or 3 years, you may get some results too.

I meant to say, "...how much these girls' lives could have been if they were NOT a runner."

Nobby wrote:

Their basic winter training is to run 20km in the morning, 20km in the afternoon. Sometimes less but sometimes more. Most of them are run between 5-minutes/km to 4-minutes/km pace but sometimes it will be increased to 3:30/km (basic “build-up” which Japanese use a lot). Most of the runs are done on the road (they get up at 4:30 and start running at 5:00…in the heart of winter in China! I know exactly how THAT feels!) but sometimes they run on indoor track—around 10 miles around 200m track! The pace would start out at 10:00~10:30 per 10 laps (2000m) and get it down to sub-8 minutes for 2000m (again, build-up).

Also interestingly, this is the same schedule for anyone from 1500m up to marathon.

Nobby

What the Chinese they do is what Jack Daniels says “some coaches practice the coach theory that is “the eggs against the wall” and hope that one don´t break”

Excerpt from Principles of Training

In McMillan's site - Jack Daniels – the art and science of running.

That's a good one! I like that. However, Ma actually had a lot of eggs that didn't break. And in fact that's actually the method when I think of many of American high school and college coaches.

One of the things I wondered about when Ma's runners were at their height was whether there were significant differences in their mental approaches from that of western runners. Specifically, if these women were, as we sort of thought, from out in the Chinese boonies, they may not have known much about what was going on in the larger world of athletics.

One of the things we don't talk about much because it isn't quantifiable is the effect of expectations upon performance. When we begin to learn about the sport we learn what its records are and those records define for us what the limits are. Those limits become self reinforcing. For example, there were certainly runners before Bannister who would have had similar physiques and there were some who were as well trained, if not better trained. But the four minute barrier was indeed a barrier and limited the performances of such athletes. Once it was gone, milers sort of poured through it.

So you might thoeorize that in the mainstream athletic world, a talented woman will learn what the records are as she matures and at her peak she may, if she's been successful enough, begin to think that she may be able to approach those performances or even surpass them by a bit. But the idea of going, say, more than a minute faster than the existing WR seems impossible so it actually becomes impossible.

Ma's women may not have been limited by a pre-existing knowledge of or appreciation for existing world records and may not have been limited by them, though that's just speculation and may be a load of crap. But I think it's worth considering.

The other thing worth noting is that there has been much said and written about women's inability to tolerate the sorts of really heavy training loads that men can. "Women's" training schedules often follow the same principles as men's scedhules but with reduced volumes in deference to their smaller muscle mass. But these women were training as much or more than the best men in the world were. It shouldn't necessarily be a complete surprise when their racing performances were as far beyond other women's as their training loads were.

As to the drug question, the more "alien" you are the more likely you are to be accused of using illegal substances by those who find you alien. That doesn't mean you aren't using them. Nor does it mean you are. The problem with those allegations is that they become the only thing that people pay attention to, so other aspects of training and racing are overlooked.

Lydiard always went back to what Holmar said of training young athletes: "If you can get a boy (or a girl) in his teens and encourage him to train and not race until he is matured, then you have laid the foundations of an Olympic champion." I like what Arthur said: "Let them play at and with athletics." At the age of 10 or 11, it should be a play. It must be fun. I didn't even like him (Arthur) publishing a schedule for young kids (he just wanted to show a guide line); there shouldn't be a schedule for young kids. But the principles should be understood. Lots of easy running; little bit of short sharp work...

I would take kids out on woods or golf course to do unstructured fartlek (fartlek should not be structured but some people do make it too rigid). Let them walk if they want to, spring up the hills, run fast down the hills, do some tags on flats... Have them do lots of other activities like soccer, basketball, skateboard, tennis, etc. I believe in keeping kids active; but I don't necessarily believe in giving kids structured training schedule.

Arthur had his girls at high school level do plenty of 90 minutes, up to 2-hour, runs. He's had some younger kids around 14 or 15 run a long run but at the age of 10 or 11, I'm sure he would have been more cautious--more so for the sake of mental aspect than physical. Let them have fun with running; don't push or force them. I've done some kids program myself and I always try to make it fun; but also have been amazed that there are some kids who just love to run! And if so, they should be givn the opportunity to run a lot. As long as it comes from kids, give them some basic safety tips and off they go. They know when to slow down or stop heck a lot better than adults.

Brendan Reilly is an agent for Japanese runners in Boulder. His Web page is www.boulderwave.com and he would know a lot about this sort of thing. Caveat: He despises this message board though.

Nobby wrote:

However, Ma actually had a lot of eggs that didn't break.

Nooby

Yes he did. For a large universe of recruitment that´s ¼ or 1/5 of the world population Ma he wasn’t able to present entire eggs if not for a short period of time. But that´s true one or another egg like Wang Junxia it didn’t break. But she was a smashed egg after 2-3 seasons. With 26 years old she was a shadow of the good runner she was been and did give up as one more Ma Juren broken egg. Inevitable.

Hello again Yellow man joking

My favorite funny Japanese man is "Cato" in the Pink Panter films. He is a funny man.

Enough about Jokes

About the Ma Junren group:

When you write "balanced food" I guess you mean white rice?. In Chinese medicin eggs are considered Yin, while in Japanese thinking (Macrobiotic)it is considered Yang.

I would love if you can write more specics on their meals and diet???????????

I am not looking for magic formulas but their pattern of eating in detail. Not the turtlesblood or cordycpes fungus.

Was there any information about sleep or dayly routines

Also is it possible for you to write the other parts of the training you have from 12/22 through 1/23 ?????????

If it is possible I would become an extremly happy person.........

And Yes I am very obsessive about the Chinese.

I thank you a lot.

Do you know any persons to contact to find more information?

Just now I write an Email to the the Mexican coach were the former assistant coaches of Ma JUnren now works. If he can give more information I will post it. But he told me it would be difficult becuase of language bariier.

Also If you want articles about Norwegian runners: Ingrid Kristiansen, Grete Waitz, Vebjørn Rodahl, Khalid Skah (lived in Norway), Marius Bakken just ask

I don't want to make a big interruption to this thread. I would like any information you could provide on Ingrid and/or Grete's training though.

Hoarse wrote:

Also If you want articles about Norwegian runners: Ingrid Kristiansen, Grete Waitz, Vebjørn Rodahl, Khalid Skah (lived in Norway), Marius Bakken just ask

Ditto. Would love to see some articles on Ingrid and Grete's training...