Is Lydiard's base training phase still the best way to go?

wellnow wrote:

Lactate is fuel for aerobic respiration, that is pretty much accepted by leading physiologists. Just because you wish to deny this, is not really my problem.

What kind of response with this? Did you not read what I said? Clearly not.

Voice of Ray-san wrote:

I know you can't but I stand by my analogy. The physiology is of secondary importance. Newton's laws are also bad-science, but Newton's world is so much easier to grasp, and it's close enough for most purposes at hand.

wellnow wrote:

Sorry Ray-san, I can't agree with you that Lydiard's fizzyology was just the paint. He talked so much bad science that it detracted so much from what he was actually trying to say.

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In my running club, we don't talk fizzyology or physiology, we produce CHAMPIONS.

As opposed to what Lydiard produced?

And what exactly are the champion of, you retarded blowhard?

Why confuse the kids with bad science? Can we have Lydiardism without the bad science please?

That's what we need whether you like it or not.

So you are still saying that it's conjecture that Lactate must be produced to allow NAD+ to be produced thereby continuing glycogenolysis and glycolysis?

I think that's pretty well proven. But you can keep your head in the sand, very few people will notice.

wellnow wrote:

The Rabble Rouser wrote:

Wait so I can efficiently use lactate as fuel? THAT IS GREAT NEWS!! So the more lactate I generate, the more fuel my muscles will have to run with! For my next marathon, I'll simply set off at 4:20 pace for the first 1.5 miles, thus building up a large amount of lactate to use as fuel! No hitting the wall for me! Thank you Wellnow, you have revolutionized distance training!

Actually, you DO produce more lactate at the beginning of the Marathon, than at the end. Lactate is a product of carbohydrate metabolism, and you gonna do a lotta that if you race 26.2

When you do sarcasm, you gotta do it well.

What sarcasm? Since you have proven to me that lactate is not in fact a bad thing, but a fuel for my muscles to use, I am trying to incorporate your knowledge into my training. Therefore during my next marathon, I will run a series of all out sprints at various points in the race to build up my lactate levels, providing myself with more fuel. Unless you were simply being annoying, and lactate buildup really is related in some way to an increase in fatigue?

I agree with wellnow!

Some people just dont want to learn anything! They are so damn affraid that their good old version of "wrong and right" will come crashing down as soon as they actually open up their minds just a little...

I strongly believe in Lydiards system too and I can assure everyone that my belief in his "traditional" build up phase hasn't been any smaller even though I have opened up my own mind and read stuff like "Lore of Running" by Timothy Noakes and other up to date things. I try to learn all the time!

Please try to realise that wellnow not uses his physiology-knowledge to tell all of you people that Lydiard was dead wrong in all aspects! He just tries to make you understand that Lydiard among all the good stuff also said something utterly wrong and that he shouldn't have used physiology as an argument for his system. It works anyway!

The reason why I am such a strong believer in his system (especially the build up phase where I think that you can reach a very high mileage in very small time as long you run slowly in the beginning) is of course that I have improved a lot since I started very long fast runs and my mileage increased to about 160 km per week or more. It's very tough to run 30 km pretty fast one day and then 20 km even faster the day after that and so on... A lot of people did that in Denmark in the 70's and 80's when the danes rocked but now too many pity themselves even though they barely reach 50 km per week. The real work has to be done on the roads and in the nature - not on the track and in the gym (at least for most people).

In this discussion we probably all agree that the term "less is more" is bullshit. Wellnow doesn't order everyone to do a very little amount of mileage and just do weight training and hard intervals (because he calls them aerobic)! He only hates when people talk about something that they don't know and writes the words anaerobic treshold and lactic acid. Lactate is not presented in the acidic form of lactic acid - rather as sodium lactate. And the term anaerobic treshold just doesnøt make sense!

And sorry about my bad english

it is ok:) what's your surname?

I am glad if my compatriots are returning to Lydiard-style

training. The training advocated by Mr. Larsen has been a disaster.

Morten,

wellnow is bogged down by science. He seems incapable of meaningful exchanges, he seems more caught up in his own fizzyology knowledge.

Science is good to know for scientists and hobbyiest, but if someone isn't excited about it, then having enough to understand the basics is fine.

It's the application of what works that is more important.

And the art of coaching is more powerful than either.

Science sometimes is like religion, in religion, if you don't have the information you fill in the holes with 'faith'....

In science when there are holes, you fill them in with assumptions or statements like, "it is likely that..."

Tomorrow there will be a new discovery to shake our current knowledge of physilology, there always is.

The Kenyans, running barefoot in the dirt or the Mexican tribe who run as part of their culture and religion...(that tribe I forget the name of, who live in mountains) do not know a lick of science and could care less.

Go ahead and test lab rats and come up with your assumptions, meanwhile the rest of us can go about watching and helping humans progress.

Every human is an experiment of one, so your defined laws should have malleable parameters, not absolutes.

And NO you do not have to drag me into the next century and under my own free will, I will choose not to go. Meanwhile I can continue to admire the work of the greatest running coach in history - a man with bad science, Arthur Lydiard.

wellnow wrote:

So you are still saying that it's conjecture that Lactate must be produced to allow NAD+ to be produced thereby continuing glycogenolysis and glycolysis?

I think that's pretty well proven. But you can keep your head in the sand, very few people will notice.

Strike two. You still clearly didn't read what I wrote.

One more and you're out.

wellnow,

you are being extremely annoying. Not because your great wisdom has shaken me from my blissful ignorance and forced me to confront any of the foundations of what I think, but because you don't ADD anything to any discussion.

Yes, I'm aware that exercise gets more aerobic with duration. Yes, I'm aware that an all-out mile race starts out anaerobic and gets more aerobic as it goes on. I ask you this: SO WHAT?!

If Lydiard's training WORKS (which, when implemented properly, usually does and is well-documented as a highly effective method of preparing for racing) then WHY it works does not in any way invalidate it!

If I go up to HRE and go "Hey, HRE, recently, I ran like 900 miles over a period of 10 weeks, and instead of doing hard intervals three times a week, I did a bunch of comfortably fast running for like 90minutes at a time for a lot of my runs. I entered a half-marathon for fun and crushed my PR! Why do you think that works?" and HRE says "Oh, well, running that much mileage makes your blood more brave, so it carries more oxygen because it isn't afraid to drop it anymore" does that invalidate the training I did?

Sure, correct the idea that you don't "go anaerobic" when you get tired. Fine- a lot of people don't get that. But you don't have to act like a jerk or ruin discussions. Lydiard's training, for whatever reason, WORKS- and so it is valid to discuss. By sneering as Lydiard's reasoning as "psuedo-science" you are being pretty disingenuous, since we today have the advantage of modern science that Lydiard didn't. Is what Niels Bohr did "psuedo-science" because his model of the atom was proven not entirely correct? Is every pioneer in any field who was less than perfect ignored and shamed?

Lydiard, a milkman with no college education, developed a training method that worked and still works. When people set out to explain WHY, the leading scientists of the day said "Hey Lydiard, we figured out why- here's why" Lydiard included the science in his lectures to help give his ideas credibility to a curious audience. So, ok, that science is outdated. Well, Lydiard, unfortunately, is dead. He cannot write an article that says "ok, sorry guys- the "why" of my ideas need to be tweaked, but the ideas themselves are still totally valid." Stop going back and looking what he wrote years ago and scoffing. Do you go back and read Newton's works and jeer him for the causality rule his Law of Motion states? Because if I'm remembering correctly, advances in science has shown that some things aren't rooted in cause/effect relationships.

Furthermore, isn't your insistence on neuromuscular efficiency dogma in and of itself? What studies do you have to prove that neuromuscular efficiency is the quality we are striving to improve? And, if running 15 miles as opposed to 10 is the correct way to improve performance, how much does it really matter if the added 5 miles increases aerobic capacity or neuromuscular efficiency? If you're doing the 15 miles, it doesn't matter if you know the latest in scientific research; it matters that you're doing the 15 miles and reaping the benefits.

I have a suggestion: stop sneering at a dead man who wasn't a scientist. If he were alive, I'm sure he'd welcome your correction of the science in his work because it could help him spread his ideas more clearly and effectively. But he can't listen to you, because he is dead. And since your corrections don't refute WHAT he did, they really matter very little in the larger issue at hand.

When the East Germans learned what Lydiard was doing they were very interested and invited him for a visit. As I recall he did some lecturing and had discussions with some of their physiologists. Some of them explained the physiological reasons why his training worked to him. I think that encouraged him to discuss his training from a physiological perspective. If he had the physiology wrong a lot of the blame for that goes to the physiologists of the time.

But like you, I don't get why it matters whether his physiological explanations matter at all as long as the training works. And given that physiologists from decades ago understood what he did one way and now we're told that understanding was inaccurate I don't know that in another few years we won't be reading that his explanations were right after all.

Back to the point...

Lydiard has been quoted, or as written, about many things and much of the time they contradict each other.

I think his 9-15 month ascent was for pure beginners. I distinctly remember his conditioning phase for experienced runners including a two week cycle. Week 1 included short sprints and short time trials. Week 2 was the aerobic phase with the 1/2, 1/4 and 3/4 effort days.

Check here, the "actual schedule":

http://www.fitnesssports.com/lyd_clinic_guide/Arthur%20Lydiard.pdf

Again, it's one of those things with Lydiard. His books are horribly written and contradict each other at times. I think if you looked at his athlete's actually training I very well doubt they did nothing but jog along for 9-15 months.

Also, keep in mind that Lydiard prepped his athletes for a single summer racing season not the 3 headed monster we have today. In that context I could very well see someone do his initial conditioning phase (the week1/week2 example) for 6 months before getting into hill work, etc.

Alan

I think the most valid critique of Lydiard's work is that it was designed to have an athlete ready to go for about 4-8 weeks out of the year- but in today's world, an athlete has to be ready to race nearly year-round.

I always liked his race week/non-race week schedule, or the stuff Rodgers' coach used to have his athletes ready to go without sacrificing development.

His guys aimed for two peaks a year. They wanted to be in form for summer in both hemispheres.

Not to gang up on wellnow, but I gotta say truer words have never been spoken, he deserved that.

My surname is Jespersen. The current level in Denmark is terribly low but after all it's getting better at the moment. Only very few are doing big mileage. Our best 1500m / mile runner is also our 10k champion due to his great endurance from weeks up to 200 km. He is coached by Niels Kim Hjorth who has run 3.36,01 who didn't run any faster than 52s for the 400m! He is not super talented but are working very hard. A lot of our best 800m runners are barely running any continous things except warm ups. They are only good because of their natural speed.

I have realised that im not that talented but 1.57 on the 800m is pretty good with only 55s on the 400m! Right now I try out the longer distances and of course it's difficult to race well and train hard at the same time. That's one of the biggest problems here in Denmark - people are not patient enough. They want to see results in only a few weeks time. But that's probably a problem all over the world. We are of course also damn lazy and a nice little workout in the gym feels much butter that running 30 km in the forrest in the winter for most people.

I only speak for my self but I went from about 80 km pr week to 150 in just four weeks even though I ran fast almost all the time. So my contribution in this discussion will be saying that it's just a question about running slowly enough in the beginning! I remember myself being able to do long runs with our now 10k champion. In october he was running over 4 min per km on his 30 km runs but only a few months later he averaged 3.45 min pr km!

So just bump up the mileage very fast at a slow pace and then the right speed will come automatically very fast!

Thanks Morten.