Why isn't Igloi training used more often today?

SlowFatMaster wrote:

Orville, were the longer intervals (880s, 1000s) prescribed by Igloi only for long distance and marathon guys? Or did the middle distance guys in his group do them too? Thanks for your valuable contributions to this thread and others.

I do not know but very probably. We were all caught up in our own workouts. I do think that the milers and below were on the track and running much faster than I was. It got to the point where there were days when I was the last guy there. There was also a time when Igloi went on strike and another time when there were about 6 or so ? guys working out. When I got there the Tokyo Olympics had just finished. Jim Grelle, Ron Larrieu Merle Magee, Joe Douglas and Norm Higgins were still there.

Igloi training is ugloi.

Athletics Illustrated wrote:

Whoever wrote in this thread that "at the peak of Lydiard in the 60's...." -- his method is still used today (roughly to exactly) by most of the very best athletes, so I don't think you can say it peaked and went down in usage - if anything Lydiard is used as much today as any time.

Lydiard's method is absolutely not used by the very best athletes today, with the exception of the Japanese. Top athletes today practice non-linear periodization.

Haven't read all the comments, but we started incorporating Igloi workouts my junior year in high school and it made all the difference. It was incredibly boring, but it worked. A typical workout was

100m run-50m walk-200 run-50m walk-300m run-50m walk-400m run continuously for up to 105 min on the track. We thought my coach was crazy but we ended up winning state that fall. It allows you to do a distance run at a faster pace and helps those with fast and slow twitch muscles.

I think the answer why Igloi training isn't used more often is that it never proved to be more effective than Lydiard training.

I would believe if it had then it would still be implemented. It worked but 2-3 hour track sessions with walk breaks?

Brent Pismo wrote:

I think the answer why Igloi training isn't used more often is that it never proved to be more effective than Lydiard training.

I would believe if it had then it would still be implemented. It worked but 2-3 hour track sessions with walk breaks?

Igloi never wrote books about his method, nor did tours to promote it.

Bob Schul and Lydiard met in Tokyo and discussed Schul's training.

Schul said he aimed for three hours a day and usually ran at least two.

Lydiard responded, how did you like doing our training.

tooting my own horn wrote:

Bob Schul and Lydiard met in Tokyo and discussed Schul's training.

Schul said he aimed for three hours a day and usually ran at least two.

Lydiard responded, how did you like doing our training.

This makes Lydiard sound like a crossfitter.

Igloi moved to the US after the Revolution and Roszavolgyi went back to Hungary and apparently trained himself.

He then won a bronze in Rome in a time faster than the WR he ran five years previously under the tutelage of Igloi.

Make of that what you will.

How can you fit a treadmill in an igloi? You can barely fit an Eskimo family.

HRE wrote:

Pity it didn't work or anything.

I see the irony, but you are going by a wrong direction of argumentation, the one you can´t defend with facts.

Lydiard training did fail in many occasions and Lydiard runners were defeat in many occasions by others training methods that seems to be superior.

To what concerns success and failure, reach the target goals and performance maximize, all related to the runner talent/ability, those that train according Lydiard, got no more or no less success, that the anyone other method. Olympic winners, world records, performance improve ? We got thousand of real examples of winners at every level of performance you might consider that reach the same or better than Lydiard with a absolute different method than the Lydiard one.

I don´t want to be exhaustive. No need. But just one example. When Lorraine Moller she did 33th in the Seul Olympic marathon don´t you realize that the other 32 that finished in front of her were best coached by different methods that did work best that her own method that day ? When in the next Olympics she finished 3rd, don´t you realize that the other 2 did fast than her because their training method were best that the Lorraine Lydiard one ?

Or do you think that Lydiard did work best on every

occasion ?

António Cabral wrote:

I see the irony, but you are going by a wrong direction of argumentation, the one you can´t defend with facts.

But just one example. When Lorraine Moller she did 33th in the Seul Olympic marathon don´t you realize that the other 32 that finished in front of her were best coached by different methods ....

When in the next Olympics she finished 3rd ...

First you say that HRE cannot demonstrate with facts that Lydiard training is particularly effective. Then you use Lorraine Moller, who used Lydiard-based training and improved from 33rd in the 1988 Seoul Olympics marathon to 3rd in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics marathon (at the age of 39), as a case study of the non-effectiveness of Lydiard training.

You could have hardly picked a worse example to justify your opinion that Lydiard had a poor training methodology.

running historian wrote:

António Cabral wrote:

I see the irony, but you are going by a wrong direction of argumentation, the one you can´t defend with facts.

But just one example. When Lorraine Moller she did 33th in the Seul Olympic marathon don´t you realize that the other 32 that finished in front of her were best coached by different methods ....

When in the next Olympics she finished 3rd ...

First you say that HRE cannot demonstrate with facts that Lydiard training is particularly effective. Then you use Lorraine Moller, who used Lydiard-based training and improved from 33rd in the 1988 Seoul Olympics marathon to 3rd in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics marathon (at the age of 39), as a case study of the non-effectiveness of Lydiard training.

You could have hardly picked a worse example to justify your opinion that Lydiard had a poor training methodology.

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Yes. And let's keep the thread about Igloi. Orville's comments are simply the best! Thank you Orville!

There is no way to say that Lorraine finished behind two or thirty two athletes because they trained better than she did or that she finished ahead of dozens of others because they didn't train as well and you know that. Training is only one part of the equation. No matter much "better" than you I trained I was not going to beat you in a race. You simply were better than me.

If you want to play the "So and so finished behind Such and Such therefore So and So didn't train as well as Such and Such did" game you descend into a murky and bottomless pit. Did Ryun train better than Keino did? In 1966 and 67 he owned Keino but couldn't beat him in 1968. What about Keino and Clarke who took turns beating the other?

Damn. Will this raving mad Portuguese ruin yet another fine thread with his Lydiard hatred?

Orville Atkins wrote:

In the 1960s I never paid the attention to times that runners today do. I ran races to win or place as high as possible which didn't always get runners their best times. You didn't need the talent that is needed today. We were all amateurs and racing was a hobby. I did train the interval way in Canada and we were good at pace judgement but I still ran with the leaders for 10 miles the first time I raced the Boston Marathon.

Training the interval way with a group and racing were all great fun!

There were no liquids, splits, medals for just finishing or t-shirts. Runners worked hard for their trophies and medals. Women were not allowed.

The new era does not seem to be as much fun for the lesser talented runner.

Eh I still enjoy competing and I'm less talented. Run to try and win not receive a finisher medal.

You make it sound like no women allowed was good though. You guys missed on some fine looking butts. Just saying.

Thanks for this. A lot of people get obsessed with training techniques and seem to think they're the only reason why an athlete does well or poorly. That reminds me of something from Nic Bideau that I read a few years back when Mottram was at the height of his powers. Bideau said that he thought the training he gave his athletes was his LEAST important contribution to their success.

If we look for "facts" to demonstrate the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of a training approach we can almost always find boatloads of them to support either side Any coach with a sufficiently large number of athletes will have "failures" and "successes" and you may not even be able to get agreement as to which is which as Lorraine's situation demonstrates. I'd argue that even her 33rd placing at an Olympics was a success because she was fast enough to make an Olympic team but Antonio seems to think that even her 3rd place was a failure.

In reality, we could only know whether an athlete's training was "best" for them by knowing what sort of performances they'd have had on some other method and there is no way to do that.

Orville,

I always appreciate your posts and first hand insight.

If Moller's published training from '92 is any indication I see virtually no real "Lydiard" in it.