Did the Beijing WC prove that Arthur Lydiard method is outdated?

already fast wrote:

because aerobic power brought him to the same point in the race

Snell was an 800 runner, where you don't start on aerobic power and then switch to anaerobic. You start entirely anaerobically, hit top speed in the first 200m, and then later use aerobic power to try to avoid slowing down.

I'm going to piss a lot of people off right now by once again saying "legal doping." If you have an athlete jog around all the time and rarely run fast, yes, they still might have plenty of speed - as much as there is in the bottle. That may or may not apply to Snell, but you have to take that era's performances and training methods with a grain of salt.

Bad Wigins wrote:

already fast wrote:

because aerobic power brought him to the same point in the race

Snell was an 800 runner, where you don't start on aerobic power and then switch to anaerobic. You start entirely anaerobically, hit top speed in the first 200m, and then later use aerobic power to try to avoid slowing down.

I'm going to piss a lot of people off right now by once again saying "legal doping." If you have an athlete jog around all the time and rarely run fast, yes, they still might have plenty of speed - as much as there is in the bottle. That may or may not apply to Snell, but you have to take that era's performances and training methods with a grain of salt.

Please quote properly.

Another fun fact: Some NZ athletes were not actually born there which should limit a bit of the raving about high numbers of elites from such a small area.

HRE slam-dunked this thread pages ago, when they quite rightly pointed out that it is an aerobic basis and buffer that allows you to access a greater percentage of other energy systems late in a race (like the energy system required to run, say, a 51s 400m at the end of a 1500m).

All I can say to the OP is to ask: "You do realize that the Lydiard principle (and variants...as long as they don't diverge too far from the original template) is now being used by 100 percent of the world's elite endurance athletes, right?"

GlobalView wrote:

HRE slam-dunked this thread pages ago, when they quite rightly pointed out that it is an aerobic basis and buffer that allows you to access a greater percentage of other energy systems late in a race (like the energy system required to run, say, a 51s 400m at the end of a 1500m).

All I can say to the OP is to ask: "You do realize that the Lydiard principle (and variants...as long as they don't diverge too far from the original template) is now being used by 100 percent of the world's elite endurance athletes, right?"

Again...doing interval workouts year-round is DIVERGING VERY FAR from Lydiard's template. He would tell you that you are doing it wrong. Again, it's like me saying that 100% of endurance elites use Igloi training because they all do interval workouts.

GlobalView wrote:

HRE slam-dunked this thread pages ago, when they quite rightly pointed out that it is an aerobic basis and buffer that allows you to access a greater percentage of other energy systems late in a race (like the energy system required to run, say, a 51s 400m at the end of a 1500m).

All I can say to the OP is to ask: "You do realize that the Lydiard principle (and variants...as long as they don't diverge too far from the original template) is now being used by 100 percent of the world's elite endurance athletes, right?"

The Lydiard method has zero guarantee of producing a kick at the finish.

For every outstanding kicker there are dozens of people using it who come up empty in a finish.

Lydiard said strength training was unnecessary and yet Aden's and Salazar's athletes do strength training.

The divergence is actually complete.

(Unlike almost all threads these days, this one actually has the potential to be good. Some names here that don't show up much anymore. Let's keep it going with some added dimensions, instead of just continuing the same back and forth over and over.)

On that note, there's an extremely important point that's been totally missed so far. There's a huge difference between being able to finish fast after a strongly paced race, and being able to finish fast after a pedestrian paced jog-fest.

Those of us who are not in our 20s or 30s, or those who have actually read and studied the history of the sport, know that championship races used to be very different than they are now. You simply can't compare a race in which a serious pace drops runners all along the way leading to a finishing kick between two or three surviving competitors, with today's ridiculous displays of basically jogging for three-fourths or more of the race distance followed by a total sprint for the last 400 to 600 meters.

Of course the best pure sprint speed will win the latter type of race. But that absolutely does not prove that today's jog-and-sprint athletes are better trained and in better shape than athletes who actually raced the race distance.

That of course leads into a discussion of courage and stones, or lack thereof, but that's not the subject of this thread.

And to all the 20-somethings who are about to tell me how stupid I am by just comparing times from vastly different eras, save it or take it somewhere else. You clearly don't understand the point of this discussion. Let alone the history and development of distance running.

From your response, and the posit of the OP, it becomes clear to me that neither of you have even read Lydiard. I can't believe you actually said that "Lydiard said strength training was uncessary..." Even if you had browsed the Table of Contents of a Lydiard training book or guide you would've gleaned that this statement is wildly inaccurate.

Unbelievable.

fadsfasfadsf wrote:

Lydiard's record is pretty pathetic compared to Canova. 6 WRs, 42 medals at the WCS, and 8 Olympic medals. And that's athletes he PERSONALLY COACHED, not just people who were "inspired" by him or "followed his philosophy."

Considering there were no world championships back then, there are way more medals to be had today. 8 Olympic medals is more or less the same than Lydiard's athletes is it not?

already fast wrote:

Please quote properly.

Another fun fact: Some NZ athletes were not actually born there which should limit a bit of the raving about high numbers of elites from such a small area.

Which ones?

divergent evolution wrote:

Lydiard said strength training was unnecessary

Thank you for outing yourself as an idiot so we can ignore your future posts.

bump

Quickness and leg speed is worthless if you don't have the stamina and aerobic strength to access it when you're tired.

GlobalView wrote:

From your response, and the posit of the OP, it becomes clear to me that neither of you have even read Lydiard. I can't believe you actually said that "Lydiard said strength training was uncessary..." Even if you had browsed the Table of Contents of a Lydiard training book or guide you would've gleaned that this statement is wildly inaccurate.

Unbelievable.

Lydiard made the statement after seeing the Finnish runners shirtless. He said runners should look like plucked chickens. or words to that effect .

Nepotism wrote:

And Peter Coe won four Olympic medals with just one family member.

Seb Coe trained pretty much Lydiard style.

His father simply repackaged the same old training principles to sell his books.

mo medals mo problems wrote:

already fast wrote:

Please quote properly.

Another fun fact: Some NZ athletes were not actually born there which should limit a bit of the raving about high numbers of elites from such a small area.

Which ones?

John Davies was born in England and Dick Quax is from the Netherlands.

Juice Springsteen wrote:

bump

Quickness and leg speed is worthless if you don't have the stamina and aerobic strength to access it when you're tired.

Why would you be tired if you have stamina and aerobic strength?

The Way We Were wrote:

Nepotism wrote:

And Peter Coe won four Olympic medals with just one family member.

Seb Coe trained pretty much Lydiard style.

His father simply repackaged the same old training principles to sell his books.

No, he did not.

reasonable try wrote:

The Way We Were wrote:

Seb Coe trained pretty much Lydiard style.

His father simply repackaged the same old training principles to sell his books.

No, he did not.

Correct, "long slow training turned you into a long slow runner".

Two biggies wrote:

mo medals mo problems wrote:

Which ones?

John Davies was born in England and Dick Quax is from the Netherlands.

They were still from New Zealand, it's not like they moved there to run.

HardLoper wrote:If you follow Lydiard's schedule to a tee, you are probably only running your fastest in a short peak period which is all his athletes needed to do. Many runners try to race fast for 8+ months out of the year and therefore it makes sense you would be doing intervals almost year round. I would interpret that as a different goal, not a different training philosophy.

It's a fair point that racing seasons are longer now. But even runners who race very infrequently have largely switched over to non-linear periodization with some hard happening running all year. The reason is that maintaining adaptations is much, much easier than building them. By using a variety of training stimuli all year, you can build on the things you accomplished in previous years, all without breaking yourself down.

Also, the length of a peak is largely determined by the FT/ST breakdown of the athlete. Training can determine when the peak occurs, but FT runners will always have shorter, more dramatic peaks than ST runners. Where non-linear periodization is really helpful is for FT runners who want to have multiple peaks, which is not the same thing as long peaks. A FT runner who practices non-linear periodization properly can build up to a peak very quickly, recover, and do it again.