Lydiard Imitations

me too

This is an excellent article, thanks for posting it. It took a while to work through what each diagram meant and i'm not there yet. Perhaps you can help with a few understandings as i go through what i think are the important bits.

As you said page 4 contains the simple super-compensation curve, although it lacks the sharpness in peak that Canada Coach's version had. I feel this is a more organic curve and the sharper curve is more idealistic. Still we can achieve the idealistic curve, it just may take some time and tinkering to achieve it.

page 5 shows exactly what i've been talking about with Jack - The Recovery Cycle, (although it looks like a wave when depicted like this). The graph appears to say that 40-48 hours is about the right time to for repeated a hard anaerobic session. It also indicates that the most damaging type of session are the anaerobic power sessions, something for people to keep in mind when considering doing too much of them.

page 8 shows the summation of pages 6 and 7. I find this interesting because i use macrocycles and this is the process that occurs through them. For me week 1 of 3 was an 85% max volume week, week 2 of 3 was 90% max volume and week 3 was 60% max volume as a rough guide. Basically in week one you attempt to do the volume of the previous week 2 and then in the new week 2 attempt to go a little further. Week 3 you release the volume pressure significantly. In reverse you have intensity in weeks 1 and 2 hovering 70-80% whilst in week 3 you crest 90%. He is using a macrocycle of 5 microcycles, but he uses only 3 of them for working and 2 for recovering.

Then i'm confused, what is A and B and in the following graph i don't understand why there are two triangles in some microcyles. Do you know? If they are two sessions in one day then it makes sense the order the two are placed in but that's just a guess.

Page 10 is very interesting considering our overall debate. It shows exactly what happens when one places too much training load on top on a base that is too small. How can race-pace methodology ignore the continued development of the aerobic base whilst still placing an ever increasing training load on top of it is just beyond me. There is only one conclusion, the training process will stop. Whether it will get back to the same level ever again is a good question, i don't see it so often and when i do it is due to a radical shift in approach. The story of Mike Smith, Canadian Decathlete illustrates this but i won't tell the story unless someone is actually interested.

We just need to be as specific as we can with everything and this will lead us to increased individualisation of training. It is a necessary end-product of the attempt to be increasingly specific. The more detail we know about someone the better we can tailor the training response. The more one observes the athlete the more detail one gets.

But we cannot go 'too far' just for the 'sake' of it. We have to recognise that, whilst no two fingerprints are ever exactly the same, all are still obviously fingerprints when you look at them. Nobody gets confused and says i don't know what that is, is that a picture of the moon? It's a fingerprint and sure the differences are myriad and 100% idiosyncratic, but when you take the fingerprint into account as a while it is quite clear what it is, no matter the amount of individuality going on. The differences we are talking about in training are in the range of hours, 1-2-3-4 hours, not days. If 72 hours is required between normal hard training sessions then the sessions are too hard. They are compromising the overall volume of training because of this. Simply put, all humans are humans; the physiology follows the same rules. The differences are in other areas, not in the basic functioning of the human body. The mind is a big part of it. From what i gather of Pre he was an extremist who knew to push both ends, so he would train himself to death and then totally let go of it and recover. Perhaps Kenny wasn't so good on the let go side of the equation. Perhaps Kenny didn't have the underlying base that Pre had so couldn't tolerate the intensity so regularly. Perhaps Kenny was a better racer than he was a trainer. There are too many questions for anything conclusive to be reached isn't there?

There is more in that Olbrecht article you posted i want to go into, as it is very pertinent to this discussion.

me too

This is an excellent article, thanks for posting it. It took a while to work through what each diagram meant and i'm not there yet. Perhaps you can help with a few understandings as i go through what i think are the important bits.

As you said page 4 contains the simple super-compensation curve, although it lacks the sharpness in peak that Canada Coach's version had. I feel this is a more organic curve and the sharper curve is more idealistic. Still we can achieve the idealistic curve, it just may take some time and tinkering to achieve it.

page 5 shows exactly what i've been talking about with Jack - The Recovery Cycle, (although it looks like a wave when depicted like this). The graph appears to say that 40-48 hours is about the right time to for repeated a hard anaerobic session. It also indicates that the most damaging type of session are the anaerobic power sessions, something for people to keep in mind when considering doing too much of them.

page 8 shows the summation of pages 6 and 7. I find this interesting because i use macrocycles and this is the process that occurs through them. For me week 1 of 3 was an 85% max volume week, week 2 of 3 was 90% max volume and week 3 was 60% max volume as a rough guide. Basically in week one you attempt to do the volume of the previous week 2 and then in the new week 2 attempt to go a little further. Week 3 you release the volume pressure significantly. In reverse you have intensity in weeks 1 and 2 hovering 70-80% whilst in week 3 you crest 90%. He is using a macrocycle of 5 microcycles, but he uses only 3 of them for working and 2 for recovering.

Then i'm confused, what is A and B and in the following graph i don't understand why there are two triangles in some microcyles. Do you know? If they are two sessions in one day then it makes sense the order the two are placed in but that's just a guess.

Page 10 is very interesting considering our overall debate. It shows exactly what happens when one places too much training load on top on a base that is too small. How can race-pace methodology ignore the continued development of the aerobic base whilst still placing an ever increasing training load on top of it is just beyond me. There is only one conclusion, the training process will stop. Whether it will get back to the same level ever again is a good question, i don't see it so often and when i do it is due to a radical shift in approach. The story of Mike Smith, Canadian Decathlete illustrates this but i won't tell the story unless someone is actually interested.

We just need to be as specific as we can with everything and this will lead us to increased individualisation of training. It is a necessary end-product of the attempt to be increasingly specific. The more detail we know about someone the better we can tailor the training response. The more one observes the athlete the more detail one gets.

But we cannot go 'too far' just for the 'sake' of it. We have to recognise that, whilst no two fingerprints are ever exactly the same, all are still obviously fingerprints when you look at them. Nobody gets confused and says i don't know what that is, is that a picture of the moon? It's a fingerprint and sure the differences are myriad and 100% idiosyncratic, but when you take the fingerprint into account as a while it is quite clear what it is, no matter the amount of individuality going on. The differences we are talking about in training are in the range of hours, 1-2-3-4 hours, not days. If 72 hours is required between normal hard training sessions then the sessions are too hard. They are compromising the overall volume of training because of this. Simply put, all humans are humans; the physiology follows the same rules. The differences are in other areas, not in the basic functioning of the human body. The mind is a big part of it. From what i gather of Pre he was an extremist who knew to push both ends, so he would train himself to death and then totally let go of it and recover. Perhaps Kenny wasn't so good on the let go side of the equation. Perhaps Kenny didn't have the underlying base that Pre had so couldn't tolerate the intensity so regularly. Perhaps Kenny was a better racer than he was a trainer. There are too many questions for anything conclusive to be reached isn't there?

There is more in that Olbrecht article you posted i want to go into, as it is very pertinent to this discussion.

Sorry for the double post. My defense is i'm a computer noob.

This is a response to everyone picking on me for stating a 'rule'.

INDIVIDUALISATION

I think i've made a wrong impression or some people are just trying to limit what i'm saying. Probably a bit of both.

My basic approach to coahcing is a combination of two factors. One is an understanding of the principles of training and how they are applied, and the other is an understanding of the athlete standing in front of me. If the athlete is not present i cannot think a single thoughtabout their training. Do you know what i mean? I need to be able to observe the athlete moving around and undergoing some basic tests to see where his limits are. From that point you know the strengths and weaknesses of this athlete situation and can 'only then' write up a training plan for them. I think it goes without saying that without the athlete present, all you can do with the principles is theorise, as we are doing in here.

On the flipside if one doesn't have an understanding of their own principles at the very least, whether they have connected those principles to the higher principles yet or not doesn't matter as much as having your own in the first place. If you don't have your own then you will have to borrow someone elses, and this leads to borrowing other peoples methods and programs. So even though the athlete is in front of us, without principles we cannot work things out for ourselves. Instead there is a stopwatch and there are articles from other coaches to compare to and schedules of past athletes to reproduce. It's a poor way to coach in my opinion but it is always the starting point for any coach i guess, imitation initially seems to be the normal way to go when developing any new skill.

So my rule is observe the athlete and apply the principles, from this you get your methodology for that athlete.

THE RECOVERY CYCLE

So of course it goes without saying that individualisation is more important that consistency. It is more important to adjust training to prevent overtraining that it is to keep 'building the wall' so to speak. This is a given, sorry if i led anyone to think otherwise.

However, this is only ever a temporary fix. It is a temporary elongation of the recovery cycle away from its optimal.

I say optimal because we are looking for optimal aren't we. What is the ideal is the question on everyones lips. We are also looking at maximimsing the training effect, so we ask what is the maximum amount of training we can get into a week and still advance with each session?

I say that three times a week is the ideal for developing our main quality, in whatever cycle we are in, and this seems reflected a lot in what we see. Sure hobby coaches can only coach on a number of days a week, yet why do we see this alternate days appear almost without exception (in Australia at least). Why does Olbrecht's graph on page 5 show 48 hours to be the optimal recovery for hard anaerobic sessions? It is showing after 48 hours super-compensation is already being lost. Why was my coach present before every session i ever did and left every session after i did, day in day out year after year. I think he had a sick day one year. Yet our training alternated, we just didn't do the same type of hard training on consecutive days. This just doesn't happen in the Soviet system. In decathlon it is really highlighted, and for us we have to go 100% maximum for two days in a row. At a championship these might be two 10 hour days. Sure we cover this need in training, but not by doubling up on hard training sessions, never. Being able to keep psychologically on track the whole time is maybe the biggest single factor that determines a decathlete, Whether you score 5500 points or whether you are over 8000, the ability to be consistently close to or over your previous best in all 10 events is the art. I appreciate a well balanced 6000 pointer more than an imbalanced 7500 pointer who could go 8000 if he got some balance back into his equation, but never will because his one-track mind won't look outside the box. I like the craftsmen decathletes, who year after year chip away at their total, balancing the equation better year after year.

In conclusion, if we train twice a week with 72 hours recovery we just aren't doing the maximum volume of work we can ideally do. It is more like what you do in high-season, approaching or already in the main competition period, not for the bread and butter developmental training phases. This intensity which requires 72 hours recovery is too much for preparation training.

Antonio Cabral wrote:

From RUN TO THE TOP(1968) the Lydiard book

The schedule of Peter Snell from 64 Tokyo Olympics

Mon - 2 miles at 1/2

Tue - 20 x 220 at 1/4

Wed - Sprint Training; Race 100 or 220

Thu - 2 x 1 mile at 1/4; 1 x 1 mile at 1/2

Fri - Sprint Training / Starts

Sat - 20 x 220 at 1/4

Sun - 2 hours steady

Funny thing, I don´t see the Gypsy “rule of thumb” of 48 hours, what Gypsy says as very fundamental.

Is Lydiard an ignorant coach because i don´t see the 48 hours philosophy, or the Gypsy 48 hours it´s what is right, or it´s Pfitzinger Lydiardism that is right, or on the Lydiard method ther´s room to do every kind of days of lenght recovery from workouts ?

I forgot to ask, where do you see the recovery rule being broken? I only see it being extended due to the phase of the year this program is based in. Nowhere does he break the minimum duration of the recovery rule. Perhaps i am just missing it. Can you show me?

I reproduced the first week only, just to have a look at. and i wish i had a feel for those fractional paces to get an even deeper feeling for his modulation.

It seems pretty clear from this one week. There are two sprint session 48 hours apart and there are three interval sessions 48 hours apart. This is pure and simple basic periodisation following the basic rule of recovery. Not sure why you provided evidence supporting my claim but thanks again.

The story of Mike Smith, Canadian Decathlete illustrates this but i won't tell the story unless someone is actually interested.

Ok, I'm interested, let's hear it.

Cheers.

Mike had two careers. First one could be said to be 1986 to 1991 and encompassed a silver at world juniors in 1986 to a silver at worlds in 1991. This period was his younger period and was normal intensity based training all year round. It lead to him having an injury plagued 1992 and 1993 and forced a change in training direction. In this period we see pr's like 10.70 100m, 7.76 long jump, 2.14 high jump and 47.05 400m. For a massive guy (6'5")he was fast.

So he DNF'd at Olympics in barcelona in 92 and Worlds in 93 in Stuttgart. And a change in direction was needed. I believe this is where he started working with Les Gramantik but not 100% sure. In 1994 i met him at the Commonwealth Games and wasn't able to beat him, he had started his second career. This career was focused on techincal development and endurance and strength. Speed and power were put on the backburner most of the time. His injury problems needed managing now and by avoiding the more explosive side of the equation he was able to do more volume of training. This career found pr's like 18m+ in sp, 53m+ in discus, 72m+ in jav, 5.20 in pole vault and 4:20 for the 1500m. His sprints were barely under 11 now and long jump was 730s, high jump just over 2m and 400m in the 48s. So he wasn't able to tune up the speed and power side any more due to the physical limitations yet he made up for it by changing the focus and gaining points in other areas. In 1996 he did his lifetime pr so the process seemed to have worked.

How this relates to MD is for athletes who have come undone with their own overly high intensity approach, and are looking to rebalance their situation once again. Mike Smith addressed his training created imbalances by dropping certain things and focusing on others. For an MD athlete who is struggling for injury, overtraining or any plateau effect simply needs to rebalance their system once again in order to move forward. The lover of the long run who hates the sprints and hills and intervals will only move forward if they start to train these aspects, whilst the hater of long runs will probably only move forward once again if they learn to embrace the long steady state.

I arrived home near Turin yesterday night, for having Christmas with my wife before going to Charlotte for speaking in the Summitt, and first I want to wish HAPPY CHRISTMAS to all the posters/readers of LR, Lyardists or not Lyardists.

I read many posts, and I want to better explain what I do and what I believe in training.

a) I'm one of "Aerobic first", because I give the max importance to the development of Aerobic System. But for me Aerobic First doesn't mean FIRST in order of chronology, but FIRST in order of importance. So, the PERCENTAGE of Aerobic Training at the beginning of preparation is very high, BUT THERE ARE IN DIFFERENT PERCENTAGE ALSO WORKOUTS FOR INCREASING STRENGTH (and these type of workouts are LACTIC), and ALL the qualities we have to use during the Specific Period.

b) For me, Aerobic is not slow run, but includes a very wide range of speeds. For a top athletes, it's aerobic running at 2'45" per km such as at 5' per km. But, a part to use running as REGENERATION, during the career of an athlete the real BEGINNING of AEROBIC TRAINING, year after year, must start at a speed every year higher, OTHERWISE THERE THE TRAINING DONE DIDN'T HAVE ANY EFFECT.

Athletes need to maintain the same INTERNAL LOAD producing a different EXTERNAL LOAD, otherwise their training was clearly wrong.

So, WHAT FOR A BEGINNER IS ANAEROBIC, FOR THE SAME ATHLETE AFTER SOME PERIOD MUST BECOME AEROBIC.

c) I explained how my phylosophy is completely different when I coach during the FUNDAMENTAL PERIOD and during the SPECIFIC PERIOD.

During the FUNDAMENTAL I build the program looking at increasing the QUALITIES of the athletes. When I speak about "building the aerobic house", the Fundamental Period is dedicated to buy the MATERIALS for building the house.

Every athlete can follow the same training system (if they are runners of the same type of event : NEVER I CAN PUT A MARATHON RUNNER TOGETHER WITH AN 800m RUNNER), and the difference are in the individual ability (speed and volume, but the system can be the same).

During the SPECIFIC PERIOD I put the ATHLETE AT THE CENTER OF THE PROJECT. This means I don't have a real program, because I need to use the "material I bought" for building the performance. So, I give the athletes KEY WORKOUTS, all having SPECIFIC AND DIRECT INFLUENCE ON THE PERFORMANCE.

For example, for a marathon runner, I can give 5 workouts in succession, such as the following :

a) 5 x 5 km at Marathon Pace with 1 km at 85% of MP in the middle (29 km)

b) Track 10 x 1600m at 105% of MP with 1'30" / 2' of interval with the last at max speed

c) 40 km at 92% of MP (after 15' warm-up)

d) Special Block : in the morning 10 km at 90% of MP + 15 km at 100%, in the afternoon 10 km at 90% + 6 x 2000m on track at 102/105% of MP with 2' of recovery in between

e) 24 km alternating one fast (105% MP) and one more slow (95% MP)

All these trainings are very specific, and of very high quality and extension (so, their COST is very high).

If an athlete is able running FASTER of the original plan, I'm very happy, because he shows to be able to use his qualities for building a very high performance.

However, FASTER is training, HIGHER is its cost. Consequentely, I NEED TO OPEN RECOVERY TIME, and so it's not possible to have a rule about the identification of the right recovery. Also about the 48 hours or 72 hours after a LACTIC WORKOUT, there is no possibility to speak about some rule, BECAUSE THE LACTATE ACCUMULATED CAN BE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

If you want to be sure, you need to check lactate and cortisol and to analyse the values EVERY DAY AFTER TRAINING. So, if you finish training with a level of CPK of 1000 (many times it happens), normally the level is cut by half every day, and you can't start a new training with high effect if your lactate is higher than 150 (that it means after 4 days). I use specific blocks for increasing the ability of the athletes in working with HIGH ACCUMULATION OF LACTATE, but after every special / specific block I give 3-4 days of very easy training.

So, I need to receive from the athletes the START for their next intensive-extensive key workout. That's the reason because I try to teach every athlete HOW to increase the feeling with his body, BECAUSE DURING THE SPECIFIC PERIOD I CHANGE THE RECOVERY ACCORDING TO THE FEELING OF THE ATHLETES.

I don't know if this is Lydiard or not, and frankly I'm not interested. But I know with this system I'm normally able to peak when I want (32 medals in World Championships, in many cases with PB of the athletes), and the athletes improved their best.

If we go to some specific workout, we can see very high difference between the system of Bill Rodgers and my system, that now is adopted by the most part of Kenyan runners (and we started working in that direction with Ethiopian, too).

At the end of every thing, approaching the Specific Period, we need to enhance the quality of the TRAINING ABLE TO SUSTAIN THE SPECIFIC TRAINING, and it's not possible to do this working with blocks in the athletic of today. One thing is the theory (is it better a LINEAR periodisation or a non linear ?), but athletes of 50 year ago had their job and could chose training only for reaching their (supposed) best results looking at the personal satisfaction ; athletes of today (African in primis) have athletics as their job, and need to produce results for earning and for living, so their activity MUST be connected with the possibility of earning money during all the season.

And to speak about which system is better, is a waste of time, because the only solution is to do what we do today.

And, in any case, today athletes do very much better than in the past. So, where is the problem ?

Excellent post

gypsy:

I'm not sure I understand the "Construction Mesocycle" slide either but here is an attempt:

Each triangle represents an intense workout. The height of the triangle is intensity, and the width of the base of the triangle is the volume of the intense workout. The height of the light blue square is the volume for the week.

So, in week I, there is one intense workout. In week II, there are two intense workouts, and volume for week II is higher than week I. In week III, there are two intense workouts, and volume is still higher than it was in week II.

The first intense workout in weeks II and III is more intense than the second intense workout. The second intense workout in week II has the same volume as the first intense workout in week II. The second intense workout in week III has more volume than the first intense workout in week III.

The first week of the Recovery Phase (week IV) has only one intense workout. The overall volume of week IV is the lowest volume so far. The intensity of the intense workout is also the lowest so far. In week V there are two intense workouts, and overall volume for the week is a little lower than for week IV. The intensity of the two intense workouts in week V is even lower than in week IV.

Hope this helps.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Thanks Jack, but here is my original question for Renato, what did they lack for:

[quote]Renato Canova wrote:

So, if it's true that without talent nobody can become a Champion, it's also true talent is not enough withou a good training plan, and all the results of the "self made men" of the past (like my friend Hodgie-san) could be very much better, if they could channel their right mentality in a modern type of training.

quote]

Renato, I would be interested for you to point out what exactly is more "modern" about Rodgers Rop schedule you have provided for me here:

As opposed to this schedule of Bill Rodgers, coached at that time by American Bill Squires:

What is Rodgers schedule from 1976 lacking from your "modern" type.

Read more:

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Bob, I already explained if I have to write my book about Marathon I wrote in 1999 for IAAF, now I write 50% different. May be there is not big difference between the schedule I used for Rodgers Rop and the training of Bill Rodgers. But of sure there is big difference between what I use today with Moses Mosop, Abel Kirui, Wilson Kipsang, Eric Ndiema, Philip Sanga, Florence Kiplagat, Lydia Cheromei, Mary Keitany, tyhe newcomer Lucy Kabuu (and many other between the Ethiopian) and what I used in 2000 / 2004.

I started to change many things during the last 7 years, from when I had the opportunity to live in Kenya for more long time (8-10 month per year).

Following the athletes every day, I could see their talent was not used enough, since they could run very much faster. These athletes were younger than before (Haile and Tergat already had a very long career on track), faster than before (able running about 27' or less during the period of their preparation for the marathon, not approaching marathon when their career was already in declining phase) and for that reason able to use better quality in training, and to recover very well (if able to respect their body, instead to follow theories coming from false scientific research, never done with this kind of top athletes).

I posted in LR both the training of Moses Mosop before Boston (2:03:06), and of Abel Kirui before WCh. If you go to see, you can understand how much different is the training I used.

One example : 31 days after running 2:03:06 his first marathon in Boston, Moses, preparing the WR of 30 km, ran in Kamarin track (who was in Iten knows how that track is...) 18 times 1000m, with 1'20" recovery, with the first in 2'45", 16 times 2'42" and the last in 2'36".

Another example regarding Florence Kiplagat, during her preparation for Berlin (2:19:44) :

Special Block :

Morning : 25' warm-up + 20 km in 1:06:36 (3'20" average)

Afternoon : 40' easy run + (Track) 5 x 2000m (rec. 2'/2'20") between 6'12" and 6'14".

Do you think this type of training is the same of 50-40 years ago ?

Thanks SFM, i think i got those basic details, it is the one or two sessions per week that threw me. Page 36 helped a little with the understanding, don't know what psb means though.There is more good stuff:page 10 i bring up again because it is being so thoroughly ignored by so many coaches, both modern and otherwise, it should be looked at again.It seems a simple fact to me that the higher you want to build your pyramid the broader the base must be. Even though there is a significantly larger base in a Keynan compared to a Westerner, this base is eroded over time and if not it stays the same whilst the loading on top increases to the point of too much, and the pyramid topples. How long a career an athlete has is important. Three years is a disgrace, yet this is becoming the norm with this approach i am speaking out against.Page 13 is also important. It says this:

Much more important than to know relation between speed and lactate is to discover what originates the lactate curves. Olbrecht2000

Now this is a comment Lydiard would appreciate, yet seems to be ignored in the modern approach which says the exact opposite in fact.

Page 32 is also important:

Many coaches believe: “no pain no anaerobic gain”“gain” ••Small amounts of hard but “friendly” training can induce major anaerobic adaptations

I think this way. Repeated smaller workouts is the way to increase training load, than rarer larger workouts. Sure we can do harder sessions but no so often. If people like 72 hours for recovery then they can do each session harder, but obviously do each session less often. This is fine in competition phase but has no place in any developmental period training.

If you are serious about training, you don't need to fit everything into a 7 day cycle. You may want to try 3 day mini-cycles. I've found them to be much more valuable.

hard, mod easy for 3 day cycles works well. See recovery graph above and it makes sense.

Renato Canova wrote:

If you want to be sure, you need to check lactate and cortisol and to analyse the values EVERY DAY AFTER TRAINING. So, if you finish training with a level of CPK of 1000 (many times it happens), normally the level is cut by half every day, and you can't start a new training with high effect if your lactate is higher than 150 (that it means after 4 days). I use specific blocks for increasing the ability of the athletes in working with HIGH ACCUMULATION OF LACTATE, but after every special / specific block I give 3-4 days of very easy training.

Thanks Renato, advice from the coach of the world's best runners is why I come here. Can you tell us more about how cortisol levels change in response to different phases of training elite athletes, and how this may be applicable to lesser runners? Thanks.

Tommy D wrote:If you are serious about training, you don't need to fit everything into a 7 day cycle. You may want to try 3 day mini-cycles. I've found them to be much more valuable.

hard, mod easy for 3 day cycles works well. See recovery graph above and it makes sense.

This would work well and i imagine you would see progress often enough with little reversal of condition. Injuries would be less likely to surface and overtraining is well avoided. But this is something a 16-17 year old would be doing as they would be up to two hard sessions but not developed enough to handle three yet.

The recovery graph by Olbrecht says super-compensation has peaked for all but the heaviest session and even an intensive anaerobic session only requires 48 hours to reach peak super compensation.

But i like mini-cycles. Within each week when you follow the alternating day rule you get three mini cycles of two days. It repeats three times in the week. For a decathlete this goes gym,track,gym,track,gym - with gym including longer running and long hills. A distance runner would alternate faster and shorter with longer and slower and the longer/slower days would contain gym work and shorter/faster days would involve some sprint work/strides.

I guess you are looking at creating two cycles within a week whereas i look at creating three. Two is a stepping stone for me. But the move from two to three is putting extra pressure on the system, so this 2-3 minicycle development is where i find a lot of care needs to be taken, or it can come undone too easily. If you aren't in a rush, and you know you can peak after 15 years of training (because it's true), then your own approach is the one for longevity.

Thank you Renato & others on this thread, I am taking all of this in and processing.

Look forward to more greater understanding in 2012.

It's quiet for a few days, i hope everyone is having a great Christmas break and that we all found a mistletoe moment.

Renato, i wanted to say something about all of this from my perspective of someone who was coached under a system that was Soviet driven but Lydiard modified. A system that thrived through the 90s and didn't have anything to do with this modern training you say is required today. Here is a little slice of exception.

One day after i had discovered Lydiard and researched and applied him for about 6 months, i bumped into my coach in the regular way, at a meet. He asked me what i had been up to. I said i had discovered this distance coach and that i was now interested in merging his stuff with what the Soviet stuff Efim had brought me up on. Efim said (imagine a Russian accent)'you do not need to worry about this, i have already done it for you.' At my incredulous gaze he continued 'take a look and you will see'. So i did and he was right and now years later, it is even clear to me how his approach differs from standard Soviet and how the differences are in part due what Efim had found when he himself researched Lydiard, back in the 70s, when he arrived in Australia.

So who is this coach i had. A brief bio, which whilst in no way as successful as yours Renato, is in it's own way interesting and somewhat revolutionary.

Efim was an athlete who was interested in coaching and had a mind for philosophy. At the age of 32 he was appointed head coach of a sports institute in Odessa, Ukraine. This was the youngest appointment in their entire system to this position. He constructed his own model of development which was subsequently adopted throughout the Soviet Union Sports System. Under his charge around 20 national team members and to be honest i never remember their names, apart from one, a decathlete called Nikolai Avilov. Efim was not Nik's main coach, in fact it seems he didn't have one, instead Efim was one of a panel of coaches in charge of this Olympic Gold Medallist.

But Efim was a philosopher, so when Matveyev was lecturing on his sytem in the 60s, a system which is philosophically founded believe it or not, Efim became very interested. He also came across books on Western Philosophy and with a young family, decided he wanted his children growing up in a democracy instead of a communist state. So he found his way out of the USSR and eventually arrived in Australia, not speaking a word of English. A year making chocolate in a chocolate factory saw his develop his English to the point of having his teaching credentials authorised and he began teaching. During this time he was appointed National Coach for Steeple and coached a few guys to pretty fast times. This was well before my time so i would have to research details but i do remember he was responsible for the naming of the Zatopek meet. He might have even organised it initially, i would have to check.

It was some years later he ran into the Program Manager of athletes at the AIS Peter Bowman. Peter immediately saw Efim's capacity as a coach and offered him a position at the AIS. Efim declined saying he had developed his life in Melbourne and his family was settled there now. So began the first ever AIS Satellite coaching program, in Melbourne in 1988. Since then many have sprung up following the success of his and are now widespread across most sports.

So Efim began from scratch and found some talented juniors to begin the process with. I came along in the second year. In the first year Efim took a couple of his new athletes, with under a year development, to World Juniors. The next year he got me there with a qualifier 7 months after i started with him, and a pb of 700 points.

Over the 10 years he had this job and ran his program he would have had 100+ national title holders and probably 30-40 National Team members. Remember all of these people were developed from scratch, as 16-18 years olds. There was a 17m triple jumper at 19, rank 2 in the world as a junior, went on to decide he wanted to be a sprinter and trained in Canada with Charlie Francis. Ran in the 10.30s. Probably a poor decision. There was a 2.36 high jumper who won a bronze at the Olympics at 19, started at 16 in the program. He was looked after by one of Efim's assistants up to the 2.36, before the assistant thought he had graduated and removed the high jumper from our program. No improvement was ever seen again. A recent Russian high jumper who won a Gold Medal in Sydney was advised by Efim for two years leading up to that win. Then there were many decathletes and heptathletes making teams and winning titles, including a couple of us over 8000 and three women close to 6000. There was the guy who got to 16m low in triple before Efim decided that 17m probably wasn't going to happen, so this triple jumper did an early season decathlon for fun. A 48.6 400m with no specific training, led to a 46.34 some 4 months later and two year pass to see a 4x400 berth in 2000 and a sub 45 split. Then you can look at the coaches in Australia that were trained under Efim and you find a whole load more of the top performances in the multi event category.

The interesting thing for me is that there was nothing there before he started. There was no precedent. He had to create his own position and then create an entire program around it and with brand new athletes. And nobody can say his program didn't produce, from nowhere, more athletes than any other found in the country. I understand this isn't what you do Renato. Your approach isn't developmental, at least not any more. You have access to the best MD talent, in the most gifted MD country, who have a pre-developed base. So there is no need for development in these athletes situations, and your program seems to reflect this. How would it go being applied to a non-North African? What differences would be required in your opinion?

gypsy wrote:

If 72 hours is required between normal hard training sessions then the sessions are too hard. They are compromising the overall volume of training because of this.

Gypsy, I see this kind of thinking in track coaches who were not themselves distance runners. I'm sorry but 48 hours is not even the most common option. It's the MINIMUM time between interval sessions for most college/club athletes, but the vast majority do better when a coach or their experience holds them back a bit.

You have to bear in mind that most serious distance runners start with a base level of a couple of runs most days - maybe an easy one in the morning and a medium one in the afternoon.

Let's say our runner gets used to this, then throws in a fairly hard 5k pace session like 6x1000 on a Tuesday night. Will he recover as fast with two runs per day as he would with almost total rest, or just the morning recovery jog on Wednesday? Of course not. Maybe he's even calibrated that Tuesday night session so that he won't be too tired, and is still capable of a businesslike 10 mile run the next day. In base training it's not uncommon even to do "interval sessions" that let you practice running at a different pace, but are actually less tiring than a day of mileage.

You get some top class runners doing pretty much the same every day for weeks (if they choose steady state runs approaching tempo pace, such as Arthur's boys, Cram or Marius Bakken), and you get others doing two or three hard sessions per week and going very easy in between. But commonly, you find a LOT of them go for two hard sessions, because that way there is still some space in your week for some reasonable quality steady running.

Once you have overlapping effects from all those different training stimuli - track workout, steady runs, morning runs - nobody can predict exactly when 'supercompensation' has occurred, except for the athlete themselves. I humbly submit that the ones who give it an extra day to be on the safe side will generally progress better than the ones who train "hard" again on the first evening they possibly can.

Finally, doing intervals too often is the most common way of "compromising the volume" of all. It stops you doing a decent volume of quality steady running.

I wasted years of my youth training too hard too often. Wejo captures this eloquently in his "why I sucked in college" article and this rings true for many, many older distance runners. Read it!

This was my third attempt ...

For me training is about optimal sustainability, not about 'more is better'. To achieve this we train the maximal amount we can that is repeatable. It needs to be sustainable/repeatable from each session so the next can be undertaken and this is also applied to each week so the next can be undertaken, and so on. But sustainable is the prior quality, so this needs to be maintained whilst optimisation is taking place.

Also there is an important distinction to make. As i perceive Lydiard to also intend, i don't attempt to 'develop' the different qualities at the same time. So when developing aerobic capacity i don't bother losing training time on that process by also trying to develop aerobic power, and vice versa. The very idea you mention, that training the main quality twice a week, to allow for some 'reasonable quality steady running' in that same week doesn't apply to my methodology at all but does highlight the fact that twice a week isn't enough. More than twice is needed is it not?

This leads to another level of looking at recvoery which i want to go into. I agree with you that if we follow the 48 hour rule continuously we run into trouble fairly quickly. After a couple of weeks an extended period of recovery is needed. That graph by Olbrecht shows supercompensation of any of the individual qualities has peaked by 48 hours. This is true in an isolated situation with a one off session, but what about repeated sessions? I don't know if there is any research to see if that curve changes after repeated sessions or not but i know this from experience. 48 hours slightly cuts off the super-compensation curve and this cutting off slightly increases with repeated sessions. I know this because the third session in a week is harder than the first. It seemed to me that the second was either the same or slightly harder, dependent on overall fitness, but the third was always the hardest. But this is in line with the training methodology i'm schooled in. You want to bunch a few sessions together on the 48 hour rule before allowing an extended recovery period of 72 hours or longer. It is looking for cumulative suppression.

So that is why a microcycle looks like this in terms of recovery would look like this:

48>48>72

The 48-48 allows for the triple session effect to occur and the 72 allows for full recovery, prior to the next repeat.

We can see this already applied to interval sessions. Eg 3x3x600/3&6 - we bunch the first three intervals together to gain the cumulative suppression effect, then we allow a longer recovery period, to recover sufficiently to continue repeating the effort.

So we just need take this idea of the break-up of a 'session' and apply it to the break-up a 'week'. Then we get the idea of slightly allowing too short a recovery to create a deeper training effect. I think this allows three times a week makes to make more sense, as long as the overall workload is kept at sustainable levels.

Often even this isn't enough recovery so the methodology allows for this with the creation of the macrocycle. Just as at the end of a session you cool down, and at the end of each week you 'cool down', the end of a macrocycle is about cooling down and that's why the final week (or two in Olbrechts study) is about winding/cooling down. One of the pertinent advantages to this is you can train closer to your training 'edge' more often, whilst actually gaining better quality recovery as well.