LYDIARD OR DANIELS?

As Arthur ALWAYS said; "Don't look at what John Walker or Lasse Viren were doing when they were at the top of the game (unless, of course, you're at that level!); but what they were doing 10 years before they reached that level. Don't look at what Kenyan runners are doing today; look at what they were doing 20,000 miles ago." You look at what El G is doing today and say, "Ah, look, in order to excell in today's high level competition, you need to kill yourself doing hard fast intervals!" If you really want to kill yourself, go ahead and do it that way. But if you want to reach his level in 10 years time, check out what he was doing when he was 16 (by the way, what I heard was that he was then a 5000m runner and packing up some mileage).

oasis,

I am sorry, but with my job, I coach as my avocation, and a HS regional race today, I likely will not get back to you until next Monday or Tuesday. But I will get back to you then. Got to go cheer for some HS kids whose season ends if their teams don't finish in the top 4 (unlikely) or they need to be in the top 15 (I am sure the one boy will go on, at least one girl, perhaps a 2nd and with luck a 3rd).

Glenn

All the best for your kids Glenn

test

ronin:

I am not one of the experts on this thread, but I can tell you about my experiences.

I had a similar concern as I moved to a more "pure" Lydiard training approach (where's the LT work?). So far (after the 1st year), I don't seem to be missing anything. I am primarily a marathoner, so the schedules I follow (I know guys, forget the schedules! - but they work for me!) include some pretty long time trials (up to 20-25k, plus a lot of 5k - 10ks). It seems to me, that a 5k or 10k time trial run at 3/4 to 7/8 effort IS an LT workout - basically the same as one of Dr. Daniel's Tempo runs.

Does anyone else agree with this?

BTW, I have been shocked by how fast I am after completing the hill phase. My first interval sessions have been really great. There is a feeling of power in my legs that is quite new for me. Also, my legs are TOUGH, which is a rather good thing for a marathoner. Calves of steel!

Hotlanta:

One layer of bricks laid down successfully, then you moved on to the next layer... It sounds like another one's down well too. Congratulations. This is the time, however, to watch youself closely. Don't try to run out of your skin. How many more weeks do you have? You need a strict control of speed development. You don't want to come right too quickly.

This, by the way folks, is what I've been trying to tell ya; you work on one element at a time. They all come together in the end. You don't need to have everything covered all the time. Following the Lydiard program is a lot like having faith in what you do.

Great replies, thanks guys, I really appreciate it. I think that some faith in the system would help a bit, that's correct.

It's pretty hard to convince myself with so many informations I have absorbed over the years. Talk about detriment of reading too many running publications :)

Anyways, I'll go ahead and finish my 6 weeks of hill running/bounding and I'll see what would happen with my speed and other systems. Good test for me.

Are there any tours or speakers on training traveling to differnt cities? i know lydiard did his tour last year

Hotlanta Master:

Could you provide us with your schedule, or at least an outline of it? I'm also a marathoner, and an aging one at that, and I'm not happy with the way my sharpening plan went this last fall. Yes, schedules are just guides and should be individualized and changeable, but the more examples I have to work from the better. And I need tough legs!

An update on how the HSers I coach did. Allison Gohl finished 8th in the region. Kate Follett took the pace out hard with 4 Rocky Mtn HS girls following. Follett won in 18:09 (first mile near 5:30), Allison was 19:07. An okay performance for her. The other 5 girls all got PRs by 15 to 45 seconds on a relative slow course. Allison goes on to state, none of the others do.

Anguel's HS coach told Anguel to take the pace out to get the pack to die, so the team might qualify for state. It cost Anguel the individual title, he was 2nd 17 seconds out of 1st in 16:07. Buth the team did get the 4th and final team spot into state. Now to get Allison and Anguel ready for better performances next Saturday at state.

Glenn

I had a discussion with this college coach and here's what he has to say (hope he's not going to sue me for the copyright!):

"While I have considered myself a Lydiard guy for many years, I never fully adopted his classic schedules until this year. Nobby (and Lorraine Moller) had a lot to do with that—they convinced me that the leap of faith was worth making. So, we did...

After a roughly 10-week base period from early June through mid-August, we spent three weeks doing some hill work and introductory speed sessions (with 2x week strength training) to prepare for a 24-day anaerobic phase...

The hardest part of “selling” this approach to the incoming freshmen is that they were used to doing intervals right up until their late-season races. “How will windsprints and time trials make me faster in the 5K or 6K later in the season?” they wondered. As Arthur noted, once the aerobic base has been built as solidly as possible (i.e., when you must start the process that leads to your target race), I let them know that we cannot magically go back and capture more stamina—doing so would risk affecting the freshness of the legs they need during the continuation of racing. That’s why it is critical that the athletes take their base acquisition period very seriously; because, once anaerobic training is concluded for that season, the goal is to maximize that base—there’s no going back to get some more stamina if the work didn’t get done earlier (nice Life lesson, too).

What’s happened is that most every athlete has not only seen improvement from race to race but from last year to this. Better still is that almost every kid finished their 6K race this past weekend with their last mile fastest and all feeling strong and fast over the last 1000m—the three frosh had never run beyond 5K; yet, each was within a few seconds of their best 5K times of the season while passing through the 5K during the 6K race."

One thing is that we suggested to taper quite a bit (sorry Tinman) and replaced long reps at steady state pace with shorter sharper stuff. I shared the schedule Glenn shared with me because I liked it a lot (hope it was okay, Glenn). In short, we basically made the training schedule "lighter" or "easier" and the girls are running much faster (I think he said something like 40' to a minute faster). This is one of the biggest things about the Lydiard program; when you're ready, you ARE ready!

This is lesser known sotry but in 1992, when Toni Hodgkinson, a totally unknown with PR of 2:03-800m only a few months before the Olympics, advanced to the final, improving her PR (and NZ national record) almost every time she ran down to 1:58 in the semi; the improvement was so rapid that we started to receive calls, questioning possible use of performance enhancing substance(s)! She was coached by the late John Davies on the Lydiard program almost to the tee ("to the T"? What does this mean anyways?)

Nobby, o a Tee : To a kiwi it means "to the letter" or to the last detail.

Nobby wrote:

By the way, Kim, Lorraine showed a video of Peter Snell to Tom Osborne. Now he understands why long runs are necessary for 800m runner! He's ready to fly down to TX to actually meet the man.

" why long runs are NECESSARY for the 800m runner"??

Hmmm......if they are so necessary, then why have so many great 800m runners excelled without them?? (and I assume that by "long", you mean something like 20 miles, which is exactly what Snell would often do). Well??

I know it's easier to think that some guy figured out everything there is to know about running 50 or so years ago, and its simpler to just follow him, but life is more complex than that.

All Lydiard said: run a lot, and mix in different elements (hills, basic speed, some ananerobic work late), and focus on aerobic work for the most part. Wow, what a genius. People before him had similar traning ideas (van Aaken) and people after him (without being directly influenced by him) had similar ideas. He's not as unique you all want to make him out to be.

He had some great ideas and popularized them. Good for him. 100's of other coaches thought up or popularized other equally important concepts, some different some similar.

Igloi had a much different system from Lydiard's, and frankly he directly developed as many if not more world class runers than Lydiard did. (and I said directly, because all of you Lydiard fanatics try to give him credit for every distance running success in every nation: 'oh Lydiard trained the Finns, oh, Lydiard made the Japs long distance stars, oh Bill Rodgers [or whoever] was a Lydiard "disciple," etc, etc.)

Lydiard was good, but he was no GOD. (that one "o" makes a big difference).

Oh yeah, sorry to have rained on your "we've figured it all out, and it is so simple: just follow St Arthur" party.

People who worked with Lydiard, trained under him, or consider their methods/training as influenced by him getting together in a forum discussing his training methods, comparing/contrasting them to Jack Daniels and other coaches, and sharing rememberances of the man is what I thought this forum was about. Obviously I was mistaken, and "give me a break" has made me seen the light with his staggering intellect and insight on coaching. Wow, I had no idea that coaches other than Arthur Lydiard even existed in the universe. Thank you "give me a break", I look forward to enjoying more of you (and your brave anonymity) in one of letsrun's fantastic "he's a doper, I'm better than you, and you're wrong" threads in the future.

I've been lurking on this thread and found it very interesting and helpful, and haven't felt inspired to post until now.

In my day job I'm an historian, and I think it is interesting that there is not a good intellectual history of the development of the science of distance running and coaching. Or perhaps I've missed it. Can anyone suggest something? It would make a fascinating history of ideas. I'd be quite happy to hear no one has written this book; always good to have ideas for books to write in my field!

That, in part, is what this discussion is about -- the history of ideas about coaching, and how different schools of thought are related. I think the people who know Lydiard would acknowledge where he drew on other people's influences, and where he genuinely innovated. To say there is nothing new under the sun is true in a trivial way. It really doesn't advance the discussion, as you can almost always find precursors to ideas. It's the combination of old ideas that often constitutes innovation.

To get back to the original premise of this thread; Lydiard compared to Daniels. Well, in Daniels' books a lot of the schedules divide a season's plan up into 3-4 phases of equal time. Though there is a short comment that if you have more than 24 weeks extending phase I -- the steady/easy base building phase -- is probably the best approach.

That seems to be different from a Lydiard approach, where the base comprises a higher percentage of the season, maybe up to 50%.

Personally I have found that the workouts in Daniels' books somewhat more useful than the workouts in Lydiard programs. But for a couple of years now I have preceded a Daniels' influenced workout plan with 12-16 weeks of steady aerobic running with hills towards the end of the cycle, a modified Lydiard approach.

Both Lydiard and Daniels periodize the training program -- this is an important similarity. The contributions from Skuj and ronin a few pages back spoke to the school of thought that--to use a modern phrase--you should be working on all energy systems year round.

These discussions--periodization or continuity--will be eternal as different people probably respond best to different programs. And it seems that a true experimental evaluation of them would be exceedingly difficult to organize, since you'd have to get hundreds of people to agree to have their training program set by someone else for a year or more. High school and college runners provide a captive population for a controlled comparison, but there would be some ethical issues, and results in younger athletes might not apply to mature adults.

Hope I haven't taken this thread off on too many tangents! Keep the discussion coming.

Happy running.

Salowskim's right. That was great. What else have you got?

There's no need to be so corrosive.

Speak about realization of potential.

The fact that Arthur collected gold medal winners and world record holders from the neighborhoods around him speaks volumes about what his training can do for someone without reams of talent.

Many 800m runners used and use long runs. Nixon Kiprotich, who I recall won silver in 1992 (and says he would have won gold but for tactical shoving) would run VERY long:

The fact that other 800m runners have run fast without long runs doesn't mean that long runs aren't NECESSARY to achieving FULL potential.

Wilson Kipketer ran 3 times 1:41, and he ran long as a child if I remember correctly. Sebastian Coe ran long--I;ve read stories about him doing 14 mile road runs in blizzards with his father driving a car next to him.

Again, no need to be corrosive.

I'm not sure why you seem to be so angry at Lydiard. He was a good guy as far as I can tell, and his contributions to running training theory are legendary and long standing.

For you to say "Oh, all Lydiard did was say 'Do x, y, and z'" is much like saying "All Newton did was discover gravity. Any stupid fool could have done that."

When you were 6 years old, was training to reach maximum capacity in running intuitive knowledge for you? I think not. You know some of what you know now, no doubt, thanks to Arthur.

Well, Arthur DID train the Finns and Japs!

Would you like people to pretend that certain successes which were undoubtedly due to his training approach should NOT be credited to him? I'm beginning to think you're Sir Lancelot posting under a different name with this Igloi talk.

Igloi was a great coach, but few around the world use his theories. All respect to Bob Schul, but 13:38, even on cinders, will shut you out of world class competition.

But Snell's 1:44 on grass (1:42 on Mondo) would have been #1 in the world last year!

You seem pretty angry.

Maybe you need to take some time away from the boards and walk some things out?

Perhaps the one that might be closest to the history of athletics that I can think of is "Fast Tracks" by Bill Squires. Not so much of science of athletics or athletic training, but very entertaining.

As a matter of fact, there was a gentleman by the name of Susumu Takahashi who was more or less a statistician/historian on athletics in Japan and his books always included tons of historic background of various training methods. That's where I drew storis of Kuts from. You would have loved it.

As a matter of fact, we believe the Lydiard Way is THE only way to train. We call those who don't follow it "savages" and force them to follow it or else we kill them off. We've been doing that since 12th century.

To join our cult, you first need to clean the carpet...I mean, you first need to remove the plastic piece from your running shoes...

By the way, I felt offended by you calling my people "Japs" so please don't.