Great canova article

Northern Star wrote:

The legacy of Lydiard is that your aerobic base is the most important determiner of your athletic success.

Northern Star

When you, as well as people from the Lydiardism, will you understand that aerobic training improve and develop shall be done together during the same period side-by-side with intervals, speed, fast training for rich training.

Do you know who is Mo Farah the 5000m-10000m double olympic champ huge success defeating all Africans in the recent London Olympics ?

Do you know who is Galen Rupp US silver medal in the 10000m this last London Olympics ?

Both are coached by Alberto Salazar.

Now read this about the aerobic first:

ALBERTO SALAZAR AFTER THE 10K

by Amby Burfoot

August 5, 2012 5:59 am

Here's what Alberto Salazar, coach of the gold and silver medalists, had to say after the men's 10,000-meter final. After Salazar's quotes are quotes by silver medalist Galen Rupp and Americans Dathan Ritzenhein (13th) and Matt Tegenkamp (19th).

ALBERTO SALAZAR: “We do speed consistently year round. We never give the body anything that it’s not accustomed to. I don’t believe in systems like the Lydiard system where they times of no speed. The body likes consistency. We always have some of it in the mix. We just use different intensities at different times of the year.

Northern Star. Lydiard aerobic first is a stupidity. No one modern coach does that kind of serobic first.

A reasoned response. My running knowledge is less than yours, so if you say Higdon is non-traditional I guess I'll accept that.

As to reinventing the wheel.... Sometimes it seems like there is really nothing new, it's all been done before, etc. My own take is that little differences do add up--at an undefined yet discernable point (the "I'll know it when I see it" argument) there are enough differences that we can say, yes, this is new. The cook may not have invented the ingredients, but we can still applaud the dish.

I think you are confusing this with some other discussion. Northern Star's comments were entirely reasonable, you are the first to bring up "Lydiard aerobic first".

Look at it this way: pretty much all cakes have the same basic set of ingredients. However, the little differences are what make the difference between, say, angel and devil's food cake.

Lydiard baked some delicious cakes and left recipes that allow for duplication and modification, and that's awesome. Canova's cake recipe is a little different, but it's still cake.

We could look at Chef Canova and go "eggs, flour, sugar, etc- nothing to see here" and that's one valid interpretation. We could also look at it and say "Hmm, how come he uses more 3 eggs instead of Lydiard's 2? How come he cooks at a higher temp for a shorter time? What's the difference?"

They're still makin' cakes. The ingredients don't change all that much- but they do change. HRE seems to fall into the camp of "guys, it's cake, don't worry about it, it's got all the right cake ingredients" and that doesn't bug me at all. On the other hand, I (and others, I guess) seem to prefer to be more precise when we cook.

I have a tough time condemning either or another point of view, so long as any good cook (whether it's Lydiard or Canova or the guy from Colorado School of Mines) gets credit he or she is due.

Breaking from the metaphor, I've learned a lot from some stuff Canova has posted here over the years. I've applied some stuff to my own running and think it's of benefit. Thank you for the help, Mr. Canova.

Alan Bennet wrote:

A reasoned response. My running knowledge is less than yours, so if you say Higdon is non-traditional I guess I'll accept that.

As to reinventing the wheel.... Sometimes it seems like there is really nothing new, it's all been done before, etc. My own take is that little differences do add up--at an undefined yet discernable point (the "I'll know it when I see it" argument) there are enough differences that we can say, yes, this is new. The cook may not have invented the ingredients, but we can still applaud the dish.

Hear, hear. And also what you said earlier:

"Canova is a great coach, I am sure of it. Not a great article, though. My problem with the article is that it does not give me enough information to construct a Canova-style training plan, complete for one cycle. Maybe coaches can get something out of the article, I don't know."

Yet despite Canova's willingness to come on here and explain his ideas, instead we get five pages of Lydiard, back-and-forth denunciations, and weird pre-emptive strikes against the supposed naiveté of the general public. After all, if we ever do hear how Canova might advise ordinary runners, we'll all follow him mindlessly like lemmings headed for the cliff, right? Or perhaps declare him the new messiah? I guess we have to be protected from ourselves. Sheesh.

Antonio,

Almost anyone that's good does the same stuff. They do plenty of volume for aerobic stimulation. They include training and different levels of higher intensities to improve those higher systems. They include hill work, usually some basic turnover work and they put in the hard, race preparation work as they need to.

Lydiard's great contribution was in demonstrating the need for aerobic development through lots of running, down to the middle distances. That forms the basis for what just about every good middle and long distance runner in the world does today. I don't know why people get hung up on his periodization, a system that applied for the amateur era fifty years ago, as if he was supposed to get everything right and what worked in 1962 is supposed to work unaltered in 2012.

Lost a lot of respect for HRE on this thread...

Antonio Cabral wrote:

ALBERTO SALAZAR: “We do speed consistently year round. We never give the body anything that it’s not accustomed to. I don’t believe in systems like the Lydiard system where they times of no speed.

Did Lydiard really say there should be times of no speed?

ALBERTO SALAZAR AFTER THE 10K

by Amby Burfoot

August 5, 2012 5:59 am

http://olympics.runnersworld.com/2012/alberto-salazar-after-the-10k/

Here's what Alberto Salazar, coach of the gold and silver medalists, had to say after the men's 10,000-meter final. After Salazar's quotes are quotes by silver medalist Galen Rupp and Americans Dathan Ritzenhein (13th) and Matt Tegenkamp (19th).

ALBERTO SALAZAR: “We do speed consistently year round. We never give the body anything that it’s not accustomed to. I don’t believe in systems like the Lydiard system where they times of no speed. The body likes consistency. We always have some of it in the mix. We just use different intensities at different times of the year.”

The distance between traditional, outdate, past Lydiard training is aerobic build-up without fast pace, without intervals during that period and modern training that does it ion every period of the season being that “fast than just aerobic pace” with different stimuli in different training periods of the season, but done ever, as Salazar uses.

But Lydiard training training refuses what Salazar uses. Fast training all season long.

I give a dam what you think about Northern Star or what you don´t, what you think about me or you don´t, what´s your training or what don´t.

I just comment on training methods, not individuals. Of course that training methods are built by individuals.

By the way, i got contact with Hal Higdon training long ago, in the early 70s, and in my opinion, Higdon training is superior than Lydiard - just my opinion. The reason it´s that Higdon is the link from past training to modern training, namely in the kind repetitions he advices. As far as i know he was one of the first coaches to understand that specific intervals relate to race pace are the must of distance training and might be done at race pace approx and not "faster than race pace, But well we were in the late 60s, early 70s, actually we are in the early 10s of the XXI Century, it´s supposed that training methodology did improve from the past to present refinement.

*looks around*

Oh, Cabral turned the thread into some diatribe against a ghost? Again?

Well, guess I'll cut and paste Canova's post into my Canova folder and hit the road...

Alan Bennet wrote:

HRE wrote:

I don't wonder what Lydiard would have made of it. I've discussed it with him.

Okay, I'll bite. What did Lydiard have to say about Renato?

Missed this one. The answer isn't too exciting.

By the time people were getting to know hat Canova was doing Arthur was well past the point of paying much attention to who was running well or who was coaching them unless he had some sort of personal connection. I'm not positive he knew who Renato was and if he did would have lumped him into the general category of people who coach East Africans. His thinking about coaching East Africans was that the athletes themselves were mostly responsible for their results and as long as you did something reasonable with them as a coach you'd get very good results.

The "cake" analogy works to some extent but there are different kinds of cakes and certain non-replaceable elements. If you want a German chocolate cake you need different ingredients than if you want a yellow cake and if you don't recognize that you won't have the cake you want. Sure, you can have a bit more of one thing and a bit less of another in your German chocolate cake and yours can be a bit different than someone else's or from previous ones you baked and it will still be a German chocolate cake. But if you leave out the chocolate you aren't getting a German chocolate cake. If you leave out the flour you aren't getting any cake.

Similarly, there are elements that are part of almost all distance training programs. For over fifty years now, the best distance runners have run a lot of miles, run daily or more, done long runs, intervals, steady runs at or near race pace, maybe some hill reps, etc. But you can find plenty examples of runners who have succeeded without including all of these elements. Clayton and Clarke didn't do intervals or hill reps. Jack Foster usually ran only once a day and 5-6 times a week. Bill Baillie finally got under 4:00 for the mile after years of trying by NOT doing reps at his hoped for race pace. It would be like leaving out the chocolate and still getting a German chocolate cake.

I've never criticized Canova's coaching here. NEVER. I think he's very good at what he does and there are MANY more things he's written here that I agree with than things I'd argue. I just don't think that he's got a non-traditional approach to training and I can't recall that he's ever said he has. Other posters here, including whoever started this thread have done so at times. He's taken elements that have been around for a long time and adapted them to the athletes he has now which is what any good coach will do. When he talks about spending 10-12 years building a big aerobic I'm nodding as hard as I can while simultaneously wondering if all the people here who want to "do Canova training" are really thinking that they're going to spend at least a decade running pile of miles or of they're just meaning that they want to go out and hammer themselves on long runs or with massive numbers of repeat kilometers that will look really impressive when they show their diaries to their friends.

Anyway, it's all pretty repetitive and I'm planning on moving along. In the unlikely event that someone really wants to respond to this post feel free to drop me an e-mail.

Sad Typical Letsrun Poster wrote:

Lost a lot of respect for HRE on this thread...

Why would you lose respect for HRE? He is stating his views and opinions like a pro, staying positive and not descending into childish name calling. I like these discussions between Canova and HRE and others.

I wish Antonio didn't feel the need to call people stupid though. That makes him look like a typical LR poster instead of the professional, knowledgeable coach that he is.

I agree with this HRE. Flour, water and something to make it sweet are irreplaceable.

The wheel has been turned and its been turning for a long time, sunshine.

Woodchopper wrote:

The wheel has been turned and its been turning for a long time, sunshine.

The wheel only turned for the fools and the cheaters.

If you are a race horse owner and you run your horse too fast too early in the preparation process you can easily waste your investment money. So this doesn't happen. Simple.

Yet in track and field this happens regularly, allowing an athlete only a few years of real improvement. This is possible because coaches aren't investing their own money in their athletes. Plus there are a lot of runners. Conclusion is a lot of burnout.

Canova wouldn't survive in horse racing. He would kill horse after horse and soon the 'owners' would be looking for a better investment than him.

HRE wrote:

When he talks about spending 10-12 years building a big aerobic I'm nodding as hard as I can while simultaneously wondering if all the people here who want to "do Canova training" are really thinking that they're going to spend at least a decade running pile of miles or of they're just meaning that they want to go out and hammer themselves on long runs or with massive numbers of repeat kilometers that will look really impressive when they show their diaries to their friends.

HRE you raise a good point. I'm not sure I've ever seen this question asked of Renato, so maybe you and/or he could respond with your thoughts. What do you view as building your aerobic house/base? Surely it's not just loads of slow miles, and therefore some of these sessions, by their very nature of being (high-end) aerobic, will add to your house? Is it simply a case that in the earlier days that you can do these kinds of sessions, but maybe at a smaller volume, or, in the case of the longer runs, closer to 90% than 95%? Essentially, is it a case that you can stick true to the principles of this (or whichever methodology you choose to follow) confident in the knowledge that as you progress the loads you will be able to absorb will increase until you can eventually/hopefully manage something approaching the levels of a Kirui or Mosop (for example)?

You really ought to be less interested in what Galen Rupp is doing NOW and more interested in what he did 2-4 years ago.

Renato, are you going to post the training of Abel Kirui and your other runners in preparation for the Olympics?