Lydiard Imitations

Not the mathematics, I am solid there. I actually already understood the mathematics of your resistance ratio, but it was nice to see your summary. Maybe it shows to some others that you have thought deeply about it. I already presumed that you did.

My doubts were about this: "This shows without NO DOUBT that Rui got the best training method from the point of view of the AEROBIC CONDITION from all the three. ..." This time I added some emphasis so you can see more directly why I used the word doubt.

The thing I am not sure about is whether maybe some OTHER QUALITY is better trained in the modern methodology. Like running economy.

* Although Lydiard athletes did do weight training, Lydiard himself was not too keen on it. Weight training gives big benefits to running economy. From what I have read, supplementary exercises are always done in modern training.

* Also faster running is very good for improving running economy. Lydiard knew that and advised "speed development" work year round. Maybe the modern training has more of this type of work early, and so does even better.

* From my own experience, running economy is VERY IMPORTANT for the marathon, and when I *die* at the end of the marathon, it is because my hip flexors can no longer lift my knees. If I ran more economically, perhaps with a shorter lever, then my hip flexors would last longer at the same speed.

So this last point is why I raised the question of specificity of running economy. If for various race distances the running economy is different, and its percentage contribution to overall time is different, that would throw off your calculation about the aerobic contribution.

Thank you, that answers the question.

Aside to all the other posters here:

Some of the heat Antonio is taking is not deserved. In my opinion people are quick to suggest he does not understand this-and-that, and are slow in making much effort to understand HIM.

rekrunner wrote:

When Antonio says "index of resistance", he is comparing short race times with longer race times (mathematically dividing one by the other) to see how much we slow down. If we slow down a lot, that means poor aerobic condition. If we slow down a little, that means a great aerobic condition (and maybe poor speed)

A problem with this sort of approach is when you start to include results from events which are outside the athlete's specialist events. To give an obvious example: El Guerrouj did not really specialize in the 800m and thus if you compare his 800m PB with his 1500m PB you will have an index of resistance that will most likely overestimate his aerobic condition.

I don't mind poking holes in his stuff because of the way it is presented. Add to this the nature of many of his 'snide' comments and he just gets people annoyed. It worsens when the same arguments are laid out over and over. Perhaps you just need time? :p

But i like your points on economy. Strength development helping economy, faster work helping economy, and possibly technical training (as in the hop flexor situation you mentioned) to help economy.

When i take a look at Lydiard himself, with Snell and Baillie and the other 'labourer' types under Lydiard's care, i see muscle bound individuals. No need for much weight training for distance running in them. Lydiard came from rugby mind you. Cerutty almost died and rebuilt himself, yet he always remained a wiry type. Elliot was skinny and weak and may well have gained a lot from strength training. So the two different camps required two different things.

For me strength for distance is all about managing your own bodyweight more and more effectively. If you could be a gymnast and a runner at the same time things would be quite a bit easier i imagine.

The speed work effect. Training is about suppression and recovery. When we suppress we fall away from our normal capacity and when we do speed work we can reaffirm this normal capacity (or instead we highlight how far away from normal we have allowed ourselves to get to). How much effort does it take to keep reaffirming this normal capacity? Far less than multiple times a week all year round i reckon.

Technical changes - i would say this is the biggest area of improvement. Pure fatigue can help technique and thus economy, however, fatigue with the right ideas is far more effective.

And finally - wouldn't it be proportional? (re:differetn distances)

Euro Runner wrote:

A problem with this sort of approach is when you start to include results from events which are outside the athlete's specialist events. To give an obvious example: El Guerrouj did not really specialize in the 800m and thus if you compare his 800m PB with his 1500m PB you will have an index of resistance that will most likely overestimate his aerobic condition.

Good point. As Antonio said, though, the analysis is statistically more valid when done over a lot of runners.

My point was that you are overestimating SOMETHING, and aerobic condition is only one (the most likely?!) candidate.

Still, it can be very interesting to apply to your own times. I see it as similar to the performance predictions. For example, on McMillan's Running Calculator, his predictions come with the qualification that you MUST have trained for the new distance.

gypsy wrote:

And finally - wouldn't it be proportional? (re:differetn distances)

Don't ask me! If I knew the answer I wouldn't have asked Antonio. His reply is that there is no agreement. I don't see any reason why it should be proportional, that's just one possible solution out of many.

One thing is for sure: At the end of a half-marathon I can KICK. At the end of a full marathon I am pretty pathetic. I will have to calculate my own resistance ratio, but in any case it is poor. Maybe that's 100% because of inadequate aerobic condition, but I suspect not.

I can't see how you could create a formula about it but i'm sure some mathematician will try one day. However, i can see it being basically proportional with other factors influencing.

I wonder about your marathon dilemma. Have you consulted Lydiard :)

gypsy wrote:

I wonder about your marathon dilemma. Have you consulted Lydiard :)

Yes. According to the medium, he says I need to do hill circuits to improve my running form. The modern training guides disagree. They indicate I need long intervals for specific endurance. "Eyewash", says Lydiard.

If pacemakers don't factor in attaining record times, why do races use them?

He said no one answered -- so I answered. Now someone has.I have to confess to a slight misunderstanding on my part -- you said "wall to wall pacemaking", and I understood "wall of pacemakers", having in mind recent Berlin marathon.Of course pacemaking is a factor, and that's why races use them.Nevertheless, I was talking about specifically about the male pacemakers for Paula's 2:15, and just recall her repeated insistence that she did not use them as wind shields, although having company may have contributed to an optimal pace.I guess it was still a contributing factor, but not a 2 minute factor.My doubts for the sub 2:05 marathon runners being aided comes mainly from the sheer number of East Africans who have done it, or can do it. If it were drugs, or for that manner, modern training, why would these generic factors overwhelming favor East Africans?

HRE wrote:

If pacemakers don't factor in attaining record times, why do races use them?

Just to further clarify my understanding, he's using it as a tool to measure current state of fitness, rather than describing some aspect of individual training sessions and races. You can think of your fitness parameterized by two variables, speed and resistance (to losing speed), where speed measures "anaerobic" fitness and "resistance" measures aerobic fitness. It's a better indicator than a single race time.I think Jack Daniels also says something similar, when he says a training goal is to be able to maintain a higher percentage of your VO2max.I never posted as "trackhead", but I did post before as "The Light" and "Voice of Ray-san".

gypsy wrote:

Ok so we have 'our' resistance to slowing down as duration increases, as opposed to some resistance in the 'session' itself. This is different, but both still differ from the idea of overcoming our own resistance to continuing. If the resistance is in us and not within the session, then is it overcoming our own resistance, or is it applying our own resistance to prevent slowing down. I like the positive spin version better i think.

ps by the way did you used to go under the alias trackhead?

Yes you have to understand the context. There may be other reasons for a poor index.

gypsy wrote:

i forgot the second bit

so we have horwill's 4 sec rule, hadd's loose versus tight and this index ratio of resistance, all to indicate something or another about whether someone has poor aerobic conditioning, or maybe poor speed development, or maybe their talent lies more towards one end of the spectrum or another. Too many or's and all of them dependent on the training structure anyway. What do we do when we have a Rod Dixon, the 'decathlete' of distance running, and Juantorena or Kratochvilova as speed demons or Viren as an endurance king. As it's been said before, it is too difficult to determine anything with this sort of analysis don't you think?

rekrunner wrote:

Like Hilversum said, the "index of resistance" in this sense is more like a measure of endurance or stamina. Maybe the best way to think about it is how much we can resist slowing down as the distances get longer.

When Antonio says "index of resistance", he is comparing short race times with longer race times (mathematically dividing one by the other) to see how much we slow down. If we slow down a lot, that means poor aerobic condition. If we slow down a little, that means a great aerobic condition (and maybe poor speed).

Horwill used a 4 second rule to show something similar, and Hadd, in the long thread talked about loose relationships versus tight relationship of race times.

Problems of linguistic are a big deal. This is problematic while translate technical issues, like is this index.

I understand that for those which the language is English American it´s hard to accept and undertand what is the meaning of resistance in latin languages as portuguese, french, spanish (Castellan), italian, and Romanian that are.

It´s not a question of name, you may call it “X” index, you may call it ratio, you may call it percent of resistance if you calcul de percent of decrease in pace (speed), or you may call it index of endurance or index of stamina, I accept that nomenclature for the british language.

Yes, we are all just exercising our democratic right to express our opinions. Just so there is no doubt, I highly respect your opinions on training methods. But it's other non-training opinions which seem to be occasionally not well supported, and sometimes directly contradicted, by your very own references, which lead me to certain expressed doubts.I can agree with you completely if the article was really a book of 300 pages and the title was "The complete history of periodization in track and field", and the readers were student coaches. But such a history lesson runs the risk of obscuring the main purpose of the article, that highlights some basic differences between two popular periodization methods. The best examples of each method is to use popular, well-known advocates of each system, that the readers can identify with. Maybe it's bad teaching of history, but it's better writing that gets the intended message across to more if the intended audience.Aaah. But now I see the problem. You concluded "important" when what is written is "most influential". Maybe Matveiev is historically more important, but he did not influence as many athletes to use linear periodization as Lydiard. Therefore, it is not a lie (nor ignorance, nor obscuration, nor ...) to say Lydiard was more influential. It was Lydiard who upset the world in Rome in 1960, not Matveiev. That is what and when people took notice. Regarding spheres of influence, the Soviets (and East Germans) had a very local influence, and didn't make much of an impact in distance running events to the outside world. While their pioneering and exhaustive discoveries were very important, they went largely unnoticed by the rest of the world, until someone could put the techniques into practice with proven success at the world level.If anything, when looking at the term "most influential theorist", the bigger problem for me is not the words "most influential", but "theorist". He became "most influential" by what he practiced, not by theory.

Actually Väätäinen is a man with interest in politics as well as a kind of "personal coach" and also a painter. He lives in south of Spain – Andalucía, near Malaga city I guess.

Yes he was a man of extremes, but that kind of persons are necessary either. He used to train like an animal, sometimes 200miles a week, he used to drink and eat quite a lot, and he got many interest in the opposite sex always. He does twin daughters i guess.

Yes. I think you (and Renato) get more criticism then you deserve, because of misunderstandings due to not speaking the same language. I try to clarify obvious misunderstandings that I see (and I see some, but not maybe all), so we criticizing each other for what we meant to say.I've learned that outside America, even native English speakers often don't understand each other. "gypsy" has a different version of English then the Yanks and the Brits, which might explain some of his obsession or confusion with some terms. He probably thinks "Durex" is a brand of cellophane tape. Imagine the confusion that can cause.

Antonio Cabral wrote:

Problems of linguistic are a big deal. This is problematic while translate technical issues, like is this index.

I understand that for those which the language is English American it´s hard to accept and undertand what is the meaning of resistance in latin languages as portuguese, french, spanish (Castellan), italian, and Romanian that are.

It´s not a question of name, you may call it “X” index, you may call it ratio, you may call it percent of resistance if you calcul de percent of decrease in pace (speed), or you may call it index of endurance or index of stamina, I accept that nomenclature for the british language.

Alan Bennet wrote:

Yes. According to the medium, he says I need to do hill circuits to improve my running form. The modern training guides disagree. They indicate I need long intervals for specific endurance. "Eyewash", says Lydiard.

"Eyewash" must be the NZ word for "hogwash"?

None of this my apply to you or your marathon dilemma, but when I one day woke up and realized that I didn't have much time left if I wanted to run a "fast" marathon before turning fifty, I found that I faced a very similar dilemma. but I believe these three worked for me:

(1) A set of giant walking lunges, 10-15 steps up an incline + high knees walk 30-40 steps up the same incline->jog back down->giant walking lunges + heel to the butt walk->jog back down-> giant walking lunges all the way up->walk back down and take a short drink pause. Repeat 3-4 times once a week. (The giant walking lunges are sometimes called "borzovsteg" in Swedish.)

(2) Short steep hill sprints. 10-12 x 10-12 seconds of maximum attack->long slow walk back, i.e. a 2-3 min recovery. Once a week. You can do them either after a shortish run or after a warmup and follow them with 2-3 km of fast running after 5 min or so. (This workout stems from Renato Canova.)

(3) Calf raises. On stairs, one leg at a time, 100 for each leg and every day. (This recommendation comes from Anders Gärderud, who has also said that he discovered what it took to be a champion when he spent his first training camp with some Finnish runners - so let's say this reply is not completely off-topic because there is a Lydiardian connection of some kind, after all.)

Hilversum,

Thanks for the tips, they all look good. The giant lunges I didn't know about, so I learned something new. Thanks again.

Being pathetic presents no dilemma to me. Haha. I run, I slow down, no problem! I am one of those that Renato Canova described as "weak everywhere". I just wanted to relate my personal experience to the training discussion at hand.

Antonio Cabral wrote:

Actually Väätäinen is a man with interest in politics as well as a kind of "personal coach" and also a painter. He lives in south of Spain – Andalucía, near Malaga city I guess.

Yes he was a man of extremes, but that kind of persons are necessary either. He used to train like an animal, sometimes 200miles a week, he used to drink and eat quite a lot, and he got many interest in the opposite sex always. He does twin daughters i guess.

He returned from his sort of voluntary exile 5-6 years ago and today he lives just across the street from me. He got elected in the Finnish parliament last year and although I wouldn't have voted for his party but he didn't appear extremist in his politics.

Your description is very much true to the man. (He is still married to his wife of 40 years, though.) Apart from his gold medals, he is also known for his legendary answer when he was interviewed on live TV and he was asked why a normal person who cannot aspire to records and victories on the race track should start running: "So that he could eat, drink and f*** with greater gusto!" (The last word was very much taboo back then, but the three rhyme in Finnish.)

Antonio Cabral wrote:

..he got many interest in the opposite sex always. He does twin daughters i guess.

Antonio, you have provided the perfect example and if it was deliberate, I salute your brilliance in English.

To "do" a female implies, er, exactly what Vaatainen liked to do to females. See many threads by teenagers on this forum.

"Doing twin daughters", well, a reasonable goal for an ambitious man, but hopefully not his own daughters ;-)