LYDIARD OR DANIELS?

The original plan was for Nobby to wear a Godzilla costume and eat sushi while he bounded. Arthur nixed it because of the sushi. But the Godzilla costume was a real loss.

800west, glad you chimed in. Maybe we can hook up the next time I'm in NZ.

Derderian-san & HRE:

Year, I love you both too!

Tom:

It's like whenever I think of Allison Roe's Boston win, you're right next to her!

HRE:

The problem with Godzilla costume was; we couldn't find size 52 Japanese ASICS racing flats to put it over Godzilla's big @## feet!

Please Nobby, post the video of your hill bounding. I'd love to see it. Thanks

Ronin:

My apology to you; this is totally my fault. It is 2AM and I'm still up, printing all the Lydiard Foundation portfolio, putting it all together in the file for the meeting we are having in a few weeks. All these ground-work really takes much longer than I'd imagine (I shouldn't be wasting my time checking out the message board!?). I promise you; I'd post it up on the website,

www.fivecircles.org

before Christmas. This would be my Chirstmas present to all young Tom Derderian out there who might have a nightmare after seeing it!

Thanks Nobby. Now we can't wait for the Christmas, just like it is supposed to be :)

I was just reading this very scientific training schedule written by one of well-established individual (not you, jtupper, though I’d love to hear from you on your opinion on what I’m about to say…). There’s lactate threshold runs (either continuous or repetitions), there’s VO2Max intervals, there’s lactate tolerance intervals…. Each workout consists of explicit speed description as well as recovery time/length. And when you look around, there are a lot more fancy names and terminologies that I can’t even remember or explain or even guess its abbreviation. I wanted to see which one of Lydiard schedule collates to each of these specific workouts. Without thorough checking, just by glancing at it, I really couldn’t find much in the Lydiard schedule. Lydiard basically prescribed famous (or infamous) ¼ effort, ½ effort and ¾ effort (occasional 7/8 effort) for everything. Most descriptive form of intervals (or repetitions) in the Lydiard schedule is either 20X200m or 20X400m with equal distance recovery jog—or basically, “run one fast and jog one…till you hit the wall.” I used to do my anaerobic training something like 8X520m. My friend asked me why 520; it’s because the stretch I used happened to be that length (on the residential road where there’s hardly any traffic). Why 8 times; it’s because that’s when I sort of hit the wall (I tended to do them too fast).

People argue that we are a lot more scientifically advanced; that we know what we are doing a lot more explicitly. If so, how come Snell’s record still stands as NZ’s national record? It’s been over 40 years!! Some people argue Snell is pretty much the only athlete Lydiard coached to such fame (in middle distance). John Davies didn’t do too badly and those who followed; be it Rod Dixon or Dick Quax or even John Walker all didn’t do too badly either.

So here’s my question; has science really advanced us in actual performances? Or did it just add some gimmick (like many high-tech running shoes) or what Lydiard would have said, “eye-wash”? People love “eye-washes”. People love to see explicitly described sophisticated training schedules. Each day’s workout is laid out so precisely, with lots of abbreviations and % and numbers, that it takes a whole page to describe what to do. Looks very impressive, a lot more impressive than good-ol’ “Tuesday: repetition. Run one fast and jog one till you have had enough”, isn’t it? But has it really brought us fruits of performance? Or could this actually be responsible for the decline in top-level performance in this country (along with other scientifically adequate countries)? Do we know too much today to worry about pronation and supination and leg-length discrepancy and junk miles and over-training and iron-deficiency from high mileage and plantar wart and ingrown toe-nails and heart rate monitoring and high blood pressure and low sugar level and high ultraviolet ray and God knows what else!?

I believe scientific approach has made it “idiot-proof’; anybody can just input his/her own numbers (usually 5k time) and it creates his/her own workouts pretty explicitly. Great. But I feel that it also made them NOT to think any more. People don’t think for themselves and experiment any more. They don’t want to learn how to fish; they want to be fed with fish (except, of course, for Arthur, right HRE!?). I wonder how many of those who claim “I’ve read Lydiard’s book” actually read the content, trying to understand the principle, or just check out the schedule?

I alwways remember a quote from Rod Dixon in his prime where he said that he believed in hard/easy training but not necessarlily in following a hard day with an easy day. He said that sometimes he needed hard/easy, sometimes hard/easy/easy and at other times he could do hard/hard/hard/easy.

Today, hard/easy is pretty much dogma though hard/easy/easy is allowed. Almost anyone would say that you can't go hard/hard/hard/easy. But what if you recover from hard in less than a day and can go hard again and again? Why shouldn't you? I think you're right. We have the right ideas but too many runners think they have to fit themselves to the training rather than vice versa.

HRE,

I think that what you are talking about is what I call the "art" part of coaching. The truly successful coaches have the knack to KNOW when a runner can do 1 more repetition or 1 more hard workout. They do not follow some rigid pattern. That is where the coach provides his value to the athlete "mix" of inputs. By allowing that the runner is a human and therefore responds as an individual to the work being done.

Glenn

Nobby, thanks for all of the great posts, I have read them all and your insight is very valuable.

I like what you posted about... "I wonder how many of those who claim “I’ve read Lydiard’s book” actually read the content, trying to understand the principle, or just check out the schedule?

I think the same holds true for Daniels' work. I think a lot of people when they want to learn Daniels', simply buy the book and flip to the VDOT charts and the prescribed workouts. That's a crime, brother. You could have some decent teams doing this, but you're going to miss out on learning the principles of training. Lydiard and Daniels are stressing the same principles. Aerobic first, transition period (daniels uses reps even says hills may be more beneficial) then some interval-type anaerobic (3/4 speed) stuff finishing with a race specific sharpening period. People who don't read the program they are using will never understand HOW to use training in the form of the "art" that you are talking about. Daniels says in his book some people may need 140 miles a week, but the principles at 140 miles a week are still the same as they are at 50.

Lydiard was hitting all of the right training zones without the "scientific" terms, etc. Daniels just put meanining and research to why these paces, distances were effective. I mean, you can't discount what Lydiards athletes did, simply amazing. When you look at Daniels' Threshold pace, Interval pace, Repetition Pace and Fast Rep pace, they are equals to the 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 7/8 paces Lydiard talks about.

Anyways, you guys keep the info coming, it's great.

Nobby -- I enjoy this thread and frequently lurk, but I have nothing as useful as your, HRE's, jtupper's etc's comments, so I don't usually post.

But one thought from my end of the spectrum: like many, I am a recreational runner trying to do well but I rarely have time for more than one workout a day. And I usually run that at 5AM. With these restrictions, I've always enjoyed Arthur's roughly "go as you feel" approach with quarter efforts, time on your feet, and so forth -- a more specific program (do x distance at y pace on this day, etc) wouldn't work as well for us down here -- some mornings you roll out of bed at 4:45 and the best you can do is shuffle into a dark, rainy morning and hope it's helping.

I agree with the earlier poster that sometimes you can go hard-hard-hard-easy, just as some weeks I go hard-easy-easy-easy. Hey, you do what you can. But focusing on 60-90 minute weekday runs does let my mileage go up a bit.

Oh, an I too sometimes have "Nobby on the brain" running up hills. Will the final version come out sometime?

P.S. Likely won't be able to go to Boston this year. Have a good time, and good luck to Mrs. Nobby (I believe you inferred she was running it this year).

Great posts everyone. Just wanted to make a quick comment on the scientifics of training.

The ultimate science is that of trial and error. Finding out through experience what works and what doesn't. That's why I think there is far more value in studying succesful athletes/coaches training logs and such to find out what seemed to help or hinder them. From what I know lydiard experimented on himself and watched how his athletes reacted to different training and saw the effects it had on them.

Science and the study of physiology is just another tool to help understand what's going on when your running at such and such pace. Does it really matter if you know what's going on if you know that running 20 miles will help your endurance, or that doing hills will help your strength? Not really.

The bottom line is improvement. It doesn't matter what you call a workout, whether it's a scientific name, or go run 800s at 3/4 pace. As long as you know what your trying to accomplish during that workout and how it will help you improve, thats all that matters.

Names are just that names. Who cares what you call a workout as long as you know why your doing it.

Glen and SJM13...whatever, sorry, lost track of all the numbers. Why don't we just call you Bruce?

Agree completely with both of your posts.

It's Steve Magness. He is sickly good and I look for him to go under 4:00 this year, perhaps by a good margin. 4:01 in HS? Only others that fast which come to mind are Webb, Ryun, Sage, Jennings, and Riley (possibly Stember). That's a select club.

As Glenn McCarthy mentioned earlier, Lydiard was all for encouraging people to know basic fundamentals of physiology and mechanics of movement because that explains "WHYS" of each exercise. It is the matter of, as HRE described, whether you control that knowledge or technical mumbo-jumbo controls you.

It is like all that material on coach Tellez's mechanical principle of running; great information and it clears a lot of questions I had. But I'm not going to lose sleep over if the angle of my arm swing is 2 degrees off. The principles are all there.

Ah, Mike Stember! He is obviously someone who had a lot of talent. I personally liked his running style--beautiful form, seemingly very fast. I remember, though, him saying that, in order to be a better (or faster) 1500m runner, he's concentrating 800 for a season or two. I didn't know exactly what he meant training-wise but I felt he was going the opposite direction. If he wanted to become a better 1500m runner, he should have trained for 5000m. It may not work for EVERYONE but there have been way too many examples to ignore it.

I see we are getting to the 1k mark in postings !!.

This is unrelated to what Nobby has just mentioned but I was talking with a friend last night who intreprets Arthur's ideas well but has added his own little 'sayings'.

He was trying to explain an "Easy run" to athletes who have come from a background of to much fast work.

So he said "Go for a Daisy run, That is where you run along looking at the Daisies"

My 2c worth this early NZ morning !

Good morning Mr. Stevenson (Dr. Chandler):

I believe great Villanova coach, Jumbo Elliot, used to say something like "Slow down and smell the roses."

This guy contacted me this morning in regards to Japanese training (he's doing this thread at CoolRunning site). That got me thinking a bit. Basically I told him that Japanese are not doing anything special; they run a lot, they do a big portion relatively slow, they run in minimalist shoes. It's not the rice or raw fish they eat that's the secret. They run a lot of kilometers based on sound principle (mainly the Lydiardism, seriously, folks!). I shared with him almost a month worth of Chugoku Electronics (where Mr. Sakaguchi coaches about 12 athletes with 5 sub-2:10 runners) at the training camp in Nelson, NZ. Every 10 days or so, they did 40~45k tempo runs; intervals of 10X1k or 3X5k; but the rest were all the same: three times a day, 60 minutes jog--90 minutes jog--60 mintues jog. You cannot get any simplier than this.

The question is NOT to figure out what kind of training Japanese are doing. We seem to know all that. But the question is whether you're ready to accept that and try it yourself. I see the same trend with the Lydiardism here. For whatever the reason, people don't want to accept it. When Japanese are repeatedly going back to the basics (the Lydiardism), we constantly seek for some high-tech, scientific means to training. It was, incidentaly, coach Sakaguchi who gave me the line for the Foundation; "It is even more imporatnt now to revisit the Lydiard principle, to go back to the basics..." Five sub-2:10 marathon runners and the bronze medal from Helsinki world champs marathon. Do we still need to list who employs the Lydiard method today?

1000th post!

I get 10 t-shirts!!!

I can send you one. What size do you wear?