Lydiardism or Coe-Martinism???

Dr. E:

I would NOT necessarily say "large" anaerobic component--maybe some. It's more of a mechanical and muscle stimulus thing. But not anaerobic.

Nobby wrote:

Dr. E:

I would NOT necessarily say "large" anaerobic component--maybe some. It's more of a mechanical and muscle stimulus thing. But not anaerobic.

Nobby,

In the program I advise here, which is a multi-paced program, the use of consistent harder hilly runs in addition to tempo runs and steady state efforts form the "base" for any possible benefit from performing future anaerobic sessions (1500 pace and faster) by building the aerobic component of fast twitch fibers. Coe/Martin called this anaerobic conditioning. Canova doesn't use the same term but does referred to long steady uphill runs as influencing fast oxidative fibers to become more active particularly in middle distance runners who do these types of longer hilly runs, hence the feeling on my part that these types of runs have a large anaerobic component. The reason you do them is to influence the anaerobic muscle fibers to take on aerobic charateristics. Lydiard called this type of work base training if I'm not mistaken.

Whatever it's referred to, I don't believe anyone in either camp would argue that a winter spent running consistently higher miles in the hills at solid efforts results in anything but an athlete ready to roll come the spring.

Joe

Arthur did make the point that you would get faster by doing anaerobic training, but only for about 6 weeks or so until the benefits were maximized. So, he'd ask, why do anaerobic work all year? But, as Nobby pointed out, he was ok with different paced work. Not all the distance runs were done at the same pace. He was ok with fartlek during the base phase, as long as it didn't become anaerobic fartlek. He was ok with "fast relaxed strides" at distances like 100 yards. So there was year round multi-paced running in the Lydiard system, but it took different forms at different times. As to why 100 mpw vs. 80, why not 100? More miles, more aerobic development.

Glassnosed, very good point about the terrain in New Zealand. I've thought of that myself many times. But I don't

think the terrain was the only reason the system worked. It's been too widely used. Tom O'Hara used it in Chicago. Billy Mills used it in his preps for the 1964 US Trials and Olympics. The terrain in Finland is not that similar to that in New Zealand, it reminded me more of Maine. Tom Hansen of denmark used it to make the 1500 finals of the 1972 Olympics. Denmark has, from my observations, nothing that really resembles a hill. Trevor Vincent and Tony Cook used it in Australia and they did their weekday runs around a horse racecourse as did Vern Walker, one of Lydiard's early guys, in New Zealand.

Skuj, the ORIGINAL Skuj,

In my heart you're the essence of Skujness, whatever name you end up using, and there will be no other Skuj.

Nobby wrote:

Dr. E:

I would NOT necessarily say "large" anaerobic component--maybe some. It's more of a mechanical and muscle stimulus thing. But not anaerobic.

Do not discount the effects of altitude. With reduced oxygen availability, the body will rely more on anaerobic systems to produce the necessary energy for these long runs. I am not suggesting that the aerobic contributions take a back seat, only that there is an increased anaerobic contribution compared to running at lower altitudes. Increased anaerobic conditioning is an undeniable benefit of training at altitude.

The real Skuj,

Yes the Queen does say no to pot smoking FBI members. But who had a face like a frying pan?

Skuj post up as Professor Skuj and register it.

Nobby,

I was Dr. E,. but that recent Dr. E is a new Dr. E who registered his name. I did not register it myself...so you are answering someone else. I will have to register a name....hmmmm.

nobby wrote: "What are we trying to achieve by introducing "multi-paces"? Just so you can get the mechanics at faster pace--or closer to race pace--going?"

now that is damn good question. the book called training distance runners by coemartin spends a great deal of time on this question, first in theory then in practical terms. some hoser has my book now, but in a nutshell, they argue that harmonious intertwining of the various stimuli over a microcycle is much better from a physiological point of view for development of all systems required for maximising your peak race. or something like that.

i know that my attraction to that particular system is out of exhileration and fun. i may not have the patience for the great lydiard blocks. i get stale unless i vary things up every week. coemartin say that my gut desires are in fact the correct thing top do.

hre wrote: "As to why 100 mpw vs. 80, why not 100? More miles, more aerobic development."

but where is the balance? why 100? why not 150? what if slightly less volume and more intensity is applied? does this automatically mean less aerobic development? can 6x800m at 5000m pace with short recovery contribute to aerobic development? would 6x800m be better than a 10 miler on some days, in order to make a balance, a different type of stress, and contribute to an engine that fires on all cyclinders, not letting any important zone lay dormant? i ramble...

coemartin argue that the 4 zones require constsnt attention and development. the anaerobic system should not be seen as something that can be quickly maxed for a few weeks after months of not attending to it.

discuss.

Dr. Exag wrote:

Nobby,

I was Dr. E,. but that recent Dr. E is a new Dr. E who registered his name. I did not register it myself...so you are answering someone else. I will have to register a name....hmmmm.

Umm, I think Nobby was answering my post. If he answered you, then he'd be answering someone else.

[quote]HRE wrote:

Arthur did make the point that you would get faster by doing anaerobic training, but only for about 6 weeks or so

__________________

That's a very useful point.

The nature of these discussions condenses into each of us speaking from a mix of personal experience and what we've seen and read. And I believe HRE's point summarizes an experience many of us have had, especially as schoolboy runners -- I know I did.

Take a typical 15, 16, or 17 year old who is generally active or playing a number of sports, have him show up for track season (the classic kid might be one who has played a lot of soccer, and thus is not in bad shape, although not truly "marathon trained"); the whole prep season may be just 9-10 weeks long, so the coach gives them six weeks of intervals, then three weeks of track meets, a district meet, and the season is over. Quite a few kids will improve a good deal on this, from say a 2:25 800m down to a 2:05 800m (or maybe 5:10 to 4:35 mile), and their take home memory is that intervals is a good way to improve. And it is . . . but only for several weeks. Then they get frustrated when trying it longer leads to progressively slower times or a failure to improve. I think this was outlined beautifully in Ron Daws book (Self Made Olympian) when he described his fairly rotten high school and college track experiences.

My own take on Coe-vs-Lydiard is that the two were more similar than given credit for. Coe talked a lot about getting a "quality base" and ran his winter basework at a good clip (outlined nicely in Kenny Moore's article on Coe in Best Efforts). Lydiard's basework used the now-quaint schema of 7/8 pace, 6/8 pace and so forth (Nobby can clarify it better than I can), which added up to something similar to multi-pace training, even in basework. Both Coe and Lydiard used a lot of hills; Lydiard famously put it into a specific 4-week block, but I don't think it was THAT different from Coe, who used a LOT of hills.

Coe's addition of weight training is something similar to hills, but I've always thought of it as an approach fairly specific to the individual for Coe: Coe had great gifts, but he was skinny as a rail with very little muscle strength, and weight training was not wrong for him. It would've been a bad idea for Snell or Prefontaine, either of whom was strong as a house without once lifting a barbell. I think Lydiard would've approved of weights for Coe (even if he never would have suggested it himself), even though most middle-distance stars didn't need it.

P.S. Well, on the bright side I did register this name years ago. I may be a dimwit, but there should be no confusion about who is dimming up the place.

Why not 150? Some of Lydiard's guys certainly did that much for stretches of time. Others, Snell comes to mind here, couldn't have handled that much so they didn't do anywhere near it. Snell was often in the 70-80 range. But when he did 10 weeks of hundreds he had his best year ever. It really comes down to what each athlete can handle and benefit from. There's no magic in a certain number, but yes, I would think that trading off 10 miles a week for more intense running might compromise aerobic development if that intensity was anaerobic.

When Jason Lunn or Brian Berryhill are able to run 3:55 and 3:56 for the mile on ONE track session (Lunn) or ONE time trial at the distance (Berryhill), I'm skeptical about the need to work on anaerobic work year round.

As it usually seems to do, I think it comes down to "Horses for Courses" (for you anglophiles). What works is what works, at least as far as specifics of the individual and coach. The general seasonal progression of higher>lower mileage, more aerobic>more anaerobic, more general conditioning pace>more race-specific pace, etc., etc.. holds up when compared for both systems. Whether an individual responds better to a more heterogeneous, speed-centric (Coe) vs. more homogeneous, volume-centric (Lydiard) mixture of paces during each stage is something that each coach and athlete must sort out for themselves.

As a personal example, like many on this thread I developed in my early years on a Lydiard-type system, and ran well when I was healthy, but found injuries/health problems to be a limiter (not necessarily the fault of Lydiard's system). Many years later, by trying a more Coe-type pattern, I have been able to smooth a lot of the transitions, stay fresher and healthier overall, and improve considerably in the shorter distances, while maintaining my longer distance levels. Of course, a long career of base mileage can only help my more recent success with less mileage and more heterogeneity. For athletes I coach, I try to feel out for each one what works best in the "ecosystem" of their (post-collegiate) training milieu.

This evolutionary process is something that I think we each must experience and is driven by a desire to overcome performance plateaus, setbacks and all of the other challenges that keep training from being a staid, cookie-cutter dispensation, instead a PROCESS that must evolve and keep moving forward. Ongoing learning is essential, and that is the value of threads like these.

I've discussed the benefits of running over hilly courses during conditioning with Peter Snell before. This is something Lydiard never quite addressed because such environment was more or less given to him; not sorted out. Many people, myself included, had made a mistake of making a drastic change from one phase to another and ended up getting injured. It didn't quite happened to Lydiard runners, I feel, because of their opportunity to be exposed to hilly running courses.

When you look at strictly anaerobic capacity development, whehter Lydiard was correct or not (because I don't think he really knew what they were and I don't really think we really know exactly what it is), it probably wouldn't take that much longer than 4~6 weeks. However, I feel the true benefit of multi-paced training principles is getting the body, mainly muscular-skelton as well as tendons and ligaments, get prepared for faster training; i.e. workouts to develop anaerobic capacity to maximum. Hilly terrains over long runs prepare you for the hill phase; all these hill running prepares you for faster repeats; and so on. Forgotten, your chance of getting injured is higher--more of the reason than perhaps just simply high mileage running.

Whether you call a type of training that stimulates "anaerobic" fibers, I assume you meant here fast twitch fibers or white muscle fibers, an anaerobic training or whatever; the point in the Lydiard program is that once you start to mix aerobic training, a type of workout to develop stamina, and anaerobic training, a type of workout to create buffer against oxygen debt fatigue; then you will create inbalance in the program. In 1984 when I was visiting Lydiard, he filmed me to do those famous (or infamous) hill exercises. Of course, he was just standing there, holding a camera, and yelling at me to keep going up and quickly come down and go up again... I got quite winded. Afterwards I told him that I was getting into oxygen debt. He said, "Going up the hill, you'll get somewhat anaerobic but you are NOT trying to make it anaerobic..." Going up that famous 3-mile long uphill on Waitak 22-mile course, yes, you'll get tired and start to breathe hard. But you don't want to make it a race up that hill and end up huffing and puffing with lactic acid coming out of your ears.

Like I said, I don't think Lydiard would opposed to multi-paced training at all--he was covering that part mainly from all the hills his runners ran plus occasional fartlek as well as all the rugged cross country courses they ran. These were ALL very important components of general conditioning--particularly conditioning of legs. What he would have opposed to is creating too much anaerobic state in training prematurely. You can run 100~150m at 1500m race pace if you'd like with plenty of recovery in between; you shouldn't get too anaerobic. You start doing some 400m repeats with short recovery; then you start to get into anaerobic state. Someone asked why he didn't like mixing them up. One of the basis of his training is the principle that "your aerobic capacity is the governing factor to your performance level." You can run your workout fairly fast and you might end up running only 3 miles because you started out too fast. Whereas, if you control your speed; then you can run 10~12 miles at strong steady pace. You'll have better benefit from the latter when it comes down to developing your aerobic capacity. You can still do it; but in his eyes, that's not the optimal way to peak performances.

Well, all I have to do is email Nobby and he will know by my signature who I am , the orginal Dr. E.

But you have it okay!

It's a compliment that you want to be me - what a challenge, just ask the original Skuj., who I and Nobby both kow the real name of as well...

So he was answering YOUR comments, but he thought he was answering me and my comments...

"Horses for courses." You've gotta like that phrase and of course, you're right.

Spider makes a point that's well worth noticing. When I was visiting Arthur in NZ in 1991, we got to talking about the Coes who had visited Arthur not too long before. Arthur told me that what Coe had done wasn't ALL that different from what he, Arthur, had people do. But, he told me, most people who talked about the "Coe System" were really only talking about part of the Coe system which in its entirety paid more attention to aerobic work than most people knew.

It would be easy to shrug that comment off as Arthur just wanting to make everything agree with his ideas, but several years later there was a letter from Peter Coe in Track and Field News in which he said essentially the same thing about his system as Arthur did, i.e., that they paid a LOT of attention to aerobic development. Some time after that, someone started a thread here in which he said he'd talked extensively with Coe who also said that he, Coe, had done a lot more volume than people recognized.

Spider's point was that there were more similarities than differences between the two systems and I think he's right. In fact, I think that most succesful running training is more alike than different now. I know that Bill Baillie spent a good bit of time in Australia training with Percy Cerutty and later said that he didn't see many differences between what Cerutty did and what Lydiard did.

Last year at Boston, I got together with coach Sakaguchi from Japan (his team has 5 sub-2:10 marathon runners) and this magazine guy from US. He asked Sakaguchi what his basic training philosophy was. Sakaguchi said, "First, you build aerobic base; then you work on speed." When further asked about specifics, he basically said, "Go read Lydiard's book." If people think he doesn't do "Lydiard" simply because he doesn't specifically do hill phase; they don't understand the principles of the system.

hey lookathat - 6 pages - excellent thread, 'cept for the occasional troll. glassnost, i really enjoyed your especially excellent post. you stated the case very well.

an isolated part of this discussion: young runners. when developing, is it wisest to do basework mostly, or could that wait until later on? in the meantime, would concentraion on running form through multipacing work best in these early years? swimmers don't start with hundreds of lengths. they get the technique down first, and this involves drills and such. is running similar? would some 100m strides and hill runs and all kinds of things "multi tier" suit the 15 year old best?

another opinion: coemartinhorwill look at success at a distance by "moving up" (the 1500 specialist will almost certainly put a lot of energy into 800 specific things while building up) while lydiardites "move down" (all lydiardites believe in "marathon training" phase for 800 and up). do you agree that this is a fundamental view from the two methodologies?

Good discussion.

One of the things that people sometimes overlook when they look at a schedule and see (made-up example) 12 x 400m at 5000m pace during the base phase is ... what are the recoveries between the fast efforts?

5000m pace doesn't feel that fast for the first 400m, but do a lot of them without a lot of recovery and that's a tough workout that does affect your ability to get out the next day and do a long run.

If you put 3 minutes jogging between each 400m repeat you will be nearly fully recovered, but have achieved your goal of working at a fast race pace during the base phase. You will not bring yourself to a racing peak by having long recoveries, but with short recoveries you will.

By contrast, if you do 400s starting every 2 minutes, that's a completely different workout even if the 400s are at the same pace.

This is probably an individual thing. Some people get 'rusty' with their speed more than others, and may genuinely need to work faster paces all year round, while others can access their speed with a couple of weeks work. It also depends on your racing schedule, what do you need or want to be able to do?

But the recoveries matter hugely for understanding those workouts, not only within the workout but within the week and month they're in.

Asceticist wrote:

wannabekila wrote:

Sorry if i'm repeating but ...

The pudding:

Coe - One success as a coach

Lydiard - Many, many.

You know nothing! Even if Coe did coach only one runner, he'd still have the most world records. Take your pudding and go home. Don't come back until you know your facts.

firstly WR are not the holy grail, Olympic medals are.

But on a WR count the score is not a one sided as you would think. Discounting the 1k event - its was seldom (never) run before Coe's time - Coe has 2 800m, 1 1500m and 3 mile WRs. Snell has 1 800m and 2 mile WRs. However there is strong association between Lydiard and Walker & Quax (1 WR ea) and an even stronger one between Lydiard and the Finnish athletes of the 70s most notably Viren (2 WRs).

Furthermore, the 80s was an era infatuated with WRs. In the snell era the ultimate goal was medals.

On the medal score Lydiard rates very highly.

I my opinion, the ultimate test or 'pudding' is the number of world class athletes developed/nurtured. Coe senior does not rate highly on this count.