Lydiard Imitations

I would imagine that Lydiard's fractions of efforts for training intensities make intuitive sense to most runners. I have given the book away now, but I think that Keith Livingstone's "healthy intelligent training" had a table showing the training heart rates (based on the athletes' resting and maximal heart rares) that corresponded to Lydiard's fractions of efforts for training intensities. This should help if anyone is still confused about this conept.

"concept"

Euro Runner wrote:

I would imagine that Lydiard's fractions of efforts for training intensities make intuitive sense to most runners. I have given the book away now, but I think that Keith Livingstone's "healthy intelligent training" had a table showing the training heart rates (based on the athletes' resting and maximal heart rares) that corresponded to Lydiard's fractions of efforts for training intensities. This should help if anyone is still confused about this concept.

In your own terms how would you describe the different aerobic paces you run at for training purposes?

I know exactly where my copy of that book is but it is a plane trip away. Soon my precious soon :)

You should get someone in New Zealand to mail your copy of Keith's book to you. As you may recall, a lot of what Keith was trying to do with that book was explain Arthur's method in terms people use today.

If you really, really, pushed Lydiard to talk in terms of numbers and heart rates, he would tell you that he thought a heart rate of 150 was a rough deviding line between aerobic and anaerobic running. It was a very rough dividing line and did not take different people having different maxes into consideration. It was just not the way he liked to think or talk. But there it is. So from that perspective, 150 or a shade over would probably be top of the line for aerobic runs.

The way he preferred to describe his "steady state" runs was to say that it was a run during which your effort and pace remained constant throughout the run. A steady state run of an hour would leave you not struggling at the end of the run much more than it did at the start, i.e., your pace would not drop and your heart rate would not get much higher at the late end.

So a run that did push your HR, for example, higher late in the run, or a run where you need to slow down as the run goes on to keep HR and effort level from rising, would not be a steady state run. It would be drifiting into an anaerobic run or into a race like effort. The high end of that fractional scale then, would be the fastest you could run without having effort rise or pace drop as the run went on. Let's say that's six minute miles for ten miles.

You could then work out percentages of that six minute pace for a ten mile run and do something similar for other distances.

I think this is possibly the most confusing part of the Lydiard system and was something that he probably did not deal with at all when he was coaching. essentially her an along with his guys and adjusted the effort based on their responses. The fractions were an attempt to explain that to a larger audience. But given his preference for running by feel I don't think it was done all that well.

Thanks for the prompt, i just skyped the person who has it.

This book was originally given to me by Chris Pilone after he was sent a new signed copy from Keith. I was in a practical phase at the time and spending anywhere from 4-8 hours a day coaching. When i'm in those phases i don't tend to research or think deeply about it all. It's just an application phase. But now i'm in a researching/pondering phase and i need that book because i am ready to read it thoroughly. Onto it.

Ok so for me 150bpm sits in the middle of the middle so it works out well. 150 is roughly the midpoint of the midrange of aerobic for me. This is where i feel like we are strengthening the aerobic system. However, i like to go up to 160bpm here and haven't noticed the change i'm looking for to indicate i'm in the upper range, pushing the aerobic envelope range. Can you go into why 150 might be a limit?

This is important thanks. Steady state is to finish roughly as you started. What about a steady state to exhaustion like a long run?

Good. I can see this as very important but so easily overlooked by the enthusiasm of youth. The only query i have on this is the long run. I'm assuming a steady state is there like you describe, but as time passes energy stores are being used up and eventually begin to run out. Glycogen depletion training as they say. I'm very interested in this particular stuff and hope i can run again soon because i plan to go on a long experiment.

I can see this now thanks for helping point it out. I guess he had to come up with some sort of scale for people to use. I can't imagine how much more precise one could be than running along with your athletes and tuning them into the right feelings. And then once the feelings have been established monitoring the athlete so he keeps his mind on the job so to speak. I like the track for this reason. Everything is a short 50m stride away. I can look after javelin, high jump, hurdles and a running session if the athletes have been with me for a while. It is possible inside a track. Out on the run you need to be with them all the way. I wonder at what stage Arthur couldn't keep up with his guys. I guess the hard 60 min runs might have been difficult as he aged. The long run and easy runs no. Does he ever talk about that?

The 150 was a very rough estimate and I said, he preferred not to deal with numbers that precisely most of the time. If you were not breathing hard with a heart rate of 160, or 170 (unlikely at 170 but we'll pretend,) he'd have been ok with it. Similarly, if you were panting at 130 he'd have told you to ease the pace. For him it was always the feel that mattered most. That's very different from the way a lot of people operate now.

The long run was usually done with most of the group present. All of the descriptions of those runs that I've gotten put the pace somewhere between the low 6:00s and 7:00. But there was never a "goal" pace on the runs. The idea was to run for a long time without getting out of breath. If you think about the group, you'd notice a wide range of abilities and talents were present. Snell was there. He struggled with long runs and miles to some degree, at least in comparison to Magee, Julian, Puckett, and Baillie. Norm Harris ran with them somewhat regularly. He never broke 2:40 for the marathon and the marathon was his best event. Lydiard ran with the group. In, say, 1962, he'd have been 45. He had a marathon best of 2:38 done twelve years previously. So the pace was decided more by what the entire group could manage than by what an individual athlete could manage.

During the week that was less true as he'd group guys together based on various things. By 1965 the group would have been at least partly disbanded. Lydiard was gone. Snell and Halberg had retired. But Lydiard told me that when he was coaching Richard Tayler in 1973-74 he ran with him. Lydiard would have been at least 56 by then and Tayler was a on his way to 27:46 for 10,000 meters a 3:58 mile, a 2:15 marathon. So again, the pace was not precisely tailored to one particular athlete. The emphasis was much more on distance than on pace.

Neither Snell nor Magee ever talked about exhaustion on a long run. They both talked about the runs being pleasant and exhilarating though Snell said that when Arthur was there the pace very rarely lagged.

oops

HRE wrote:

Neither Snell nor Magee ever talked about exhaustion on a long run. They both talked about the runs being pleasant and exhilarating though Snell said that when Arthur was there the pace very rarely lagged.

So where in the training plan does this recruitment of dormant muscle fibres and capillary beds and the glycogen depletion occur? I figured these to be the end result of running for over 2 hours. Does this occur at a subtle level so whilst feeling tired the feeling remains pleasant? I had this image of hitting the 'wall' and continuing on for a bit more.

HRE/gypsy - I had the privilege of being trained by Barry Magee for a short period a few years back, and at the time Barry tended to use percentages rather than fractions (not sure if that was also the case with you HRE?), so during the base phase instead of 10m @ 1/2 and 10m @ 3/4 it was 10m @ 80% and 10m @ 90%, with everything else in the traditional conditioning period being classed as 65-70%. Again in both cases, simply an expression of effort, rather than any fixed method of calculation.

However, Barry also shared with me the paces that roughly applied during the conditioning period, so to give you an idea.....

Barry's pb pace was 5:14 per mile (just to apply some context), and what he told me was:

10m @ 80% (1/2) - 65mins at the start of conditioning down to 58mins at the end (so 34s per mile over pb pace as a direct comparison).

10m @ 90% (or 3/4) - 60mins at the start of conditioning down to 54mins at the end (so 10s per mile over pb pace as a direct comparison).

The 'varied fartlek over hills' would have been 12m in about 75mins all in.

And the long run would have went from around 2:30 in the beginning, down to 2:15 by the end (so 54s per mile over pb pace as a direct comparison).

Obviously those figures are just rough ideas of progression as Barry told me, rather than figures set in stone, etc, but I hope it gives you some indication.

Some more thoughts/opinions, just whilst I think of them.......

gypsy wrote:

So where in the training plan does this recruitment of dormant muscle fibres and capillary beds and the glycogen depletion occur? I figured these to be the end result of running for over 2 hours. Does this occur at a subtle level so whilst feeling tired the feeling remains pleasant? I had this image of hitting the 'wall' and continuing on for a bit more.

For my money this is a cumulative mileage effect, enhanced by the upper aerobic efforts, during the conditioning period. Simple as that.

Without reading back through the whole thread, but just taking the title 'Lydiard limitations'...... From a marathoning perspective (and therefore based on the original schedules in 'Run to the Top' rather than the subsequent watered down ones), the limitations were more to do with the schedules, than the man, which I would guess was probably the reason for apparently not wanting to publish schedules in the first place.

The original marathon schedules were tough, but obviously Lydiard being directly involved would have tinkered when necessary to prevent overtraining, etc. Taking the schedules at face value, they are a little crowded for my taste. From memory some weeks have 4 consecutive days which were: 18m @ 1/2, 3m TT, 15m @ 3/4, 6m TT (not necessarily in that order), so the limitation there to my mind is insufficient allowance for recovery.

I think a lot of the Canova specific stuff tallies to a large extent with some of the original stuff, but the main difference is the moving of the LT type stuff (3m and 6m TT) to a pre-specific phase, which fits with what I had deduced as my best fit (before coming across the Canova stuff incidentally). Experiments of one and all that.

Essentially, I guess what I am saying is that the limitations of Lydiard are, quite simply, having the schedules without the coach to first hand guide you through it.

I don't know much physiology. But all of those things begin to happen as your heart rate rises. The rising continues for some time as the heart rate rises and then levels off. If you're running at some "ideal" pace I would imagine you're maximizing all of those things but you don't need to be at that ideal pace to have those benefits accrue. So maybe Lydiard and Harris were going a bit harder than was ideal and Magee and Julian a bit slower. But they were all in a beneficial zone.

Z Ta Tu,

Neither Barry nor Arthur ever said much of anything to me about either pace or effort. That might be because they knew I knwe the system pretty well. We mostly focused on how I could get some faster running in given my tendency to get slower with interval work. Barry once made a comment to me about doing a "quality" two run covering about 21 km. At the time I was running marathons in a shade over three hours. He also described runs that he did to me which are consistent with what you describe. He'd do an out and back run of ten miles where he'd go "out" in about thirty minutes and "back" in 25-26. I'd do similar runs but somewhat slower.

HRE wrote:

I don't know much physiology. But all of those things begin to happen as your heart rate rises. The rising continues for some time as the heart rate rises and then levels off. If you're running at some "ideal" pace I would imagine you're maximizing all of those things but you don't need to be at that ideal pace to have those benefits accrue.

Ok two things here are important to me and they are interconnected. One is this whole thing about physiology and its connection to our sport. Thanks for provoking me on that as i have wanted to say something for a while. The other is this gaining of benefits whilst not actually maximising the stimulus of those benefits. For me this second point is self explanatory but i think it is missed by this modern complex approach (MCA). Because this element is missed, that MCA approach tends to push everything towards the racing end of the spectrum. I think this is the essence of the problem the MCA faces. And this line of thinking is led by the science thinking which brings me back to this physiology debate.

A young child who for the first time in his life focuses on and sees a tree. Now there is this thing there. No name just a thing to be looked at. Then one day he points to his mother his new discovery. She looks up and says thats a tree. You can see the change in expression and focus in the child when this sentence comes out. there is a new sound. Tree. Now it has been named. This name tree then subdivides itself into ever increasing elements as the child ages. The tree comes to have trunk, branches, leaves. Now things are beginning to be understood by the child as having component parts. Later roots are understood and the tree is not just balancing on the ground. This brings understanding of things invisible to the eye and other things like the iceberg example show how massive these invisible parts are. Later the child, now a pubescent age teen is understanding processes existing inside the tree. Flow of nutrients up and down, the layers of the tree from the alive internals to the dead bark layer and this is related to the human body. Later again the ideas of atoms, molecules begin and the processes at this level can be understood. It is all a developmental process of seeing deeper and deeper into something. And as new information comes to light the understanding of what a tree is goes far beyond that initial starting point of giving it the name 'tree'.

Why did i say all of that? Because it is the same process the science of physiology is travelling. It is still a child. What it is describing is still going through major shifts in perception. The changes in their opinions and lack of consensus even amongst themselves means that their understanding is not complete enough yet for it to be transferred into a practical setting. All it can do at present, in my way of thinking, is to analyse the practical situation. I think it is very dangerous for a developmental science to be providing opinion on training methodology. This very danger hasn't been observed and so we have this present situation where too much training methodology is being led by scientific thinking. Not yet fully formed scientific thinking yet pushed at us hard enough that coaches begin to doubt themselves and then they start changing things and it all seems logical and definitely seems to work in the short term, so a trend begins and now coaches are becoming more and more scientific and less and less intuitive/experiential in their approach. It is far more difficult for a Lydiard or Cerutty type to appear right now compared to when they did appear. The fights they both had with the 'establishment' of the day would be nothing compared to what would occur now. The system has far more control over the athletes lives now. Problems would arise for sure and would start very early. It's funny how early. I'm coaching a kid new to 800m and he basically elevates himself to the second faster time in the world for a 15 year old by the end of his second season. Suddenly the national distance coach is talking to me. Funny but also insidious.

cheers HRE

Ok so what you are saying is that the cumulative fatigue effect from the whole week means that late in a long run on the Sunday these effects occur. They occur because of cumulative volume fatigue and not through any intensity measure. You bring up 'enhanced by upper aerobic efforts' and i wonder if say that really long continuous hill, late on the Waitak course, has an effect similar to this enhancement in accelerating this process of total fatigue.

I should have use a small 'i' in imitations. The capital eye has caused some confusion on this. However, i'm still interested in what you have to say about limitations.

What do you mean by this? I have a thought but don't know if it's yours.

Is this what you mean, the adjustments that can be done when the coach is present (and capable). Perhaps the original schedules were what he could personally do and had decided on the best ultimate volumes to reach, in order to retain balance for MD that is. They weren't something to jump to in your first year.

Looking at those 4 days it is very intense. Was this a weekly thing and if so how many weeks in a row? And what had come prior in the training period. I'm assuming the marathon conditioning phase and high volume so this is a factor to how much intensity can be handled. It also depends on the intensity of the time trials. From what HRE is saying the fractional system can as easily be applied to time trials as longer running. So perhaps these trials weren't necessarily 'all out'. You or he would need to guide me on that. 18m at 1/2 sounds like what i prefer as my mid week longer run. Not the same range as the end of week long run, we don't want to go past the point of repeatability which the long run represents to me, but we do want to go up to that edge as a primer for sunday as much as anything else. 90min up to 2h is what i'm looking at for this run.

Getting back to those four days. In analysis. Day one no problem. Day two still no problem even if the timetrial is at 100%. It is a short session. Day three is when it comes down. But still day three on the back of the other days isn't enough to finish of the process here. The process of this 'mini suppression module' so to speak. Very long, then very fast, then heavy long, then heavy fast. Total suppression in 4 days, i love it. How repeatable i don't know. How often did this repeat in the program and for how long? Think i already asked those two questions. :) After those four days can i assume three days focused on easy and recovery? Can you detail the other three days? Very interesting stuff thanks.

So this 3 and 6 mile TT stuff for Lydiard is found in the his first phase, whereas for Antonio is is found in say the third phase/precomp phase/the one i call racing prep. Or do i have that wrong?

For sure thats a limitation. He's dead and that's my biggest limitation right now. If he wasn't i would be doing a Nobby and be knocking on his front door already.

More on the track you were talking about, surely every systemised approach has this problem. Or do you suggest a Daniels style system allows for more people get it roughly correct and this is an advantage over Lydiardism?

Some years back we had a guy win our national cross country championships who also had a masters degree in exercise physiology. He was asked if he thought his expertise in physiology gave him an advantage over his competitors. He said no, that runners figured out what works and physiologists explain why.

Kenyan kids running back and forth to school and chasing goats across the fields are not analyzing their pace relative to their VO2 max or some such thing. They're just active and getting fit. In the 70s Lydiard was predicting that they would be the best runners on earth because their way of life developed their aerobic fitiness so highly. Once that's in place you just have to do some sharpening. "Anyone can coach a Kenyan," he used to say.

HRE, I think we can start with Kenyans already at 85% / 90% of their max potential, since they do what is the basis of training : running long and fast.

At the same time, we have difficulty in driving european and american runners at their 90% with all our exercises and our methodology, because they lack of the most important quality : the ability to be aggressive in training, developing their top qualities.

Now, we look very much more to the INTENSITY of Aerobic training than in the past. We don't need running a lot volume of miles for all the life in order to increase the capillarization : after 2 years, an athlete can reach his top level of vessel, and after this he can only increase the intensity.

However, thinking that everybody can coach a Kenyan is a very big stupidity, and only who never was in Kenya or Ethiopia can think of it. Of course, if we need a Kenyan beating, for example, an Italian of today, everybody can coach a Kenyan. But, if we look at a Kenyan winning Olympic, or WCh, or beating WR, he needs to beat ALL THE OTHER KENYANS OR ETHIOPIANS, and his natural level of 85/90% is not enough.

And, please, stop to speak about the training for Marathon of Lydiard or somebody of 50 years ago. If Peter Snell could be still today one of the best specialists in the world in his event (may be also the best, as Jim Ryun in 1500m), THE BEST MARATHON RUNNERS OF 50 YEARS AGO TODAY COULDN'T BE THE BEST WOMEN. So, it clearly means that in long distances the difference between the past and the present stays mainly in a different methodology.

I think everybody of us used Lydiard as basis for developing our training system. But, as every thing in the world, science and knoweldge go on, and now, using Lydiard's basis, we are very much beyond his system, when we speak about long distance training.

We go down this road all the time. I see loads of Lydiard in what you say you do. You think you've gotten beyond Lydiard. You're not going to change your thinking and I'm not likely to change mine.

I've asid here before that I think the marathon might have been Arthur's weakest event in terms of his coaching. I'd give Bill Squires or Nakamura that title. I'd give it to you if you got a number of Italians, or any other westerners for that matetr, under 2:10 or so. Squires' guys were beating Kenyans on occasion but it's a different world now. I'll buy into this idea that training today is an improvement over what was done 40-50 years ago when we see it work for everyone and not just Africans.

I´m not all that familiar with the European runners that you used to coach, but I wonder if the ran any faster than Viren did in the 1970s. If not, then we can conclude that the training methods haven´t developed as much as you´d like us to believe.

Hi if i may comment and query on what you have said. You are clearly a very well developed coach based on what you have just said, however, i must be cheeky and query something.

I agree the Kenyans are naturally higher than the rest of the world for MD. Why is where i may differ although i agree the basic lifetyle running the Kenyans do sets them up well for MD.

Agree again. It probably doesn't help that there is perception out there that the Africans are unbeatable and unending.

Here we have some interesting things.

1. 'Now' you say the focus is on aerobic intensity or aerobic power over aerobic capacity or volume.

2. You say this is because aerobic capacity can be reached within a few years.

3. That increased muscular capilliarisation is the change that becomes stagnant after a certain amount of time in training.

So i need to ask two questions.

1. How do you know this training effect ceases to develop after two years (or three or whatever).

2. Surely increased capilliarisation isn't the only training effect from aerobic capacity training. What else is there in your view and do these other qualities also peak/plateau/stagnate after a few years of development?

And i would like to ask a couple of questions on this as well.

So in what ways are we past Lydiard? What in Lydiard's approach is now redundant?

Thanks for your time.

This is an answer not only for you, but for HRE too. Speaking about Italian Marathon runners. don't forget Italy was the only Country winning 2 times Olympic Games in the space of 5 Olympics (1988 with Bordin and 2004 with Baldini) when I was the National Responsible together with Luciano Gigliotti. Italian marathon runners won New York for 4 times (Pizzolato 1984-85, Poli 1986 and Leone 1996), European Champs many times (Bordin 1986/1990, Baldini 1998/2006, Maria Guida 2002) and a lot of medals in big Championships (WCh : Modica Silver 1999, Bordin bronze 1987, Baldini bronze 2001 / 2003, Ornella Ferrara bronze 1995 ; European Championships : Laura Fogli silver 1982 / 1986, Maria Curatolo silver 1994, Pizzolato silver 1986, Goffi silver 1998, Maura Viceconte bronze 1998, Poli silver 1990, Modica bronze 1998, and probably I forget somebody else). We had several athletes under 2:10:00 (Baldini, Bordin, Leone, Poli, Bettiol, Caimmi, Bourifa, Andriani, Pertile, Goffi), with the training system of some year ago.

I wrote the official book for IAAF about Marathon, that was distributed to all the Federations in 2000. If I had to write the same book today, I had to write 50% of something different, since the methodology changed.

You ask where is written that the target of capillarisation can be reached in about two years : I ask you where is written that this process can continue for all the athletic life. Training has very simple principles : you need to give to your body stimuli, and the reaction of the body IS TRAINING. Athletes can improve because their physiology changes, and nothing can change without being stimulated. To repeat, year after year, what the athletes are already able to do, can give ADAPTATION, and adaptation is the greatest enemy for an athlete.

When you go to school, and are comfortable, for instance, in the third class of high school, do you go to repeat that class for all your life, or you consider it the base for going to the 4th class and after to University ?

Long and easy run, that at the beginning of the activity of an athlete can be a stimulus in extension BECAUSE THE ATHLETE NEVER USED BEFORE, after some time becomes only REGENERATION, because the process of training must allow the body IN RUNNING FASTER WITH THE SAME INTERNAL LOAD. So, sorry, but to think that long and easy run can continue to be an important mean of training after some year is a big limit in the possibility of improvement.

Why the athletes of Lydiard were so good in short distances, in spite of the high mileage, and not in long distances ? Because the intensity of long run was a basic support for all the athletes having a low threshold (like specialists of 800/1500m), and this type of training had a GENERAL EFFECT before the specific part of training. Peter Snell was able running marathon, without too much effort, in 2:27, like a women in 100th position today, and this was a good base for running in the special period a high quantity of intervals (also 30x400m in 62.0, and, if I well remember, 15 times in 58.0 during the period of Tokyo 1964).

But, when we speak about long distances, please, try to understand how much athletics is changed today.

Halberg won OG 1960 in 5000m (13'43"4) with last km in 2'41"7, but was only 5th in 10000m in 28'48"8, 16" behind Pyotr Bolotnikov (28'32"2). His PB was practically the same (28'48"), and this can show he never was really prepared for this event. In 1961, Halberg confirmed to be a specialist of mile / 5000 more than 10000m. He failed to better the WR of 5000m for 0.2 only (13'35"2 in Stockholm), helped by Barry Magee, that finished the year as number one in 10000m in 28'50"8.

Barry Magee was able to better the WR of 20000m in 1963 with km 20.190 : today is a good pace for the training of the best Kenyan marathon runners, at 2400m of altitude, on rough roads, hilly courses and heavy shoes...

An athlete using very high mileage, but at the same time some workout of high intensity in long run, was Jos Hermens, that in fact was able running, in 1976, km 20,974 (almost 2 laps more than Baillie). Jos was a follower of Lydiard, but used a high intensity in long run, in some way anticipating the today system, and when Haile Gebrselassie started to be managed by Jos, he started also to run very fast long run (that Lydiard didn't use).