Great canova article

Great post.

Would love to hear Mr. Canova's explanation on how one can best build up their "aerobic house" over 8-10 years.

With Lydiard style training, that seems obvious to me. Like HRE and some other posters said, the athletes Canova coaches start out with him in the same shape as world class runners from the 60s/70s. Just by the way they grow up, they're developing their aerobic capacity in a Lydiard way, not exact but it's achieving about the same thing.

What seems to be sticking in everyone's craw is that the Running Times article just briefly mentions the building of the aerobic house. In an article meant to show how you can replicate that style of training, it was a great failure that they de-emphasized that so much. This problem happens because Canova doesn't have the Lydiard style mission to tell his training to regular people to make them faster. He's not telling you guys how he trains people on here so that you can replicate it. He's telling you because people ask him to and he doesn't see any harm in spreading it. This is the most important thing that the seemingly angry people on this thread need to understand, Canova is not telling American recreational runners to use his training. He's really not telling anyone to use his training. He is simply putting it out there and other people have twisted it around for their own purposes.

So let's say you're a 14 year old American kid starting cross country. Forget Renato Canova exists. Read multiple Lydiard books and get an understanding of the principles behind that. Do that style of training for 15 years. If by that time you can run 2:10, then you can see what Canova has to offer.

[quote]rafawd wrote:

I agree with you for the most part, but to think Canova isn't busy selling himself in Kenya, in his book, in his press, in letsrun etc etc then that part of your story is a fantasy

Favorite line by Canova: "Mileage? What is mileage?"

Think about it. I'm looking forward to a lot more candid quotes in Canova's new book:

http://www.americandistanceproject.com/Index/Welcome.html

I was planning on not posting on this thread anymore but because there are several people referring to my last post I'll hang on a bit more. This may get kind of lengthy.

While I really don't want to make this into a thread about Lydiard, let's look at his prediction, made in the 70s, that East Africans were going to do spectacular things as distance runners soon. His reasoning was simply that their way of life, walking or running to school, herding livestock, walking for miles to get places rather than driving, was giving them tremendous cardiovascular fitness which was he believed to be the basis of running success.

He didn't see any of that as "training" in the formal sense. It was a sort of pre-training that they just stumbled onto by virtue of their lifestyle and he always emphasized that it was not particularly intense. It was very much a quantity before quality sort of thing that few westerners were getting in their daily lives and which made it possible for Africans to run very well even without doing loads of distance work. If you were around the sport when Kenyans were beginning to race well you may recall that a lot of them did fairly low volume. Guys like Keino, Phillip Ndoo, Mike Boit, Michael Musyoki were all successful without doing the miles most of us from that era were doing. Later generations of Kenyans began doing more volume than their western competitors and that was when the gap started to open.

If your way of life doesn't build that big aerobic house for you inadvertently then you've got to do it (shouldn't "adverdently" be a word then?) for yourself and that's going to involve a lot low intensity work. I think the Japanese have done the best job of this.

I don't think it's a matter of doing all slow running but I do think it's a matter of doing a lot more of it than most US runners prefer and more of it than our system is geared for. If you run for your high school or college you want to be good NOW, not ten years from now. The odds are that you won't even be running ten years from now so if you can be a little better now by doing anaerobic running at the cost of long term development you'll likely want to do that and your coach, who likely will not be coaching you in ten years will also want you to do that and even if you're positive that you'll be in the sport in ten years you still want to beat as many guys now as you can and if a fair amount of intense running will make that happen, that's what you'll do. So asking someone to spend ten years doing low intensity, high volume training is asking a lot.

Sure, high end aerobic runs will add a LOT to your aerobic house and speed up the building preocess. Those sorts of runs are an integral part of Lydiard's system and he always emphasized that. He spent his life trying to explain to people that his base phase was not LSD.

On the other hand, he understood that people constantly overestimate how fast they can run aerobically and that if you keep pushing the idea of high end aerobic running you'll have a lot of people who agree with you in theory but who in practice are hammering themselves too often and spending a lot of time doing something other than building that aerobic house even though they may think that's what they're doing.

When I started using Lydiard's ideas I was generally running 7:30-8:00 on my distance runs and about 50 mpw. In under three years I was often in the 120-150 range and was running a few seconds either way of 6:00 pace. But the EFFORT was constant throughout once I'd worked the miles from 50 or so to over 100. There were a few occasions in that era when I made a point of trying deliberately to run a faster pace and it never went well and that's where I think some of the folks who are fascinated by Canova's stuff could have some difficulty and the source of that difficulty is more likely to be themselves than Canova's ideas because what I see is the fascination with the fast long runs and tough intervals and really not much interest in spending years developing the sort of base that will enable them to benefit from the harder, faster stuff that comes later.

That's really long way of saying that yes, high end aerobic work will help build that big house but you need to make sure that you really are doing aerobic work.

HRE, I agree 95% with your post. The only thing you must know, because what you think, and Lydiard thought, is not correct, is the way African boys and girls use for creating their aerobic base.

It's not true that they run long distances when are very young.

What really happened (now the situations is different) is that a boy who was 10 km far from the school (and this frequently happened, especially on the mountains of Marakwet area)started walking one and half hour before the beginning of the school. He walked for 400m, after met some other boy living in some hut there, and when they were together started to have challenges running. So, one told the other "we see who is the first from here till that tree", and the tree was 300m far, and they ran very fast, and after this they started to walk again. But, at the same time, they joined other boys from other huts, and again had a challenge of 200 / 400m. So, THEY BUILT THEIR AEROBIC HOUSE USING MAINLY INTERVALS AT HIGH SPEED AND NEVER LONG CONTINUOUS RUN AT EASY PACE.

This fact must bring people to think if the only way to increase the aerobic level is running at aerobic speed. Which is the effect, when you are very young, of short tests very much faster than the threshold, in great quantity but also with full recovery ?

The real problem in this system, as in the system I explain for preparing marathon (long and fast) is that who wants to use it needs to understand how much recovery has to do. The "law" of 48 hours for recovering is a complete bullshit. Recovery time is totally different for different type of workouts, depending on several factors. The example is that, when you run a full marathon at your best, you cant compete after 48 hours, but if you run the distance of a marathon at 60% of your effort you can train very well also the day after.

Under this point of view, Kenyans never looked at some rule during their recovery. They move when feel again ready.

I remember, the first time I was in Kenya, I saw a training of Moses Kiptanui and several other athletes, in Chepkoilel track (the track of University, 12 km far from Eldoret). They went for 15 times 300m, all between 41" and 42", and started with about 1' of recovery, for finishing with about 7' between the number 14 and number 15. At that time, I considered this as a methodological mistake. Today, I use to do workouts of LACTIC RESISTANCE opening the recovery, if I want to respect the speed.

The mistake many can do is to think at the length of the test, not at their speed, for deciding if something is Aerobic or Anaerobic. But I already explained that, for an athlete running 10000m in 27'30", that means 2'45" per km, that means 66" per lap, running 20 times 400m in 66" IS FULLY AEROBIC, because is the same pace of his PB, with less volume and some rest in the middle.

We had, in the past, some good athlete of 800 / 1500m who used to be a soccer player before running, and NEVER went for long continuous run when very young. Antibo, for example, 4th in 10000m in OG 1984, 2nd in OG 1988, 4th in OG 1992, European Champion in both 5000 / 10000 in 1990, was discovered at 17 years of age, winning a competitions on the road of 6 km, without any specific training, ahead one athlete having a PB of 8'34" in 3000 steeple, winner of World Universitary Games (D'Aleo). He had 3 years of practice as hockey player in his school.

At least, we fully agree that the "aerobic house" is the base for every specific type of training you can use. But what we say is that you can build your house also with a lot of anaerobic efforts, mixed of course with something typically aerobic, if you understand the alternance between effort and recovery, and this is the way African use to build their house.

I generally agree with about 95% of what you write as well. Maybe we should enjoy the 95% agreement and not bicker too much about the 5% difference. I only know the stories about Kenya that I read or am told.

HRE wrote:

Maybe we should enjoy the 95% agreement and not bicker too much about the 5% difference.

Or you could stop posting and we could 100% enjoy what Canova has to say.

Is the pissing contest finally over?

How about this... wrote:

HRE wrote:

Maybe we should enjoy the 95% agreement and not bicker too much about the 5% difference.

Or you could stop posting and we could 100% enjoy what Canova has to say.

Oooh. Am I really interfering with your enjoyment? Then I'll keep posting.

How about this... wrote:

HRE wrote:

Maybe we should enjoy the 95% agreement and not bicker too much about the 5% difference.

Or you could stop posting and we could 100% enjoy what Canova has to say.

Post of the year.

Mr Canova, i believe there are a few foundational type mistakes in what you just said. I will take the opportunity to outline each one.Firstly, you are somewhat disingenuous with your claims about the youth of Kenya. Since you also travel there and ask questions i am sure you know this. Whilst the distances of 200-400 you mention may indeed be fairly common, walking between them was not all that common. In fact the jogging and sprinting phases you are referring to were often separated by the next athletes house, where there was a brief stop. So one of these Kenyan youngsters may have jogged/walked with 6 long sprints and 7 complete stops over 90 minutes and 12 kms. This is the more likely scenario than the one you just painted to support your position.The you attempt to draw a conclusion from your selective facts that aerobic abilities can be developed by anaerobic running. This is a complete falsity. The only way the aerobic develops during anaerobic activity is when the aerobic system is also stressed and that stress is maintained at some level, even if it is slow jogging between harder efforts, like with fartlek, which is basically what the youth of Kenya is doing.Following this you bring up the law of 48 hours and refer to it as bullshit. Well this shows me you haven't really coached anyone outside the distance events, because 48 hours happens to be the best interval between strength training sessions, speed training sessions and technical training sessions. You are correct of course when you say that recovery depends on the effort preceding it. This is true from repetition to repetition, from day to day and week to week. It is a obvious fact as you clearly point out that 48 is not enough time to begin training again after a hard marathon. It is easy to discredit an argument by referring to a statistical outlyer so we really should remove the marathon as an example. Referring to any normal example and we find that 48 hours is a very good amount of time for recovery. However, this is not conclusive because we are still really only talking about a single training session and what we are interested in is repeatable training. For repeatable training and to ensure workload is optimal throughout, 48 hours appears to be the right amount of time to fully recover from a training session that requires about 85% of our reserves, which is generally what a continuous training program would require if one was operating optimally.However, this next sentence holds a good point:

Under this point of view, Kenyans never looked at some rule during their recovery. They move when feel again ready.

So i wonder, as i have looked at your program methodology a number of times, how does this open recovery period, based on internal feeling of each athlete, lead you to modify your program, day by day. I ask because i haven't seen this occurring in your work.

How about this... wrote:

Or you could stop posting and we could 100% enjoy what Canova has to say.

Simply not true. This recent and very interesting post by Canova was a direct response to HRE. Also, from the article, the bit under the heading "Pace is more important than distance" was posted previously on letsrun in conversation with HRE. (Can't find the link, sorry.) Carry on.

Stop picking holes out of Renato's argument in order to give yourself a path on the back. I presume Renato was refering to Marathon training when he said that a set time period such as 48 hours could not determine the best time to proceed with the next major workout. Rather it went by how the athlete felt in the days following the original workout. I knew some of ye Americans are thick but you bring it to a whole new level sunshine. Thank god we have intelligent Europeans such as myslef and Renato to help the simple minded American folk of Lets Run out.

Oh by the way Renato coaches Silas Kiplagat. Does he count as a middle distance athlete?

Woodchopper wrote:

Stop picking holes

If you understood the holes i would take you a little more seriously. Furthermore i am not a US citizen nor do i live there so perhaps your straw man needs to get another uniform. How about you take that opportunity for another chance and come back with at least some understanding of what it was i said in the previous post, sunshine :)

Renato,

How would you suggest an average runner,one who will never be an elite runner but would like to run the best he can with the little training time he has each day due to family and work, train?

Thanks

You haven't seen it occurring in his work because you are A.) not looking very closely or B.) just very smug. Sunshine ;) Look again.

ari viderci wrote:

However, this next sentence holds a good point:

Under this point of view, Kenyans never looked at some rule during their recovery. They move when feel again ready.

So i wonder, as i have looked at your program methodology a number of times, how does this open recovery period, based on internal feeling of each athlete, lead you to modify your program, day by day. I ask because i haven't seen this occurring in your work.

You havent seen it occuring because you havent had a chance to compare the prepared schedule with the actually occuring schedule.

Renato posts his athletes actual training not the program he prepares in advance which can differ,

If you looked at the program and then the actual training you would probably see these differences which are due to the athletes feeling!!!

Changa wrote:

You havent seen it occuring because you havent had a chance to compare the prepared schedule with the actually occuring schedule.

Renato posts his athletes actual training not the program he prepares in advance which can differ,

If you looked at the program and then the actual training you would probably see these differences which are due to the athletes feeling!!!

Maybe you are right and i have only seen actual schedules. To be honest i don't know if i've seen actual or scheduled programs or both. Still, Canova can straighten that bit out as well if he replies when he has had a good think.