LYDIARD OR DANIELS?

Ok, I'm going to assume you aren't doing the classic full cycle Lydiard thing here, but are more on the lines of the race week/non-race week business. And I have it in my head that you coach high school kids, but I'd say pretty much the same thing for college runners.

You've got four days in there that are going to get somewhat anaerobic, though you may be thinking of using Arthur's concept of aerobic fartlek here, then it's only two anaerobic days and I'll have to change all of this around. I'd only do one time trial each week and alternate the distance. So one week you'd have a 3k, the next a 5k. Let's say you do the trials on Saturdays. Then I'd make the Friday fartlek into an aerobic run of comparable length and use Wednesday for a variety of things. You might alternate a hill session one week with something like some 880/mile reps the next week.

This is based on some assumptions that may not be valid, so you might put something up later that would change what I've said.

This thread has so much invaluable information, it should be bound and published. Nobby, I appreciate your acknowledgement of the broad range of information out there, and how this may lead to misconception and confusion. Currently, I am battling plantar fasciitis and I have been terribly confused by groups that say use shoes with posting, and those that say use flexible shoes. I went the orthotics route, which I think aggrivated the problem more, because the logic of supporting the arch makes sense. However, allowing the foot to function normally also makes sense. Anyway, I'm going to give your advice on cushioned, flexible shoes a try.

In addition, you have enforced something I heard Lydiard state in person; that we must see our training as a long term agenda and not expect instant rewards. This inspires us all to continue pursuing excellence in this sport. Thanks.

There is something naturally intuitive-like, from Lydiard philosophy (I hasten to say science). I don't know of an english word for intuitive, in regards to how a person can 'feel' a philosophy...obviously facts and philosophy cannot be intuitive...a person is intuitive or not...

Anyway, many answers here, seem to be provided in a way, which match my hunches. Especially the more I read of Lydiard, the more the 'feeling' of what is the right answer or approach, turns out to be accurate.

Must be right if it seems right before the question is answered...I mean I was reading some of that Renato stuff and my eyes kept drooping...2% of this 3% of that, blah blah blah...I'd like to feel tired, feel 7/8 effort, feel aerobic threshold, feel ready etc etc...this is all making sense.

A million thanks.

Sorry Glenn, but it probably will not be as much of a "gem" as you might have expected--because supposedly I'm in it too (unless they decided to cut me!). I should be able to get a copy directly from them and I'll let you know.

Whatever the phase you might be in; or whomever you're coaching with this schedule; I would do exactly what HRE suggested. I fact, I used to shuffled around my own schedule like that. I used to do a lot of LSD (at the time, it was about 6:40~7:00 pace for me) and nothing else. So Arthur told me to do faster stuff (to balance my schedule). I couldn't cram everything in one week so I did, usually on Wednesday, one week hill repeat; next week long reps... Saturday was always something like time trial to more or less simulate race on Saturday. Longest run on weekend; one long run of about 1:30 on Tuesday and another one from 1:30 to 1:45 on Thursday.... This was during conditioning.

If boredom, or mental pressure, is an issue, as often would with younger athletes, you can always change venues. This is another great thing about Lydiard's preaching--forget distance or per-mile-pace. Just get out and run for an hour and a half. If you feel good, push a bit. If you're tired, slacken a bit.

During hill training, same pattern and do bounding one week; springing the next; and steep hill running some other time... For anaerobic training, use hard fartlek one week; repeats the next; then some hard time trial one other week, etc. Always remember to balance your schedule according to your developmental stage and your strengths and weaknesses. I needed to include some faster stuff which Arthur would have not recommended otherwise. But I needed that. As Glenn said, everybody's different. The Lydiard program is NEVER a cookie-cutter program.

Science, to me, is quite often a restriction. Science DOES sometimes give us concrete proof that it's good to do cerain training, etc. But when you hear numbers, very reason why you believe it as a concrete proof, can be very limiting. It would give you the reason why you will never going to make it as a distance runner. You only have 50% of slow twitch muscle fibers. No good trying to become a marathon runner. If I remember it correctly, didn't Don Kardong record 50/50 slow/fast twitch ratio? Thank God he never let it decide his athletic career (otherwise, he would have not become a marathon runner and we would have never enjoyed his entertaining writing skill...). At some other thread I saw someone asking a training plan to be a good marathon runner and gave a hypothetical number of 26 seconds for 200m. Some wise man jumped and snapped; "Sorry, you're not fast enough to be a fast marathon runner..."

Planning on your training schedule based on purely science is, to me, like driving a car by only checking with rear-view mirror. Science has provided the reason why some workouts worked, why high altitude training helped, why taking an easy day after a hard anaerobic workout helps... But it is very rare that doctors (not exercise physiologist/coach) come up with some innovative training method. Before you decide not to exceed 73 miles a week because anything beyond that is "scientifically proven" to be junk-miles, get out and run 74 miles a week and see it for yourself. It may work differently for YOU.

My cholesterole level is a bit high. But I never quite bought into this high cholesterole = heart disease theory. Too many exceptions and too many unknowns. Arthur, after running thousands and millions of miles, had rather high cholesterole level and of course he ate red meat at least once a week (probably more...). Living up to 87 the way he did ain't too bad. Of course, now recent study is showing that things a bit more complicated than previously "proven"... I still restrict my bacon intake though!

Now Lydiard never said this but I'm pretty sure he would agree; "If in doubt, forget numbers!"

Ok very cool.

It doesn't sit well with me, figuring out percentages to that degree. Not in sport.

Boxing, one of the most beautiful and ugly sports is all about feel. There is the ebb and flow of movement with the opponent. There is the hand-eye coordination developed with the speed bag and skipping. There is the feel of the 80 pound heavy bag vs the 110 pound heavy. There is the shadow boxing, when the telegraphing of the jab fades into smooth left-right-left combos, where the sound of the breathing are heavier than the movement itself...it all comes together. It's all visual, audio, timing....timing is a sense.

I cannot imagine training a boxer to punch 1.8% faster with the right counter...but I can imagine telling him he needs more snap.

Same with ice-hockey. A guy can skate like the wind, but if he cannot feel or anticipate where the puck is going, he is out of sync, literally...he must feel the ebb and flow. It's all a rythm.

Why should running FITNESS be any different. You should feel your heart rate is high...or legs are all healed from rest or recovery...Heart rate monitor...I don't know.

"Anybody can coach Kenyans because they have already developed their aerobic capacity." I don't mean to say people like Dr. Rosa or coach Canova are just "anybody". But this is what you COULD afford to do if you have a bunch of ambitious young athletes like Kenyans; you can take a handful, say, 20 of them; run a series of tests--be it scientific test or just test runs--and pick 4 or 5 who performed best; take them to Europe and throw them in some high quality races and they'd perform very well. "

Sorry bud, but there is a HUGE leap from the selecting of these people and taking them to the sub 27min level. This requires DEVELOPMENT, carefully and gradually. I believe your view of this scenario is simplistic and clouded, and your view of "scientific coaching" is very wrong. This is an interesting thread, but much of it is devoted to explaining why Lydiard works so well and why some other "modern" systems don't. We are attracted to different coaches for different reasons. If you love Lydiard, great. But do not put the training systems of Canova or Igloi or Daniels or Stampfl into a little box in the corner. Do not assume that Canova or Cabral could not or would not enjoy taking a 3:00 marathoner to 2:45. Do not say that "numbers" is bad. Numbers just isn't for everyone. Lydiard is certainly not suitable for everyone. Keep the big picture in mind when discussing the benefits and influences of any particular system. And please stop saying that all of these top runners of today are actually doing a Lydiard system in disguise. They aren't.

If you look at the training of really every top runner today, what you see in their programs are the same things Arthur had people doing fifty years ago. Those things aren't all done in a "Run to the Top" pattern, but those top people have all developed training systems that are consistent with the principles that Arthur used. Bill Squires, for example, has his own way of training people that's worked exceptionally well and if you looked at what his guys did you'd see, if you understand Lydiard's principles, that Billy's guys were covering the same bases, though in Bill's way which was not a photocopy of Arthur's way. In fact, Antonio and I exchanged several e-mails earlier this year discussing the idea that there are certain physiological things that a coach needs to develop in his athletes. We got into the topic of doing interval work year round as Antonio does vs. doing it at certain stages as Arthur did and Antonio said that by assigning certain kinds of intervals he was able to accomplish the sorts of things Arthur did with steady runs. The point is to understand what needs done and then find ways of doing it.

I also think that a more appropriate exapmle of improving an average marathon runners would be taking that 3:00 marathon runner to something like 2:20-2:30, or taking a 4:30 high school miler and getting him under 4:00. I don't know if either Antonio or Canova do that. I'd guess that Antonio has as he does coach "local" runners. I don't know if Canova coaches anyone but Kenyans.

Since this thread started out as a comparison of two ends of spectrum (if you would like to look at it that way), I'm still waiting for someone to come out and open that little box in the corner and share that insight instead of just complaining. I know about the Lydiard program. If asked, I'd be more than happy to share what I know. And I'd love to learn more about the other side but so far not too many have shared adequate insight. I had NO intention of hogging this thread into the "Lyiard thread". I'm sure HRE or Kim or Glenn don't intend that either. We know certain things that we could share with others when people ask. As a matter of fact, several times along the way I asked people from other end of spectrum to chip in.

Also I never said everybody at the top level employs the Lydiard system. In fact, I have criticized a NZ production who made cocumentary of Lydiard for saying something that's not accurate. I know Deek had the influence. I know Vire did too. I know most Japanese coaches would say they base their training on Lydiard. I have never--or if I did give an impression, I never meant it that way--generalize the whole and bunch it all together and say "they do this". If I didn't know what kind of training some top athletes did, which is most cases anyways, I would not dare say they do one way or the other. I pointed out that Lydiard gave Igloi a credit. I also mentioned that Stampfl was doing long conditioning training despite some criticism Lydiard himself had give in the past. And I didn't appreciate your "generalizing" my intention.

Cheers Nobby. I for one am happy to applaud Arthur an try to interpret his ideas but I never intended for this thread to become an Arthur "shrine".

Seeing that this is also about Dr Daniels, I am really interested in what some of the athletes, Coaches say about some of his workouts and ideas.

So I will kick it off ?

I know with some of my younger athletes telling them they are to run say 4 X 800 at 1/2 or 3/4 effort really gets the questions going. The first being "How fast (or slow !) is that"

The kids want a time I find, so many times I have "guestimated" and pretty much we have been okay with that. However, over the last year or so I have had lots of communication with Tinman and his "Critical velocity" discussion.

I also find Tinman has a pretty good "handle" on both Arthur and Dr Daniels. In fact I managed to get him a copy of Arthurs original "Run to the Top"

I have used some of Tinmans ideas incorporated in the athletes training.

I would loved to have discussed them with Arthur but I have gone with the premise "Is this Anaerobic ?" Answer "No" . So lets run with it.

We have been successful.

One thing I have always believed is Arthur was far more open minded than many give him credit for. The only time I saw him critical of others was over the amounts of Anaerobic work being pushed into athletes

When I was in consultation with him in the 80's and bounced around training ideas, he was always supportive and wanted to know how things went if you tried them.

As I said above his stock answer would be "Don't get too Anaerobic"

So for Dr Daniels and others. Can you help us with some of the VDOT ideas ?, How would they fit in with Arthur's 1/2 or 3/4 efffort tables.

Needed to add another piece.

Whenever I have athletes run any sort of "effort" or "tempo" I would err on the slow side rather than the fast one.

Cheers Team.

Geez team, I thought a heap of people would be on here either answering what I have asked or tearing apart my statement of "guestimate".

I did'nt set out to drown the thread but had to go looking for it on this early Kiwi morning !!

Kim,

don't think it had anything to do with your post.

I am finding that "slowing" down runners takes more effort than one would think. The more "ambitious" they are, the more they seem intent upon pushing the envelope every day. I've been working with one lad who is suffering a stress reaction on his left femur after having had almost the same thing on his right last spring. It actually went to a fracture. He wants to hurry up and make a name for himself. I need to sit down with him and talk to him about how the prior 4 years he had progressed well with very little down time. But then he did most of his running on his own and now he has teammates that are "pulling" him to faster runs.

Glenn

I'm always wary when I hear or read the words "Don't get too Anaerobic"

I thinks it's important to observe adequate recovery periods after anaerobic workouts, but I think that just as some people do too much anaerobic volume, a lot of distance runners do too little.

At elite level, the 10000m has become a middle distance race, with the top runners going into that race with 1.45-1.46 800m pace in their legs and 3.30-3.32 1500m pace.

Even in the World Cross Country Championships, Bekele is going into those two races with that kind of pace in his legs - 12.49 for 5000m indoors.

Again, you get back to Lydiard's example of Snell in Rome, the slowest sprinter in the field beating everyone because his aerobic fitness let him run at his top speed when fatigue kept the rest of the field from doing so.

Those 1:45s and 3:32s are coming from tremendously high aerobic capacities. There is no way you can "sprint" to a 3:32 or a 12:49.

The comment about too many distance runners doing too little anaerobic work turns up from time time and I always wonder specifically who the commentators have in mind. Every training profile I ever see of US runners for ages now has them doing at least two anaerobic days a week, usually pretty much year round. Have you got any specific examples in mind?

There you go, Kim, you tossed from fuel on after all.

The schedule that hyena posted is from a BASE phase schedule in the book Running the Lydiard Way.

While Lydiard was perhaps not always accurate about aerobic-anaerobic, and therefore I'm most probably not explaining it accurately either, I feel way too many middle distance and distance runners in this country today, particularly high school and colleges, do too much anaerobic training and not enough speed training.

Plenty of middle distance runners in this country are fast enough but when they come down to the last lap mad dash, they get left behind. Why? Is it because they are not fast enough? Or, as Dr. Snell said, is it because they ran out of gast by the time they reach that point and they cannot utilize thier raw speed?

I just got off the phone with Lorraine Moller and she told me this lady she coaches PRed in the marathon by a couple of minutes off her base work (no speed training). "You have to define 'speed' in a different term," she said. "Sometimes you gain speed from strength." If you can predict 10000m performace off 800m time, they don't need to run 10000m. Here's the same argument HRE has had over and over; if they waited to break 28 minutes to run a good marathon, Rodgers or Khanouchi would have never run a marathon. And for your record, regardless of how fast the world record will become, 800m and up will ALWAYS remain predominantly aerobic--particularly if you're a high school or a college runner, and if your name is not "Bekele". No, I'll take it back. Even if your name is "Bekele", you'll still be running 800m and up predominantly aerobically.

Glenn, I am "stirring' here. Trying to get a response !.

Regarding slowing kids down. I know exactly where you are coming from. it is one of the reason I give the kids a "time" for a set distance, so I can control somwhat what they are doing in workouts.

As I said I always err on the slow side. One of the things I learned from Bill Baillie was in any "Hard" workout the athlete should finish feeling as though they could do a little more or could have done it a little quicker.

I have one kid who has really taken that on board and has begun to run really well as he understands the "balancing" of the workload.

Unfortunately, The same kid stood on the edge of a step in the forest and damaged the plantar fascia of his left foot. So now he lives in the Pool, aqua jogging.