Wow, Lydiard training seems ridiculously hard

Of course, you are right. We haven't learned anything new per se, but we have learned how to take what we knew before and better apply it. A pure Lydiard style would be following his training plans in his book. My post wasn't an attack on you yet you seem very bitter. Never the less, agree to disagree.

Exactly WHERE have you seen Lydiard followers belittle people who enjoy the interval based routines of Stampfl or Igloi? In magazines? Could you give a reference? In a book? Same comment. On the board here? Can you reference the thread or threads?

I've never seen anything of the kind. I have seen statements from Lydiard followers who believe that the Lydiard method generally has worked better than either of the other approaches but that's not belittling. Every Lydiard follower I know has always sort of aped Arthur on this matter and said that people should train in the way that they prefer so I'd be interested to see where they're belittling people who do something else.

HRE, the reference is my own eyes, and I apologize, I use the term belittle liberally. More to the effect of sarcasm if someones mileage totals are relatively low. This website is rife with sarcastic behavior and there have certainly been threads about Igloi, etc, that drew ire from high mileage. I understand high mileage doesn't necessitate that their ideology be Lydiardesque. The confusion was created on my part.

Pardon me, the previous paragraph should read "ire from high mileage advocates".

No. There is no "pure" Lydiard style. Lydiard himself said repeatedly that you don't simply want to mimic the schedules in the books. He didn't want to put the schedules there for that reason. Many schedules that he wrote for people, many subsequent general schedules that he wrote, were not like the ones in the books. And not everything that he wrote for everyone was a high mileage schedule. I've seen "beginner's" base schedules that he wrote with long runs of 75-90 minutes, two others at 45-60 minutes and the rest of the runs at 30-45 minutes.

If you're reading things that seem angry or bitter or belittling some of that might be because so many people look at those schedules, think that you have to follow them religiously, and say "That's outdated" or "That's really hard."

A "pure" Lydiard schedule would have to be one written by Arthur. Anything that any of the rest of us put together is an adaption based on our understanding of his ideas.

This is probably completely off topic but I'm trying to figure this out:

How did Lydiard athletes entire year look? By looking at his old books that instead of two 24 week periods each year with a build up and then taper a break at then end, it lookes more like this:

10 weeks - Marathon Training (100mpw schedules)

4 weeks - Hill training (hill circuits)

10 weeks - Track Training & peak

8 weeks or less - hold peak, leftover weeks for recovery

12 weeks - XC season

8 weeks or less - Road Training season

So if I'm putting this together right, they were not doing "base" training twice a year like we would do in the summer for XC and the winter for track, but only once a year for 10 weeks before track.

Am I on the right track with this?

That's splitting hairs. You might as well say in football there is no "pure Bill Walsh/West Coast offense" unless Coach Walsh himself wrote up the plays.

Perhaps perhaps better semantics would state that there is a "classic" Lydiard approach.

No I agree with HRE on this. I was actually thinking of what he ended up writing anyway and that is if you understand the holism of Lydiard's method, you will write one schedule to fit the specific athlete's needs. The 'classic' Lydiard you are talking about perhaps should be called the 'framework', mind you there are things you can get athletes to do which can be referred to as 'a classic Lydiard move'....but again, you understand the holism of Lydiard to make a classic Lydiard move.

For example: Runner X needs to be pushed often during his out and back runs, he dogs it too much and doesn't get the true benefits of sub-AT or AT 1/2 to 3/4 efforts). Runner Y goes too hard, nearly races his training, needs a talking to. Runner Z pushes hard and is tough as nails, but runs no faster than AT.

During the aerobic phase, but later, when these guys are fit, you might have x and z together much more often that y...but y is useful when you start running time trials, so you must have that in mind through the phases.

The art of the coaching would be to decide who is with who, who gets exaggerated efforts in their schedule to get more out of them and who gets tempered effort schedules, to hold them back at least a little.

Knowing that their behavior dictates what you can do with them...does everyone get the same sched? Yes and no with variations, but yeah they are working within the 'framework' of doing the aerobic development phase first. A so-called 'classic Lydiard' move might be to have one runner paired with a certain other runner during particular runs to serve a specific purpose...

How can you define something as maleable within that framework or method as "pure"? But I think I know what you mean.

Sometimes I over-react, nothing to do with you, and maybe more to do with a few too many beers. I could agree with "we have learned how to take what we knew before and better apply it", but find it hard to believe this marginal statement is what all these threads are always about.I've read a few Lydiard books, but I never really looked at any of the training plans. I usually skip those parts of books. I would echo the others -- the plans have very little to do with "pure Lydiard". They are simply one possible application of the ideas.I think I'm going to give myself and everyone else a break now, and see if my answers pop up somewhere else.

Caiado wrote:

Of course, you are right. We haven't learned anything new per se, but we have learned how to take what we knew before and better apply it. A pure Lydiard style would be following his training plans in his book. My post wasn't an attack on you yet you seem very bitter. Never the less, agree to disagree.

I see my old friend Barbara Ann has been posting here !!!

I too want to back up what HRE said above.

I am very sure that none of we "Lydiardites" ever "rubbished' other 'methods' of training or what has developed since. I have a trunk in my garage with running information going back years and years. I love reading about how the guys "back in the day" trained and have just finished "3:59.4 The quest to break the 4 minute mile" by John Bryant.

I take a huge interest in the "How's and what's" of todays Champions.

I have not revisited the huge Lydiard/Daniels thread to check but I know all I have tried to do is 'interpret'" what I saw as misunderstandings.

I can find many people who interpreted Arthurs ideas as 100 miles a week of "slow running" ... I know that frustrated the hell out of him !!, especially when they said they were using Lydiard methods !!

As for the lacing debate .. I too find that a lot of the modern shoes do not suit it and I would not have laced a shoe with that method for probably 10 years if not more.

To the detractors who call me a Lydiardite .. I take that as a compliment but really I am a Dolanite. Jack Dolan was the first person to welcome me to the Lynndale club here in NZ when I was a youngster, he was also the guy there with the encouraging words when we ran a bad one.

As Arthur said in the original "Run to the Top" ...... This book is dedicated in find appreciation to Jack Dolan who taught Arthur Lydiard in the first place what fitness really was.

In my own case : I would not be in the Sport today if it was not for Jack Dolan.

So what are the Lydiard books for ? To burn, to forget. What a the conferences for ? So what are the Lydiard foundation training rules like blocks of periodization, the 100miles, long run, training blocks, the anaerobic block, or the lace shoe for ? To forget, to contest, to cry out loud, a joke ?

So what is Lydiard "pure style" ? What is written in the books, in the papers, or what is done in the schedules ?

One more step further and you will admit that the Lydiard 100miles, the long run, the absence of interval training during the aerobic block, the long run it´s all useless, it´s in the Lydiard books, but we don´t need to follow.

Might be that for once in a lifetime i agree with you with your first sentence.

Unhappily you miss to complete the second sentence. When you, or everyone else does what you name "is an adaption based on our understanding of Lydiard ideas", from that moment on can´t be Lydiard training but HRE training, or whatever other person adapts.

Because i prove with facts, data, and training methodology that some of the "pure" Lydiard ideas are wrong or outdate, its why that “hybrid” Lydiard adaptations are outdate as well.

Some Lydiard ideas are wrong or outdate, and outdate is the periodization , the mileage management, to the balance of aerobics with anaerobics, the use of interval training, the gain of aerobic condition and strength endurance trough Lydiard training all that "pure" ideas are inadequate or outdate.

It´s obvious that when Lydiard did adapt some training ideas from others and he collect it in one method that changed to LYDIARD METHOD, not kept the name of original methods that he adapt. Therefore, when someone else takes the “pure” Lydiard method done by Lydiard and put together an adaptation that is not Lydiard training, it´s the training of the person that did that adaptation. Besides, each one of us can adapt to a different final method, and in consequence we have a different method somehow for each of one that adapts. It´s no more Lydiard training, can´t be defined as Lydiard because we lost the parameters of that training adaptation.

Wetcoast wrote:

the holism of Lydiard's method

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh..holism !

Lydiard the only method that got holism ! It´s a peculiarity from the Lydiard method. The others methods they don´t !

Wetcoast wrote:

The art of the coaching

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh..the art of coaching !

Lydiard the only method that got the art of coaching !

I advice you to register that both patents. The holism and the art of coaching are qualities that the only one training method that got it it´s Lydiard...or Lydiard disciples !

I see, this changes the whole picture ! 100 miles are not 100 milee, are holistic 100miles, the introductory aerobic block is not just the introductory block at the light of the training methodology or the physiology science, it´s the art of coaching !

Might be i´m a jerk, but if i get some holism i´m not a jerk anymore.

Your problem is that despite your appeal for beatuifull defenitions as holism or the art of coaching the Lydiard training training at the eyes of the rich training methodology is outdate, somethig that you with your holism, you aren´t able understand.

On this board, I am the pioneer to say that in the Lydiard training "the king is nude" and nothing can change that fact.

Please, try to learn something more about training methodology and don´t insist in your phychology study (holism and gestalt) or art (of coach) study. It´s all useless for the training methodology.

There were generally two seasons his guys tried to come to a peak for, both of them were track seasons, one in the southern hemisphere from about the end of December to sometime in February and the other was the northern hemisphere's track season. They'd have a date by which they wanted to be in and count back 26 weeks from that race. They had two base phases a year of ten weeks each but none of the subsequent phases went longer than 6 weeks and some were only four weeks.

The NZ cross country season happens around the same time of year as the northern track season, so they could be at a peak for both. Road racing was not a real priority anywhere in those years. I believe they'd just do road races as they turned up regardless of where they happened to be in their schedule. They also would run in club races throughout the year but again, it wasn't something they really focused on. Since Kim's here he probably can give a better description of how the NZ seasons were set up in those days and of where marathons fit in. There were also a couple rest weeks planned in after the racing seasons.

By the way, you mentioned people belittling Igloi's approach for its low volume. No one who knows anything about what Igloi did would describe it as a low volume approach. It was not. Orville Atkins, who posts here with some frequency, trained with Igloi in Los Angeles for a couple years or so and will tell you that he regularly ran around 500 miles a month.

Not every football team that ran the west coast offense was doing exactly what Walsh did even though many coaches who took that offense to other teams learned it while coaching with Walsh. Even Walsh was not doing exactly the same thing with that offense at San Francisco as he did at Stanford. But he was using the same principles.

No training methodology can be understood completely or even adequately simply by reading a schedule just as it would not be possible to understand the west coast offense simply by looking at one of Walsh's playbooks. I'll say it yet again; Lydiard did not want to publish schedules in his books. He wanted people to read the text and understand why he trained people as he did and then write their own schedules. Even Lydiard himself sort of disavowed what you're calling "classic" Lydiard.

The Japanese idolize Lydiard. When Nakamura wanted to take his runners to a training camp he went to New Zealand because "Lydiard is there." One of the main reasons Nobby has access to almost anyone who matters in Japanese running is because he's known there for the year he spent with Lydiard and the long term relationship he and Arthur had afterward. But I've never seen a Japanese marathoner's training that looks all that much like one of the marathon schedules that Arthur wrote.

Nic Bideau, in an interview, once said that the training he gave to his athletes was based on the principles that Lydiard outlined. But again, you wouldn't really know it just from looking at bits of Mottram's training that turn up in places. If you want a really good illustration of the influence of Lydiard on Bideau recall the time before Mottram's medal at the World Cup when he was running poorly a few weeks before and people had written him off. Bideau's response, calling off Mottram's races and having him run easily with a small number of very light, short repetition work, was right from the Lydiard playbook but it's not something you'll find written into any Lydiard schedules. It's a response that comes from conceptualizing training and racing and the effects of different types of running as Lydiard did. Of course you have to adapt your training methodology to your circumstances.

When Joe Henderson was in high school he read everything about running and training he could get his hands on. When "Run to the Top" came out Joe got a copy. He was immediately drawn to Lydiard's approach but like the OP thought it was too hard. So he halved the schedules and went on to win consecutive state championships in the mile.

Heracletus's quote about never being able to step into the

same river twice does not just apply to moving bodies of water.

And with that, I am outta here.

One last thing.

Chuckster, I know you weren't the one who made the comment about belittling Igloi's approach for its low volume. Sorry.

Now I'm gone.

Wetcoast wrote:

During the aerobic phase, but later, when these guys are fit, you might have x and z together much more often that y...but y is useful when you start running time trials, so you must have that in mind through the phases.

This is the main issue that you are wrong.

With or without gestalt, with or without holism, with or without art of training, this is the Lydiard main training idea that is outdate.

Unhapply for Lydiard nothing that you might be adapt or adjust to this Lydiard training idea might save Lydiard training to be outdate.

The modern distance training approach it´s the training that in the cycle of periodization considers each one of the variants with the same importance, it considers the aerobic and the aerobic at the same kind of interest. The modern training considers that the introductory period shall go from the quality variants to the quantity variants. The modern in date distance training is seen as an EXTENSIVE PROCESS and not start with mileage and put intensity in the final part of the cycle.

It really doesn´t matter if ou might build the schedules that you want, without interval training during the aerobic block/phase as the “pure” Lydiard does, or if you build one aerobic block/phase that you use interval training, as far as you think that the aerobic training shall precede the anaerobic block. With or without interval training, both kind of procedure is outdate. The modern training pays the same attention and the same interest to the MILEAGE as to the INTENSITY in one extensive process of both.

It´s nothing different to what Renato Canova says or James Li executes. I don´t know one modern coach hat thinks that the aerobic enhance is quite infinite as Lydiard does defines.

When you insist in what Lydiard says. Lydiard means about “one base of aerobic training,” it´s what is outdate and wrong. The science, the methodology, the trial-and-error proves that you get motre enhance of the performance if since the start you deal with both variants, the intensity also named quality, and the volume also named quantity with the same kind of interest and you introduce each one as soon as possible. It´s not enough to introduce both soon. It´s necessary that you admit that one is so important as the other.

For the same main reason of training modernity , the hills done in the Lydiard style should be introduce in the introductory block and not after the introductory block.

For the same main reason of training modernity, the long run shouldn´t not be of primary interest.

For the same main reason the 100miles should not be one main target, independently if you are able or you aren´t able to run 100 ridiculously hard 10 miles

You and many Lydiardites, you try to solve the problem with the introduce of intervals, change the formation, bring Lydiard schedules different than what is written in books. It really doesn’t matter, nothing changes or so little changes to approach the training modernity. What you need to change is your main training concepts to the modern in date training approach.

Bravo. I appreciate the effort. It's much more constructive, than say your two previous posts.

I'll limit my comments to a couple of things I noticed, which look like mistypings, mainly because it gives the opposite meaning of what I think you are saying:

"it considers the aerobic and the aerobic at the same kind of interest" -- Of course "aerobic" and "aerobic" have the same kind of interest. I guess you mean "aerobic and *an*aerobic"?

"the long run shouldn´t not be of primary interest" -- Looks like one too many "nots".

"independently if you are able or you aren´t able to run 100 ridiculously hard 10 miles" -- Looks like one too many zeros, or one extra number. Do you mean 10x10 ridiculously hard miles?

rekrunner wrote:

Bravo. I appreciate the effort. It's much more constructive, than say your two previous posts.

Bravo. I apreciate you correct my type mistakes.

I see you lost the obsession to ask me for books. At least this time you forget to ask me about books. Ther´s no way one book or thousand books might understand what´s modern or what´s outdate training.

I appreciate that you correct my next post as well. Thanks.

Lydiard training doesn´t deal with mileage and intensity at the same level of interest and that´s why the Lydiard training does different training blocks: the marathon aerobic mileage block, the hill block, the anaerobic block.

It´s true that in order to do the mileage aerobic training requires volume training, mileage training, quantity, long training sessions. It´s true either that in order to train intensity, quality, speed requires fast training, quality, some percent of anaerobic training.

However the distance training approach as EXTENSIVE process that is, deals with both mileage and intensity variants included and both as important simultaneously and as important at every moment of the season periodization. Eventually the training of both variants requires some soft training MODULATION, but the way, not one of both variables can´t be neglect for the interest of the other . In this item the Lydiard training diverges from the modern training concept of specificity. If you pay attention to Lydiard training in one block is predefined by aerobic and another is defined as anaerobic. Rarely one workout training is direct relate with the specifics of the distance event. Modern training diverges from this Lydiard outdate training concept because every moment of the training process is seen as one step to specificity. Specificity is one training concept that is miss in the Lydiard training , the training is seen not like should be, seen as every training session target is the total contribute to the SPECIFICITY of the distance event. SPECIFICITY is the key of modern training, and not like in Lydiard that every single workout tries to get one isolate goal.

SPECIFIC training is the type of training that produces direct improvement in performance capacity.

In modern training, the response of training is specific. It´s why one Lydiard long training session of 2 hour can be aerobic training but isn´t specific at all for the 800m event. It´s generic training. Also, Lydiard mileage training, or intervals the Lydiard way can be everything less specific training.

SPECIFICY is the must of modern training, the number one discrimination from past training to modrn training. Modern coaches, that do modern methodology, like Renato Canova is one, james lI is another, they say so. On Lets Run.com board, Renato Canova many times says that specificity is they key to modern training. Read and try to understand what he means by SPECIFICITY, something that the Lydiard fellow miss to understand.

Beyond moderate performance competency, only SPECIALIZED CONDITIONING will produce further performance improvements. It´s why specific training is so important.

Aerobic training or the Lydiard aerobic block is a bogus, because every athlete shows a wide variety of adaptations to the same relative training intensity.

The Lydiard training needs to be reformulated from A to Z in order to fulfill the modern distance training methodology.

What I write is just theory. But what the Lydiard adept writes on LRC isn´t theory at all, it´s training on the field.