Basic Training Principles--New booklet on Lydiard training for high school runners

Cabral copyright

2 kinds of runners. Which are you?

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=2375989&page=0

Cabral post

You will need to wait a bit longer for my answer to your question about the young punk who wants some training. First I want to continue explaining some of my basic training concepts.

In the past there has been too much misunderstanding about the different use of training terminology; I want to be sure you understand what I mean when I use some technical expressions.

Training. Time and Space Matters

I see every training program as an organised schedule of different stimulae, the main goal of which is to get the runner into optimal shape for the target event.

Each individual stimulus is made up of a precise management of time and space – the running pace. Each training stimulus can be considered from that viewpoint.

1/ Specific training; directly linked to the target event.

2/ General training; not directly linked to the target event, but important nonetheless.

Some more basic concepts can be linked to the target race pace. To create a specific stimulus linked to target race pace, there are 3 fundamental paces;

1/ To run faster than race pace for a shorter period/ distance than race distance.

2/ To run at race pace.

3/ To run slower than race pace, for a longer period/ distance than race distance.

Three other “artificial” concepts can also be abstracted from the target event;

1/ Speed: To run a short distance in a maximal effort, quite close to individual maximum effort.

2/ Resistance: To run at an intensity very close to that of race pace, or at a pace very close to race pace.

3/ Endurance or Persistence: To run longer than race distance at a pace that is clearly slower and less intense than race pace.

Two other ideas are also connected to the time and space concept;

1/ Intensive: It means to run faster, and consequently the need to train over short distances or in short time durations and come close to your fastest paces.

2/ Extensive: It means to run longer than race duration / distance, which means running slower than race pace so as to last the whole distance or duration of the session.

Among all these “artificial concepts of discrimination” there is a specific training pace we also need to define that is called “strength endurance”. This is a pace with an intensity that is in direct connection and similar to the target event. It is a compromise of speed, resistance and endurance (each already defined above) in an intensity that is very close to race pace.

All this is basic stuff, but it can be made complex when someone discovers the “wheel” of training; intermittent running.

Therefore "Time and Space Matters" – the way I view training methodology – that’s basically a way to manage all training stimulae in agreement with a specific target event. If you want to reduce it to the minimal, or the essence of training, it can be seen as the proper management of “pace intensities” for the target event.

All running training – like most physical activities – benefits from synthesising all previous training experience and all previous training methods into a training methodology that works for you. Each successful training method has its own collective foundation based on universal logic, i.e. science, or any other method of knowledge acquisition, such as past experience or trial and error.

Cabral copyright

2 kinds of runners. Which are you?

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=2375989&page=0

Cabral post

When someone comes up to me asks me to coach them, my first question (perhaps obviously) is to ask him/her about their running background and to show me some examples of their recent training. At the same time, I like to inquire about their motivation and medium and long-term targets.

I analyse what I am told, and then consider what I think I can do, how best I can train the person before to me to maximise his/her potential.

This is a major challenge for me: to achieve the best possible improvement and optimal progress for each runner.

In the case of our young punk, the first thing I need to teach him is my three basic pace levels:

1 - easy runs

2 - moderate to intense (but still submaximal) LT runs

3 - maximal runs

I will start him for some time with just easy runs (according to my definition). As you discuss above, he needs to be made "ready to train". Then when I see that the time has come, I will introduce into his regular training some intense but submaximal runs - these provoke a high aerobic demand.

Later, when I estimate that he is ready to compete, I will include some 3rd level training intensity - fast runs, with a higher aerobic demand at maximal pace. As you would expect, most of the fast runs will be done in the form of intermittent workouts.

Antonio Cabral wrote:

I disagree and let me say why. ... Lydiard, in the case of the aerobic first phase prefers continuous runs ... Lydiard said don´t do intervals in that phase, point.

I hesitated to include that paragraph, because I don't want to distract the discussion. I would have no problem including an "aerobic" session like 10x400m at 10K pace, with 45 second jogging recovery once a week (maybe replacing the fartlek), while the rest are continuous, during the aerobic phase. Maybe you're right, and I should call it a modified Lydiard, since the idea of that session clearly doesn't come from Lydiard.

Antonio Cabral wrote:

Replace "simultaneously" by ...

Maybe "contemporaneously".

Cabral copyright wrote:

I will start him for some time with just easy runs (according to my definition). As you discuss above, he needs to be made "ready to train". Then when I see that the time has come, I will introduce into his regular training some intense but submaximal runs - these provoke a high aerobic demand.

Later, when I estimate that he is ready to compete, I will include some 3rd level training intensity - fast runs, with a higher aerobic demand at maximal pace. As you would expect, most of the fast runs will be done in the form of intermittent workouts.

I may not understand the entire context as I have not read all of the posts, but I cannot help thinking that this is an "aerobic first" training philosophy when reading this paragraph.

Euro runner wrote:

I may not understand the entire context as I have not read all of the posts, but I cannot help thinking that this is an "aerobic first" training philosophy when reading this paragraph.

It is my understanding in the difference is that Cabral would recommend a "general aerobic" conditioning until a runner is "fit" and ready for training. Once fit, the Cabral-trained runner does not revisit this aerobic-only (or aerobic first) phase in the training cycle. Lydiard recommends an aerobic phase each year/cycle.

[I may be wrong in some or all of this understanding]

ACmilan wrote:

systems wrote:

The point I am trying to make, is that we need very hard sessions that avoid acidosis. This is how all the best runners train.

Who on earth are you talking about? I have never heard such a thing.

Watch the best 800m runners. Are they gasping for breath when they run 1.41?

No, they aren't. Same with the 400, and any other distance.

Very hard sessions to achieve maximum buffering effect is not a good way to train. You don't need it to run your best race, because that is just inneficient running.

Your natural reaction will be to say that this is not true. You will need to think about it for a while.

systems wrote:

Watch the best 800m runners. Are they gasping for breath when they run 1.41?

No, they aren't. Same with the 400, and any other distance.

Very hard sessions to achieve maximum buffering effect is not a good way to train. You don't need it to run your best race, because that is just inneficient running.

Your natural reaction will be to say that this is not true. You will need to think about it for a while.

I took your advice and thought about it a second time and have decided to stay with my first thought. It was worth the exercise though.

Hopefully an athletes' training has required effort levels higher than they could ever produce in a single race. I thought this was the normal approach, to cover the demands of the event.

Your take on this in definitely unique, at least in this thread. I'm sure there are like minded people somewhere but i haven't met one of them, until you that is. Whilst Lydiard recommends a serious retraction on the amount of interval training you suggest a total removal. This is possibly an extremist point of view? Your evidence is that the best runners aren't gasping for breath as the finish. No doubt you are right in most cases but check again and you will find many examples where a great athlete pr a great performance has required near total exhaustion.

That is beside the point. The point being that it is the training that is done in preparation that allows those performances (ok, i'm shifting it to performance).

Early season races in some of these athletes you are talking about are prior to the anaerobic interval phase and are a few seconds slower than the late seasons results. Therein lies the difference between doing and not doing this specific phase of MD training. So it is a very small amount i grant you, but this sport measures to .001 for a reason.

Of course you could be looking mainly at EPO scabs.

Huh? That's not what I wrote at all.

I quoted you directly???

It's your conclusion. "systems" didn't suggest eliminating interval training. He talked about "not carbo loading" and "warming up" as a way to run fast while avoiding heavy breathing (a proxy for acidosis) during the hard sessions.

He also referenced Jack Daniels, who uses cruise intervals, I-paced intervals, and R-paced intervals.

rekrunner wrote:

It's your conclusion. "systems" didn't suggest eliminating interval training. He talked about "not carbo loading" and "warming up" as a way to run fast while avoiding heavy breathing (a proxy for acidosis) during the hard sessions.

He also referenced Jack Daniels, who uses cruise intervals, I-paced intervals, and R-paced intervals.

Ok thanks for clearing up my error. I meant to refer to anaerobic intervals ie those that are designed to stimulate an increased ability to buffer lactate.

I think where he is coming from is an idea that to strengthen then aerobic system most directly you need to be breathing from the level of below your diaphragm and not above, where above is indicating the breathing is now 'hard' or 'out of control'.

I agree with what i just said and wonder if systems is thinking the same way.

rekrunner wrote:

It's your conclusion. "systems" didn't suggest eliminating interval training. He talked about "not carbo loading" and "warming up" as a way to run fast while avoiding heavy breathing (a proxy for acidosis) during the hard sessions.

He also referenced Jack Daniels, who uses cruise intervals, I-paced intervals, and R-paced intervals.

Thank you rekrunner. And thank you for being the representative letsrun poster for answering the question of what people are refering to when they talk about so called 'anaerobic training'

I accept that a lower blood pH is what they are refering to. Although I believe that this should be avoided during hard interval training and racing so that we have more control over our breathing.

ACmilan wrote:

I meant to refer to anaerobic intervals ie those that are designed to stimulate an increased ability to buffer lactate.

I think where he is coming from is an idea that to strengthen then aerobic system most directly you need to be breathing from the level of below your diaphragm and not above, where above is indicating the breathing is now 'hard' or 'out of control'.

I agree with what i just said and wonder if systems is thinking the same way.

Lactate isn't buffered. The acidity comes from glycolytic hydrogen ions.

And no, I wasn't talking about breathing below the diaphragm. I was taling about the effect that the low blood pH/acidosis etc has on our breathing, it makes us produce extra carbon dioxide when we breath out.

If you refer to Jack Daniel's studies, he shows that this can cause the breathing rate to increase by 30% above the normal blood pH level which gives a breathing rate of one carbon dioxide molecule exhaled for every oxygen molecule inhaled when running at the ventilatory threshold.

However, we can all run at middle distance paces without a heavy acidosis by either refraining from carbo loading before a short race, or by having a good long warm up, or just by being very nervous for several hours before the race. With the right training we learn how to find the right level. But we have to train very hard to become super efficient runners.

42 seconds for 400m and 1.39 for 800 won't be achieved by the runner who achives the lowest blood pH, because the last 100m of those races is of course the slowest, and to reduce this decelleration a runner has to hurt less, not hurt more, although such races will always involve some slowing down and some pain, it's part of the pacing strategy that must be executed.

You're welcome. I think it's an easy way to think about it, if you're not a physiologist. Of course, in a Lydiard cycle, these hard sessions would be some 6 weeks or so away from real racing, so they shouldn't interfere too much with what happens when racing starts.

systems wrote:

Thank you rekrunner. And thank you for being the representative letsrun poster for answering the question of what people are refering to when they talk about so called 'anaerobic training'

I accept that a lower blood pH is what they are refering to. Although I believe that this should be avoided during hard interval training and racing so that we have more control over our breathing.

I think the science gets in the way of good training and coaching. One of the dangers is that athletes and coaches get the wrong idea of this so called 'anaerobic training' and don't do real quality speed endurance sessions.

What never gets discussed is the way to use up the glycogen in the most effective way. We either do it by accident or by feel and we can get it wrong if we try to rush things.

When we are fully carbo loaded, we have enough fuel for 15-20 miles of very fast running, but if we try to hard with a full or nearly full fuel tank, we can get out of breath very easily without hitting the right paces. We all know that feeling. And we all know the feeling, when the glycogen stores are low, but we are moving fast and easy, without breathing hard.

Of course there must be a compromise between power and efficiency, and when the glycogen stores get too low, power cannot be generated. All good runners and coaches understand this by feel and experience. But science always lags behind this level of intuitive and practical understanding, and causes much confusion. Thus, trying to define a coaching methodology with scientific terminology presents more problems than it solves.

It's annoying when old words create confusion, like buffering. But i feel it still tells the story well enough of the body coping with excess demands on its systems and learning to deal in that state of intensity. We do have to allow our bodies to adapt to this level of effort because racing conditions require it, do they not?

Apart from this, i like what you are saying as it seems to always have a reference to reality, so i assume you are speaking from experience.

There is one idea you are presenting that is outside my own thinking but now you mention it not outside my experience, so thanks for that. The effect of glycogen storage levels on breathing rate. Why is this so? Does the body decide stores are too low so we will focus on fat usage? If stores are high does the body naturally want to use the faster accessed energy stores first, thinking it has plenty in reserve? Interesting idea anyway, prior to this i only had the idea that one of the main functions of the long run was to stimulate extra glycogen storage capacity, due to depletion of all available stores.

See what you think of this: I feel we should develop our 'fitness' from as low as possible and progressively raise this up to where our energy systems cross over in dominance. We then spend more of our training time gently pushing this cross over from underneath, with some time spent going above it. Only a small proportion of the time spent above it is spent in a negative acidocis situation, the last few reps of a speed endurance session, or the last few minutes of a progressive longer run. According to Lydiard (and pretty much the rest of what we are talking about seems to come from him) you can spend more time in this acidotic state if you have more aerobic capacity to support it. This makes sense in any life example you can choose, you have more capital you can make a bigger investment; you have more oxgygen you can stay underwater for longer, you spend more time planting food plants, you get more food to eat ... etc.

I love it when an athlete wins or record breaks and has done it with apparent ease. I know this experience well enough to have discussed it many times with peers. We all remember our best performances that felt effortless. It is like the holy grail for athletes, once they can look beyond the dazzling but shallow beauty of the PR. Always there is the wonderment at how it happened. Everyone has their opinions, from the easy throw-away comment of being in the zone, to describing something of the experience, the emphasis on smoothness that exists, the mental freedom that is unusual, the feeling you are observing yourself as an onlooker rather than as the active participant, the loss of time and or space/distance. I'm sure there are many more. I think the important part of this is not a description of what is it but an analysis of how it came about. I believe Lydiard's training is designed to guarantee this experience for an athlete, as long as all elements of Lydiard's method are followed. I think it works as a package and i for one am not prepared to tamper with it's balance. It was put together by a master of his craft.

What do you think?

Thank you. Yes that feeling of performing at our highest level but feeling as though it was almost effortless is something I am familiar with and what has made me wonder and question for a long time.

What I have written in my last 10 or so posts here is an attempt to explain it, where other explanations fail.

I do believe it is related to low glycogen reserve, and that this triggers our brain to be more selective in switching from one group of muscle fibers (motor units) to another. This happens much more efficiently when we are conditioned by our training to perform at this level.

If you think that in an 800m race for example, you may only be using about 100 kcals or so, this is only about 1/30th of your maximum glycogen storage. Before an important race, our nervous system will probably be getting rid of excess glycogen, using it up in preparation for the effort, so that when the gun fires, we are in the optimum state of arousal. But we have to be confident in our training when that gun goes and execute our race strategy/strategies.

For longer races of course this will be different, although I think it will apply for all track races. None of the track distances utilize fats for fuel though, if they are honest hard efforts.

We don't need special training to cope with acidosis, that is the big mistake runners make, thinking that they need some special conditioning to push the breathing rate very high. We don't need that in a race, it is inefficient, and we shouldn't practice running inefficiently, but running fast and long without that feeling of gasping for breath. When that happens in training, we just haven't had a long enough warm up.

Seems like nobody else is with us.

Ok so we agree in principle that 'something' different seems to be happening in these cases of performance in the 'zone'. I think we need two questions for this: 'what' is it and 'how' does it happen.

The what seems only able to be explained through the mind as that is where this is happening and doesn't really help us. The 'how' can help us reproduce it, if we can work out the answer.

I see how you are explaining it but believe that is only part of the picture. If the answer comes down to appropriate warming up then you may be right with a lot of cases, but my own experience negates this. Warming up is removed as a factor influencing performance if one simply knows how much they need to be 'ready' to go.

We can flip this idea over to the martial arts to gain some perspective. Say all of your preparation for the upcoming big fight is in attacking methods. For three years you practise attacking and then comes the big fight and you get hit hard. The complete lack of preparation for the defensive side of the art simply equates to not being prepared for it. Simple ey. The late stages of the 800m may well involve the need to receive a punch or two and not lose your head in the process. Those that have trained to keep their form, both mental and physical, when the extreme test comes on. Just check Keino and Vasala in Munich for such a battle.

But if you can read your body accurately and constantly, so you always know how much, then there is no need to go into 'uncontrolled breathing', because it is more efficient to increase the breathing capacity by staying within in, even whilst maximally expanding the aerobic bubble. You are so precise that you can play with that edge inside yourself like a dancer on a tightrope.

Where does this extra efficiency come from? It comes from greater muscle tension, giving us a more springy stride, using less fuel for a given pace.

But too much tension is a problem causing fatigue.

How do we get that optimum muscle tension? From training, pre-race nerves, not too anxious, not too relaxed. And a good warm-up. Then good race tactics, not going off to fast, not getting into bad positions.

Of course the last 100m is always the slowest in hard fought 800m races, that is just part of 800m running, but I believe that running to maximum buffer capacity can only slow you down even more. You have to use somewhat less than that to get best results.