Lydiard vs Coe vs Daniels

wanttorun wrote:I am not sure that I understand all that is going on this thread. But it would seem that no one has really shown the differences between Lydiard, Coe, and Daniels.

Good point.

I've been fairly interested in this thread and have been discussing it with some friends. One of my buddies made a suggestion that I thought I'd lob out, and hope that maybe jtupper or others could answer.

The suggestion was this (I generalize of course):

Coe and Daniels largely ingore the aerobic threshold (AeT) and concentrate on the anaerobic threshold (AnT). Lydiard, whether he would use these words or not, focusses on both, first developing AeT, and then working on AnT.

A Lydiard runner would therefore develop both aerobic and anaerobic strength, and should be able to have good performances across a broad range of race distances (say 1500 to marathon). A Daniels or Coe runner, on the other hand, would likely only have good performances across a narrower band (say 1500-3000).

All approaches are excellent (since all three are obviously well-regarded), but they have a different emphasis and therefore different outcome.

Anyone agree or disagree? Note, these are not my original thoughts, but they do seem reasonable to me.

jtupper, any agreement or rebuttal?

Just wondering !!

Who has Peter Coe Coached in the last 14 years and who has stated that Coe has had a great influence on their running ?

I would love to see a list of Coaches and athletes who could testify to that influence.

look at the training of the top runners of today from the 1500m to the Marathon:its pretty much the same.

Lets compare the base(Winter-Spring) training of El-Guerrouj(1500-5k), Gebre(5k-10k) and Khannouchi:

2 sessions at 3000m-10k pace per week, some threshold or tempo runs + base/recovery runs.

Some recover better from hard-workouts and can do higher volume of easy runs(120-140 like Gebre), some do less because they can't hold it(90-110 like Khannouchi).

Almost every toprunner trains more or less that way, just some modulation because some recover better and some not so good.

Joe Newton at York high school in Elhurst Illinois. Granted he is a high school coach. But probably the most successful high school XC coach ever. Both Marius Bakken and Don Sage ran for York.

I remember when I was in College in the US in the 1970's that Joe Newton was already doing an awesome job and was already a Top High School Coach.

Seb Coe was still in High School in '74. He won the All England Schools 3k .

Newton's reputation was probably greater than Peter Coe's at that time !!

Seb & Peter Coe were not known until around 1978 on a World stage.

My point being WHO states that their Coaching is influenced by Peter Coe.

I would disagree with this characterization. Aerobic threshold occurs at such a low velocity that Coe, Dainiels, Lydiard all ignore it. I'm not aware of anyone who believes that raising aerobic threshold would result in improved performance.

Note that I'm using "aerobic threshold" in the "onset of

blood lactate" sense, which corresponds to the level of exertion which rasises lactate above the level at rest, and there are other definitions which may be reached at a different, possibly higher HR:

1. The point at which anaerobic energy pathways start to operate.

2. approximately 20 beats lower than anaerobic threshold

3. the intensity at which an individual burns the most fat

4. 2mmol blood lactate

Now if we substitute "Aerobic Development" for AeT, and "Anaerobic Development" for AnT (leaving aside for now any questions of the precise meaning of these terms) then Coe/Daniels would probably regard the statement as incorrect, in that they would not say that they ignore "Aerobic Development". They might, however, agree that they introduce "Anaerobic Development" earlier than one would in an orthodox Lydiard program.

The perspective of a Lydiard expert on this point my very well differ, and since we have many of them at our disposal, I will leave it to them to enlighten us.

I have advocated using aerobic threshold running as a regular part of a weekly training since the 1980s when I read that Alois Mader, et al of the German sports machine identified it as an important training tool.

I label the aerobic threshold as starting just a little slower than marathon race pace. It is a pace that certainly can be used often in training and won't break a runner down.

By the way, Jannsen, Peter, M.D. identifies aerobic threshold as occurring roughly 9-10 beats below lactate theshold (aka anaerobic threshold). As a general rule, that is equal to 85% of maximum heart rate for trained individuals.

Some people think it is too slow to be of benefit, but I disagree. To each their own. Tinman

Open your eyes wrote:

Pete wrote:

(It would be great if Hadd would join in on this thread. There's been a lot of good input amongst the inevitable inane pettiness)

Dear Pete -

Please open your eyes and pay attention. "Hadd" is John Kellog, aka FWRUNCO, aka "stop the pigeon"

The only real response I can offer to this poster (ironically named "open your eyes;" I suggest you heed your own advice) is: wow, you are pathetically freaking stupid.

Hadd is an Italian coach named John Hadd who is based in Italy.

Fwrunco is James Newson of Fort Worth Running Company in Fort Worth, Texas. His co-worker and Weldon's coach is John Kellogg (who has posted under JK, TG&P Oz, Michelle Branch fan, stop the pigeon, and Professor Utonium).

Before you make ridiculously idiotic wagers with people, do not take a metaphorical crossbow and shoot yourself in the brain with it. Do not be ignorant.

Actually Seb and his father came to visit Newton and Joe does credit them with influencing his training philosophy. Kim just because he was coaching before Seb Coe was on the world stage doesn't mean anything.

Oh and here is another one: Al Schmidt at Mississippi State. He takes a lot of shit on this board. But coached Margaret Gross to an Olympic trials victory in the marathon which was the OLympic trials record until this year. Also he coaches Tiff McWilliams who golds the NCAA 1500. He also was around coaching before Coe. But he has changed his philosophy since Coe as well.

Joe Newton at York wrote:

Joe Newton at York high school in Elhurst Illinois. Granted he is a high school coach. But probably the most successful high school XC coach ever. Both Marius Bakken and Don Sage ran for York.

I believe the connection goes beyond that, that Marius is acquainted with Peter Coe himself, and acknowleges a Coe influence.

That said, it appears that Marius is an independent thinker, and draws inspiration from many sources. He credits Kenyan style 'lots-of-LT' training as responsile for his breakthrough year. He does not discuss the details of his training, so it is difficult to make an independent judgement about the extent of the various influences.

yes but I question him running McWillaims at SECs under stress-fracture conditions...

The reason no one has shown clearly the differences between Lydiard, Coe, and Daniels is because they are not that different in reality. Whether you run 2hrs at 60% or 90 mins. at 70%, or 60 mins. at 80%, your essentially accomplishing the same thing, aerobic conditioning and capillary development. Lydiard states that you should work on top end sprint speed once a week. Coe obviousley believes in plenty of speed training. Lydiard believes in hill training, so does Coe. They both believe in tempo runs. All these things will get you fit, that is the key.

Any runner who wishes to train for any distance from the 800m to the marathon would do well to start with the Lydiard system. First, because it takes 5 years of consistent training to prepare the body for more difficult levels of training, or more conisistent speed intervals. The differences only begin to emerge at the shorter distances, 800 to 1500, and maybe 3000 now that it is being run at 4:00 pace. So how do they then differ?

In the Coe system they believed in training for world record speeds and in order to do this they had to develop a way to fight off lactic acid builup more efficiently at high speed. That is why Seb ran short, fast intervals with very short recoveries. An example, 8 x 300m @ 36 with 45 sec recovery. No Lydiard trained runner would be able to run that workout. However the Lydiard system certainley provides any runner with the fitness level to train in that direction if they chose to do so.

How effective was the Coe plan? In 1980 Track and Field News projected what all World records would be in the year 2000 at all distance from the 100m to the marathon. In the year 2000 the actual world record were faster in all distances except the 800m, which they projected would be sub 1:40. No one has even gone sub 1:41, and only Kipketer has gone sub 1:42. That should put in perspective how fast Coe's 1:41.8 really was. Lydiard trained runners (with great talent) can and have run 1:45, but they will not run 1:41, and there is a huge difference in those times.

I believe that one runner today who trains most closely to Coe is Alan Webb, I also believe he will run extremley fast, maybe world record speed at 1500m, one thing is for sure, it will be fun to watch and see. So I think the differences are to be found at the highest levels of the mid distances. Also Coe does state that he belives andy mid distance runner should be fully fit at one distance above and one distance below their primary distance. So your observation of the narrower range of a Coe trained runner is pretty close.

I'll agree to most of this. I would just like to comment on a couple of things you mentioned. First, you said, "Lydiard states that you should work on top end sprint speed once a week." Actually, Lydiard says that you can work on top end speed almost everyday, year round. However, he feels it is only necessary once a week. Also, you said that Lydiard's runners couldn't handle Coe's short, fast intervals with short recovery. I feel this is mostly true as Lydiard's runners tend to be able to handle higher volumns though. For example, a Lydiard trained runner might struggle against a Coe trained runner in the 8x300 workout you discribed. However, the Lydiard runner would probably do better at 8x400 at 1500 pace with 45 seconds rest. It all depends on the type of runner someone is. I had a college freshman last year who couldn't break 50 seconds for 400 to save his life. But he ran 1:52 in the 800 and was my best 800 runner, though he was my slowest runner over 600. On top of that he would always outkick other 800 guys who could split 46-47 on a relay. I've kind of adapted the philosophy that strength and stamina is more important than speed (speed is a luxury) and Lydiard's approach tends to help support this training style. I agree with you though, that an 800 runner who is Lydiard trained could run 1:48 with moderate talent, but would probably never run under 1:45. However, Lydiard would also say that those guys should focus more on the 1500/5000 and not the 800 since they weren't blessed with amazing speed.

This brings up a question though. Do you guys think that a marathon type approach to base training (Lydiard), followed by 12 weeks of Coe's 14 day cycle of multipaced training would yield positive results for an 800 runner? Kind of combining the best of both worlds?

Kim Stevenson wrote:

Just wondering !!

Who has Peter Coe Coached in the last 14 years and who has stated that Coe has had a great influence on their running ?

I would love to see a list of Coaches and athletes who could testify to that influence.

good point, the coes did a lot of speedwork plus used epo...to transmit this approach to other atletes would expose sebastian as a drug user.

So why didn't Coe commercialize his EPO source? He would have stood to make billions of dollars, given that Amgen didn't start clinical trials of Epogen® until 1985.

Kim Stevenson wrote:

I remember when I was in College in the US in the 1970's that Joe Newton was already doing an awesome job and was already a Top High School Coach.

Seb Coe was still in High School in '74. He won the All England Schools 3k .

Newton's reputation was probably greater than Peter Coe's at that time !!

Seb & Peter Coe were not known until around 1978 on a World stage.

My point being WHO states that their Coaching is influenced by Peter Coe.

following is a quote from Marius Bakken's site (see link below):

"The things to look at is the incredible development of Mr. Peter Coes multi tier system. Salah Hissou brought this home to Marocco and started working on it in the early/mid 90s."

then a little further, a quote attributed to one Hicham El Guerrouj, King of the Mile (&copy Michael Bautista):

“In the beginning of the 80s, the British milers dominated distance running. So we simply copied their training system and adapted it to our runners”

Now it might be that "British miler training system" <> "Coe system". But what then might it be? the Harry Wilson system? The Frank Horwill system? Marius' interpretation of this point seems clear.

scepticus wrote:

So why didn't Coe commercialize his EPO source? He would have stood to make billions of dollars, given that Amgen didn't start clinical trials of Epogen® until 1985.

1885? cyclists were using it and dying from too much of it in the 1970"s...... (see "coach" and cardiologist ROSA who "caoches" the kenyans. he became the rich one. seb went to parliament.)

Good stuff ! What I am really enjoying is that what is happening here are SIMILARITIES are appearing not the differences.

I note EL G's first tier of training is Aerobic Endurance. First fan of that concept is Arthur Lydiard and really all that Arthur has ever prescribed is you must condition Aerobically before you start SPECIFIC Anaerobic work.

During vacation time I can remember staying up at Stanmore Bay at Bill Baillie's Holiday home (In a Tent) and every morning was an Aerobic Endurance Run (to quote the Maroccan info) and every afternoon was a faster workout.

Halberg mentions this sort of work in his book. (Saying at the same place when Arthur owned it)

Possibly biggest difference was on the last day (usually a Sunday .. back to work Monday) Bill had us run 22 miles. I managed mine at 2:40 Marathon pace.

I know that Seb Coe ran many miles around Graves Park and similar areas of Sheffield.

I had a conversation with a Coaching buddy 2 days ago and we noticed that we use many terms that are attributed to other Coaches eg: Tempo Runs instead of Effort Runs we got that from Jack Daniels.

Don't forget that when Arthur wrote those schedules he was dealing with athletes who held 9 to 5 jobs than trained. Henc the long runs on weekends.

I quite often wonder what he would have done if he had full time athletes. The Finns were probably closest to that ideal except he worked with the Coaches there, but was attributed to the overall success.

My guess is that what EL G does now is possibly what Arthur would do if he had that time over again with full time athletes.

As an aside : If you saw the Cycling at the Olympics one of our Women : Sarah Ulmer, took 6 seconds off the World Record for the 3k Pursuit (Gold Medal). Her programme contains huge amounts of Aerobic Endurance as well as Specific Anaerobic work.