LYDIARD OR DANIELS?

I have stayed out of this section and am going to be a fence sitter of sorts.

I have to say I like to know what the athletes are doing pace wise, especially the young ones who can "race" the training, but all I do is use a watch as a "check" not as a "given" or a "have to do" .

In line with this I too have a story similar to the Tayler one.

Another Coach who I have worked with before could not oversee one of her athletes workouts. I knew the kid quite well so I said I would be there for the session. She had scheduled 10 X 400 in 67

I checked the kids first rep and it was 62 .. too quick, so I noted that and mentally noted he could 'fall apart' later. I told him to slow down.

He continued, running the next 4 in 63 - 64. Still too quick. He ran the 6th in 67 .. Ok but then he ran the 7th in 70 ..looking awful. I bagged the workout as I could see he had entered Anaerobic territory.

He objected and said "I have to do 10". I said "No point, you are now in Anaerobic teritory and we will do nothing productive by carrying on"

I sent him off for a nice quiet 20 to 25 minute jog.

I also altered some of his workouts for later in the week. Getting him to do a lot more 'easy running'

His Coach was most upset that I had bagged the workout and changed some of the workouts and was concerned he may not "compete well" at National Secondary schools.

The opposite happened. He ran a 1500m PB (4:06)placed 6th (not expected at all) and was the youngest athlete in the top 6 by 2 years.

The Coach apologised profusely and said 'Now I understand !!"

To give the coach credit.. She is a top Sprint Coach and this was her first experience of Coaching a Distance runner.

What I am trying to say here is the watch was a check tool not a Bible and gave me the information we needed to for the workout to be successful. he kid was not experienced enough to run that workout "by feel" or "percieved effort".

Kim:

Explained how anaerobic training should be performed better than Arthur himself. John Robinson was the one who told me exactly the same story. I carried on when I coached at Hitachi as well. Anaerobic training is to develop your anaerobic capacity. Once achieved, the mission accomplished.

I love watching "24" (Jeff Johnson got me hooked with it). It's funny to think we have to rely on people who always talk about "chain of command" or "proper protocal". Of course Jack Bauer (spelling?) always breaks those stuff and, in the end, comes out as a hero. Does this actually reflect American people's desire to be a rebel when they know they can't? I've found this rather amusing.

As Lydiard always said, know WHY you're doing a certain workout. If the purpose of the workout is to complete the workout exactly as described, fine. Go for it. But if not, and if you know what the purpose is, then be a bit flexible. Don't lose the sight of that "purpose".

you said something very interesting nobby:

Nobby wrote:Anaerobic training is to develop your anaerobic capacity. Once achieved, the mission accomplished.

how do you know when this is accomplished, and if you know, what do you do then? stop the sessions? just do sharpeners? i'm very curious about this. with that tayler example, being so carefree and all, when exactly would you know that he was ready, without the clearly defined times / volumes / recovery? aren't most anaerobic sessions just stepping stones to the next one, where the parametrs get adjusted accordingly? stevenson also posted something interesting and i very much agree that if the session is going very badly from the start, then changes must be made. the session was laid out in detail, the goal was clear, but if it gets blown because of the wrong speed or unexpected fatigue or even weather or something, then you must be flexible. this is very different from that tayler example though.

I too am having achilles trouble. If it lingers, get a dopler ultrasound to check you have neo-vascularization. This is when blood vessels and nerves grow under you tendon. Since there is no space there for them, it hurts like the dickens. Easy fix though.

Cheers,

Bruce

>>example someone was saying just because rono didn't stretch that it must therefore be lydiard that he was following.<<

If you are referring to the cut and paste of Rono's first comment about stretching that I put up on the Harrier's site...well perhaps I was cavalier in my comments. It was tongue-in-cheek however, has truth in it - what was my comment? It was a metaphor.

Anyway, the point was that what Rono was saying, is what Lydiard said about stretching. Also, there are comments about principles for building a base and conditioning etc., that echo Lydaird, from Rono - just proof that it works.

bruce deacon, letsrunner! i never knew. sounds like you are 'cured' and ready to go nuts as a master. all the best. exag i was agoodvictorian for a couple of posts before i settled on 1:49, so i was actually responding to something on that henry rono training thread part 2. of course, nobby already said that lydiardites do stretch, but the point i was trying to make, hopefully not in a condescending way, was that mr lydiard did not invent the whole running biz. he had a very large role to play, but i cannot help feeling that this role has been blown way out of proportion by his disciples, many of whom appear on this awesome thread. we should keep things in context and know the history of running pre 1955. i've followed this thread very closely for a long time. having said that, it is obvious that henry, purposely or not, follows lydiard principles quite closely in his training outlook.

Dr. Exag wrote:

Also, there are comments about principles for building a base and conditioning etc., that echo Lydaird, from Rono - just proof that it works.

and i suppose the point i keep trying to make is that it works for many runners but not for every runner. for every gold medallist and world record holder that you can point out that followed lydiard principles very closely, i can point out a gold medallist and world record holder who did not follow those principles in the slightest. i know that many of the disciples here will say that those latter people actually did in fact follow lydiard without knowing it though. :) or they were some kind of genetic freaks! because how on earth could you succeed without the strict lydiard principles, right? :)

1:49, I am one of the disciples you talk of. However, when I entered this forum it was not to say that Arthur invented running and is the be all and end all. Far from it, I know where Arthur got much of his motivation and the start of his knowledge base. It was from a man named Jack Dolan. I got much of my motivation from the same man.

When I was a 17 year old and wandered down to the Lynndale club in Auckland it was Jack who came up to me first and made me feel welcome. I was 'a nothing', just a kid who wanted to run. Jack made me run with a guy called Bruce Harrison, One of Arthur's lesser known "Boys". I still remember that run like it was yesterday.

From that day on I became one of "Jack Dolan's" boys as he liked to look after the youngsters. It was his aim that he keep us in the Sport. As I graduated to Senior ranks I saw less of Jack. But then he had done his job and was looking at the next group of kids.

So to me the guy who started it all was Jack Dolan NOT Arthur Lydiard.

If you read Arthur's first book "Run to the Top" the very first opening statement is "THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED IN FOND APPRECIATION TO JACK DOLAN WHO TAUGHT ARTHUR LYDIARD IN THE FIRST PLACE WHAT FITNESS REALLY WAS'.

Funny that !! Arthur found the same thing I did !!!

All I want to do is keep the Lydiard 'legend' alive and enjoy discussing "Training" issues and how Arthur may or may not have approached those issues.

I think the best thing that has happened on this forum is the fact that Dr Daniels has posted. I just wish he could do so more.

The thread should be called Lydiard AND Daniels.

So 1:49 how about some VALUABLE contributions on some of this stuff. To me you obviously have more than average talent.

As long as Vipam's thread never tops this one's numbers.....

again a lydiardite is offended because i'm trying to put some things into perspective, not trying to be difficult.

Kim Stevenson wrote:

So 1:49 how about some VALUABLE contributions on some of this stuff.

i see this kind of thing throughout this really great thread. why is it that someone cannot say, without a comment like that coming back to them, that the history of our great sport has lasting contributions from all kinds of personalities, of which arthur was one of the players, and not the almighty god who ruled all? i don't get it. nobby has also bitten off peoples heads when they didnt deserve it. some of you guys act like you own lydiardism, like you got appointed in a supreme court to speak on his behalf. why do you act that way? i didnt deserve that stevenson. i'm outta this thread. enjoy, i'll keep reading anyway.

If those of us who are Arthur's fans see athletes training in ways that seem to cover all of Arthur's "bases," we'll usually say something to the effect of "that looks a lot like Arthur's stuff." van Aaken, for example, did things that look very similar to much of what Arthur did. But we know that van Aaken was actually doing what he did before Arthur started coaching. We might comment on how van Aaken's stuff is consistent with Arthur's principles because it is. Saying so does not mean we're claiming that Arthur influenced van Aaken.

There have been comments made about Henry Rono's comeback thread and how his training seems very Lydiard-like. That's not to say that Henry was coached by Lydiard or that he read Lydiard or was told about Lydiard. It just measn that we see that Henry is covering the same bases Arthur wanted to. I think that Peter Snell once looked at samples of Gebraselassie's training and commented that it looked like it followed Arthur's principles.

Arthur didn't invent anything. He discovered something and then found a productive way to work with it. Igloi, Zatopek, Cerutty, van Aaken all did the same thing, but their ways of working with what they found were different.

Actually, Nobby DID get appointed to speak in Arthur's behalf and if you challenged that all the way to the Supreme Court, you'd lose. It's in Arthur's will.

THAT explains it then. I thought Lydiardism was in the public domain, and that no person could take ownership. All runners are free to be Lydiardites if they choose. I know of Lydiard experts who would strongly debate a lot of things that have been presented here as The Lydiard Way. I really enjoy the thread too, but there is some validity in the arguement that some of you "experts" can be challenged effectively on some of the aspects and history presented.Just saying......Carry on!

HRE wrote:

Actually, Nobby DID get appointed to speak in Arthur's behalf and if you challenged that all the way to the Supreme Court, you'd lose. It's in Arthur's will.

Arthur was always bothered by people who would claim they were doing his training but who had actually just taken bits of it and mixed it with other stuff and came up with some sort of hybrid model. He was also bothered when his name and legacy were used without his permission. At one point his brother was selling "Lydiard" running shoes and he was furious about that.

So he did take steps to exert some control over the use of his name and decided that Nobby was the best person to see to it that if something is called "Lydiard" training that it actually conforms to the model. Barry Magee would have been the other likely candidate, but Barry is less interested in doing things like setting up foundations and monitoring what others are saying and doing in regards to Arthur's name.

I have certainly not presented myself as an expert here, at least not consciously. I'm not sure any of us have. We're just people who had some personal contacts with Arthur, and some of his original atheletes over the years and are sharing recollections and understandings. Did you know Arthur well and if so, how does your understanding of anything covered here differ from what you've read?

1:49, way to totally miss the point.

Kim just spent nearly an entire post "putting things into perspective" and NOT biting anyone's head off about Lydiard. In fact, Kim barely SPOKE about Lydiard in the post, except to say that Jack influenced Lydiard just as he influenced Kim!

Seems to me like you're being a little sensitive about everything. The better way to "put things in perspective" would be perhaps to talk about some of the other great coaches' methods out there, rather than just allude to them as you continue to say that Lydiard wasn't the only great one.

We all know he wasn't, but since we have a bunch of Lydiard experts here, we end up talking about his method, mostly. I could talk for an hour and a half about Daniels and leave pages and pages of posts, but I don't know anything about Daniels, having never studied him before, so all those posts would be me making stuff up. If we want this to be a thread for all kinds of methods, recruit some experts of other methods!

I don't expect Nobby to provide the same level of insight insight as to Percy Cerutty's training or Rob De Castella's methods as he can with Lydiard, nor for Tinman or HRE or Kim. They're sharing what THEY KNOW.

As for the idea that "all elites do Lydiard, even if its not by name" I think that's more a reflection of basic principles of training than Lydiard. Any good program needs aerobic development, anaerobic development, sharpening, race-specific training, etc. It just so happens that running for prolonged peroids of time at distances way longer than race distances is the best way for aerobic development. . . Lydiard is often identified with high-end aerobic development, so yeah, it is valid to say "Frank Shorter did a lot of Lydiard type aerobic running" because Lydiard was big on aerobic development and we associate him with it. It would also be fair to say "Frank shorter did a lot of Van Aaken type aerobic running."

A runner coached by Lydiard would be more likely to compare other peoples' training to his own, because his own is more familiar to him. A runner coached by Van Aaken would compare another runners' training to his own, and so on and so forth.

There are some basic principles in training that don't change-- it'd be just as easy for Peter Coe to watch a Lydiard-trained athlete do a ten miler fairly hard and say 'that's like what Seb did when he was emphasizing aerobic development' as it is for Nobby to look at Seb Coe's training and go "oh, that's classic Lydiard hill workout!"

Yeah yeah yeah, 1:49 this and 1:49 that, but he left good questions that I want answered, please:

1:49 wrote:

you said something very interesting nobby:

Nobby wrote:Anaerobic training is to develop your anaerobic capacity. Once achieved, the mission accomplished.

how do you know when this is accomplished, and if you know, what do you do then? stop the sessions? just do sharpeners? i'm very curious about this.

Gone but not forgotten wrote:

Yeah yeah yeah, 1:49 this and 1:49 that, but he left good questions that I want answered, please:

I'm no expert on Lydiard, but I'm thinking that even someone who knows very little about distance training would know that if you go out way too fast on the first couple of repetitions and start to fall off the pace considerably on the next couple, it's best to bag the session rather than run yourself to exhaustion just to get the self-perceived "magic" number of reps.

If anything, I think this supports Daniels' training as much as Lydiard, in such that if you start a workout training at the wrong pace or in the wrong "zone," if you will, and can't hit any of the target times in the latter part of the workout because you ran them too hard early on, it's best to cut it short.

I give my athletes a target number of reps to shoot for, usually a range, like say, 8-12, and an approximate time that I think would be best for them to try and hit, like say 2:20-2:40 per 800, let's say. I also have recovery time in mind, sometimes a 400 jog or an equal time recovery jog, but even that I might adjust on the fly, not just by giving more recovery for someone who is struggling, but also maybe giving less recovery for someone who is running well. The thing is, some people get so caught up in having to do an exact pace a precise number of times with X recovery, not a second more or a second less, and even if the athlete is in severe distress, "too bad, they've gotta finish the workout because this is THE WORKOUT."

I personally like using Daniels charts/formulas to give me a ballpark idea of what an athlete should "ideally" do, but I've learned over the years that all athletes aren't going to have an ideal workout 100% of the time. Variables might have to be changed and that's okay.

I'd rather an athlete be a bit undertrained than a bit overtrained. I'd rather an athlete do one rep less and feel confident and like they could do another than have them struggle just to get to the finish line and lose confidence because they couldn't get that "magic" target time.

1:49.,

You and your thousand other psuedonyms, stop repeating yourself, 88 pages later.

I have learned more in this thread than from my previous last several years of running.

The contributions on here from Nobby, Kim, HRE and many others are worth burning onto CD/DVD so I can read them as reference, rather than opening up the Lore of Running.

You have two eyes and one typing finger, please read twice as much as you type, that would help the rest of the world live.

Case closed.

I agree, drunkenhyena.

I hope tinman or nobby will address those questions that 1:49 asked because they are good ones.

Arthur had a phase of X weeks for anaerobic development but how did he KNOW when you had achieved that goal completely,

especially if the sessions were kinda free.

I would think that certain steps need to be made in aspects of speed, form, recovery ability,

so how do you observe this if it didnt matter how many and how fast..