Adapting Lydiard into one weekly / 2 week training cycle repeated year round

SamH wrote:

Been reading some stuff on Lydiard training , however hear in the UK we race year round and I think a solid a young athlete it I should important to race as well to gain tactical experience etc. How would you adapt Lydiard into a weekly cycle to be in good shape year round for a high school aged runner to race well over 800/1500 mainly but 5k in the winter?

* Correction: however here in the UK we race year round and I think as a young athlete it is important to race a lot to gain tactical experience

Arthur eventually put together schedules for people who wanted to race pretty much year round and weren't looking to peak once or twice. Here's a sample of his "race week-non race week" schedule, one for cross country and one for track:

Cross country (non-race week)

Monday: repetitions 3 × 1,500 meters or 6 × 800 meters

Tuesday: aerobic running 60-90 minutes

Wednesday: time trial 3,000 or 5,000 meters

Thursday: aerobic running 60-90 minutes

Friday: fast relaxed striding 10 × 100 meters

Saturday: time trial 3,000 or 5,000 meters

Sunday: aerobic running 60-90 minutes

Cross country (race week)

Monday: wind-sprints 6-10 × 100 meters

Tuesday: easy fartlek 30-60 minutes

Wednesday: time trial 1,500 to 2,000 meters

Thursday: fast relaxed striding 6 × 100 meters

Friday: jog 30 minutes

Saturday: race

Sunday: aerobic running 90 minutes or more

Road (non-race week)

Monday: repetitions 3 × 1,600 meters or 6 × 800 meters

Tuesday: aerobic running 90 minutes

Wednesday: time trial 3 miles

Thursday: aerobic running 90 minutes

Friday: fast relaxed striding 6-10 × 100 meters

Saturday: time trial 3 miles

Sunday: aerobic running 90 minutes or more

Road (race week)

Monday: wind-sprints 10-16 × 100 meters

Tuesday: easy fartlek 30-60 minutes

Wednesday: time trial 1 mile

Thursday: fast relaxed striding 4-6 ×100 meters

Friday: jog 30 minutes

Saturday: race

Sunday: aerobic running 90 minutes or more

You want to remember that this is a template that can be adapted for a particular runner and his/her circumstances. You don't need to follow it literally.

This has come up here before more than once. Here's a thread from a couple years ago:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=8604808

Why not just pick a scheme that is designed to allow for year round racing? Look at some of the tinman (for one of a zillion ) schedules where you are basically doing a tempo run, 1 10k/paced intervals, and a little bit of faster work. It is a fine general base that you can race off by replacing a workout with a race. Before your big race take 6-8 weeks and do some race specific work.

That being said taking 2-3 months off from racing at some point is a great idea.

Keep in mind that the Lydiard race week / non race week schedule is not optimal. Lydiard proposed it to appease the “joggers” but it was not his preferred way of training someone.

parkerjohn wrote:

Keep in mind that the Lydiard race week / non race week schedule is not optimal. Lydiard proposed it to appease the “joggers” but it was not his preferred way of training someone.

He did not think it was the optimal way to train but he was not just appeasing joggers. He understood that the world had changed and there were many runners wanting to race well for months on end. If someone is looking for another adaption of Lydiard for near year round running you could look at Pat Clohessy's Complex System. Clohessey learnt Lydiard's system when he was racing and travelling in Europe with Arthur and his runners in 1962 (I think.) When he began coaching he too recognized that runners were interested in near year round racing so he adapted Lydiard's ideas in that way.

Adapting the Lydiard system in this manner takes away its greatest strength. The long and uninterrupted conditioning period is a key component of Lydiardism because of what it does for your oxygen uptake level. You shouldn’t mix aerobic and anaerobic training according to Lydiard. In fact, that was one of the problems he had in Finland when he first arrived. Lydiard had to call in an East German physiologist to explain to the Finns what he already knew to be true. Racing opportunities, financial incentives and the like may have changed over the years but good training is still good training.

parkerjohn wrote:

Adapting the Lydiard system in this manner takes away its greatest strength. The long and uninterrupted conditioning period is a key component of Lydiardism because of what it does for your oxygen uptake level. You shouldn’t mix aerobic and anaerobic training according to Lydiard. In fact, that was one of the problems he had in Finland when he first arrived. Lydiard had to call in an East German physiologist to explain to the Finns what he already knew to be true. Racing opportunities, financial incentives and the like may have changed over the years but good training is still good training.

So do you reach a higher level of performance at the end of doing a 6 month Lydiard based programme ( involving peaking etc) or 6 months of pat clohessey/tinman style training ( where most energy systems are worked on every week and fitness progresses gradually)?

I know that Arthur was against racing/anaerobic work in the base phase , bu I was to follow a Lydiard style phasic plan, would it be ok to race occasionally during the base phase ( to gain some race experience)as long as you train through it and keep the mileage up or would this really affect the aerobic base?

parkerjohn wrote:

Adapting the Lydiard system in this manner takes away its greatest strength. The long and uninterrupted conditioning period is a key component of Lydiardism because of what it does for your oxygen uptake level. You shouldn’t mix aerobic and anaerobic training according to Lydiard. In fact, that was one of the problems he had in Finland when he first arrived. Lydiard had to call in an East German physiologist to explain to the Finns what he already knew to be true. Racing opportunities, financial incentives and the like may have changed over the years but good training is still good training.

Yes, I just agreed with you about this. But it's also possible to do 2-3 months of base building and then move into this race week-non race week schedule for an indefinite time.

If you're using the classic Lydiard system with the phases it certainly is possible to race in any phase. His guys did it all the time but the races were not taken seriously enough to interfere with the work being done in that phase. So if you wanted to race during the base phased you would but you'd train through the race, i.e. no lowered mileage in the day or two before as a taper, maybe a normal morning run and a long warm up and cool down on race day.

parkerjohn wrote:

Adapting the Lydiard system in this manner takes away its greatest strength. The long and uninterrupted conditioning period is a key component of Lydiardism because of what it does for your oxygen uptake level. You shouldn’t mix aerobic and anaerobic training according to Lydiard. In fact, that was one of the problems he had in Finland when he first arrived. Lydiard had to call in an East German physiologist to explain to the Finns what he already knew to be true. Racing opportunities, financial incentives and the like may have changed over the years but good training is still good training.

This is nonsense. If it was true, then other systems wouldn't work as well.

Was the East German physiologist Mader or someone else?

HRE wrote:

Yes, I just agreed with you about this. But it's also possible to do 2-3 months of base building and then move into this race week-non race week schedule for an indefinite time.

Racing in the base phase is not advised as that will be an anaerobic stimulus (unless it's something like a half marathon at marathon pace).

Doing the classic 6-month program is more effective than a 2-3 month build-up followed by race-week/ non-race week schedule for an indefinite period of time.

The OP is referring to a young athlete of high school age. Lydiard would say that if you could encourage a boy in his teens to train and not race until he has matured you are laying the foundations of an Olympic champion. That's a quote he borrowed from coach Holmar.

What about, doing the classic 6 month base phase once.

Follow up with the weekly training cycle for most of the racing season, and then return to a 2-3 month base phase. Then rinse and repeat. i.e. have a dedicated base phase each year, just not one as long as 6 months.

The question for me, is how much extra benefit would come from sticking to the 6 month base period annually? Would there be more benefit to runners doing the longer distances?

Alfie wrote:

What about, doing the classic 6 month base phase once.

Follow up with the weekly training cycle for most of the racing season, and then return to a 2-3 month base phase. Then rinse and repeat. i.e. have a dedicated base phase each year, just not one as long as 6 months.

The question for me, is how much extra benefit would come from sticking to the 6 month base period annually? Would there be more benefit to runners doing the longer distances?

Once you reach a point where your oxygen uptake level is high because you've been doing this for a long time and you've really strengthened your aerobic system, there's no need to take a full 3 months to rebuild your base. It depends on the training history of the athlete and how burned out they may feel after a full racing season.

HRE wrote:

parkerjohn wrote:

Keep in mind that the Lydiard race week / non race week schedule is not optimal. Lydiard proposed it to appease the “joggers” but it was not his preferred way of training someone.

He did not think it was the optimal way to train but he was not just appeasing joggers. He understood that the world had changed and there were many runners wanting to race well for months on end. If someone is looking for another adaption of Lydiard for near year round running you could look at Pat Clohessy's Complex System. Clohessey learnt Lydiard's system when he was racing and travelling in Europe with Arthur and his runners in 1962 (I think.) When he began coaching he too recognized that runners were interested in near year round racing so he adapted Lydiard's ideas in that way.

I’ve done me a search for info about Clohessys system however I can’t find much. What would a typical week look like for a ( high school) distance runner in his programme?

SamH wrote:

I’ve done me a search for info about Clohessys system however I can’t find much. What would a typical week look like for a ( high school) distance runner in his programme?

You might want to take a look at this thread about Rob de Castella's training and the Aussie "complex" approach:

The basic weekly set-up is

M easy

T hills

W medium long

Th speed (classically, for de Castella, 8 x 400 fast/200 float

F easy

Sat race or steady run at a good effort

Sun long run

For a little more developmental detail, you may find this useful: it's a guide to the training system developed by Chris Wardlaw, which is a close cousin to Clohessy's.

I am aware that Arthur liked Holmer's quote. I've actually put it here myself in other threads. Another thing he liked saying about young runners was "See if you can get them interested in how far they can run rather than how fast." But he also understood that things like that were not going to happen in the real world especially once road racing became ubiquitous. So he wrote schedules that he thought allowed for racing well regularly.

He has a book about training young runners and there's not much in it that's very different from what's in his other books if I recall correctly. The OP is in the UK. I don't know how frequently young runners race there but if they do as much of it as US high school kids do which is pretty much weekly, I would reduce the interval sessions and time trials to no more than one a week .

Again, Arthur's guys did race during their base phase but not seriously and not in a way that interferred with the phase. In the race week/non race week schedule there is no actual base phase though I think it's good to have a break from racing once in a while. Similarly in the Complex System there are not the distinct phases you have in classic Lydiard but you can be some variation. I've seen a quote from Craig Mottram saying something like "I'm never more than 2-3 weeks away from peak form."

I would second what the guy whose post is below yours wrote. That week he describes is what I've seen for Deek at various stages of his career. The big changes, as I recall, is the amount of running at different ages, e.g, the length of the easy, medium, and long runs, all increased over time and I don't believe that he ran more than once a day in the early years.

If someone wants to be the best runner they can be, Lydiard would not condone racing year-round much less during the base phase, and much much less for an athlete who needs work improving their maximum steady state." Can you shorten the base phase? Yes, but that only works if you are "in good condition" and that's as far as that line of thinking goes.

"If you are in good condition and have gone through a thorough training programme but plan...a season of social running, you can mix your training, keeping a balance, and you can maintain your form or even continue to improve it." (Running to the Top)

Lydiard goes on to say..."This is a programme designed for people who want to enjoy their running without aspiring to be champions and get a lot of fun out of racing consistently at a personally satisfying level...the schedules followed by aspiring champions disconcert them...what they want is a programme that will enable them to race every one, two, or three weeks and will keep them improving and free of injury." (Running to the Top)

The schedule referred to above is the race week-non race week schedule. It's also been called the fun run schedule. You will not reach your potential this way. It's worth noting how in a year where many competitions have been cancelled due to Covid we're seeing very fast times. That's certainly not the only reason but a contributing factor no doubt.

If the concern is gaining race experience or learning tactics (as OP mentions) Lydiard prescribes developmental racing in the coordination period by which time anaerobic work is already in the mix.

Clohessy/Wardlaw training is all fine and well, and Deek's career speaks for itself, but Lydiard training stands on its own merits. Lydiard/Gilmour wrote enough books for us to have a clear idea of what he believed would achieve best results.