van aaken

Ernst Van Aaken....wrote a book The Van Aaken Method. Coached Harold Norpoth.

his motto was eat a little, drink moderately and run a lot.

He coached Harold Norpoth (who ran in the early 70's). Top 5000 m runner.

I seem to remember Van Aaken (Ernst?) saying to eat about 1000 calories a day and run a lot. He used to say run like children play.

There is an old Runners World Monthly book the Van Aaken Method.

I remember Norpoth was VERY skinny- eat a little

I remember reading somewhere where he had a list of heights and what runners should weigh. For 5-7 he recommended no more than 119 pounds. If you look at the trend that has occurred today with the top runner in the world it looks like he may have been ahead of his time.

As far as eating 1000 calories a day I can't see how that would be possible. When I was trying to get down to Van Aakens' weight suggestions and still run 100 miles a week 2300 calories was like starvation. It took a forcible effort and was nearly impossible not to feel too wiped out to train at all. And I was only about 125 at that time.

I always wondered if the world class Africans you see have a diet that is low calorically and still allows them to train hard and stay that skinny that westerners aren't suited to emulate.

A few years ago I talked to someone from the Albany, NY area who brought Kenyans in to the U.S. and helped them get started in road racing. He said they ate a ton of food, just not junk food- lots of chicken and vegetables and fruit.

As far as 1000 calories a day- it is virtually no food. I'd starve, I tried it years ago and could not do it.

The 1000 calorie thing could be wrong, I'm going back to the 70's in Runers World (when it was a real runner's magazine).

Here's another discussion about Ernie. I'd love to know who that runner you mention was. He'd have to be a pretty decent age now to have run under EvA who's been dead since 1984.

There are more than one way to achieve at our sport. Many of the Kenyans eat little at home because there is little to eat at home. When they get to the USA there is no shortage of food. We (Americans) feel that we must eat lots of food or suffer. According to Dr. Van Aaken this is not so- our ability to achieve the most from what we eat (provided it is a healthy diet) is geared by quality not mass amounts of processed food.

Obviously an invaluable resource for runners in developed countries is dietary information that can allow someone to maximize quality at the minimum caloric and non-nutritious quality.

I know I consume way too much processed junk food high in saturated and polyunsaturated fat. Its everywhere here, cheap, convenient, and tasty. In the U.S. we develop the palate at an early age for food like this. When you're starving after a hard workout are you likely to spend the time and money to go to the grocery store and regularly prepare the best meals, or are you going to take the easy way out and hit fast food or order a pizza? I know I eat at least 2 bags of potato chips every day at work because it tastes good, fills me, and costs less than a buck. And I don't have to spend the time and effort buying and preparing something a lot better nutritiously.

Van Aaken pickups are named after him. Basically just running the last .5-mile of your run faster. I don't think many runners still use them on a regular basis, but I still see them referred to occasionally.

Also let us remember that the purpose of our training is to race faster. One quote that Van Aaken used to repeat was that we are "training to race not training to train". We would hear this whenever we turned an easy workout into a race. However, with this said we also did pickups at the end of most runs- not all out, but more like race pace for your shorter races (ie as a marathoner I usually did a pickup at about 5-10k pace). Distance was not measured, rather it was usually from a point to a point (second point was usually about 400-600 from actual finish of the workout to allow for a cool down run).

I'm a tad confused. Your first post mentions meeting a runner who trained with van Aaken and to me, reads as if you don't know much about him. This post reads as though you trained with him. Am I missing something?

Van Aaken thought people were a lot healthier after the war (WWII that is) than today (today being the 70s) because there wasn't a lot of food, what food there was was carbs and vegetables, with a little meat, and not so processed and because most people did some sort of physical labor. I doubt anyone (except him) tried his 1000 calorie bit, but his advice to eat properly is no doubt very good advice.

I think a lot of top runners (particularly Kenyans) like to finish their runs with his pick-up which would be 3-10 minutes at aerobic threshold pace.

If you can get a hold of his book The Van Aaken Method definitely get it.

His comment about the 1,000 calorie thing was that Germans were eating that amount right after the war and were healthier than in later years when they had more to eat. In his book he recommeded eating only 1,000 calories periodically or for an extended time in order to lose weight.

I also know from talking to Joan Ullyot, who was his interpreter when he toured the US in the 70s, that he was not a big proponent of eating fruits and vegetables and didn't do much of it himself. He simply believed in limiting calories, however that was done.

This is "another runner". I was trying to post to "wondering" and being far from a computer type I thought if I typed "wondering" it would go under that heading. I guess you now know that computers is not one of my strong areas.

rich,

how is your caloric intake these days? and what about your mileage, over 3000 this year? did you get over your hip and back injuries?

have a great holiday season.

manfred

Thanks for clarifying the calorie bit, I was trying to piece together what I remember from his book but I haven't read it in a while. 1000 calories for only a few days might be ok, but even then it'd be pretty hard to do for very long. Did he view it as some sort of "cleanser" or mainly for the purpose of losing weight? I'm surprised by the no fruits part but he seemed like the kind of guy who was always experimenting on himself in order to find what worked best for him.

I believe he was also one of the first to encourage women to do long distance running as well.

I meant it'd be hard to run on 1000 calories a day, not that you couldn't live on 1000 cals a day. Of course, not much beer on a 1000 calories a day either :(

I don't think that EvA was a big believer in beer, but a runner often linked to him, Manfred Steffny, seemed to be quite fond of it.

I have two copies of the van Aaken method, published by RW circa 1977 or so. The 1,000 calories a day was only a suggestion for weight loss. Eva supposedly said that no runner should eat in excess of 3,000 calories a day. He also emphasized that limiting calories was more important than the makeup of the calories eaten.

What did Joan Ullyot say that EvA usually ate, HRE?