Lydiard v Cerutty

Cerutty certainly seemed to focuss a lot on the athletes mind set, his tactics were extreme but his theories were certainly ahead of his time.

Three of Lydiard's guys, Halberg, Baillie, and Bill Rodger spent some time in Oz in the 50s and ran with Cerutty. I read a quote from Baillie somewhere to the effect that he didn't see much difference at all in what Cerutty and Lydiard did with their athletes.

Halberg was always loyal to Lydiard and expressed some displeasure over the fact that Cerutty had been trying to claim credit for Halberg's success in the wake of the time Halberg had spent with him.

The one obvious difference I can think of is that Lydiard never recruited athletes in the hopes they'd train with him and Cerutty did.

frank horwill

HRE wrote:

Three of Lydiard's guys, Halberg, Baillie, and Bill Rodger spent some time in Oz in the 50s and ran with Cerutty. I read a quote from Baillie somewhere to the effect that he didn't see much difference at all in what Cerutty and Lydiard did with their athletes.

Halberg was always loyal to Lydiard and expressed some displeasure over the fact that Cerutty had been trying to claim credit for Halberg's success in the wake of the time Halberg had spent with him.

The one obvious difference I can think of is that Lydiard never recruited athletes in the hopes they'd train with him and Cerutty did.

Cerutty seems very 'out there' in his approach wheras Lydiard was more of the quiet achiever type. Is that a difference between Aussies and Kiwi's? Naughty by Cerutty with Baillie though. Possibly his comment about Lydiard himself 'he is a real go-getter' described the part of Arthur than Percy most readily saw, the part that was strong already in himself. He may have missed some of the other parts of Arthur.

may be some massive leaps there

i have a theory wrote:

frank horwill

Ok. What about him?

On the topic of Cerutty, does anyone know of a book that outlines Cerutty's coaching approach?

I have two here lent to me by a friend the buzz. Athletics. How to be a Champion' and 'Success in Sport and Life'. They give a pretty good account of his approach but i think they are quite rare. I live in Melbourne so possibly there are more around here. I would be happy to type some stuff from the books.

sim

can you write about ceruttys approach to strength training and quality vs quantity/periodisation...

hi again HRE

i am looking in this Cerutty book 'Success in Sport and Life.' Between pages 120 and 121 is a photo of Bill Baillie. Have you seen it?

He is finishing a race with Ron Clarke and has just beaten Clarke half a chest. Have you seen it?

Baillie's face and body position is remarkable. I'm amazed. It is like he is communing with god as he crosses that line. Clarke has his head rolled back as he lunges desperately whereas Baillie is so relaxed, face is so peaceful, chest and shoulders so square. Fists a little like Cerutty's position :)

Cerutty says this below about Baillie

"Few athletes have commanded my respect and admiration as has Baillie. A frequent visitor to Portsea, we came to learn that Baillie was one of the nicest personalities possible to meet, just as his courage equalled any in the athletic world ... Returning to Portsea in 1964, 8 years after his first visit, when his name appears above Murray Halberg's in the Visitor's book, ballie wrote 'Percy, i have returned a W.R.H. Your teachings have helped, (signed) Bill Baillie.'"

As i get to know Arthur and Percy more and more i find the similarities are far greater than the differences. Possibly these great athletes found the same and so Cerutty served mainly to reinforce Lydiard. Any additional little extras would have been from the individual differences in the two men moreso than their underlying understanding of how things worked.

I don't know if this is true and when i finally get to NZ Rich i am hoping to catch up with Barry. Also (and i don't know how to achieve this) speak with Herb Elliot somehow. The Buzz has organised for me to meet with Peter Bourke to discuss what he did and what Stampfl was like and i will have to take that opportunity up before it is too late.

thanks Rich

sure but i did just do something in the thread on elliot and strength training. I will just cut and paste as it's relevant here.

Percy talks abouts strength training in one of his books 'Athletics. How to become a champion.' chapter 11.

Percy talks about the 'two well-defined classes, viz. the body-conditioners and the weightlifters.'

The body-conditioners (or body-builders) were more concerned with "size and muscular definition than strength proper."

"It has been found that working with heavy weights and many repetitions, especially until very 'hot', grow big. The weights used are are not as heavy as those customarily used by the 'lifters' and the reps tend to be more extensive. Such men tend to be big and strong, but seldom the strongest."

"The practising 'lifter', however, approaches his problem in a different manner. firstly, his problem is to gain greater strength without any appreciable gain in size or body-weight,"

"So the lifter, to achieve his ends, viz. strenght without any appreciable gain in bulk, has evolved a different technique to that of the 'body-builder'. He works with maximum weights, and this alone ensures his 'reps' are reduced to a minimum, often only two or three."

"This approach necessarily reduces the time he can apply himself to his exertions. His training is then intensive, just as the body builder tends to train extensively."

"The intensive system is known to alter the nature of the muscle fibre - and to strengthen it - rather than get added strength from increased size of muscle. Some of the results are startling i might add."

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and some random selections:

"I immediately set the veriest novice on his body-weight for the dead-lift, and what he can move 6 times but not 10 times becomes his starting weight for any exercise other than the dead-lift."

"And they increase the weight to be moved as soon as they can handle the exercise weight 10 times on most days. Three 'reps' of ten of the determined weight for each exercise will soon develop any runner to a strength quite sufficient to his needs as a runner. He will be said to have approached that strength when he hoists his won body-weight above his head by any means he cares to adopt."

"Summed up,the whole purpose of weight-conditioning, as any form of conditioning such as running the sand-hill, is to acquire enhanced 'power' in order that we can do a thing more powerfully, faster, better."

'and the feats of my most recent youthful athlete, Herb Elliot who after 4 months of very hard conditioning moved from a mile best of 4:20 to 4:00.4, at the age of 10 days over his 19th birthday as well as a 149.2 880y - a best-ever by an Australian."

"It may also be doubtful if the marathon runner of the future and his times will ge the results of the future by running alone."

"However, no athlete can really claim to be strong who is unable to heave his body-weight overhead, or curl in loose style some 80-90% of his body-weight. Those who can do no more than 50% of their body-weight overhead must be written off as amongst mankind's physical weaklings, Runnign alone is unlikely to imporve their sorry lot." (tough)

"That my teachings may be rather for the exclusive few who would aim high i do not deny. As i dislike watering down my methods to suit the level of the weaker and more numerous ones, i never expect my views to be really popular. That which appeals ot the many can never be exclusive. Championship and world class is rather exclusive still. Personally, i like it that way"

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Percy also has a chapter later on titled 'Gymnastics and extra exercises a must' and also this chapter "Resistance exercises using the body: the bar-bell and the dumb-bell as added resistance." with some specifics.

1. The Snatch. To warm up.

2. The rowing motion. For arms, shoulders and abdominals.

3. The press. For pushing muscles, standing(military), bench press or best of all with heavy dumb-bells, exercising each arm alternatively.

4. Curls. Front and Reverse.

5. The dead-lift. With erect, straight back.

6. One handed swings.

The boys are also fond of pull downs where the equipment is available.

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there are descriptions on each of these exercises and a little more stuff, but next time.

ps am i breaking copyright by doing this?

I've seen that photo but don't have the book. Maybe I'll try to track it down. But one of the things one of your comments made me think of is that there are certain things that an athlete needs to do to maximize development and there are only so many ways of doing that. We have all of these threads looking at the differences between different coahes and their methods but maybe it would be more productive to look at similarities. I think a lot of the perceived differences result from what is emphasized and what is less emphasized in a coach's writing or speaking.

E.g., Lydiard was always the "distance" guy, Cerutty the "weights and resistance work" guy. But that doesn't mean Cerutty didn't have his guys do distance work. And I think that if you look at what various successful coaches do you'll see the same elements present but handled in different ways.

Lydiard was a rugby player before a runner so i assume he was a strong man already, was it Barry Magee that was a brick layer? And Snell was a monster. Maybe strength wasn;t so necessary in that squad. Also for marathon, which was where Arthur started, strength not so important. Cerutty on the other hand didn't have his eye on just fitness when he began looking into the body and so on, he had his eye on not dieing and as a result i think his approach was more generalised inititally because of that. Up to last week i thought ok Cerutty less long running than Lydiard, 10 mile runs seemed about it but then i read that Elliot and Pirie once did a 30 mile run where Elliot ground Pirie into the dirt and then on a trip with some friends Elliot decided to go for a 28 mile run for the pure joy of running. Also Cerutty himself did all sorts of ultra long races like the 100 miles run? in 23 hours 50 odd minutes. So it becomes more similar. Aussie like to be more complicated than New Zealanders i find in general anyway. :)

sim wrote:

My query is hopefully to someone that has met both of them but this may be difficult.

Why would meeting either of them make any difference?

"Training With Cerutty"

It's out of print, but I think I got it on addall or ebay for a reasonable enough price.

whats that book got in it that you found interesting?

I think on a personality level to gain some insight one might have had to meet them to respond to the other guy.

thank You sim.great stuff!

Sim,

I notice that you live in Melbourne - I'm from Hobart and have a copy of the book that 'reader' mentioned as well. It's written by an American whose name escapes me who was combining Cerutty's philosophies with his ideas on neuromuscular conditioning.

From memory the first few chapters were about Cerutty's life and ideas in general as well as his own and how they related to each other. There is a chapter about natural diet, resistance training, and then a chapter on how Cerutty thought an athlete should train for sprints, middle distance, 5k/10k, and marathon.

If people are interested I will post some info from it up on here in the next few days.

icecold it would be great if you put some stuff from the book down. I will be in New Norfolk soon so i will take my books with me. Maybe we can catch up and compare them in person?

Larry Myers is the American you are referring to.

He was a field athlete that did his undergraduate work

at Adams State.