Lydiard "Young athletes should forget about racing"

NZ and where did they go wrong? .... except for Willis.

Well, the Lydiard system at the time was state of the art.

Secondly, Lydiard's personality, along with Jelly later motivated, inspired the athletes to achieve (this is underrated by some). Thirdly, athletes with ability came along at the right time.

After the 70's, the world went in a different direction, became progressively more professional.

NZ was left behind, and perhaps pursued a watered down version of the profound findings of Lydiard.

NZ in a way destroyed itself. With no post as NZ national coach, he left for a world wide adventure to influence another wave of runners, the Finns. Later the Brits would modify the approach. The runners from the Atlas mountains made further advances.

All the while NZ stood still, no declined.

And all the while, US made notes, and fantastically dominates the scene after the Africans.

And of course Africans use a modified Lydiard approach now.

Advances after Lydiard in training are in more intelligent recovery, oxygen deprivation, AND MORE VOLUME AT THE SPEED YOU INTEND TO RACE AT.

Supplements both legal and illegal and certain procedures on-top of training innovations produced quite a few medals and records.

NZ seems to have no part in any of these advances, apart from the few runners that went to the US to learn their craft.

Old timers, unfortunately have to roll in their grave on this one.

HRE wrote:

Jon,

I know you've got this thing about terminolgy but I also know that you know good and well that Lydiard described running that left you out of breath as "anaerobic" running. Feel free to give us another set of terms to distinguish between that sort of running and the kind that does not leave you breathing hard.

I don't think the out of breath-ness is very reliable as an indication of what is a hard workout and what is too hard. In cool weather, I can do much faster work with short recovery and not be breathing hard. In warm/humid weather, I'm breathing very hard in interval training, but the recovery after the session is much quicker because the impact on the legs is much less.

Also, if a low blood pH is so bad, then a hill session is the worst training you can do, and downhill work, the best, when in fact, both are beneficial at the right time.

Terminology just gets in the way. It's all very vague, so good guess work and experimentation are what is really important.

NobbyH wrote:

You should definitely race!! Arthur used to always remind me; that we are "training to race." That's why impressive workout don't count at all; race is where you put everything together. That's why I always get horrified whenever I see someone goes; "I'm going to build a huge aerobic base by concentrating on Marathon Conditioning for 2 years..." though that's now what Lydiard's "As Long As Possible" means at all.

Both Barry Magee and Bill Baillie said; "If you don't race, you just get vegitated..."

However not long ago...from another Nobby´s post he writes...

(…) I'm not 100% sure if your point(s) of criticism is because, with Lydiard program, we don't do lots of fast runs in the first half of the program. You may call it "outdated" or "not modern" but I still think a lot of it is to do with situational issue rather than efficacy issue. Suppose there's no money involved in today's Grand Prix track and you have 6 months to prepare; would so many athletes still stay sharp year-around? I don't know; they may. Lydiard came up with race-week/non-race-week schedule not so much because it's better; he still said that, IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO DO IT THIS WAY, to build up first and don't mix things up so much. Why? Because, in his mind, racing too much, or doing too much race-like training all the time would pull your condition down and you get jaded or stale. I've seen a letsrun thread a while back, someone asking if there's any scientific proof or reserach on too much racing and staleness. I doubt it but, as a coach, you should know. And you KNOW the timing when the athlete had it enough throughout the season. So what do you do? You even said you'd take that runner out from racing and do some regeneration type of training (mostly nice easy run, I'd assume???) for 2 to 6 weeks. I'd assume you wouldn't continue to push that poor runner to do hard(er) track workout and expect him/her to do better the next time around. When you're cooked, you're cooked. Hard race-like training would push him/her further down. With Lydiard, the solution was to take some time off and do some longish easy jog or do some long run. (…)

IT´S SO INCOERENT AND CONTRADICTORY THAT I DON´T NEED TO COMMENT OR DISCUSS ! NO NEED.

Here you can read Nobby post.

RE: Peter Snell Interview and his thoughts on Lydiard

Damn those kiwis wrote:

So I've obviously para-phrased that but in terms of the long term developement of young athletes how much truth is there in that?

As a high school coach, I interpret this idea in terms of the "above average" and "average-below average" athletes (everything I say is IMO!):

The above-average HS runner has hopes of running in college, so their coach should realize that their training needs to reflect this. These athletes can probably be competitive/contribute to their team with subpar racing for most of the season (the top kids on my XC team use dual meets against crappy teams as tempo runs). PR or "all-out" performances should be planned for and held to a minimum (big invites, state championships, etc.)

The average-below average HS runner IMO may never push themselves hard enough in races to get burnt out from races. A 5k from an elite athlete is more demanding and harder to recover from than a back of the pack kid who doesn't push his/her limits. This doesn't pertain to all below-average runners, but definitely some. I say let these kids race til the cows come home.