Lydiard Imitations

I don't really have a horse in this race but in reading the thread an idea jumped out at me. By the time I learned about Lydiard in the states in the early 80s, it was taught as training for everyone, maybe through Bowerman's influence.

When I learned it, I thought everyone meant everyone, every day for all time. My thought is that everyone didn't mean to be that inclusive but rather that it was training that would develop anyone until they could become someone and truly individualize their training. Antonio's maximize aerobics first, Lydiard's self experimentation and Nobby's list of principles all support this while leaving open the idea of using this early training to learn what is best for an individual and focus there later.

Anyway I have no first or even second hand knowledge, just a guess.

Not wanting to overpost or anything i had to respond to this one, because i like it a lot and feel similarly.

I see the basic principles of Lydiard's system as equally able to apply to anyone on the spectrum from the hospitalised to the Olympic Champion. It might be too extreme saying hospitalised but, hey i believe what i believe. To me Lydiard's system could just as easily be called health for the sick, as fitness for the masses, or specialised training for the champions. A Famous Lydiard anecdote is about how he advised a heart disease patient to walk a marathon. By the time he finally achieved it of course there was no significant heart problem anymore. The cure was regain your fitness.

This becomes really interesting if you extend it all the way through. The marathon walker then starts jogging. Eventually jogs a marathon. Starts following a schedule and eventually races a marathon. Trains for longer and becomes competitive in races ... etc

So to think about it like &*B&Y:UIQRW so beautifully stated, is really helpful.

Good point you did introduce, different aerobic training need from people of the urban area or folk region !

Might I consider Lydiard a folk coach ? Is Japan one undeveloped country since they got many high mileage runners ?

The rich distance training approach it´s by each runner individual idiosyncrasy and runner type, not by different country area or country development.

Let´s come back to the phrase “Maximise aerobic conditioning and do it first”.

I agree with the first part “maximize aerobic conditioning” but i do not agree with DO IT FIRST.

When you will be able to a satisfactory answer to the questions of dilemma “What comes first the chicken or the egg ?”. “Which comes first: thunder or lightning?”

Try an answer, be by religion, by science, by distance training approach, whatever, i will let you know which is wrong.

The main reason why Lydiard said “Maximise aerobic conditioning and do it first” it due to the wrong Lydiard conclusion that the volume and easy steady-state training improves the aerobic system quite unlimited which is wrong.

Anyhow you may read all that wrong conclusion here:

http://www.runbayou.com/ArthurLydiard.pdf

gypsy wrote:

I see the basic principles of Lydiard's system as equally able to apply to anyone on the spectrum from the hospitalised to the Olympic Champion. It might be too extreme saying hospitalised but, hey i believe what i believe.

Oh... my... my... ther´s a new category out there !

We had the runner from develped country and the runner from undeveloped country, the urban runner and the folk runner - we might have another category, the suburbian runner, the olympic runner and now we have the hospitalised runner !

You made my day ! LOL

Antonio Cabral wrote:

[quote]Oh... my... my... there´s a new category out there !

We had the runner from developed country and the runner from undeveloped country, the urban runner and the folk runner - we might have another category, the suburban runner, the olympic runner and now we have the hospitalised runner !

You made my day ! LOL

:) This is a good thing

Seriously though i don't think we need to make this 'hospitalised person' a new category. It is still the same system for the person in the hospital bed and the Peter Snell.

To illustrate we need look no further than another system, the Pilates system developed by Joseph Pilates. For those who don't know, Joseph developed his system of exercise around hospitalised patients. All of the exercises were for people who had been bedridden for months after a serious injury.

Then Joseph went to the US and set up next to the New York ballet school and began working with their elite dancers. Now ballet around the world uses pilates system for physical development.

So you can see the parallels, Lydiard system for heart disease patient example and Pilates hospital bed example yet both of them also worked with the fittest people in their respective fields as well.

Antonio Cabral wrote:

Good point you did introduce, different aerobic training need from people of the urban area or folk region !

Might I consider Lydiard a folk coach?

You could categorise Lydiard as a folk coach. He developed his system initially around his own training and personal experience and later with the training of others. He only connected his findings and understandings back to science as necessary, like lactate testing for example. He definitely didn't study sport/exercise and only afterwards develop his system. He did it the other way around.

Is Japan one undeveloped country since they got many high mileage runners?

Can you please define developed and undeveloped again? You didn't address my last question on it. And it is still a confusing factor.

Developed =

Undeveloped =

Plus this assertion New Zealand is of a different category to the US. UK etc.

After that we can go into the chicken/egg dilemma.

gypsy wrote:

Can you please define developed and undeveloped again? You didn't address my last question on it. And it is still a confusing factor.

Developed =

Undeveloped =

Can´t you read underlines ?

Developed = the country which the distance runner do need aerobic conditioning first.

Undeveloped = the country which the distance runner doesn´t need aerobic conditioning first.

Antonio Cabral wrote:

Can´t you read underlines ?

Developed = the country which the distance runner do need aerobic conditioning first.

Undeveloped = the country which the distance runner doesn´t need aerobic conditioning first.

Ok so the US, UK are undeveloped countries how?

sorry that was me in the above post

10/10

Don´t forget Forrest Gump either. It´s the folk runner icon. He decided to run.

i love forrest :)

but your definitions of developed and undeveloped arent clear

so we cant use them to hide Lydiards true worth by trying to explain it away on these undefined categories.

So do we drop this whole idea or can you be more clear?

Come on Antonio, why are you avoiding?

gypsy wrote:

Come on Antonio, why are you avoiding?

You like Forrest and i like Lydiard. You said and it´s all right. lydiard is a self-made man that bluid his own training ideas by himself, with "faith", sacrifice, experience, trail-and-error and enough physiology. He is not perfect, his training is not perfect, who does perfect training ? However the Lydiardist follower aren´t able to use the same criteria that Lydiard did as training research. The Lydiardist, most of the times isn´t able to think by his own mind, as Lydiard did. Lydiard didn´t accept many training pre-concepts from that period. But Lydiardist don´t think by his head, with his mind, he thinks by Lydiard method.

Everyone Lydiard adept isn´t able to debate about distance training without quote Lydiard as a manifesto. One very Lydiard representative said to me that he reads and studies other training methods. What for if every definitive conclusion, every step of the process the conclusion is that Lydiard does the best opinion about every training aspect and every kind of training issue.

The day that they be free.thinking and free-judge or that they will be able to discuss every distance training approach without quote Lydiard, without name someone thatn does as Lydiard did, or that more than dubious Lydiard private speech, on that day they will be free to better understand what i say or whjat every other person says that is not Lydiard precisely. Their physilogy isn´t sports or running physiology,it´s just what Lydiard accepts on the physiology. Their history of training or training methodology it´s not what´s universal accepted b y science or history, it´s just the history and the science through the eyes of the master, that´s Lydiard.

Are you anxious to know my opinion ? Before thai i post once again, try to read twice, three times my first post on this thread. My answer why i think that "aerobic first" is a stupid idea it´s there, underlined.

Most people says that i´m Lydiard obssessive the way i contest and the number of my posts which the subject is Lydiard directly or indirectly refereed. But this is not my fault. This is the fault of the Lydiardists, so many are their posts insisting about Lydiard speech. When i first start to posts to discuss and debate about the Lydiard method it´s is my normal reactions against so predominant, conclusive, abusive number of posts that they don´t do nothing but praise Lydiard and they don´t accept every kind of comment, every kind of comment is considered "negative comment". Or i just know 2 kinds of comments, the true ones, and the untruth ones. Besides who decides and who judges if the comment of the other is negative or positive ? the other side contender of the debate ?

Ok. I will try to answer for what you expect, with one condition. I willn´t refer Lydiard or Lydiard training, besides of course that Lydiard training is the transversal goal. But you don ´t debate with me either with Lydiard training speech.

ps -don´t forget to answer first about the egg or the chicken and the thunder and or ray, what comes first. It will be a rich start to the debate if the aerobic condition comes first. Ok ?

This is a good stopping point. We both like the 'folk' runner as it brings something to the table. I don't like too much faith but without faith we cant aspire to a new, unknown level. Faith can open new doors never before considered. yet once the door is open, faith is no longer necessary. Experience replaces it.

Perfection to me is an ideal exactly alike to infinity. It is a concept that holds no truth in reality. Sure we can aspire in the direction of perfection, however, we will never reach it. It is impossible, like touching god.

Thats how i see these larger metaphysical concepts.

I don't feel it is good to generalise. Also i don't think it is valuable to talk of Lydiardism and Lydirdists in this way. Sure people will blindly follow a way they have agreed with. How many Christians, Muslims, Buddhists etc are the same. It doesn't make them wrong, just uninformed.

Yet even though it is common sense that most followers of a 'way' won't fully understand the details, this cannot be extended to all Lydiard followers. Some/many very clearly understand what they are doing and why. So you say -

And I say as long as we don't see the religion of science in the same way as the religion of Lydiard and that we can step outside of rigid orthodoxy and its language then we can debate freely.

Ok i see it and will respond in the next post. This post seems to be a dilenation of the rules of engagement :)

I will attempt to but just to let you know something about me. I don't like to be someone elses camp. I prefer to attempt to stand alone. So whilst my understanding of things is based on many sources i hope i can translate them into my own particular way of thinking. I may not achieve this all the time, so bear with me if i do seem to say something that is Lydiard. Personally i like Cerutty a little more than Lydiard, but that could be because he is my countryman, in fact same city and same part of the same city. Having said that Lydiard went somewhere that Cerutty didn't. But then Cerutty went somewhere lydiard didn't. I like to compare and contrast both.

So we may well get a blend of physiology, Lydiard, Cerruty, Igloi, Canova and gypsy. some other posters of course and maybe a few other side tracks to help illustrate things.

I hope this is ok with you and we can proceed.

So we begin here. What is first the chicken or the egg. The thunder or the lightning.

Neither comes first. One cannot exist without the other. They are codependent complementaries. The chicken comes from the egg but the egg is produced by the chicken. A conundrum easily solved if we consider neither came first. Some other form was present prior to both the chicken and the egg. Thunder and lightning? Again neither. Both are present together and cannot be separated. Both begin as a result of an outside factor, friction. Create enough friction and both thunder and lightning are born together.

So for me to know which comes first in the athlete you need to assess where the athlete is at. This is normal approach. Once the athlete has been assesses we can then proceed in developing that athlete.

So what to do first is dependent on where the athlete is at in terms of all the fitness qualities. Some will need one thing whilst others will need another. In this case aerobic does not come first, not necessarily. However, we find, especially in developed countries, that people are generally more sedentary, thus requiring an increase in aerobic fitness to replace that which is lost by a Westernised Lifestyle.

Still, in my experience, everybody needs aerobic first as this is the biggest flaw they have. Occasionally i deal with a very fit person from the beginning and in such cases we may be working on technique or strength (especially strength in specific areas like the calves/feet or the torso.)

So the conclusion for me is you cannot know what an athlete requires until you meet him and see him do things in training. Once you see the biggest flaws in the athlete then the training program can be developed. I like to address the biggest flaws first, it seems normal to me.

Most of the time the biggest flaw is in aerobic conditioning. So that is why it is most commonly first. (my caveat is that i work on all endurance based things in my first phase - endurance circuits (sorry Percy), endurance based drills and of course endurance running).

So apart from critiquing what i've just said, can you tell me why aerobic conditioning does not come first? For me in 98% of cases it does.

Damn how did i do that. Is there any way to edit these posts?

Is this what you mean?

I Guess Antonio is either away or unwilling to engage in this.

I will have to approach this from another direction.