What is your favorite Lydiard Quote

"Good training and bad training look exactly the same on paper."

SlowFatMaster wrote:

"Good training and bad training look exactly the same on paper."

That's a great quote but I'm almost sure it came from Ron Daws. Of course Daws was a total Lydiard guy and may have picked it up from Arthur.

A.V. '68 wrote:

Schul wrote:

I looked up to my Dad for all his knowledge. Unfortunately it was all outdated useless stuff.

Useless if you spend all your days reading and posting on LetsRun, probably.

This might come as a shocker to some, but there is a whole world outside of the Internet.

Would you like to know how to hand milk cows and carve wooden utensils and other Amish like stuff?

Schul wrote:

Igloi used hard interval training, as did Timmons. Lydiard just couldn't accept that there is more than one way to train.

Totally disagree. Just because intervals are used does not mean they are all hard. That just isn't true.

Just like saying Lydiard's distance runs were LSD. That just isn't true.

Both systems will work as long as basic physiological principals are not broken.

Both were legendary coaches because they understand this.

My favourite is "train don't strain".

What I like most about Lydiard is his philosophy, that you are only as good as your training, you have all the physical talent you will ever need, you just have to learn how to use it, and then use it.

Oh and the idea that top runners don't need any so called 'performance enhancing drugs'. I guess most of the so called 'Lydiardists' don't really get this though. Nobby? HRE? Kelsall?

I don't get what you're asking in that last paragraph so this may not be what you're looking for.

Arthur was completely against PEDs. I don't know that he had a grasp on how common they'd become though. He dismissed claims that the East Germans, who were big Lydiard fans, were using them and attributed their success to "applying my methods in a scientific way." He said that the Chinese women who were demolishing all those world records in the 90s were doing it because they were training so much more than any women ever have done. That so many of the architects of the East German program had migrated to China didn't phase him as you wouldn't expect it to as he thought the East Germans weren't doing anything illegal either.

We know he was wrong about the East Germans. He certainly was right that those Chinese women were training like no other group of women ever had. From there we don't know anything more about them.

Remember that by the time the sport was professional and there was money to be made, which is the driving force behind doping, Arthur was barely connected to the top athletes in the sport. By then he was pretty much only giving lectures and coaching a very small number of athletes who had some connection to him and one of those did use an illegal PED at least for a brief time, something which might have killed him if he hadn't already been dead when that information came out.

"The negroid has an natural advantage because he can maintain high knee lift while leaning forward. The caucasian cannot achieve this and thus must follow my training to optimise his full potential. I have proven this to be true many times over and over."

From a recruiting speech in Europe:

"Only through me can you achieve a power greater than any jedi! Learn to know the dark side of the force and you’ll be able to save your wife from certan death."

"One day, a lot of people will reprint my books over and over again with different titles in order to milk my legend and make money."

turtle runner wrote:

"Miles make champions!"

To a former world class 100m sprinter:

"If you can run the miles I can make you a champion 10k runner. Now go fetch me some water. We have work to do!"

Arthur was the best. He took the runners from his neighborhood and had them win Olympic medals. Having worked with him in Venezuela, I saw the results there. New National records from 800 to the marathon. His 'Champions are everywhere. You just have to train them properly.' Is really true. I have used his system to coach runners for 40 years. They have all set their best times under his system. It worked in 1960 and works today. Just review the success of the University of Colorado, the coach is a full Lydiard advocate.

What I am asking from you and Nobby, and Christopher Kelsall and others here is to recognise that Lydiard was right in his philosophy that superior performances don't come from drugs, regardless of who took what.

This is really the only logical way forward for elite level sport, because all of the money, time and effort spent on testing for drugs, and all of the anti-drug rhetoric, just hypes up the belief in the concept of so called 'Performand Enhancing Drugs'. And it is a concept, not a scientific fact we are dealing with here.

Lydiard's psychology and intuition goes far beyond what most physiologists understand. His philosophy is not just the past, good old days of amateurism, but the present and the future of elite level sport.

Amen brother! Lydiard #1

runmorenow wrote:

Arthur was the best.

Totally agree. I have a clipping taped to my cubical wall from his death almost 11 years ago that says; The greatest coach of all time has died.

The obvious question is, In what sport? In my mind, it doesn't matter. He was just the Greatest of Coaches!!

I've always felt very privileged to have heard him speak twice in the weeks just before his death.

Oh. If you're saying PEDs aren't effective and we should just allow them I can't agree.

Pimpin ain't easy.

"Ryun would've run 3:47 if I had been coaching him".

messi wrote:

"Ryun would've run 3:47 if I had been coaching him".

" Snell would've run 3:46 if I had been coaching him."

-Bob Timmons

Antonio where are you?