In your opinion, what is the best training program? Lydiard, Daniels, Coe, etc?

Gjert Ingebrigtsen

Excellent summary Sir.

No dude, you're missing his point. Wet coast was referring to human physiology not fitness and the evolution of world records. Two different things.

iflyboats wrote:

lmb wrote:

Arthur Jones' theories and equipment are a relic of days past. Name me a modern professional trainer, not some back at the local LA fitness or some other chain, who uses his hypotheses. They are nonsense.

Jones' theories still run totally counter to everything in the mainstream. His greatness is that he had the independence to say "to Hell with what other trainers are doing, this is the correct way," fully knowing, but not caring, that most people are too ignorant to listen.

Arthur Jones knew nothing about running. Why are you citing him on this thread?

I have always been a huge fan of Lydiard. His philosophies took me from a 5:00 miler to a sub 3:40 1500m runner. However, what he puts down for schedules in his books is not an accurate depiction of what his athletes actually did back in the 1960s.

Plus, if you advocate his style of training, coaches will hate you for wanting to run too many miles, doing your long runs too fast, and your teammates think its weird to do 10x120m nearly every day after practice.

But his results speak for themself and his training is timeless. Ignore his work at your own peril. No training system has ever been able to take regular runners and turn them into elite runners like his due to the emphasis on aerobic capacity.

Hi,

So, if you have had so successful experience by using Lydiard's system in the right direction, could you describe some

major steps in middle-distance training ? Maybe even some weeks of training, if that's not to hard for you, thanks !

longjack wrote:

Lydiard is My Lord and Saviour wrote:

Lydiard

lydiard is not one thing.

Yes it it. It is all the same basic principles. Sure some runners who used Lydiard training emphasised certain things than others(or not did certain things at all). His training changed in the since that he was always adapting it to the runner and looking for improvements. But the same basic principles stayed the same. That the thing about Lydiard, it's not dogmatic. You take the basic principles. Apply it to yourself and through trial and error figure out what works best for you. That is how he figured out his training philosophy, through trial and error.

Prefontaine1991 wrote:

Hi,

So, if you have had so successful experience by using Lydiard's system in the right direction, could you describe some

major steps in middle-distance training ? Maybe even some weeks of training, if that's not to hard for you, thanks !

I would recommend building your aerobic base by running at the high end of you aerobic capacity twice a week. Once for the long run, building up to 2 hours eventually. Plus another run or two during the week progressing to a similar effort, likely corresponding to your current marathon pace. This is best done outside of a racing season and in which no more than one interval session in being run during a training week. Adding 10 x 120m at least twice a week following a run is absolute money for improving form, sprint speed, and running economy. This you can follow right out of Lydiard's books (he got this from legendary sprint coach Bud Winter). Training like this can work with any system your coach puts you in, I just don't recommend drastically increasing your long run while running races and two or more workouts a week. And two a days, with one run being slow and easy.

Those recommendations are pretty standard, but its easy for coaches and athlete to over emphasize workout days, despite ample evidence that increasing VO2max does not necessarily improve race performance and there being a known limit as to how much lactic acid you can sustain pace with. Eventually athletes only improve by better aerobic capacity, improved economy, improved fat metabolism, and stronger tendons/muscles. Lydiard had this figured out in the 60s, truly ahead of his time and the science. But now we explain why his "aerobic" philosophy was accurate.

I got the most bang per buck from Brad Hudson and Matt Fitzgerald:

https://www.amazon.com/Run-Faster-5K-Marathon-Coach/dp/0767928229/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=brad+running&qid=1567613825&s=books&sr=1-5

Heh, yes, nice advice !

Actually, I did the same during my long run, usually I alternated between moderate-fast LR during 70-75 min and pretty

slow LR during 90-110 mins/double 10 km + 15 km.

I prefer relatively easy workouts like 5 x mile with 90 s of recovery and pace based on feeling, about 10 k pace + 5-7 sec.

And I've done a lot of different workouts like 5 x mile, 4 x 8 min, several fartleks, 3 x 10 min and so on, all that stuff was

based on tempo pace. Another training was somewhere between 3-5k pace. I did 15x400, 7x800, 6 x 1k, 4 x mile and

some mixed workouts like 10 x 400 (3 k pace) + 1 k in 3:07 and so on.

Mileage was lately 50-55. About 6-7 running sessions per week, 1 day off. Sometimes I ran some extra easy running, when

I wanted to.

When I was younger I did a lot of intervals at high speed with tons of rest and low mileage and now I am just building up

my mileage and feeling aerobically stronger.

Every week I do several strides like 4 x 100 the day before workout and 3 x 100 before every session and 3 x 60 m after

every session. Seems pretty strange, but now I am feeling better at faster paces, even without fast interval training.

If times and medals are your definition of ‘the best training’, than Salazar and Sang offer the best training at the moment.

Like Really Bro wrote:

If times and medals are your definition of ‘the best training’, than Salazar and Sang offer the best training at the moment.

Not really. More like this dude.