In what ways did Lydiard get it wrong?

Pappy wrote:

CoachB wrote:

Overly strict periodization. Most coaches now mix in easy speed work throughout the year just to maintain biomechanics

Just looking at Lydiard's training it appears he never had people do easy speed work in some of the phases. If you believe Frank Shorter "Hills are speed work in disguise". Lydiard's athletes did a lot of easy speed work with the hilly routes they ran.

I'm not sure Lydiard got anything truly wrong while training his athletes. The description of the training was poorly explained in the books in some cases.

Lydiard's athletes ran well out of peak phase. Go back and look at how Snell/Halberg/etc ran during all phases of the season. As Pappy notes, they were always doing speed with hills. The hill is described as being 100m to 400m in length and they did it for an hour. That is not speed or biomechanics? Last time I checked, Colorado and other proponents of his system seemed to work well. If you read Lydiard transcripts (to Japanese and other groups) he goes into a bit more depth about doing light speed training and says do it. So making it seem like his method had no flexibility is insane. For those who say Snell didn't train as Lydiard wanted, read "No Bugles No Drums". It sounds like he did. Not getting to 100 mi all the time in base phase doesn't mean he didn't follow principles. If we was 80 -90 mi we are now going to say he didn't? He ran their tempos (10 milers) 2 times a week at 3/4 effort, did their big Sunday 23 miler, and got in all the other elements of the week. Snell notes the mileage for the week was not hit due to some am's he didn't like to get in his running. That doesn't mean he wasn't following the principles.

asdfasdfasdfssss wrote:

by modern standards, he was wrong because he didnt coach any girls

Anne Hannam, Heather Carmichael, Loa Olafsson, Joan Ullyot who was the first woman past 50 to run a marathon in less than 2:50.

Despite running less than 100 miles per week Snell still could have done even better in the 800 meter with modern training. The 800 is a speed event and 60 miles per week would be more appropriate.

One blind spot that I think Arthur had was the prevalence of PEDs. He never believed that the East German successes were due to doping. He believed that the Chinese women who briefly were destroying world distance records were clean. I think the blind spot was because he always believed the best of people until there was a reason not to. He certainly would not have approved of it. I was glad in a way that he was dead when Liza Hunter Galvin, the last Olympian he coached, was caught.

The other thing I had a hard time believing he was right about was his idea that running in hot weather was not really difficult as long AS LONG AS IT WAS ALSO HUMID. I remember asking him about that, he's the only person I ever knew who said such a thing. But he said that was what he'd experienced so I guess you can't really say he was wrong.

His thought about drugs HRE. He was both right and wrong. Please consider it both ways.

And about the heat and humidity, same thing. Hot and dry is more dangerous because you don't know you are dehydrating very quickly. Extremes of both heat and humidity are obviously tough and potentially life threatening in extreme cases.

yes, but wrote:

just stating the obvious here wrote:

It worked IN HIS TIME because it was better than the previous approach (that is, all intervals like Igloi). I doubt the champs from the last Olympics were doing a program that was very similar to Lydiard's.

Well no American athlete has dominated the 800 and 1500 like Peter Snell did. Just saying.

Ever hear of Jim Ryun.

nawautin wrote:

yes, but wrote:

Well no American athlete has dominated the 800 and 1500 like Peter Snell did. Just saying.

Ever hear of Jim Ryun.

Underachiever compared to Snell. The US is has been traditionally underachieving generally in middle distance running. Something is wrong and has been for a very long time. Why?

Yarly wrote:

Despite running less than 100 miles per week Snell still could have done even better in the 800 meter with modern training. The 800 is a speed event and 60 miles per week would be more appropriate.

Like his competitors were doing?

I did not say that Arthur didn't think about drugs. Who in the sport could not think about drugs? But when people would ask him if he thought that the East Germans, for example, were doping their athletes, he'd tell you that he didn't think they were. He was wrong. Even if not all of their athletes were doped we know that many were. And I did not say Arthur was wrong about the hot and dry versus hot and humid thing. I said I found it hard to believe.

HRE wrote:

One blind spot that I think Arthur had was the prevalence of PEDs. He never believed that the East German successes were due to doping. He believed that the Chinese women who briefly were destroying world distance records were clean. I think the blind spot was because he always believed the best of people until there was a reason not to. He certainly would not have approved of it. I was glad in a way that he was dead when Liza Hunter Galvin, the last Olympian he coached, was caught.

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He was also very naive about the source of Finnish success in the '70s.

None

asdfasdfasdfssss wrote:

by modern standards, he was wrong because he didnt coach any girls

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He didn't realize that drugs like EPO would render his system useless in the face of cheaters.

YMMV wrote:

HRE wrote:

One blind spot that I think Arthur had was the prevalence of PEDs. He never believed that the East German successes were due to doping. He believed that the Chinese women who briefly were destroying world distance records were clean. I think the blind spot was because he always believed the best of people until there was a reason not to. He certainly would not have approved of it. I was glad in a way that he was dead when Liza Hunter Galvin, the last Olympian he coached, was caught.

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He was also very naive about the source of Finnish success in the '70s.

How could he be naive of the Finnish success when he worked with their coaches?

just stating the obvious here wrote:

yes, but wrote:

Well no American athlete has dominated the 800 and 1500 like Peter Snell did. Just saying.

That's a red herring. No one is talking about American athletes.

There is no such thing as a red herring.

Yarly wrote:

Despite running less than 100 miles per week Snell still could have done even better in the 800 meter with modern training. The 800 is a speed event and 60 miles per week would be more appropriate.

I am absolutely sure that Snell, Ryun, Liquori, Shorter, Prefontaine, Virgin, and all the rest could have done

better with modern nutrition, mechanics, shoes, medicine, training, psychology, and so forth. But no one knows,

even with all the science, that a speed guy could not run 100 mpw and not set a new world record.

Yes this high temperature, high humidity and low temperature low humidity one was quintessentially him. Arch Jelley also praised the East Germans for their 2 cycles per annum research etc.

No he should have went so far as to get a gymnastics coach to help out with footing mobility and balance and do Sprint training. You can't tell me his competition back then we're training like modern 400 meter sprinters. Snell got better endurance from the way he trained obviously but could have retained more speed an ran faster. 144 is not the limit and you can always get better.

He didn't advise his athletes to wear Vaporflys, so that's a major blind spot.

HRE wrote:

asdfasdfasdfssss wrote:

by modern standards, he was wrong because he didnt coach any girls

Anne Hannam, Heather Carmichael, Loa Olafsson, Joan Ullyot who was the first woman past 50 to run a marathon in less than 2:50.

Didn't he coach Allison Roe for a while?