Arthur Lydiard, the World's most Middle distance Coach, on How to Train Effectively

As a lifelong runner, master's and senior competitor in track and field, I have read hundreds of stories on training techniques.

These same hundreds of stories ordinarily dealt with addressing definite aspects of training.

Marathon Coach

It was not until I bought and read Running, The Lydiard Way that training doctrine became more leading than private workouts to achieve definite results.

Lydiard was New Zealand's top marathon runner before his runners burst on the scene in the 1960 Rome Olympic Games.

Murray Halberg won the 5000 meters and became a sub-four-minute miler who went on to set a string of world records. Peter Snell won the 800 meters. Snell would win both the 800 and 1500 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and John Davies would earn the Bronze medal in the 1500.

When Lydiard went to Finland to convert the fortunes of its running program, the corollary was that Lasse Viren won the 5000 and 10,000 meter duplicate at both the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games.

It was the influence of Lydiard that led New Zealand to create the first organized jogging group in the world.

Bill Bowerman, the University of Oregon's legendary coach, went to New Zealand to see what Lydiard was doing and returned to create the jogging craze in the United States.

Arthur Lydiard's basic system was that long, even-paced running at a strong speed increases strength and endurance, even when it is prolonged close to the point of collapse; it is beneficial, not harmful, to regular competition.

It is hardly a stretch to propose that Lydiard's influence has made him the greatest coach ever. No less of a coach that Bill Bowerman said in his book, Coaching Track and Field, that "there is no good distance coach in the world (than Arthur Lydiard)."

After reading and learning Lydiard's book (written with Garth Gilmour), I condensed the following training doctrine of Lydiard's system and continue to study and use it today:

Arthur Lydiard on Running:

Aerobic practice is 19 times more frugal than anaerobic exercise. A daily program of sustained running is requisite to achieving precise respiratory and circulatory development. The longer the periods of running, the good the results of the sustained effort will be. You should understand that it is the speed of the running that stops you, not the distance. Running that breaks the even tube of time and distance is anaerobic, not aerobic, and it must be avoided. All this running must be steady and even, at a pace that leaves you tired at the end, but knowing you could have run faster if you had wanted to. In other words, you should be pleasantly tired. Your aim is to find your best aerobic speed over the discrete courses. If, during any of these runs, you find you have to ease back a puny to recover, you will know that you have moved into the anaerobic phase. This is neither frugal nor desirable. Continual creation of large oxygen debts by doing anaerobic training accumulates:

1) lactic acid and other wastes

2) upsets the nutritive system

3) reduces the benefits of vitamins

4) reduces nutrition from food

5) disrupts enzyme functions

6) slows recovery

7) makes additional training difficult

8) upsets the nervous system

9) makes you disinterested and irritable

10) induces insomnia and low spirits

11) endangers your general health

12) makes you vulnerable to injuries and illness.

My most frequent admonition to athletes and coaches is: train, do not strain. Running is without interrogate the best practice for runners, and provided you watch the degree of effort, you can not honestly do too much of it. Once you are tantalizing freely over the shorter runs, you should move into one or two longer runs each week to maintain the revision and build belief in yourself. The anaerobic stage of your preparation should only be tackled after you have advanced your aerobic capacity and maximum steady state to the highest potential levels. Four weeks of hard anaerobic training is normally enough. Do not let age deter whatever from tackling long mileages, as long as the private is happy about it and exercises carefully. Running, I repeat, is the best practice for runners, and the more you do in a balanced aerobic-anaerobic ratio agreeing to this unabridged system, the good you will be.

If you do not understand the distinction between aerobic and anaerobic running and other terms used here, you could buy Lydiard's book and learn the difference.

Lydiard's work is a textbook not only on his doctrine of running but also on the physiology of exercise.

Copyright © 2007 Ed Bagley

Arthur Lydiard, the World's most Middle distance Coach, on How to Train Effectively