Is your training program Pisa or Giza?

The 5 principles of Lydiard Training

1. Maximize Your Aerobic Capacity

Bigger Oxygen uptake = More Energy = Better performance

Is your training program Pisa or Giza?

 

Would you consider building a house without a solid foundation? Of course not! There are laws against it for good reason – the building would be unstable. Take the Leaning Tower of Pisa for example. I remember standing at the top of it frozen with the fear of falling. My point of reference was all askew because it lists precariously. All because the ground beneath it cannot support the structure. By contrast the Great Pyramid of Giza, with its wide base, is much higher but not in the slightest danger of falling over.

This is the principle behind building a base in training. Without it your capacity to recover and do the successive training phases is limited. 

For the complete article and to learn about their coaching services, please go to http://www.running-wizard.com/.  Lydiard Running Wizard is a project by my sister, Lorraine Moller, in collaboration with a small team of outstanding athletes and coaches.  Lydiard Running Wizard brings the coaching systems of the late Arthur Lydiard - the most successful running coach in history - into the digital era.

While this service principally targets runners, the programme and personalised support by professional coaches, is almost seamlessly able to be adapted to other sports such as cycling, waka, kayak, rowing and even racing horses!

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About this website

The advice in these articles is given freely without promise or obligation.  Its all about giving you and your family the tools and information to take control of your health and fitness.

Are athletes really getting faster due to legitimate training mehtods?

"Thanks for the comments on an article that I, and my team of athletes and professional strength & conditioning specialists/sport scientists so intelligently put together. Why strength train? simple:
1. prevent chronic injury - all sports, esp those that are repetitive in motion, will cause an imbalance that can lead to injury. Stronger athletes are more resistant to injury
2. prevent burnout - our entire team of experts at Human Motion can talk the talk and we can certainly walk the walk - all athletes at a high level and know the benefits of stimulating the nervous system in the "gym." Aside from balanced power development and refining motor programs and intramuscular coordination and decreased "unnecessary" cortical activty, doing something other than paddling can be a great OTS avoider.
3. Improve power - Simple really - improve strength, improve rate fo force application = improvements in power. We have measured kayakers in the lab after strength training and low and behold - their watts went up

So, athletes in general are getting faster and getting stronger, across the board, in all sports and what is the common denominator - excellent, scientifically prescribed strength programs. The results speak for themselves and you didn't hear this from some geeky scientist that sits in a lab all day, you heard this from those who have tested and proven it on themselves and their athletes." (Here is the article in question)
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Gary Moller responds:
I am not sure whether the letter above is an advertorial or a telling off - probably both.

First of all, canoeing is several sports in one - it could be flat water sprints, slalom, canoe polo, marathon or as part of multisports. Each has differing requirements. The most important being a high skill base and then physical conditioning.

I have a reasonable competitive canoeing background and have presented to kayaking coaches about the Lydiard Method of athlete conditioning. Canoeing is the only sport I have done competitively and never suffered an injury, other than being whacked under the nose by another kayaker's paddle! Ouch! I concentrated on long distance downriver racing and palying the waves so, other than sore shoulders and a numb arse, there are few other injuries because anything worse would probably result in terminal drowning.

While I have no problem with gym conditioning for paddling, I will continue to argue that the best conditioning for most sports is to do the sport. Great athletes are not made in gyms - its time on the water, on the road and so on that produces them. Of course, they need to work to a structured coaching programme. In the case of canoeing, most, if not all of the strength work can be done on the water under the instruction of an experienced paddling coach who can devise sport-specific drills. If an athlete has the time and the energy to do fancy gym work, then he/she is probably not spending enough time on the water.

I can not understand the logic of the argument that working out in the gym reduces injuries. Injuries from kayak training are rare and where they occur, the problem is to do with poor techniques and training programme structure. Paddlers who get injured need a new coach and they might also benefit from a good shoulder massage, a better diet and more rest between training sessions. Who knows? Chucking weights is lower on the list of interventions. This is especially so, since weight training without meticulous practice carries much higher risk of injury than paddling a canoe!

Photo: NZ Kayaker, Ben Fouhy, clean and mean and beaten by an Australian drugs cheat.

Are athletes really getting that much faster and stronger due to legitimate means, or is much of what we witness today the result of outright cheating? In Lorraine's book, "On the Wings of Mercury" she tactfully talks about drugs cheats. In one story, she talks about "Catheter Woman" who creates a toilet queue under the Olympic stadium while she struggles to fit a plastic bladder and catheter with "clean" urine inside her before rushing out into the crowded stadium to make her winning attempt. Yep, Gold and the other atheltes knew what she was up to but could or would not say anything.

An athlete does not accuse another of being a drugs cheat without the risk of having their arses sued to Kingdom-come, and of being totally unwelcome like a deformed leper for the rest of their living days by event promoters, their national sporting bodies and fellow athletes. Say "drug cheat" and your career is history. A drugs cheat gets only 4 years off - not a lifetime of ostracism as can happen to the clean athlete who speaks out.

Photo: Nathan Baggaley - exposed as a low down drugs cheat - go here for the story

We should be under no illusions at all that drugs taking is not rife in sports across the board and we are naiive if we really think that the sports drugs testing agencies are getting on top of the problem.

Clean athletes usually come 5th or less - seldom first.

Question:
The next Olympics are being held in China. China is planning to dominate these games in the medal count. So, my question to you is this: How come we are not seeing Chinese athletes competing on the World stage right now? What are they getting up to behind the security of their national borders?

High fat diets are beneficial for endurance performance

"I have just found a study of runners and performance on high fat diets.

http://www.jacn.org/cgi/content/full/19/3/345
A Perspective on Fat Intake in Athletes David R. Pendergast, EdD, FACN, John J. Leddy, MD and Jaya T. Venkatraman, PhD

Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol. 19, No. 3, 345-350 (2000)

I'm really excited to see that the slow twitch muscle people (I mean people with higher percentage of slow twitch to fast) did really well on diets from 32-55% fat as far as their performance goes. The more I have been thinking about this whole carbo loading nonsense, the less sense it makes to me, even as the running community continues to advocate it along with a very low fat diet. So I'm going to keep a food journal as well as a training one as I prepare for my first half marathon race this autumn eating high fat (by that I mean highest percentage of daily calories from coming from fat). We shall see.

"Exercise training is generally associated with an increase in maximal aerobic power and endurance [3]. It is also generally agreed that the maximal potential for aerobic power and endurance is set genetically [3]. Any examination of the effects of dietary fat intake has to be considered in light of potential training effects. In studies of 25 male and female middle-aged endurance runners, with a long history of running, Vo2max did not significantly improve while running 40 to 50 miles per week for six months [44].

This same group of runners, when put on a high-fat diet, had a 3% to 8% increase in Vo2max (not significant) without a significant change in the peak heart rate observed in the max Vo2 test [47]. In a study on young elite endurance runners, a high-fat diet compared with a low-fat diet significantly increased Vo2max 8% to 12%, without a significant increase in the peak heart rate during the Vo2max test [35]. It should be noted that the diets in these two studies [35,43] were not randomized and cardiac output was not measured, so further work in this area is needed. Future work may also focus on the role of body fat distribution and the percentage of slow twitch oxidative muscle fibers in determining fat oxidation and endurance performance.

"Muscle fiber composition is important, as the potential for increased fat oxidation applies to slow twitch oxidative fiber metabolism. Thus, the higher the percentage of these fibers, the greater the potential benefits from the high-fat diet. It has recently been shown that experienced male runners (n=6, age=35±5 years), training 35 to 65 miles per week, consuming high dietary fat for one month (42%) had significantly increased in the volume density of total lipid in the muscle, without significant changes in the volume density of total mitochondria or total body weight and percent body fat [48].

Many athletes consume low calorie and low fat diets as a mechanism to reduce both fat intake and body weight [23,28]. Low caloric and/or fat intake diets may result in low levels of intramuscular fat stores that compromise performance."
Deanna
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Gary Moller comments:
While this is a controversial topic, I believe the fat free message that is currently the mantra of so many experts is a recipe for ill health. I was once in favour of the low fat diet, as all sports nutritionists seemed to be and most still are.
The drive to consume processed carbohydrates is now commercially driven by the food industry that makes billions worldwide through the sale of cheap carbohydrate foods and drinks derived from sources such as corn syrup that is then dollied up and on-sold at many times its actual cost. Low fat dairy is great for the dairy industry which strips the goodness out of the milk - sells us the milk water (while calling it milk) and then selling us the goodness as super-priced super foods (whey, creatine, colostrum etc) or as fortified milk water, such as Anlene. I would prefer real milk thanks - but where can you get it nowadays? Have public health officials have been seduced by industry propaganda and have they now adopted this fat-free mantra as their own, closing the shutters to good sense in the process?
While I do not have a problem with anybody making a profit, I do worry that athletes and the health conscious are being led down the wrong path. My take is this: Research that validates the benefits of carbohydrate-soaked diets is hardly ever short of funding as well as the publicity of their findings. Research that is to the contrary may have funding difficulties and any findings are likely to be buried, never to be published in the mass media including the sport magasines. We see similar patterns with chocolate and coffee. Of drugs for conditions like high blood pressure we hear little about the alternatives.
The study referred to in this article may be one of these that are buried. As young athletes, growing up in the late 1960's and early 1970's, we all trained the Lydiard Way, even if we did not realise it. The bread and butter part of the week was the weekend when we typically ran a short race like a lung-burning 3 mile cross-country and then ran a steady 2-3 hours through the Tokoroa bush on the Sunday morning on little more than a slice of toast with honey. Then we ravenously devoured the Sunday Roast!
Lydiard trained athletes were dominant back then and now I understand why. It has a lot to do with training the body to make best use of its fat reserves while conserving precious muscle glycogen which is needed for that withering home straight sprint. The intense racing on the Saturday depleted our muscle glycogen which takes 2-3 days to fully restore. Then we ran steady state less than a dozen hours later for a couple of hours or three, relying almost entirely on our fat reserves. We then packed in a rich supply of fat, protein and carbohydrate in the form of the Sunday roast and pudding. Do this for 12 weeks on the trot, Lydiard style, and you not only produce an athlete with the most completely developed aerobic setup; but also one with the most efficient fat metabolism. Lydiard always said that his athletes go faster as they work their way through the heats and semis, saving their best for the finals, while the opposition get progressively slower.
What Lydiard observed may be explained in part by the Lydiard trained athlete naturally conserving his or her muscle glycogen during competition. Without ample glycogen, the ability to run at pace, or to sprint is seriously compromised. Although Peter Snell was never the fastest sprinter in the fields, he consistently displayed the most withering finish. So did athletes like the Great miler - John Walker.
Nowadays, I have gone back to what I used to do: I run and cycle in training without food, ingesting plain water only. I have been doing this for the last couple of years. While it took three to four months for my body to adapt, it has been well worth the trouble. I am back to running and riding at my best which has been wonderful because I should be slowing with age. Instead, I am back to getting faster and doing this on less training than ever. While I have been doing several other things to keep the body ticking over properly, the fat/carbo thing is a most important part of the good health mix.
When doing intense competition that lasts more than about two hours, such as an extended mountain bike race, I might use a sugary electrolyte replacement like Balance Restore (wwwGaryMoller.com); but most certainly not during lower-intensity training and recreational rides. The sugar shot is reserved for the high intensity, extended races. It works and it fits with this JACN study.
If you are doing relatively low intensity exercise that goes on for hours, such as a long hike, you are probably better served having a traditional farmer's breakfast consisting of bacon, eggs, sausages and baked beans on toast - plus a plate or two of porridge and a couple of cups of tea than having just a feed of nutritionally devoid pasta or bread and then relying on a sports drink to get you through.
As the JACN study indicates, performance is very much to do with calories consumed and there is no better source of calories than fat! When I worked on the farms of Putaruru, the day began at 4am milking the cows, followed by a big feed at 8am and then we worked steadily through the day doing hard labour before milking again at 3pm. That big breakfast is what got us through the day. More Calories In = More Calories Out.
Fat is essential for health and performance for more reasons than just plain calories: fat in the diet is essential for the supply and absorption of the fat soluble vitamins - E, D, A and K. Even if you supplement with vitamins, you still need fat to be healthy. Fat in the form of cholesterol provides the building blocks for the construction of hormones, like testosterone which men and women need to be strong and virile (A good reason for avoiding impotence-inducing statins). Cholesterol makes your cells robust and water proof.
Of course, there are fats and there are fats and one should be emphasising the consumption of healthy fats - but that is another article. In the meantime, avoid any kind of fat that is processed, like the hydrogenated ones that you find in the cheap cooking oils, margarines and cookies.

Commuting to train for the Karapoti Mountain Bike Race

Hi Gary
I am training to do the Karapoti race and have been reading your article that is on the PNP site. I commute as part of my training and looking at the training plans I am wondering if it is too far.

I live in Porirua and work at the bottom of the Wainui hill, 30kms each way. I have been doing base training so I try to average less than 130 BPM . I am also looking at doing some of the road events, K2 and Taupo cycle challenge (my 40th birthday resolution is to break 4hrs 20mins for Taupo.. PB is 4.22)

Karapoti is the event Im targeting, K2 is an epic training ride preparing for a fast lap of Taupo. Mondays I teach a Spin class at my local gym at 6am then commute to work so by the time I get home Monday night it gives me approx 3hrs all up of cycling. I only teach 1 spin class a week.

I have been cycling more seriously now for 5yrs and without knowing it have been using a form of the Lydiard method because it worked for me, im just wondering if my commute should incorporate my interval sessions and take the next day as recovery???

Any help you could give me would be great Thanks
"Grant"
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Gary Moller comments:
Grant, thanks for asking. But I am not sure if I am going to answer your question directly.

When it comes to training I am a big fan of commuting. If you read any of the training advice of the Kennetts of Karapoti fame, you will realise that they are fans of commuting as well. Commuting is one of the best ways to get super fit and cycling is a great way to get super fit because cycling is easy on the legs and joints and recovery is usually as fast as it takes to replenish energy stores.

So, if one does it right, it is possible to cycle train every day; whereas, if one was doing running, then rest days become critical if injury is to be avoided. With cycling, rest days can be active days in the form of easy riding. Rest is relative.

Grant, I would use the commuting as your principal form of training. Modify your commuting to vary the training so that some days are easy "recovery" rides straight to and from work while other days might be the very long way home. Other days can be the hilly way home, a series of gut-wrenching intervals or a punishing grind into a strong head wind!

If you are going to structure your training in the classic Lydiard style, ensure that you have distinct blocks of training that build you to a peak of fitness for competition. Please have a good read of my course notes on "Train to Win". This is about the Lydiard Method and you will have to use your imagination to adapt the structures to cycling. Its easy to do; but must be applied with discipline.

Grant, the key to doing really well competitively, especially as you get older, is to ensure that you maintain optimum health so that you can do the big volumes and high intensity sessions and recover in between. Please listen carefully to Lorraine's advice in this video about recovery and adapt it to your cycling training and competition.

Athletes never retire - they just slowly grind to a halt

But this does not need to be the case. With that 40th birthday just around the corner, I would place as much attention to your nutritional status and the application of recovery strategies, such as stretching, massage and sleep as I would to your training (I am available for personal consultations about these matters).

Part II of Final Sprint Interview with Lorraine Moller

Dear Colleagues,
Episode 66 of The Final Sprint Podcast features the second and final installment of a two-part series of interviews with the legendary female running pioneer and Lydiard protégé LORRAINE MOLLERI encourage you to listen to the podcast and to please share it with your readers and other contacts. 

She also discusses helping to create the Arthur Lydiard Foundation, her charity efforts and much more! The audio interviewis also available at no charge in the iTunes Store.  Any and all feedback from you and/or your readers is greatly appreciated. Thanks again and please feel free to call and/or email me if there is anyway that I can assist you, your publication or organization.
Sincerely, Adam Jacobs

TFS's Audio Interview w/ LORRAINE MOLLER (Part 1 of 2) - Female running pioneer and passionate Lydiard protégé

Dear Colleagues,
Episode 65 of The Final Sprint Podcast features the first installment in a two-part series of interviews with the legendary female running pioneer and Lydiard protégé LORRAINE MOLLER. (Note: The second and final part of the interview will be published tomorrow in Episode 66).I encourage you to listen to the podcast and to please share it with your readers and other contacts.

In today's portion of the interview, Lorraine talks about the link between her development as a runner and as a person, the stages of her career, being driven by that "pioneering kiwi spirit" , the metamorphosis of female athletics, her bond with iconic running coach Arthur Lydiard, misconceptions about his training philosophies, and why her basic training so seamlessly prepared her for the marathon. She also discusses the special meaning of her induction to the Colorado Running Hall of Fame, and her belief that running is a personal and spiritual journey has enabled her to develop the often under-appreciated, but yet crucial element to success in both running and in life: self-understanding and the mental framework of a champion.

The audio interview is also available at no charge in the iTunes Store.
Any and all feedback from you and/or your readers is greatly appreciated. Thanks again and please feel free to call and/or email me if there is anyway that I can assist you, your publication or organization.
Sincerely,
Adam Jacobs

Question: Will speed training improve her 800m time?

Ponder this:A talented sprinter turned 800m runner, her PB for 200m is just over 26 seconds.
Her PB for 800m is 2m 9s.
When in an 800m race, she has no "kick", being left behind by the winners over the last 150 or so metres of a race. Her usual finishing position is 3rd or 4th place.
Seeking a solution, her fahter and coach consulted a sprint expert so that they could learn more about speed drills and anaerobic work to improve her kick. Will this work for this talented 18 year old?

The answer is "No!" of course. Her problem is a stamina one - not a lack of speed or anaerobic capacity. In theory, she has more than enough speed to run way under 2 minutes for an 800m. Training to sprint 200m faster will do nothing to lower her 800m time. Concentrating too much on speed and anerobic training might even cause her to run slower.

Athletes like Peter Snell and John Walker were never the fastest sprinters in the fields, yet they both posessed the most stunning kicks over the last 200m of a race, be it 800m or 1500m. They had aerobic stamina, the oxygen uptakes honed from years of distance training and racing events like road and cross-country - as well as a good measure of speed training, of course. This stamina meant they were able to conserve their anaerobic reserves more than their speed-trained opponents. When it came to the winning sprint, they had more gas in reserve for firing their after-burners than anybody else. They consistently won.

Stamina is what wins races that are longer than about 4oom.

Running - Being good racers in training and losing the plot

I don't think a lot of NZ coaches have really grasped the finer points of Lydiard’s coaching, I’m seeing young runners grinding out over the Waitakeres most weekends going flat out, I'm not hearing the message train don't strain, I'm hearing a message of mileage instead of time spent training.

A group of young adults goes out over the Waitakeres whether they are bent on competing I’m not sure, they go out together but come back down at one hang of a pace spread-eagled possibly racing each other back down. Their best is being given on the Waitakeres.
Our best results are coming from athletes trained by overseas coaches.

It’s the problem when a few coaches have all the talent under their wing, if they don't do a good job all the talent isn't developed properly.

There needs to be a message of balance, knowing when to ease off and listening to your own body rather than religiously following a coach.

Wayne

Photo: 1970's Canterbury, New Zealand Korean training camp when NZ was the Mecca for runners: the long sunday pack runs were part of a carefully managed buildup plan. There were no heroics.

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Gary Moller comments:
Wayne, These observations and comments are right on the mark and get to the heart of one of the reasons why New Zealand has lost the running plot after having been consistently at the top of the running world.

If you read my articles about Kenyan running, you will realise that Kenyans commence their running from a very early age, with brief bursts of intensity when playing games like soccer. This very much describes my own upbringing in rural New Zealand of the 1950's. It is only after a decade and a half later that the Kenyans, as young adults, are subjected to big running miles at pace and gut-heaving anaerobic work.

Lydiard alway worked on the basis that it took 8-10 years to build a champion. How right he was and how right he still is.

To take teenage boys and girls with the best of just a few years of running behind them and have them racing the lenght of the Waitakeres is really dumb. It is a recipe for disaster. End of story!

How do Kenyan runners train?

This is an interesting website page about how Kenyan runners train, including what is done with older school children.

The general gist of it is this: If you want to be as fast as a Kenyan then you have to train at about the lactate threshold (Don't worry about what this means, other than that you need to hike along most of the time!).

If you carefully read my earlier article about Kenyan Training Secrets, you will see I have a different angle on their training. It is what they (Kenyans) do from birth that produces the adult champions. As we can see from the current state of affairs of athletics in soft countrys like NZ and the US, our trying to copy them by following what is published by the "experts" is a disaster. We could learn a few lessons by reviewing Arthur Lydiard's pioneering work. When viewed macroscopically Kenyan training is very similar to Lydiard's structure that steadily builds an athlete to peak performance over 8-10 years .

If we want to beat the Kenyans then we need to start by toughening up our kids from birth by making them run and walk everywhere, preferably barefoot, doing chores about the yard and lifting heavy weights in between (This is low intensity endurance and strength work). When they have time off, they can play typical kids games like soccer and scampering away from adults with big sticks! (Speed and agility training).


After 15 or so years of hard labour they are then ready for all the fancy speed work - and who cares in what form that is because it is the early years that is the foundation of Kenyan running performance.