Bounding drills and training the Lydiard way

Gordon Moller practicing a bounding drill during the latest Lydiard Coaching Certification course

Gordon turns 60 later this year and his performances are world class when it comes to age groups.  He finished 3rd overall in his last off road half marathon and won his age group by a country mile.  He's fast.

When most people think about training for a marathon, or half marathon, thoughts usually turn to grinding out endless miles, day after day and week after week, with little attention to other components for performance, including form and efficiency.  While time out running is an essential part, so is paying attention to developing power, speed and form and these can all suffer if training is mostly an endless plod.  Whether you are a front runner or recreational runner your body does not differentiate - the same principles of training apply - all that may vary are the intensity, volume and duration.

Arthur Lydiard was the founder of modern periodisation and his methods are still unsurpassed.  The key to enjoyable and rewarding running, be it an 800 meter race, or surviving an ultra marathon, is getting the right mix of endurance, speed and power in training and timing when and how these are introduced to produce consistent and satisfying performances on the day.  This is the art and science of periodisation.

If you are a coach or athlete and want to learn more about Lydiard Coaching Certification and the art of periodisation, please go here:
http://www.lydiardfoundation.org/events/

Train well!

 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.

Top athletics coach Alberto Salazar faces doping claims

"Alberto Salazar has been accused of violating anti-doping rules, including claims he was involved in doping US record holder Galen Rupp, in 2002.

Were these athletes doping during the 2012 London Olympics?

Rupp and GB Olympic gold medalist Mo Farah are part of Salazar's US stable, the Nike Oregon Project."http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-32877702

Rumours had been circulating around the time of the London Olympics that the Brits had developed something "special" prior to the London Olympics, that was giving many of its athletes the competitive edge.  Standout performers included British runner, Mo Farrah, and American ,Galen Rupp, both members of Alberto  Salazar's Nike Oregon Project (NOP) team.  Were they doping?  Had they discovered a performance enhancing substance that was not illegal?  Were they bending the doping rules?  Had they found a legal loophole?

Here's an interesting programme that details TUE can be manipulated, the links between UK athletics and Salazar and the presenter shows how easy it is to dope and get away with it (WADA only catches an estimated 2% of dopers):



A few months after the London Olympics, the Wall Street Journal published an investigative report revealing that NOP athletes, including Rupp, had been prescribed medication for hypothyroidism by a New York endocrinologist:
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2003/apr/24/athletics.duncanmackay

You can read the Wall Street article here:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323550604578412913149043072

You will gather, when you connect the dots, that there appeared to be some very dodgy stuff going on.

My assumption, later proven to be pretty close to the mark, was that Farrah and Rupp were using thyroid hormone, possibly adrenaline as well, and doing so quite openly, because what they were taking was either not illegal under the doping regulations, or they had therapeutic use exemptions (TUE) to do so.  Whatever might have been the case, something stank - in my opinion - and in the opinion of some others who love running and who detest the cheats, including those who manipulate TUE's to take drugs like thyroxine and Prednisone (a steroid Rupp was apparently taking in 2002).
Yes, I was on the money:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-3112885/Stop-stars-abusing-thyroid-drugs-say-runners-amid-Alberto-Salazar-doping-row.html

Early 2013 I was invited to give a talk to the Scottish Harrier Club in Wellington on the topic of avoiding burnout in athletes.  Much of the presentation was about adrenal and thyroid health issues which are endemic in over-trained athletes and I mentioned the case of the use of medication by some of Salazar's NOP athletes.  By contrast, I advocate the treatment of thyroid and adrenal fatigue in athletes by modifying their training and the use of nutritional support - not drugs.

George Arbuthnott, an investigative journalist with the Sunday Times, working with David Walsh, who blew the whistle on Lance Armstrong, somehow found out about my presentation to Scottish Harriers.  George contacted me in February 2014, while investigating rumours that some of Britain's athletes were being wrongly diagnosed with conditions thus allowing them to take performance-enhancing medications under the TUE.

Incidentally, I think the TUE is an open invitation to cheat, with huge grey areas and regularly abused:

"So here's something interesting...chatting to Dr Jeroen Swart, respected sports physician & coach, and he points out that the use of corticosteroids (like prednisone that Galen Rupp is alleged to have used) is prohibited ONLY IN-COMPETITION, with TUEs for certain cases.

The glucocorticoids are not listed as "Prohibited at all times" (see screen grabs from the WADA prohibited list below - the list of prohibited at all times list is on the left, and in-competition is on the right), which means out-of-competition, you don't even need a TUE, there's no restriction.

In other words, athletes can use corticosteroids, with all their benefits, until about a week before competition, and they wouldn't even need a TUE for it.

I'd never made the conscious link until this discussion, but it's really bizarre that the restriction (via TUE) of these substances only applies to competition, and not training. Better recovery, harder training, greater benefit, and race clean.

And wait, there's more - the same applies to stimulants, so people can use them in training, get the benefit, and then race after a 'clear-out' phase. Obviously, there's an ethical issue here, but the WADA list doesn't cover them out of competition. Loophole...

It seems so ludicrous to me, I feel I'm missing something, but the WADA list invites this approach."

Comments by sports scientist, Ross Tucker

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Science-of-Sport/213103522034028?fref=nf

Rumours were circulating that the British had found something "special" prior to the London Olympics, that was giving many of its athletes the competitive edge.

I introduced him to a source close to NOP (not my sister, Lorraine) who provided most of the information that led to the article that was published in the Sunday Times that revealed the questionable use of a secret form of L-Carnitine by NOP, possible injected.

This is the article that George finally wrote (sorry, you have to subscribe to read it!).  Its an intriguing read:

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/article1534628.ece

With George's article being published, things have begun to unravel:
https://www.propublica.org/article/former-team-members-accuse-coach-alberto-salazar-of-breaking-drug-rules

Interestingly, these comments, made in 2014, by another source of information for the Sunday Times turned out to be so wrong:

"The cycling connection is how this is going to unravel.  The NOP is a small group, and there are just a small number of inside people who know what's going on.  Cycling teams are different though, a lot of people, and different faces coming and going all the time.  Someone will get caught with it and then WADA will know what to look for."

It is a crying shame that doping continues to be an ongoing issue.  Like corruption in sport (think FIFA) everyone involved, including the innocent, are irreparably tainted.  Every exceptional performance is called into question.  Meanwhile the clean ones, who usually come 5th, or lower, miss out on the winnings, the sponsors and the team selections.  They may be forced into early and often impoverished retirement, while the cheats go on to become celebrity millionaires.  Its just plain wrong.

Also, this is great opportunity to tout correct training as the path to excellence. Coaches who need to lurk in the shadows looking for the edge do not believe in their training, as Lydiard did. Here's the training coaches need to produce clean high performers:

http://www.lydiardfoundation.org/coach-training/

 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.

"How to avoid altitude sickness": Practical advice from Lorraine Moller

Gary,

Lorraine Moller training at
altitude in Boulder
Colorado some time ago

I have a question about altitude sickness.

I've just decided to do the Tour Du Mont Blanc but I'm nervous about some of the climbs which go up to about 2600m.

I have been at 2200m before and never had problems but experienced pretty bad altitude sickness at 3000m.

At what height does altitude sickness become a real possibility and is there any way to manage, minimise or hopefully eliminate the possibility of getting it so my trek doesn't become a nightmare?

Thank you

"D"

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Lorraine Moller replies:

Hi Gary, In reply to D's query about preparing for hikes at high altitude: I have some experience with altitude training but it has been the other way around, train high and race low. 

Since you are training at sea level and your event takes place at quite high altitudes I will attempt to make what I know relevant to your situation. 

 There are two primary limiting factors with regards to any endurance activity, muscular conditioning and oxygenation. The muscular conditioning needed to meet the requirements for your hike can be trained for adequately at sea level. However the ability of your body to meet the specific requirements of high altitude is a little more difficult as this type of training requires specificity that is not most efficiently met by training at sea level. 

The biggest challenge for your body at high altitude is the lower air pressure that makes the breathable air less dense. So for every 500 meters you climb you lose about 4% of your available oxygen and by about 3,000m you are only breathing in about 3/4 of the oxygen that you would have at sea level. However the more developed your oxygenating system is, the better you will fare and most walkers and runners can greatly improve their aerobic capacity at sea level by undertaking a simple conditioning plan of regular and variable intensity hikes, two or three challenging ones a week with hills to get the heart pumping and time on your feet, interspersed with some gentle recovery hikes. 

If you are limited by terrain, I suggest running some of your workouts to get the heart rate up and stimulate the body systems to become efficient oxygen processing units. Don't overdo it; too much has the opposite effect and gets you tired and injured, but a regular weekly cycle of workout/recovery can greatly improve your VO2 max in just a few months. 

Here's some suggestions for you from one of our recent Lydiard Coach graduates, Kathy Pidcock, who has trained many ultra and mountain runners: 

"That's always tough on transitioning from sea level to altitude. My recommendation is to do lots of hiking on as tough a trail as they can find (steep works best) and hike it with gusto. Try to get almost anaerobic for several minutes before resting then repeat the process several times. Climb with full packs, it will get them to AT (Aerobic Threshold) quicker. 

Hopefully they will have at least 2 weeks to train. If they are flying into someplace to do the hiking, I suggest they arrive just before the hike, not a week or 2 before. That's when the body begins to break down and tries to make more red blood cells for oxygen carrying capacity. That whole process can take up to 4 months. They will be more tired if their body is trying to repair AND suffering from lack of oxygen with exertion. 

I also recommend taking in foods/drinks that are high in iron to prep the blood prior to the hike. Tell them to take it very slowly on the hike, enjoy the sights, rest often and take lots of pictures and to have a fabulous time!"

A further comments from Gary: 
I would add in a sauna twice a week in the time left leading up to the expedition, as well as increase your daily intake of multi mineral salt such as Himalayan salt (such an appropriately named product!):  Heat acclimatisation boosts blood volume (meaning you have a greater sink for holding oxygen and nutrients) and you will be better able to handle and avoid dehydration which is usually experienced in the very low humidity of high altitude, even if conditions are freezing.
http://blog.garymoller.com/2009/09/how-to-use-sauna-to-improve-health.html

About Lorraine Moller and the Lydiard Foundation
http://lydiardfoundation.deliriousvisions.com/lorraine-moller-inducted-to-boulder-sports-hall-of-fame/

Become a Certified Lydiard Coach: http://www.lydiardfoundation.org/

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.

Candida and Fungal Infections? Gary Moller recommends you explore this programme: Click Here!

Here is your opportunity to become a Lydiard Foundation, Level I or II Certified Coach

Lydiard Foundation, Level I or II Certified Coach

Peter Snell: Lydiard Coaching in action

Did you know that anybody can call themselves an expert in middle and long distance running; but how do you know they are any better than the rest?  Well, you have no way of knowing, even if they have a university degree in exercise science.  There are no standards, no uniformity and it shows in our inconsistent, hit or miss results in competition.

Well, this is all about to change.  If you hire a Lydiard Foundation Certified Coach, then you will at the least know that this coach has a good understanding of the principles of athletic conditioning that were developed by the most successful running coach of all time - the late Arthur Lydiard.

If you are interested in becoming a Lydiard Foundation, Level I or II Certified Coach, then here is your opportunity!  This is the opportunity to gain a unique coaching qualification that may never come around again - unless you have the time and the money to head over the the United States.

http://www.lydiardfoundation.org/

Like so much of our best talent and ideas, such as Arthur Lydiard's medal-winning training system, we have squandered the opportunity to domicile it in New Zealand, instead exporting it to places afar where it is recognised for what it is - a winning formula!  I think this ongoing habit of shunning and ignoring the best we produce is shameful.  Why isn't the Lydiard Foundation headquartered in New Zealand?  (I know why but I am not about to tell you!).

Fortunately, all is not quite lost, with a few expat Kiwis, including Peter Snell and Lorraine Moller,

Pekka Vasala and Kip Keino running with real style

having key roles in the USA-based Lydiard Foundation which is setting about producing a set of uniform coaching standards within the USA for middle and long distance running.

Lorraine will be running two courses through Massey University (details below) and your attendance will help ensure their success.  Perhaps Massey University will leverage the success of these courses to establish a permanent presence of the Lydiard Foundation in the country where it all began.

April Coaching Courses

Ms Moller will be presenting at two Lydiard Foundation Coaching Certification courses Level I and II in April. Both are hosted by Massey University, with the Palmerston North courses running from

April 4-6 and the Albany courses from April 11-13.

Both coaching courses run from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. Fees apply and reservations are essential, so contact the School of Sport and Exercise by email: sport@massey.ac.nz or call (06) 359 5099 ext 81585 to reserve your place.

Lorraine Moller: Boston Marathon winner 1984

It’s a timely topic as athletes these days navigate a labyrinth of information in their search to become better, and as widespread lifestyle diseases contribute to declining fitness levels in the general public.
Massey University national events and sponsorship director Denise Armstrong says hosting the talk and the coaching courses is a perfect match for the University.

"Massey is the leading sports university in New Zealand and the home of more high-performance athletes than any other tertiary institution," she says. "Lorraine Moller is an amazing role model and someone that New Zealand athletes at any stage, and their coaches, can learn valuable lessons from."
Ms Moller had an unprecedented 28-year international running career, and was the only women in the world to have completed all of the first four Olympic marathons for women. She won a bronze medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics in the women’s marathon. She won the Boston Marathon in 1984, was a triple winner of the Osaka Ladies Marathon, and has won three Commonwealth Games medals. Ms Moller was also a forerunner for equality in women’s athletics and an activist for professionalism in distance running.

The Lydiard system, developed by the late Arthur Lydiard, is recognised as the gold standard of endurance systems worldwide and has produced more champions and made more lifetime runners out of beginners than any other system. Ms Moller will discuss whether the system is still relevant in this high-tech age.

http://www.voxy.co.nz/national/running-legend-lorraine-moller-speak-albany/5/185285

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.

Candida and Fungal Infections? Gary Moller recommends you explore this programme: Click Here!

"On the Run" Short Film about Lydiard and Running in New Zealand 1979

Click on this image to view the movie

This film showcases legendary running coach Arthur Lydiard's training methods through the example of his acolytes, including reigning Olympic 1,500m champ John Walker. 'Arthur's boys' (Snell, Halberg, Magee) scored attention by winning unheralded medals (two golds and a bronze) at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Lydiard later led the 'flying Finns' to similar success. His method revolves around building stamina to complement speed, and was influential in popularising jogging globally. Beautifully filmed, a doco highlight is Jack Foster's exhilarating scree slope descent.

Gary:

• If my memory serves me right, the "Cave Man" runner in the opening scene is my team mate of the time, Gary Wilby, of the Victoria University Harrier Club.  Another "Gary", of course!  He was, and still is, very, very hairy.
• What you see in the movie is a succession of incredibly well-conditioned male and female athletes.  Look closely at their wonderful muscle development.  There are no over-trained and under-nourished athletes to be seen.  They trained to a system and ate well.  And watch them run with great efficiency!  
• This is back in the days when New Zealand really did inspire a sense of awe and disbelief in the running world.  I am getting overwhelmed with nostalgia.
• Great to see a few shots of my sister, Lorraine, although a wee bit off the pace in the race sequences.
• Look at the strength these athletes have in their legs.  There is not a hint of a flat-footed runner among them.  Look at the terrain they are training on - no manicured trails to be seen.  Agile!
• Take special note at about the 6 minute mark.  There is demonstrated a largely forgotten pair of running drills - Hill-springing and hill-bounding.  And look at the muscles on the female runner demonstrating the drills.  Every runner, serious and recreational, should be practicing these drills as part of their weekly training.  I am in the process of getting back into running and several minutes of hill-springing are part and parcel of just about every run around the block.

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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.

The Golden Hour documentary - Snell and Halberg at the Rome Olympics

The Golden Hour

22 Jul 12 | 1:30:43 |  Classification: PGR

The inspirational story of New Zealand's greatest ever day at the Olympics, based on the experiences of Olympians Peter Snell and Murray Halberg, and their coach Arthur Lydiard.

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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.

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.

Long Runs - Long Rides and their effect on fat and carbohydrate metabolism

Hi Gary,

Thanks for your time. I recieved your e-mail address from your website after reading Keith Livingstones book on Lydiards principles. Am so very happy to be able to ask you a question

In the book Lydiard principle recommends doing long runs with no carbs. I'm a cyclist trying to use his principles, and on the bike a long equivalent ride would be 5hrs or so. Would you recommend going this long also without carbs? Can only manage 3.5hrs at the moment but am working on it.

All other areas look as though they can transfer across ok :)

Many thanks Gary, take good care Clarence 

________________________________________

Gary:

Clarence, rather than muddle about trying to explain what can be quite confusing; especially since what we are saying seems to run counter to "mainstream" advice, I decided to ask the author of the book, Dr Keith Livingstone, to do the honours of providing the answer.

As an aside; Keith and his twin brother, Colin, were born in Kenya and raised in New Zealand. In their 20's Keith and Colin were more like rockets than runners. While I can claim to have done some training runs with Keith, I saw mostly his rear end while he set about innocently wasting me!  Keith was one of the most promising 5 and 10km runners during the 70's but he chose study over running which was a good decision - I guess.  Keith is a bit of a bright spark and he knows his exercise physiology back to front, especially as it applies to running and cycling.

For a little more about Keith, the Author of HIT, please go here.

Just one further comment from me: What Keith explains below may appear to be running contrary to what most mainstream nutritionists and exercise physiologists tend to advise - like loading up on carbs here, there and every-where.  I think the root cause of this dissonance in advice is because the food industry has captured academia and the media: Research that sets out to prove the benefits of hi-carbs gets the funding and the ones that produce findings in support of carbs gets all of the publicity.  The rest get buried - if they ever get off the ground in the first place.  Over 70% of academic studies never see the light of day and fewer than 10% of these ever get published in a peer reviewed journal and then only a few of these get into the popular press - and this is after the funding bias in favour of carbs has done the first weeding out!  You see; the food industry want you to buy highly priced super-processed foods (if you can call this food!) that are made from super-cheap stuff like soy, corn and wheat extracts.  There is no money to be made by trying to sell you a corn cob.  The money is in taking that raw 10 cent corn cob and converting it into several sports gels and selling them to you for 2-5 bucks each.  Got the idea?

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Keith:
In my book Healthy Intelligent Training, I advised runners that they SHOULD NOT try to do their long runs by running the last few kilometers by sucking on carbohydrate gel sachets, etc.

Why would I say this? Surely that heavy-legged, wooden feeling we get as the last of the accessible carbohydrate stores gets used up isn't desireable, is it? Well, in a circular way, yes- it’s extremely desirable. There’s really no better way I know of to get the body to switch its attention to conserving glycogen (stored muscle sugars in endless chains of glucose molecules) than by taking that tank to ‘empty’ a few weeks in a row in long efforts until the body then says “But hey- I can MAKE more of this stuff by stripping down fatty acids into glucose by another route!”

(“Triglycerides”, which are often represented as “bad fats” by people who should study and think more, can be considered “Three -glucoses”. With a twist of a bit of each end, and a ‘yank’ between each section, done in the machinery of the slow twitch fibers’ mitochondria, in each of those fatty acid molecules there are a few potential high-energy glucose molecules once they've been cleaved off and re-badged.)

A body trained this way on the Lydiard principles will soon adapt, and the “heavy-legged, wooden feeling” doesn’t occur at all in long runs over two and a half hours any more. In fact, one starts to move along at very good high-aerobic speeds on a mixed-fuel of carbs and fats, just about as efficiently as on carbs alone. This leaves decent stores of muscle glycogen that can be accessed late into a long aerobic race like the marathon, or late into a competitive ride, without the need for “gu-gels”, etc. If you train to get super-efficient on dual-fuels, and hop into a race , you can always “top up” within the race for a superlative result (maybe a big negative split!). However- practice it once or twice outside a race just so that you don’t have any surprises on race day!

So if we can find a way to ‘train’ the body over a number of weeks in incremental steps to strip down the nearly endless supplies of free fatty acids floating around, and re-badge the ‘triglycerides’ that make up a high proportion of accessible fats within the muscle cells into glucose for higher-power output, then we’re using the metabolic portion of the slow twitch fibers to supply ready fuel for our fast twitch fibers that supply the power necessary to move anyone at much faster than 4m20s Km speed.(8.5 mph for a runner).

On long runs, we should make an effort to stay hydrated , because glucose needs a fair bit of water around it to get into the system. The way to get things going when running is something like a 3.5 hour run with the first 90 minutes at slow jogging pace, and then do a normal 2 hour run on top of that, and see how good you feel at the end.

On long bike rides, the trick is to never go off the small front ring on a road bike, and ‘spin’ for as long as possible at low intensities, with the heart rate quite low, near only 65% intensity on the Karvonen Heart Rate scale. (Gary explain this.. it’s in the book- I’m going to bed). (Gary’s advice: Read the book!)

On other rides through the week that have different purposes to the fat utilisation purpose of the long ride, naturally enough we go at sustained intensities that are higher, to our level of training and tolerance.http://hitsystem.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/book3.jpg

The great, and very very big Miguel Indurain, one of the few multiple winners of the Tour de France, gave Lance Armstrong this low-intensity tip as more or less his ‘secret’ to conserving muscle glycogen. On the big front ring, we can push higher speeds for sure, but it’s done by utilising higher power output that tips the scales towards more fast twitch fibre use, and thereby ripping through glycogen stores. Since we do much the same amount of nett work for a given distance, whether we do it with high speed and high power, or whether we take it a little steadier, the small front ring and lower heart rate will make sure you’re using slow twitch more, thereby stripping down those triglycerides and free fatty acids in the mitochondrial energy factories without touching your glycogen stores much.

As a rule of thumb, the more strength or power required to turn the pedal, the more the likelihood you’re recruiting fast twitch and using glycogen, and vice-versa with respect to the far more aerobically efficient and fuel-efficient slow twitch fibers.

So if your ego can handle fat weekend warriors with spare tyres passing you on the waterfront, start there, but also be prepared for the odd granny to go past. Then you’re really doing it well, and after your fatty acid metabolism kicks in, you’ll find you can go a very long way without the need for carbs.

HOWEVER- always have some carbs on hand just in case your system isn’t quite right one day and you ’bonk’ thirty kilometers from home! I’d also suggest eating every couple of hours after about 5 hours if you do longer rides; toasted sandwiches of cheese, ham, and tomato were perfect fuel for me when I did a few all-day charity rides several years ago, as well as a water-pack with grape juice (alkali, full of potassium) diluted by about 1:3 with water. Fruit juices such as apple or grape are alkali (= good!), whereas orange juice is too acidic and can muck up your stomach quite badly. Any fruit drink should be diluted to roughly 6g sugars/liter (6% w/v), or less on hot days.

Keith Livingstone

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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.

Essential Lydiard by Lorraine Moller

Essential Lydiard

Principles, not formulas, are the keys to successful training

By Lorraine Moller

There's a story told about Arthur Lydiard and his golden boys at the '64 Olympics in Tokyo. Down at the training track, with their rivals looking on, they ran an impressive interval session of 20 quarters. The next day one of these opponents, a talented interval-trained Canadian in his first Olympics, showed up at the track with his coach and proceeded to run the same session. Lydiard's boys cheered him on as he ran each interval faster than the last. When it was all done a reporter asked Lydiard what he thought of the kid's workout. "I think it was the last nail in his coffin," Lydiard replied.

"But your boys ran the same session yesterday."

"Yes, but my boys needed it."

Perfectly peaked, Lydiard's protege, Peter Snell, won two gold medals. His teammate, John Davies, won a bronze. The Canadian who had eclipsed the Kiwis' training run with his own failed to advance to the finals in his event -- as Lydiard had predicted.

One of my former coaches, Ron Daws, often quoted the above story to illustrate his axiom: "Good training and bad training look exactly the same on paper." Twenty quarters can bring one runner to his or her peak and bury another in a hole. Daws, adhering to Lydiard's philosophy, recognized that stand-alone workouts mean little; it is their contextual application to the advancement of the athlete's goal that matters. Training, then, is not a series of numbers that can be universally applied but is rather the art of combining measure, timing and sequence to the specific needs of the individual. Herein lies the brilliance of the coaching of Arthur Lydiard.

My first coach, John Davies, the same Lydiard protege who won bronze in Tokyo, called Arthur to ask him how to adapt the training for a promising 14-year-old girl. He didn't want to wreck me. Arthur advised him to build a base by increasing my mileage. I began on regular runs, soon reaching my target of 40 miles per week, which I continued for some months. There were never any hard and fast rules that are regularly attributed to Lydiard, such as the 100-miles-per-week mandate, but rather a careful consideration for my age, gender, ability, fitness and event. And that's how it was for the next 28 years of my career as an international athlete under the guidance of three consecutive Lydiard coaches: Davies, Ron Daws and Dick Quax. My schedules were never replicated in content; however, the principles that defined them as good Lydiard training (and outlined in this article) were unwavering.

Please go here for the entire Running Times article.

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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.  Please give me your support by subscribing to my free email updates. Please shop at my Online Store. Please encourage your family and friends to do the same. While we may not always be able to compete with the big operators on price, we aim to more than compensate through personal service!
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Do you have a question?  Email Gary: gary@myotec.co.nz. Include any relevant background information to your question.  Please be patient and be aware that I may not be able to answer every inquiry in detail, depending on workloads (My paying clients take precedence!). I will either reply by email or, most likely, by way of an article (Personal identifying details will be removed before publication).

Lorraine Moller replies to a question about Lydiard training for longevity and ultras

Hi Gary
My names Gary also from NZ!  I've been a dedicated long distance runner since October 2004 and loving it.
I've been pretty lucky with injuries and had very few of them(except a plantar faciistis which I have recovered from).Because of my job I'm pretty busy and I can't train and race the way I want to, but still manage every day to get out and do a run. My peak milage gets up to about 190km-200km .I'm planning to do 1 or 2 races April or May next year which is the peak season here in Japan for road racing and athletics in general.
After that I want to focus more on my job for the next 3 years ,doing a reduced schedule of around 100-120km per week then 3 years later get back into the long miles and competition again ,by that time I'll be 42 .I believe that my best running will be between 42-46 in marathons and especially the ultras.
I saw on U-TUBE an interesting comment that Lorraine made about the japanese runners in their first year of a 4 year build up for the olympics they do a lot of back pack hiking.
My question is - How much running are they doing during this period of their training?

Lorraine Moller on Training the Lydiard Way

Lorraine explains how to train the Lydiard way. Using this method of athletic conditioning, Lorraine's extraordinary running career extended an astonishing 28 years of international representation.

Listen to this podcast in which Lorraine explains how to train the Lydiard way. Click here to begin listening.

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Interview with Dr Keith Livingstone about Healthy, Intelligent Training and Lydiard

"Keith Livingstone, from New Zealand recently published a new book about an old training method, writing it in today’s language. He has taken the famous training method of the late and incomparable Arthur Lydiard and modernized it so everyone can understand the theory and application fully in a book he calls, Healthy Intelligent Training or H.I.T for short.

The Lydiard method may have produced dozens of international medals for New Zealand, Finland and several other countries,......."
For the full interview, please go here

I have a couple of spare copies of Keith's book. If you want a copy, you can have it for NZ$40 plus post. First in - first served.

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"Incidental Joy" - An article by George Beinhorn about Arthur Lydiard and Lorraine Moller

Here's an interesting article about Arthur Lydiard and my sister, Lorraine Moller.

The author, George Beinhorn, has written a book about running and fitness. While I have not read it, it does appear to worth getting hold of.

Click on the image to the left to read on his website.

Lorraine's book, On the Wings of Mercury, is available here.

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When you become older, you must do more recuperation after training

"When you become older, you must do more recuperation after training and you are not doing the mileage that you were doing when you were young"

Quote from Tomescu-Dita of what it takes to become an Olympic champion at 38. She stunned the field in China by breaking away after half distance to become the event's oldest winner.
For the complete article please go here.

_______________________________

Gary comments

It happens that Tomescu-Dita lives in Boulder, Colorado, the same city as my sister Lorraine, who won Olympic bronze in Barcelona when she was 39.  Lorraine was an inspiration to Tomescu-Dita that she was not too old to go for it at Beijing.  "I met her last year and I told her I am too old to win a gold medal, or a medal, at the Olympics," said Tomescu-Dita. "She said, 'You are not old.

This article discusses Paula Radcliffe's tendency to hammer out the miles in training and her less than favourable chances of winning the London Marathon after her recent run of injuries and poor performances.  Among those interviewed is one of the greatest female distance runners, Ingrid Christiansen.  As an aside I met Ingrid and her young family over a few days way back in about 1988.  I put together a lecture about exercise and pregnancy based on that and other experiences.  Here it is. Exercise and Pregnancy

As an athlete gets older the need for big training diminishes.  After about 8-10 years of continuous training any further gains in strength and endurance are negligible.  Further ramping up of training intensity and duration merely add to injury and illness risk for no real gain.  It is better to concentrate on recovery and competing smart.  This principle applies regardless of age after one has done 10 years of hard base training.  Please go here for my presentation notes that explain this in more detail:

Train to Win - Training the Lydiard Way

From about 40 years of age the body also needs progressively more recovery time between training and competition.  There needs to be much more attention to optimum nutrition, seeking to identify and correct subtle deficiencies.
The older athlete should not make the mistake of trying to do a young man's training schedule as so often happens when an aspiring older athlete hires some whiz-bang fitness specialist to design a training schedule.  The result may be short term gains for a huge amount of effort and cost at the risk of eventual chronic fatigue and injury - and consequent premature retirement.
The better approach is to concentrate on a training and competition programme that yields the best results for the least effort.
I have applied this principle to my own fitness and sporting competition and am delighted to be going as strong as ever at 55 years.

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Here it is at last - the Lydiard Foundation is up and running

At last! While it should be based in New Zealand I guess it could never be. We are so good at exporting our best talent and best ideas and Lydiard is no exception.


Thankfully, the Lydiard Foundation has a strong Kiwi connection in the form of my sister Lorraine. Please visit the brand new Lydiard Foundation website and please sign on as a supporter. We want to keep a strong Kiwi connection. Lydiard is the most innovative and successful running coach in history. Let's not lose his legacy for good!

Talk to Gary Moller (First 5 minutes are free):

Lorraine Moller talks about Athlete Conditioning based upon the Lydiard Method

When I was recently in New Zealand as a guest of the Lovelock/Davies Foundation, sponsored by Powerade, to speak of the work of The Lydiard Foundation I was both surprised and pleased. I had been concerned that New Zealand had lost the way and athletes had moved away from the Lydiard way of training, that it was seen as outdated and the public might not be interested.
There was an outstanding attendance at both lectures in Wanganui and Auckland. The packed audiences included many great and experienced coaches with a wealth of knowledge and experience in the subject that far exceeds mine - coaches such as Barry Magee, Arch Jelley, Chris Pilone, Gary Little and my co-presenter and long-time mentor, Dick Quax.
Almost every runner I knew trained 'Lydiard' when I was young. We ran cross country and road in the winter during our build-ups. We called people who went to the track and did speed work in the winter idiots. The strength building of the winter set us up for the track racing of the summer. The elders of our clubs explained that miles were like putting sand in your bucket and racing emptied the sand out again. (I would have preferred a 'money in the bank' analogy but the image of sand has stuck.)
New Zealand runners were at the top then. I grew up in the wake of the golden era of Peter Snell, Murray Halberg, John Davies, Marise Chamberlain, Barry Magee, and Mike Ryan. The trio Dick Quax, Rod Dixon and John Walker emulated their medal winning legacy. We women were soon to come into our own, in both parity of events and public and media recognition of accomplishment. All of us were coloured by the Lydiard brush. I was coached by John Davies, Ron Daws, and Dick Quax, all Lydiard aficionados.
Lydiardism had its own lore and lingo: we didn't periodise, we pyramidised; we didn't have heart-rate monitors, we gauged by effort; and our coaches were always mindful of how much sand was in our buckets. The Lydiard method was not a theoretical construct borne of lab formulae but a work in progress over the lifetime of Arthur (and others), trialed and tested on thousands if not millions of runners. What worked stuck to become an impressively sound and successful methodology, applicable to all endurance events in all sports over more than a few minutes in duration.
Why is Lydiardism so successful? Because it is a pyramid, solid from the ground up to its peak, it shape defined by the principles it embodies.
These principles are:
1. Maximum Aerobic Efficiency. The body is an oxygen dependant machine for movement. The better we are at utilizing oxygen, the faster and longer we can move at any degree of intensity. The bigger the base of the pyramid the higher the peak.
2. Progressive Development of Energy Transport Systems. Aerobic development precedes anaerobic development. The ascent up the pyramid is a movement from endurance to strength to speed, each stage building on and supporting the next stage.
3. Response Regulation. This is a fancy way of saying that everyone is different and each individual needs to keep an eye on their bucket and adjust their training so that they arrive at the peak of their pyramid with it filled to maximum.
4. Peaking. The pyramid focuses the efforts both physically and mentally so that the chances of performing well on the day that counts are greatest.
There are many such fine coaches scattered throughout New Zealand, coaches who long ago embraced Lydiard in principle and now carry a wealth of expertise. These are New Zealand's best asset for sport and I believe that support of these people at administrative level to teach and inspire our next generation of coaches and athletes is our best bet for a new golden era. Coaches are so often overlooked, especially in a sport that has become professional. As bucket-fillers they too need their buckets filled.
For more information on The Lydiard Foundation or to participate in our training forums with your training question, answers or comments log onto www.lydiardfoundation.org

Talk to Gary Moller (First 5 minutes are free):

Mahe Drysdale sinks Rob Waddell in rowing showdown

So, as of today, Mahe Drysdale is off to Beijing representing New Zealand in the single scull rowing after an emphatic third race against former world champion, Rob Waddell.

Waddell, the bigger and stronger athlete of the two, looked like he might take the third of the three race series; but all that changed when the gun went with Drysdale clearing out to win by several lengths over a tiring Waddell.

Why and how did Drysdale manage to pull such a big performance out of the bag in the 3rd race against his bigger opponent? I think it was all in the conditioning and all sports could well take note of the lessons inherent in this thrashing.

The late Arthur Lydiard once said this to his athletes:

"You will come to your peak slower than many others and you will be running last when they are running first. But when it is really important to be running first, you will be passing them."

And this is what his athletes did time and time again. As his athletes worked their way through the heats and semis, they steadily worked their way to the front of the field, athletes like Snell, Walker and paddlers like Ferguson and MacDonald.

They were all superbly aerobically conditioned through years and years of base training.

I met Mahe Drysdale at the Halberg Awards just over a week ago. His appearance is that of a tall, lean highly conditioned endurance athlete, conditioined in the calssic Lydiard style.

For Waddell to make such a spectacular comeback in so little time after several years of working as a bulked up strength athlete on Team NZ's Americas Cup yachting team, his endurance base must have been minimal, since it takes years to properly develop. Waddell must have relied mostly on his strength and most of his rowing conditioning must have been high intensity interval training to bring him to peak for the NZ rowing nationals. Incidentally, this kind of training is making a huge comeback after various studies showed that this type of training produces the fastest results. This is misguided.

Of course, all athletic training is a mix of aerobic and anaerobic - interval and distance work. What we are really taking about is the relative emphasis and structure of the training. Its not really one type of training versus another. All Lydiard trained athletes did heaps of intervals; but only after several weeks of base aerobic fitness that builds to a seasonal peak. This process of building is steadily worked on over an 8-10 year period.

While high intensity interval training on a minimal aerobic base may produce spectacular results, this is at a cost during competition that is spread over several days or weeks. A highly aerobic conditioned athlete, like Drysdale recovers much quicker, like almost overnight, as compared to his interval trained opponent. The less aerobically trained athlete will waken more acidic, with tight muscles and less muscle glycogen to play with compared to his opponent.

The athlete who initially appeared to be the stronger and fitter will croak in the finals. I think this is what happened in the rowing today between these two awesome athletes.

For more about the Lydiard training system, here are my presentation handout notes for my lecture/workshop: "Train to Win".

I will comment about Waddell's reported irregular heartbeat in another article shortly. While it was undoubtedly a factor in his poor performance today, I think it is a symptom of things going on, rather than a cause. There is a very important and critical distinction between symptoms and cause when dealing with such matters. Resorting to surgical solutions right away may be premature and exceedingly risky.