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Full Video Transcript

Introduction to Arthur Lydiard’s Impact on Distance Running

It’s time to talk about the person who might have the greatest impact on distance running endurance training history. That is Arthur Littyard. And today I’m going to break it all down because there are so many misconceptions when it comes to Lydiard training and misunderstandings. So I’ve read it all.

I’ve talked to people who trained under him. I’ve talked to the people who have carried his legacy on. I actually went and listened to Lydiard speak the day before he sadly passed away in Houston, Texas, and got to talk with him briefly. So, we’re going to use all that knowledge and give you the actual insights behind Arthur Lyard and how he revolutionized training.

Before we get into his style of training and the misconceptions, I want to start with acknowledging that revolution. We have to put things in

Historical Context: Training in the 1950s

their historical context. In the 1950s, interval training was king. Like Emil Zatipek was the freaking man. Winning the 5K, 10K marathon at the same Olympics.

Unheard of. Insane. Dropped records. And basically everyone who was kind of mimicking and copying at that point was doing a crap ton of intervals 50 by 400 and all sorts of variation.

That was the name of the game. [snorts] It was it. And there was some periodization. For instance, if we look at France Stanle who famously advised Roger Banister among others, you would see, hey, we’re going to do lots of kind of longer, slower intervals and then get faster as we go along.

But it was still a crap ton of intervals. Okay, that was the name of the game. Igloloy came around and kind of innovated a little bit or a lot in a different direction. But what really changed training was Arthur Lyard in the 1960s tail end of the 50s coming along and saying, “Hey, we can do this a different way.” And

Lydiard’s Training Revolution: High Volume and Periodization

what he did is he’s remembered for his high volume 100 miles a week, which is really important. But what he actually did is he said, “Hey, we can periodize these things to a much bigger extreme.” Meaning, we can build a foundation of bass and then have some hills and then do a crap ton of intervals cuz Lineard still had a big interval phase. And we can all make it work, but the sequencing really freaking matters. And that’s what we kind of neglected a little bit.

So he brought in some hey we have to build a foundation and then we have to work towards that faster work as you’ll come to see. He really was the start of what I’d call the modern era where we started to see hey we can do more than repeat the same kind of stuff or gradually change it. And then his partnership with Bill Bowererman really took it to another level as he incorporated hard easy training. And I would also argue that almost all of modern training is a derivative of linear style training.

Like he changed it that much. So now we’re saying, yeah, there’s a lot of differences, but we’re still adhering to a blueprint that he kind of revolutionized. So all credit to Liard. What did this training look like?

Well, there’s some differences between what it did during its heyday in the 60s and 70s and what we do even now or even what he professed in his later days. So, I’m going to go through it all. But the key

Foundation Phase: Building the Aerobic Base

is the foundation phase, the base phase, the thing that he’s known for. Okay, this is what everyone remembers about Lineard and they often forget the rest. But what it was is he realized, hey, if we build a aerobic foundation and he did this kind of through self-experimentation on himself and then with other athletes, he was a milkman turned runner later in life. And he realized, hey, if we do a lot of what was called then marathon training, which was essentially lots of easy to steady, that sets the stage and it allows us to have a better performance at a variety of distances, but we really need that foundation.

His key insight was endurance or what we later called aerobic training is the foundation of basically everything at least 1500 up but to a degree 800 up as well is we need that foundation and linear essentially did that by saying hey if you can dedicate four months to running lots of miles now this gets simplified into 100 miles a week and it would vary and lard would tell would vary, but the key for him for is you needed to get a ton of running in or as much as you could relatively handle safely. Another thing that gets lost here is that it’s often seen as like, oh, long slow distance. No, no. Liard’s original schedules and these guys often ran pretty dang fast for these runs.

I mean, they were cranking some high five minute pace, low six minute pace, mid fives. Like, they were cranking on some of this stuff. Sometimes it was easier, okay? Especially if they did secondary runs, but there was some steady stuff in there.

And Lard later said, “Here’s what you do. First, you emphasize the volume and you build up to that volume. And if it’s easy, if it’s slow, whatever, just get it in. And then once you’ve got that volume, then you worried about the time distance or what we’d call the pace.

It was the quantity of that to get you prepared. And then you can worry about the quality. The other thing to include here is originally is they also had some variation. It wasn’t just easy steady.

It was also there’s some fart lick or speed play which for them was not our organized fart lick of minute on minute off or two on one off. It was just kind of natural. Pick up the pace hard up some hills, go fast on some flats, easy up, like just kind of naturally change the pace of it. Okay.

And this training included basically lots of singles, occasionally some doubles depending on the athlete, and then a long run on a famous hilly course, which I butcher the name Wuru, something like that. Don’t get mad at me, but famous long run course started near Littyard’s house and went through some hills and was pretty dang tough. You can go Google it and find it. But that was the key.

Then after this 4 months of 100 mile weeks or thereabouts and he said, “Hey, if you don’t have four months, that’s fine. You can shorten it. Depends on the person.”

Hill Phase: Bridging Marathon and Track Training

You then enter a hill phase. Okay? And this hill phase was essentially a one-mon phase that was a bridge between the marathon training and the track training. And this one is often neglected or forgotten, but I think it’s really important because it does bridge that gap.

It also introduces some speed development, which people often forget in Lyard. And Lydiard was famous for not using much strength training. But this introduced a kind of strength strength endurance plyometric effect which again is often neglected or forgotten about. Now what did the hill training phase look like?

It wasn’t just hill training. What it included was also leg speed training. So there three days of hill training which we’ll get into and three day or two days of leg speed training which what is leg speed training? basically 120 to 150 m sprints or fast running.

Lyard said it move your legs as fast as possible with 3 minutes rest. What was this again to bridge that gap? He was saying, “Hey, we just did a bunch of easy stuff. We got to get those legs turning over.” And in fact, Lydiard would say often, “Hey, get this on a very slight, gentle downhill slope so you can get those legs turning over and get ready to roll.” Again, forgotten.

It’s that bridging that gap. It’s saying, “We might have neglected speed a little bit during the marathon training, but we’ve got to build it back up.” The hill training, what was it? Originally they had about a half mile long hill and they would, you know, depending on the description, either stride or bound up the hill. Now the description changed a little over time, but essentially what you’re looking at is a exaggerated kind of bounding effect where you’re really emphasizing the push off the ground to get this kind of plyometric or strength-like effect.

Liard quoted as saying, “Spring up hills on their toes, concentrating on relaxing and springing rather than running.” Later on, this was kind of shortened to about a 200 to 300 meter hill. How steep? Again, varied, but his recommendation was not super steep, so that you’re, you know, not moving very much, but a more kind of gradual or moderate hill where you could still get going. Now, the hill wasn’t the only phase.

So, once you got up that 800 hill or later on that 200, 300 hill, it’d say, “Hey, you need 200 to 400 m at the top, which you jog out.” This was your recovery. And then you come back down the hill and then you stride it out down the hill pretty dang fast. So Snell, there were various reports where Peter Snell eventually got down where he was going like 150s down the 800 hill occasionally, rarely, but the point was it was cranking pretty good. Okay, of course the hill made it easy, but you were running fast.

Then you’d get down to the bottom hill, you’d recover again, and then you do what they called wind sprints, which would vary in distance, but basically 50 m, 100 m, 150, 200, where you’re going pretty fast and getting about 400 meter of volume in the work. Again, it’s transitioning. It’s saying, “Hey, let’s introduce a little speed or even a little speed with fatigue because they’re wind sprints, so you don’t have a ton of recovery here. They’re not full out sprinting.

They just called them wind sprints, but hard intervals, right? So, what you’ve got, and originally you would repeat this, you know, four to six times later, sometimes a little bit less, two to three, depending on the athlete, but what you’ve got is this strength and speed combination. So, we’ve got hills three days a week, we’ve got leg speed two days a week at least, and then we’ve got one day a week of your long run. Keeping that long run in there is the key.

Why? Because literally realized, as we’ll come to see in the interval training, is that we needed something to keep that aerobic system primed. Unlike modern training where you often see, hey, we’re going to keep some easy runs in between our hard workouts and do two hard workouts, a long run, the rest easy. Liter stuff in there, right?

and not as many like, hey, go get this run in. Sometimes they had doubles and other things to increase volume depending on the athlete and the time period of it. But like that long run serves a vital purpose of maintaining that aerobic ability. So

Track Training Phase: Anaerobic Capacity and Sharpening

this is why it was often like do your hill training, your leg speed and then Sunday go run 2 hours steady because we need that especially as we go into the next phase. The next phase, depending on, you know, book, time of year, was essentially the track training phase, which could be 10 weeks, three months, somewhere in that range. And it basically started with we’d call it he’d call it anorobic capacity work. We’d call it kind of track training and then work towards the last four weeks or so of sharpening and coordination which is essentially we need to bring this together during this whole phase.

The long run is basically kept. Why? Again it’s that maintenance. It’s that counterbalance.

Liard’s genius was saying, “Hey, we can’t forget this marathon training we’ve did for months and months. We’ve got to balance that out and keep that going.” How did he do it? The long run. Originally, when we moved to track training time, it was essentially like, “Hey, we’re going to do five days a week of interval training.” Okay, again we’re coming off the heavy interval phase of training.

Like we’re Zatipek was doing six, seven days of cranking intervals. Stampful 5 days a week of intervals or 400 meter repeats or something like that. So he didn’t get rid of that to a degree. He toned it down.

Leard wasn’t running 5400s. But what he said is like, hey, we need some of this stuff. So let’s break it down. Originally, the track phase had 5 days a week of intense training.

As I said, later it was dropped to 3 days a week because you probably realized you didn’t need that much. What did that track training look like? Okay, it’s going to depend on the event, but essentially early on you’re mixing kind of longer intervals with some short work with a little bit near sprint stuff, but not that much. Um, a and it’s it’s anywhere from kind of like 200 400 meter repeats up to 800s k or even one off what we now call kind of like a tempo run.

Uh, but in lineard’s day tempos thresholds weren’t a thing. So they kind of said like three miles at half effort, which wasn’t half effort in the way you’d think of it, but 3 miles pretty dang close to uh or pretty dang hard. So, let me give you an example in these. So, for example, for the mile, here’s a Monday through Sunday session.

Two miles at quarter speed. Again, not really what we’d think of as quarter speed. I’m going to give you an example real quick so you understand this. I don’t have the three mile or two mile chart.

Actually, I do. So, 2 miles at at quarter speed, if you’re running a 10-minute 2-m would be 1055. So instead of running 5 minute pace, you’re running what? A little under 530, 527 pace.

So again, not easy. It’s more like a steady tempo effort for 2 miles. Tuesday, 4x 800. Wednesday, 12×300 plus 1800.

Thursday, 6 miles at a quarter. Again, six mile kind of tempo effort. Friday, 6×200. Saturday, one mile at a quarter effort.

one mile at a half effort, which again is pretty dang hard, Sunday long run. So maybe not the traditional interval workouts you’re thinking, but it’s 5 days of quality. Okay, now we’d say, you know, 3 days of hard stuff plus maybe two days of tempo or threshold type type work. But the point is is quality after quality after quality.

As I said later that was changed as you progressed from kind of doing like the hard interval stuff. What happened is some of those threshold tempo stuff got dropped or got turned into what we’ll call time trials which I’ll explain in a minute. And we had more quality interval stuff. So for instance the second month for that mile would look something like this.

1,200 at half effort, which is pretty dang fast. Followed by 800 at 3/4 effort, followed by 400 all out. Okay, that’s 1284. Not a lot of volume, but very high quality.

Okay, very high quality. Tuesday would be 4×400. Okay, again, pretty high quality. Wednesday, 6 by 800 at half effort.

Pretty high quality. Thursday, 5 miles at 3/4 effort, which is faster than a tempo. Okay, that’s pretty dang hard. Okay.

Almost like a time trialesque. Not quite that speed, but about as fast and relaxed as you could go. Friday 6x 200. Saturday 20 by 200.

Sunday long run. So you’re seeing that what happens is the quality of stuff increases as we go along. Liard called this moving from the anorobic capacity phase to the sharpening or co-coordination phase. And what you’d see is you’d see some of the longer, you know, slower intervals dropped in terms of like speed, endurance, speed, what do you called sharpening efforts and eventually, you know, some near max stuff.

So for instance, the third month of this training where you’re almost at peaking, it would be 3 miles where you essentially sprinted 50 m and then cruised 50 m. So this was linear sharpening. 50 meter sprint, 50 meter cruise. This is a really hard workout.

Okay, but that’s how we saw it as sharpening. And then that Tuesday after would be a 1200 time trial. Time trials for lyard were essentially as fast as you could go without straining and without kicking. So it’s fast but we’ll use relaxed but fast but not under strain.

Okay. So, it’s not like digging deep, having things fall apart, tightening up. For Lydia, these were like checkpoints. He’d use time trials to say, “Hey, we’re not going to run like all out and see what you can do, but we’re going to do a trial that is like as again fast but relaxed.” And this is going to tell me the weak points in your race where we need to work on it.

Can you sustain the pace? Can do you have good stamina? Do you need to make the pace feel easier? Need sharper stuff?

Do you need to back up those time trials during the last month or so before the peak race would give that indicator? Okay, so if we did that Wednesday, Thursday, 3 miles at 3/4 effort again faster in tempo, Friday, 3x 200 all out. Peter Snell said to have run I think 22 point in some of these. Saturday, you know, 800 Sunday long run.

So, what you can see is we’re sharpening, meaning we’re getting faster. There’s higher higher quality stuff. We’re doing a try tile to see, hey, what’s the deal here and adjusting based on that. And then the last week or two for Lyd would essentially be, hey, we’re going to like ease up and peak.

So the example for the peak race again for a mile Monday six mile jog Tuesday 3×200 all out Wednesday 1400 at 78 effort so pretty dang fast but not max Thursday three mile jog Friday three mile jog Saturday race of the year and that’s what you got and the point here is like we could do this I’ve got schedules for three 3k 5k 10k but The point was essentially early on in the track training was essentially about you’re accumulating, you know, anywhere from a mile, 2 miles up to maybe 5k, 3 miles worth of hard intervals. Initially, maybe a little bit longer, a little bit slower, adding in some what we call tempo stuff. And then as we got faster or as we got closer to the race that would move towards putting the pieces together, meaning those tempos turned into time trials or faster than tempo stuff. We’re we’re trying to test things and a little bit shorter and the intervals got shorter and faster or into that kind of sharpening 50 m sprint, 50 m cruise or similar things like that.

You’re bringing it all together kind of coalescing. And I should note again just as a reminder, the long run is kept in there. Why? Aerobic ability is to keep us keep that side of the equation kind of good in a good spot.

As I said, later in life, he moved from the 5 days a week of hard stuff down to three, sometimes four, but more intermixed like we’d see now as a result of a lot of things. experimentation, but also partnership with Bowererman, who you know, he and Lydia had kind of eventually popularized the hard easy concept, and that was more into his training cycles. All right, we’ve gone through a lot for Liard. I’ve simplified a lot.

If I got anything a little bit wrong, apologies. I’ve written about Liard a lot. I’m doing this on basic notes and mostly off memory here. But the point is this is liter helped us understand hey the sequencing if we can build a base first and then prepare for the track with some hills, some leg speed training and then finally top off with the quote unquote anorobic or speed training or specific training depending on your verbiage that you like to use.

we’re gonna be in a good spot. They build off of each other. We can’t just say, “Hey, we’re gonna do intervals all day and get a little bit faster.” Okay? It’s the building and sequencing that really matters.

The other thing that he realized is that you have to maintain what you built up. This is why there’s that long run in there. There’s still some decent volume of running even during the sharpening, coordination, track phase of things. Why?

We can’t leave it all behind. I think the thing that is often missed in Lyard is that he wasn’t just run long. Again, he had that track phase that was pretty dang intense. Although, I should note it wasn’t generally a high volume of intervals, but more specific.

Hey, we’re going to use this to sharpen and get ready to roll. Okay. But the thing that is often missed is the bridge. The hills give us strength.

Okay. and transition us from the marathon to be able to run fast. Again, the leg speed development stuff in the wind sprints to run fast when it matters. He’s connecting things.

He’s not only saying building and maintaining, but he’s the original dude who went build, maintain, connect, which done another video of one of my core principles in training. How

Modern Interpretations and Evolution of Lydiard’s Methods

has this evolved and changed since you know in the 1960s and 70s or even 90s and 2000s when lyard passed I think what we now know is that like we can build we don’t have to have as dense of periods or strict of periods. So now instead of you know using the hill and lag speed development sometimes a lot of times now in modern training we mix that stuff in with our quote unquote base. We do hill sprints. We do some hills.

We do some more fart licks. Although Lydier did fart licks during his training, but we we kind of systematize it. The other innovation that’s occurred is they didn’t know really this lactate threshold idea. So they do things like 5 miles at half effort or things like that with steady runs.

Now we bring more knowledge into refining that and staying saying instead of saying hey you know we need to do something pretty steady hard we have more knowledge on how to refine that and when to bring that in I think a little bit earlier to develop that as well. The other thing that I think has shifted is our knowledge of interval training is a little bit better. Lydier you know was good at this. He saw it as like, hey, I need to sharpen up and I need to have it a little bit longer, a little bit slower, and then get faster as we go.

I think now what we see is similar to what Igloid did. We can say, hey, we can use interval training just like swimmers to develop aerobically in different ways or any manner of ways. It just depends on how we combine these things. So, it’s not that, you know, um, we’re going back to Zatipex 50x 400, but we realize that how we combine these things determines the stimulus and adaptation.

So, I think we’re a little more creative on building interval training now than we were at that point.

Conclusion: Lydiard’s Lasting Legacy

But there you go. That’s literate. He was the godfather of modern training and really revolutionized things. And I still think it’s very important if you’re an endurance coach, if you’re a coach of any time to go read Lyd, to go read his original stuff, to go read the Liyard Foundation work in the presentations done by some of the great folks there and some of the modern interpretations like Keith Livingston’s healthy intelligent training, how to bring it into the modern world.

I think all the bones are there of a good solid training program for modern stuff. Now we’re just iterating on it. We’re saying just like Lydia did, how do we make this better? But if we know the history, then we understand how we got to this point, why things stuck around, and where and why things have evolved.

So we don’t make the mistake and say, “Hey, linear 100 miles a week outdated. Like forget that.” No, we realize that we still need a foundation. Whether that’s 100 miles a week for someone or 40 miles a week for someone or any variation of it as Lyd himself professed in his own lectures and talks. So hopefully this is helpful.

If you enjoyed it, let me know. I’m thinking about doing a deep dive on we’ll just call it coaching greats where we go through some of the greats like Liiardoy Stample Berman whoever have you Canova and just outline their contributation to training because I think history is one of the most important things to understand don’t get me wrong I’m a science guy but you got to understand why we got here and how we got there here because it gives us so much information so let me know if that sounds like something you’ve enjoyed throw me down some comments comments down there. Like, subscribe, hit the notification button, all the things the YouTube influencers tell you to do. Till next time, thanks for watching.

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