Arthur Lydiard
Encyclopedia
Arthur Leslie Lydiard, ONZ
, OBE
, (6 July 1917 – 11 December 2004) was a New Zealand
runner
and athletics coach
. He has been lauded as one of the outstanding athletics coaches of all time and is credited with popularizing the sport of running
and making it commonplace across the sporting world. His training methods are based on a strong endurance base and periodisation.
Lydiard competed in the Men's Marathon at the 1950 British Empire Games
in Auckland, coming thirteenth with a time of 2h:54m:51.6s.
Lydiard presided over New Zealand's golden era in world track and field during the 1960s sending Murray Halberg
, Peter Snell
and Barry Magee
to the podium at the 1960 Summer Olympics
in Rome. Under Lydiard's tutelage Snell went on to double-gold at the 1964 Summer Olympics
in Tokyo. Athletes subsequently coached by him or influenced by his coaching methods included such luminaries as Rod Dixon
, John Walker
, Dick Quax
and Dick Tayler
.
He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire
in 1962 and in 1990 was made an Additional Member of the Order of New Zealand
. He also became a life member of Athletics New Zealand
in 2003.
Arthur Lydiard died 11 December 2004 of a suspected heart attack
, in Texas
, while on a lecture
tour.
winning gold in the 1500 metres at the 1972 Munich Olympics
and Lasse Virén
winning gold in both the 5000 metres and 10,000 metres at the 1972 Olympics and the 1976 Montreal Olympics
), his coaching experiences in Mexico
and Venezuela
were less successful. Lydiard was forced to leave both countries because of what he perceived as a lack of support for his coaching efforts and the needs of athletes there.
In total, Arthur Lydiard's stay in Finland, following the Finnish Track & Field Association invitation, lasted only 19 months, but had long-lasting effects.
Before his arrival, interval training
had been, unsuccessfully, the cornerstone of the Finnish training during the 1960s. Due to this background and the Finns' reluctance to change, his stay initially created mixed reviews.
However, most importantly, the new training methods were picked up by the trainers of Pekka Vasala, and Lasse Virén's coach Rolf Haikkola. Lydiard's advice is often seen as complementary to those given at the time by Percy Cerutty
, an Australian coach, Paavo Nurmi
, the Flying Finn, and Mihály Iglói
, a Hungarian coach.
The first signs of positive results from Lydiard's visit came when Olavi Suomalainen won the 1972 Boston Marathon.
, which hailed him as All time best running coach.
Lydiard constantly clashed with unimaginative and officious athletics administrators in his native New Zealand and in the countries that called upon his strong personality and coaching expertise to establish national athletics programmes.
The marathon-conditioning phase of Lydiard's system is known as base training, as it creates the foundation for all subsequent training. Lydiard's emphasis on an endurance base for his athletes, combined with his introduction of periodisation in the training of distance runners, were the decisive elements in the world-beating success of the athletes he coached or influenced.
Periodisation comprises emphasising different aspects of training in successive phases as an athlete approaches an intended target race. After the base training phase, Lydiard advocated 4 weeks of strength work. This included hill running and springing, followed by a maximum of 4 weeks of anaerobic training (Lydiard found through physiological testing that 4 weeks was the maximum amount of anaerobic development needed—any more caused negative effects such a decrease in aerobic enzymes and increased mental stress, often referred to as burnout, due to lowered blood pH). Followed by a co-ordination phase of 6 weeks in which anaerobic work and volume taper off and the athlete races each week, learning from each race to fine-tune him- or herself for the target race. For Lydiard's greatest athletes the target race was invariably an Olympic final.
Lydiard was renowned for his uncanny knack of ensuring that his athletes peaked for their most important races and, apart from his tremendous charisma and extraordinary ability to inspire and motivate athletes, this was largely a product of the periodisation principle he introduced into running training.
In the base training phase of his system Lydiard insisted, dogmatically, that his athletes—not least 800 metres athlete Peter Snell—must train 100 miles (160 km) a week. He was completely inflexible on this requirement. In the 1950s and 1960s during the base phase of their training the athletes under Lydiard's tutelage would run a 35 km Sunday training route, from his famed 5 Wainwright Avenue address in West Auckland, through steep and winding roads in the Waitakere mountain ranges. The total cumulative ascent in the Waitakeres was over 500 metres. After laying such an arduous endurance base Lydiard's athletes—including Murray Halberg, Peter Snell, Barry Magee and John Davies—were ready to challenge the world, winning six Olympic medals between them in the 1960 Rome Olympics and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Snell who, after retiring from athletics in the mid-1960s went on to obtain a PhD in exercise physiology, stated in his autobiography No Bugles No Drums that the marathon-conditioning-endurance aspect of Lydiard's training was the primary factor in his success as a world-beating middle distance athlete.
The Lydiard system has been challenged since it was formalised and crystallised in the early 1960s. The two main sources of criticism of Lydiard emanate from the English coach, Frank Horwill
, and the US coach, Jack Daniels
. Horwill's Five Tier Training system departs from Lydiard in its claim that the maximum amount of weekly mileage that an athlete requires to achieve maximum aerobic efficiency is 110 km.
Horwill takes the view that Lydiard's insistence on 160 km a week in the base phase is at best superfluous, at worst an unnecessary cause of injuries and staleness. Horwell also differs from Lydiard in that he believes that all aspects of training must be present in a training programme at any time of the year and periodisation is a matter of simply emphasising one aspect of training such as speed or strength during a particular phase in which all the other training components are present.
Daniels, on the other hand, emphasises the need to train at what he terms threshold pace in order to achieve optimum athletic performance. He believes that the Lydiard system ignores training at such intermediate paces between the extremes of long, slow, distance running and fast, anaerobic, track work. However, Lydiard never advocated long slow distance and, in fact, had his runners work at maximum aerobic steady state during base training, which is threshold pace.
Although both these approaches represent modifications of the Lydiard system they are by no means a complete refutation of the system because they share with Lydiard an emphasis on endurance work as the point of departure in conditioning distance runners and Horwill's and Daniels' programmes follow the same periodisation sequence as Lydiard's. These post-Lydiard training systems are unavoidably indebted to Lydiard's coaching philosophy as much as they may attempt to distance themselves from Lydiard's powerful and pervasive influence on the training of distance athletes.
Efforts have been made across the world to preserve and promote the training and coaching legacy left by Lydiard. In his native New Zealand, the Legend marathon, which follows the famous training route followed by Lydiard's greatest athletes over the Waitekere Mountains west of Auckland, was established in his memory by Zimbabwean-born Ian Winsome. In the United States, where Lydiard's ideas gained most currency worldwide, the Lydiard Foundation was established by two Lydiard disciples, Nobby Hashizume and New Zealand 1992 Olympic women's marathon bronze medalist Lorraine Moller, to promote Lydiard's training philosophy. In Johannesburg, South Africa, the only athletics club in the world to be named after a coach, the Lydiard Athletics Club, was founded in 2009 to promote Lydiard's training methodology and promote running as a way of life amongst the youth.
As recently as 2009, Lydiard's training methods were also credited as the catalyst for the qualification of an unprecedented three South African male athletes, Juan Van Deventer, Pieter Van Der Westhuizen and Johan Cronje, for the 1500 metres for the 2009 Track and Field Championships in Berlin.
Order of New Zealand
The Order of New Zealand is the highest honour in New Zealand's honours system, created "to recognise outstanding service to the Crown and people of New Zealand in a civil or military capacity"...
, OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
, (6 July 1917 – 11 December 2004) was a New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
runner
Running
Running is a means of terrestrial locomotion allowing humans and other animals to move rapidly on foot. It is simply defined in athletics terms as a gait in which at regular points during the running cycle both feet are off the ground...
and athletics coach
Coach (sport)
In sports, a coach is an individual involved in the direction, instruction and training of the operations of a sports team or of individual sportspeople.-Staff:...
. He has been lauded as one of the outstanding athletics coaches of all time and is credited with popularizing the sport of running
Running
Running is a means of terrestrial locomotion allowing humans and other animals to move rapidly on foot. It is simply defined in athletics terms as a gait in which at regular points during the running cycle both feet are off the ground...
and making it commonplace across the sporting world. His training methods are based on a strong endurance base and periodisation.
Lydiard competed in the Men's Marathon at the 1950 British Empire Games
1950 British Empire Games
The 1950 British Empire Games was the fourth edition of what is now called the Commonwealth Games. It was held in Auckland, New Zealand between the 4th and 11th of February 1950, after a 12-year gap from the 3rd edition of the games...
in Auckland, coming thirteenth with a time of 2h:54m:51.6s.
Lydiard presided over New Zealand's golden era in world track and field during the 1960s sending Murray Halberg
Murray Halberg
Sir Murray Gordon Halberg, ONZ, MBE is a former New Zealand middle distance runner who won the gold medal in the 5000 metres event at the 1960 Olympics. He also won gold medals in the 3 miles events at the 1958 and 1962 Commonwealth Games...
, Peter Snell
Peter Snell
Sir Peter George Snell, KNZM, MBE is a former New Zealand athlete, now resident in Texas, United States. He had one of the shortest careers of world famous international sportsmen, yet achieved so much that he was voted New Zealand’s "Sports Champion of the Century"...
and Barry Magee
Barry Magee
Arthur Barry Magee is a former New Zealand athlete who mainly competed in the marathon....
to the podium at the 1960 Summer Olympics
1960 Summer Olympics
The 1960 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held from August 25 to September 11, 1960 in Rome, Italy...
in Rome. Under Lydiard's tutelage Snell went on to double-gold at the 1964 Summer Olympics
1964 Summer Olympics
The 1964 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Tokyo, Japan in 1964. Tokyo had been awarded with the organization of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but this honor was subsequently passed to Helsinki because of Japan's...
in Tokyo. Athletes subsequently coached by him or influenced by his coaching methods included such luminaries as Rod Dixon
Rod Dixon
Rodney Phillip "Rod" Dixon is a former New Zealand middle distance runner. He won the bronze medal over 1500 metres at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and in 1983 won the prestigious New York City Marathon.-Biography:...
, John Walker
John Walker (runner)
Sir John George Walker, KNZM, CBE, is a former middle distance runner from New Zealand.Walker was the first person to run the mile in under 3:50, and won the Olympic Games 1500m in Montreal in 1976....
, Dick Quax
Dick Quax
Theodorus Jacobus Leonardus "Dick" Quax is a New Zealand runner and former world record holder in the 5000 metres. He stood for Parliament with the ACT Party in 1999 and 2002...
and Dick Tayler
Dick Tayler
Richard Tayler is a former New Zealand runner who mostly competed in distances from 1500m to 10000m....
.
He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
in 1962 and in 1990 was made an Additional Member of the Order of New Zealand
Order of New Zealand
The Order of New Zealand is the highest honour in New Zealand's honours system, created "to recognise outstanding service to the Crown and people of New Zealand in a civil or military capacity"...
. He also became a life member of Athletics New Zealand
Athletics New Zealand
Athletics New Zealand is the national organisation for athletics in New Zealand. This includes responsibility for Track and field, cross country running, road running and racewalking....
in 2003.
Arthur Lydiard died 11 December 2004 of a suspected heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
, in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, while on a lecture
Lecture
thumb|A lecture on [[linear algebra]] at the [[Helsinki University of Technology]]A lecture is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical information, history,...
tour.
Time in Finland
While the work he did in the late 1960s in Finland is generally acknowledged to have led to the renaissance in Finnish distance running in the 1970s (with Pekka VasalaPekka Vasala
Pekka Antero Vasala was a middle-distance athlete who won an Olympic gold medal in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich....
winning gold in the 1500 metres at the 1972 Munich Olympics
1972 Summer Olympics
The 1972 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from August 26 to September 11, 1972....
and Lasse Virén
Lasse Virén
Lasse Artturi Virén is a former Finnish long-distance runner, winner of four gold medals at the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics...
winning gold in both the 5000 metres and 10,000 metres at the 1972 Olympics and the 1976 Montreal Olympics
1976 Summer Olympics
The 1976 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event celebrated in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1976. Montreal was awarded the rights to the 1976 Games on May 12, 1970, at the 69th IOC Session in Amsterdam, over the bids of Moscow and...
), his coaching experiences in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
were less successful. Lydiard was forced to leave both countries because of what he perceived as a lack of support for his coaching efforts and the needs of athletes there.
In total, Arthur Lydiard's stay in Finland, following the Finnish Track & Field Association invitation, lasted only 19 months, but had long-lasting effects.
Before his arrival, interval training
Interval training
Interval training is a type of physical training that involves bursts of high-intensity work interspersed with periods of low-intensity work...
had been, unsuccessfully, the cornerstone of the Finnish training during the 1960s. Due to this background and the Finns' reluctance to change, his stay initially created mixed reviews.
However, most importantly, the new training methods were picked up by the trainers of Pekka Vasala, and Lasse Virén's coach Rolf Haikkola. Lydiard's advice is often seen as complementary to those given at the time by Percy Cerutty
Percy Cerutty
Percy Wells Cerutty was one of the world's leading athletics coaches in the 1950s and 1960s....
, an Australian coach, Paavo Nurmi
Paavo Nurmi
Paavo Johannes Nurmi was a Finnish runner. Born in Turku, he was known as one of the "Flying Finns," a term given to him, Hannes Kolehmainen, Ville Ritola, and others for their distinction in running...
, the Flying Finn, and Mihály Iglói
Mihály Iglói
Mihály Iglói was a legendary Hungarian distance running coach. Iglói coached such luminaries as Sándor Iharos, István Rózsavölgyi, László Tábori, Bob Schul and Jim Beatty...
, a Hungarian coach.
The first signs of positive results from Lydiard's visit came when Olavi Suomalainen won the 1972 Boston Marathon.
Training philosophy
Lydiard's ground-breaking impact on distance running was recognised by Runner's WorldRunner's World
Runner's World is a globally circulated monthly magazine for runners of all skills sets, published by Rodale Press in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, in the United States...
, which hailed him as All time best running coach.
Lydiard constantly clashed with unimaginative and officious athletics administrators in his native New Zealand and in the countries that called upon his strong personality and coaching expertise to establish national athletics programmes.
The marathon-conditioning phase of Lydiard's system is known as base training, as it creates the foundation for all subsequent training. Lydiard's emphasis on an endurance base for his athletes, combined with his introduction of periodisation in the training of distance runners, were the decisive elements in the world-beating success of the athletes he coached or influenced.
Periodisation comprises emphasising different aspects of training in successive phases as an athlete approaches an intended target race. After the base training phase, Lydiard advocated 4 weeks of strength work. This included hill running and springing, followed by a maximum of 4 weeks of anaerobic training (Lydiard found through physiological testing that 4 weeks was the maximum amount of anaerobic development needed—any more caused negative effects such a decrease in aerobic enzymes and increased mental stress, often referred to as burnout, due to lowered blood pH). Followed by a co-ordination phase of 6 weeks in which anaerobic work and volume taper off and the athlete races each week, learning from each race to fine-tune him- or herself for the target race. For Lydiard's greatest athletes the target race was invariably an Olympic final.
Lydiard was renowned for his uncanny knack of ensuring that his athletes peaked for their most important races and, apart from his tremendous charisma and extraordinary ability to inspire and motivate athletes, this was largely a product of the periodisation principle he introduced into running training.
In the base training phase of his system Lydiard insisted, dogmatically, that his athletes—not least 800 metres athlete Peter Snell—must train 100 miles (160 km) a week. He was completely inflexible on this requirement. In the 1950s and 1960s during the base phase of their training the athletes under Lydiard's tutelage would run a 35 km Sunday training route, from his famed 5 Wainwright Avenue address in West Auckland, through steep and winding roads in the Waitakere mountain ranges. The total cumulative ascent in the Waitakeres was over 500 metres. After laying such an arduous endurance base Lydiard's athletes—including Murray Halberg, Peter Snell, Barry Magee and John Davies—were ready to challenge the world, winning six Olympic medals between them in the 1960 Rome Olympics and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Snell who, after retiring from athletics in the mid-1960s went on to obtain a PhD in exercise physiology, stated in his autobiography No Bugles No Drums that the marathon-conditioning-endurance aspect of Lydiard's training was the primary factor in his success as a world-beating middle distance athlete.
The Lydiard system has been challenged since it was formalised and crystallised in the early 1960s. The two main sources of criticism of Lydiard emanate from the English coach, Frank Horwill
Frank Horwill
Frank J. Horwill MBE is a UK Athletics senior level 4 coach most famous for founding the British Milers' Club and for formulating the Five Pace Training Theory which is widely used for coaching middle-distance runners throughout the world....
, and the US coach, Jack Daniels
Jack Daniels (coach)
Jack Tupper Daniels is a former professor of physical education and cross-country running coach at Brevard College, in North Carolina. He received his doctoral degree in exercise physiology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison...
. Horwill's Five Tier Training system departs from Lydiard in its claim that the maximum amount of weekly mileage that an athlete requires to achieve maximum aerobic efficiency is 110 km.
Horwill takes the view that Lydiard's insistence on 160 km a week in the base phase is at best superfluous, at worst an unnecessary cause of injuries and staleness. Horwell also differs from Lydiard in that he believes that all aspects of training must be present in a training programme at any time of the year and periodisation is a matter of simply emphasising one aspect of training such as speed or strength during a particular phase in which all the other training components are present.
Daniels, on the other hand, emphasises the need to train at what he terms threshold pace in order to achieve optimum athletic performance. He believes that the Lydiard system ignores training at such intermediate paces between the extremes of long, slow, distance running and fast, anaerobic, track work. However, Lydiard never advocated long slow distance and, in fact, had his runners work at maximum aerobic steady state during base training, which is threshold pace.
Although both these approaches represent modifications of the Lydiard system they are by no means a complete refutation of the system because they share with Lydiard an emphasis on endurance work as the point of departure in conditioning distance runners and Horwill's and Daniels' programmes follow the same periodisation sequence as Lydiard's. These post-Lydiard training systems are unavoidably indebted to Lydiard's coaching philosophy as much as they may attempt to distance themselves from Lydiard's powerful and pervasive influence on the training of distance athletes.
Legacy
Nearly every successful athletics coach or athlete active in the world today consciously or unconsciously emulates Lydiard's training system by laying an endurance base and making use of periodisation for peak performance. While the direct influence Lydiard exerted on the East African athletes is a matter for debate, what is indisputable is that the Kenyan and Ethiopians athletes do significant amounts of endurance work and make use of periodisation.Efforts have been made across the world to preserve and promote the training and coaching legacy left by Lydiard. In his native New Zealand, the Legend marathon, which follows the famous training route followed by Lydiard's greatest athletes over the Waitekere Mountains west of Auckland, was established in his memory by Zimbabwean-born Ian Winsome. In the United States, where Lydiard's ideas gained most currency worldwide, the Lydiard Foundation was established by two Lydiard disciples, Nobby Hashizume and New Zealand 1992 Olympic women's marathon bronze medalist Lorraine Moller, to promote Lydiard's training philosophy. In Johannesburg, South Africa, the only athletics club in the world to be named after a coach, the Lydiard Athletics Club, was founded in 2009 to promote Lydiard's training methodology and promote running as a way of life amongst the youth.
As recently as 2009, Lydiard's training methods were also credited as the catalyst for the qualification of an unprecedented three South African male athletes, Juan Van Deventer, Pieter Van Der Westhuizen and Johan Cronje, for the 1500 metres for the 2009 Track and Field Championships in Berlin.
External links
- Profile at the New Zealand Olympic Committee website
- Old Official Site
- Lydiard Foundation (non-profit)
- Lydiard Foundation book on training
- Obituary at the NZ Herald
- Profile at NZEdge.com
- Athletics.org.nz hall of fame
- Lydiard links
- Lydiard Athletics Club (South Africa) from the Dictionary of New Zealand BiographyDictionary of New Zealand BiographyThe Dictionary of New Zealand Biography contains biographies for over 3,000 New Zealanders. It is available in both English and Maori. All volumes of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography are available online....