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. The
greater your oxygen utilization ability the greater capacity you have for both
work and recovery and the more efficient your training.
Lydiard said, "The greater the base the higher the peak!" Consider building a
base as making a long term commitment to achieving your potential.
2. Develop Your Internal Feedback Systems
Once developed your internal feedback systems become a reliable central
reference point for gauging optimal training. This comes through experience
and is a learned skill. Every successful athlete has these developed to a
high degree so that they can trust and rely on what their body is telling
them.
How do you do this? Simply by paying attention to your feelings and
learning the language of your physiology. Sure you might be a bit rusty to
begin with. So by all means use the advice of others more experienced and
your technological devices such as stopwatch, heart rate monitor and GPS to
help you get a handle on what your body is really telling you. But, a word
of caution – do not become so reliant on them that you are bypassing your
own inner technology. These devices are limited to specfic information for
which they are programmed, whereas, given practice, the human mind has an
unlimited capacity to synthesize multitudes of data very accurately and
instantly into a "knowing". This knowing gives you the confidence to race
on the razor's edge – maximising your effort to precision.
Always keep in mind – Ultimately the most accurate
feedback comes from you!
3. Balance Workouts With Recovery
Adjust your training daily according to your
recovery responses.
Did you know that your fitness improvement actually takes place when you
are resting? Yes that’s right! Most people mistakenly think that it is
during the hard work-out that they are getting fitter. Not true!
Your body is actually broken down with the challenge of the workout and it
is only afterwards – during the recovery phase – that you adapt. You see it
takes time for your body to become more enduring, stronger, or faster in
response to the stimulus you applied to it. Your biology ensures you are
better able to meet the challenge next time.
Imagine that! You improve while you are resting,
but only if you have done the work!
There are three common mistakes that athletes make:
- Too much workload
- Not enough recovery
- Inadequate challenge
So how do you know how to pitch the correct volume and pace in training
for you? Your schedule is designed to give you accurate guidelines. But
you will fine-tune it to precision by monitoring your responses. This is
called Response-Regulated Training.
We will tell you exactly how to do this with scientifically-validated
Recovery Indicators. (Three simple checks each
morning will tell you whether to adjust your training up or down.)
Good training, then, is dependent on carefully balancing the two phases
of adaptation – WORK and RECOVERY.
4. Sequentially Develop Energy Systems
Progressively train to run your fullest range of
paces efficiently
There is a correct order to good training. We’ve already talked about
building a solid endurance base. All the while you are learning to read
your body and understand how you respond so that you can balance the
training challenges to the necessary recovery.
Next you need to understand the sequential development of your training
tools.
Using the pyramid as his working model Lydiard had his runners ascend it
in segments of increasing intensity, each phase of training building on
the preceding phase of training.
General overall fitness training – the aerobic part – is done first.
Strength, gained from hill training, is then built upon your endurance
base.
Once these are established training that is specific to your particular
event takes place.
- Your capacity to tolerate oxygen debt and the build-up of lactic acid.
- Your capacity to maintain a particular pace over a particular distance.
- The development of speed.
- All elements are then put together in the final training phase of Coordination.
- Finally you get to Taper in preparation for your race, or series of races.
5. Apply Correct Timing
Success is a carefully timed process that begins
on the first day of training
and ends with your personal mastery over time and distance in your chosen race.
Shakespeare summed it well up in three words – "Timing is everything."
He would have been a good coach.
Correct timing is the essential element of knowing
- When to work hard
- When to pull back
- How to pace yourself throughout a run
- How long to maintain a type of training for maximum effect
- How to peak for an important race
Here are some of the biggest timing mistakes runners make:
- Running hard, intense workouts way out from competition – Unsure if he
still has the speed he stepsonto a track, in the middle of the winter,
when he should be doing a build-up.
- Making a big training effort right before the important race – She
tries to reassure herself that she can go the distance by running 22 miles
at race pace 1 week before the marathon.
- Running hard in a race when not ready - "because my friend asked me to
accompany him..." or "it was in my hometown..." or "they had a
nice-looking T-shirt..."
Timing mistakes are a sure-fire way to miss the mark. You can have all the
talent or fitness but with poor timing you can eaily blow your training and
the race. That’s why it is important to follow a program where you
understand not only the what, why of each workout but the when. Without
the element of correct timing the yin/yang rhythm of effective training
cannot be harnessed.