Remembering the legacy of Arthur Lydiard

Meanwhile off-season training becomes focused around long steady state rows and a variety of cross training activities, from the rowing machine to cross country skiing to cycling, where putting in the miles is the key.

So where did the idea to train longer than your racing distance come from? What do you say when your coach insists that miles make a champion? Look to legendary coach, New Zealand's Arthur Lydiard for some of those answers.

Lydiard died earlier this week at the age of 87 and although best known for his work with runners, Lydiard's coaching methods transcended numerous sports including rowing.

Lydiard developed his ideas more than four decades ago when he wondered why the running speed at short distances could not be maintained over a longer distance. From this Lydiard's ideas on building stamina developed and a training method that became known as LSD – long slow distance.

The method is now used worldwide.

Lydiard's method uses a balance between aerobic (endurance building) and anaerobic (short bursts) training following the principle that an individual's anaerobic capacity is the limiting factor to getting faster, while the aerobic capacity can be developed by the individual. This is where the long distance aerobic training comes into play.

The Lydiard method states that your aerobic capacity – your stamina – can be improved. With long distance training the body's cardiac efficiency – its ability to pump blood around the body – is developed. This forms your aerobic base. If you think of this development like a pyramid, with aerobic capacity forming the base and anaerobic capacity sitting at the top of the pyramid, then it will give an idea of how the method works. The aerobic base is the foundation and the bigger the foundation the bigger and higher the top level can be built.

Training at the aerobic level also allows the athlete to be in a "near-tireless" state which means recovery is more rapid and therefore a heavier workload is possible.

Lydiard's method sets out the season so that training plans are worked back from the most important event. The majority of the season is spent doing aerobic training with the last four weeks being used for anaerobic development and coordination with the aid of interval training and repetitions. Lydiard also advocated a "freshening up" period in the last two weeks before competition.

Lydiard stressed that improvement was a long term endeavour stating that an individual's best performance would probably take 10 years to produce.

Until recently Lydiard remained an avid runner and used his own experiences as a marathon runner to formulate his ideas. Trial and error were his guides. Once Lydiard found the best way to do something he would then go to the physiologists and find out why it worked.

As Lydiard's training methods began to filter through to the rest of the world he turned more to coaching coaches. By the 1960s his ideas had been taken up both in Europe and Kenya. "It is not so much whom I've coached," Lydiard stated recently, "but the coaches I've coached."

Lydiard chose not to use heart rates as a training tool. He believed it was best to ask the athlete how they felt. "It doesn't work to take your heart rate first thing in the morning," said Lydiard, "as it depends who you are sleeping with."

"I always made sure that my athletes knew what they were doing and how and why they were doing it," said Lydiard. 

Lydiard was unwavering and passionate in espousing his ideas. He was on a speaking tour of the United States when he died and only just that day had been spending time with young athletes.

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