Arthur Lydiard was a very significant distance running coach coming from New Zealand and his legacy has had major affect on the training of athletes now. He has become acknowledged in making running or jogging popular during the later 60's and early 70's. Many have even advocated that he possibly even invented jogging. He trained many Olympic winners from New Zealand in the 1960s (Barry Magee, Murray Halberg and Peter Snell) together a substantial influence through various other coaches on other dominant NZ runners including John Walker who was the first person to run more than 100 sub-4 minute miles as well as run a mile quicker than 3 minutes and 50 second. Lydiard was born 6 July 1917 and passed on on 11 December 2004 at the age of 87. Lydiard has received quite a few awards in his own NZ plus in Finland where his coaching has been responsible for an upsurge of Finnish long distance running in the early 70's. The publication, Runners World called Lydiard as the Runners World coach of the century for their millennium issue. As an athlete himself, he competed in the marathon at the 1950 British Empire Games, finishing 13th with a time of 2hr 54m. Lydiard's influence on athletics has become enormous and way further than his own feats as an athlete himself.
With regards to Lydiard's coaching approach, he advocated separating the year into diverse training periods or stages. The base or background period is the stamina period that was made up of a minimum of 10 weeks of maximum miles that the runner can do to be able to enhance their aerobic foundation or background. That's where his well known 100 miles per week came from as he regarded this to be the optimum. Arthur Lydiard recommended for your lengthier runs should be approximately 20 miles. These kinds of distances were run at a speed which was slightly below the anaerobic tolerance and is kept as a constant aerobic pace. The target is to develop the greatest endurance base possible for the following stages. The subsequent phase is the uphill training phase which usually primarily involve uphill bounding or springing workouts to improve power in the legs which was commonly carried out three times per week. Some middle and long distance aerobic work is still done during this period which might go on for around four or so weeks. The subsequent 4 or so week period of time had been referred to as the sharpening or speed period where some anaerobic interval and speed work training is completed so the athlete are able to improve your speed. Following that four week period, the hard training is backed off and the focus will be on keeping focused and healthy for competition.
Many think about it doubtful that any coach will ever have more impact on the training methods of endurance athletes than Arthur Lydiard. The plan that he produced transformed middle and long distance running with respect to the volume of work he assumed a runner must be undertaking. The routines consisted of plenty of hard work. Most training programs utilized by athletes today could track their origins back to that which was touted by Arthur Lydiard.