Arthur Lydiard

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Arthur Lydiard (left) at the 1949 New Zealand Marathon Championships award ceremony

Arthur Lydiard (born July 6, 1917 in Auckland , New Zealand ; † December 11, 2004 in Houston , Texas , USA ) was a New Zealand athletics coach who led a total of 17 middle and long-distance runners to Olympic medals. He founded the method of endurance training , which he also propagated for leisure and health sports. In 1961 he founded the first jogging club in New Zealand . From there, the idea of ​​jogging first found its way to the USA and later to the whole world. Lydiard also treated heart attack patients through endurance runs.

successes

Sports career

Arthur Lydiard took part in smaller long-distance races from the mid-1940s. From 1949 to 1955 he was a well-known marathon runner in New Zealand, after which he ended his sports career. With his first marathon run in 1949 (3:30:07 hours) he won the championship of the Auckland region , he was twice New Zealand champion, in 1953 (2:41:29 hours) and 1955 (2:42:34 hours). He ran his fastest marathon in 2:39:05 hours. Since he often trained with his runners during his later career as a trainer, at the age of 61 he managed to run a marathon under three hours (2:58:58).

Coaching

In addition to his work as a shoemaker and milk delivery man, he has been leading New Zealand medium and long-distance runners since the late 1940s.

Lydiard suddenly became famous as a running coach when, during the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960 , athletes he supervised won gold twice for New Zealand within half an hour: first Peter Snell over 800 m and the immediately following competition Murray Halberg over 5000 m . Another athlete from Arthur Lydiard's runners group, Barry Magee , came third in the marathon .

At the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964, athletes trained by him won another three medals - Peter Snell two golds (800 m, 1500 m) and John Davies bronze over 1500 m.

In later years Lydiard no longer trained individual athletes, but passed his method on in coaching seminars. The four medals of the Finns Lasse Virén , Pekka Vasala and Tapio Kantanen at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich (three golds, one bronze) can be traced back to his 19-month activity in Finland from 1967 to 1969 .

Arthur Lydiard was the Olympic coach for Denmark in 1972, national coach for Venezuela in 1970 and 1972, and for Mexico in 1965.

Lydiards method

Lydiard gained his knowledge mainly in self-experiments in which he experimented with extremely long distances - 80 to 400 kilometers per week.

From this he developed the core of his method - several months of building endurance training at a high running pace in the so-called steady state , the pace that the runner can just hold out for a long time without exhaustion. Lydiard considers a week of 160 kilometers to be optimal. The purpose of this training is to radically increase the oxygen supply in the muscles through the formation of new, very fine branching vessels ( capillarization ). With this he creates the basis for a high oxygen debt in competition, i. H. running faster than the mere supply of oxygen to the muscles would suggest.

In the training system, the long endurance runs are followed by four to six weeks of hill training and finally around twelve weeks of preparation for competitions through tempo runs and sprint series. Endurance training, i.e. running long distances, is never completely given up in all phases. Lydiard saw hill training as one of the main differences to other forms of endurance training such as B. that of Ernst van Aaken . In hill training (mountain jumping in alternating steps), not only the extreme lactate tolerance is trained, but above all movement economy under the conditions of total acidity. By targeting different components of the training in different cycles, Lydiard is also considered the inventor of block training , even if he did not use this term. Due to the periodization of the athletic training that he used , runners who used his method to prepare for the Olympic Games in 1972 were by far the most successful.

Lydiard's endurance method , which is still recognized today, surprised the sporting world in the 1960s, because until then the interval method had dominated medium and long-distance running, made famous by the Czechoslovak runner Emil Zatopek in the 1940s and 1950s.

Another endurance training method was developed by the German doctor Ernst van Aaken in the 1950s . In contrast to the Lydiard system, training is only carried out at low speeds. Only at the end of each training unit there is a speed run ("crescendo") up to maximum speed at van Aaken.

Quotes

  • “It's very easy to start running: run at a relaxed pace for five minutes, turn around, and run back. If the return trip takes more than five minutes because you cannot keep up the pace, you have exceeded your aerobic threshold and have entered an anaerobic state. For the next run you should make sure that you slow down and end the run as you started it. "
  • “The quickest method of causing a sudden jump in performance is the hard-light-hard-light system. This system says that every longer run must be followed by a shorter, less intense run in order to enable your body to adapt to the new demands ... "
  • “As part of my so-called marathon training system, the athletes run a controlled 160 kilometers per week. In addition, there is another 160 kilometers of regenerative jogging, if the time and the will are available. "
  • “In this way, with a group of runners from all distances, I was able to strive for and ultimately win all national titles from the 800-meter run to the marathon. I managed this year after year over a period of more than ten years. "

literature

Arthur Lydiard's books were published in Germany with a total circulation of around 75,000 copies.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arnd Krüger : Many roads lead to Olympia. The changes in training systems for medium and long distance runners (1850–1997). In: N. Gissel (Hrsg.): Sporting performance in change. Czwalina, Hamburg 1998, pp. 41-56.
  2. ^ Arnd Krüger: Periodization and selection of the athletes in the Olympic year. In: competitive sport. 3 (1973), p. 2, pp. 91-99.
  3. ^ Arthur Lydiard, Garth Gilmour: Middle and long distance running for seniors (Original title: Distance Training for Masters .) Aachen 2001, p. 19.
  4. ^ Arthur Lydiard, Garth Gilmour: Middle and long distance running for seniors (Original title: Distance Training for Masters .) Aachen 2001, p. 19.
  5. ^ Arthur Lydiard, Garth Gilmour: Middle and long distance running for seniors (Original title: Distance Training for Masters .) Aachen 2001, p. 15.
  6. ^ Arthur Lydiard, Garth Gilmour: Middle and long distance running for seniors (Original title: Distance Training for Masters .) Aachen 2001, p. 15.
personal data
SURNAME Lydiard, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lydiard, Arthur Leslie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION New Zealand athletics trainer
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Auckland , New Zealand
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 2004
Place of death Houston , Texas , USA