Arthur Lydiard and LSD Training

by Jason Lawrence

(Japanese follows the English)

I have been in Japan for almost five years now, and in that time I have been surprised by the misconceptions runners have concerning the LSD (long slow distance) training conceived and promoted by Arthur Lydiard. Do people really think his athletes became champions by jogging 2-3 hours a day? I remember getting up on Sunday mornings to meet my friends up in the hills or at the beach and although we may have started off running at a gentle pace, it didn’t stay that way for very long.

Some refer to Lydiard as “the inventor of jogging.” I prefer to call him the world’s greatest distance coach. He took athletes from his own neighborhood in New Zealand and turned them into Olympic champions and world record breakers. He also has been credited with saving the lives of numerous people who suffered from heart problems. By showing people that jogging was healthy he improved the quality of their lives.

The objective of this article is to illustrate the connection between Lydiard, jogging, and LSD. The second half will look at the kind of “LSD” his athletes used to win Olympic medals, break world records, and why his training system is so successful. 

In the beginning
Arthur Lydiard was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1917 and like most Kiwis, he grew up playing rugby. After an 8k “five mile” jog with a friend when Arthur was in his late twenties he realized he was out of shape, becoming fat and lazy. “If this is what I am like at 27, what state of fitness will I be in when I am 47?” he said. It was then that he decided he was going to commit himself to getting fit for life.

It was only after experimenting on himself that he decided he would coach local athletes with his methods. Starting in the mid 1940s, it took him about 10 years of trial and error to develop a training system he was satisfied with. Training weeks during this time included everything from 80 to 400 kilometers a week, running fast and slow to find the correct blend of running speeds.  Throughout this period not only did he work as a trained shoemaker, he also delivered milk, and still found time to sleep 8 hours a day.

A popular running maxim is “no pain, no gain.” Arthur would say “train, don’t strain.” This is the basic idea behind his training system that all of his runners, including 800-meter runners, used. He said that the heart is just like any other muscle and with exercise it will become stronger. This was when doctors were still prescribing bed rest for heart patients. Arthur took great pride in coaching middle aged people who had suffered heart attacks through the marathon journey and to a higher quality of life.

The jogging boom
Now we fast forward to the New Zealand summer of 1961-62, one year after the Rome Olympics, where in the space of 30 minutes, Lydiard athletes won two gold medals including one to the at the time “unknown” Peter Snell. Another Lydiard athlete, Barry Magee, took bronze in the marathon, behind the barefooted Bikilla.

Bill Bowerman, Nike co-founder and legendary track and field coach at Oregon University, was invited to tour New Zealand in 1961 with his athletes to compete against Lydiard’s stable. Bowerman’s “Men of Oregon” had just broken the 4 x 1 mile relay world record that the New Zealand team had set earlier in Ireland. Arthur organized the tour and it was a success — they held meets in small summer holiday spots around New Zealand where people were spending the Christmas break. That same year New Zealand’s first jogging club was born in Auckland and Arthur invited Bill to come along one weekend as a special guest, then persuaded Bowerman to join the “slow pack” for a few miles. Although he was no longer an athlete, Bowerman was shocked by the fact that even the club’s slowest runners were disappearing up the hill in front of him. But one man by the name of Andy Steadman slowed down many times during that run and encouraged Bill to keep going.

Bowerman couldn’t believe that this man, who was 74 years old, more than 20 years older than he was and who had also had three heart attacks, was in a lot better shape than he was. Bill decided to improve his health by doing some running and lost 15cm from his waistline during his short stay in New Zealand. Bowerman went back to the States to spread the news and started America’s jogging boom. He had 3000 people at the Oregon track waiting to meet Arthur when he came in 1963!  He also published a book called “Jogging” in 1967 which helped inspire Americans to run for health and also included a photo of old Andy Steadman running on Auckland’s waterfront. Bowerman was an excellent sprint and field event coach but did not have the expertise Arthur had when it came to distance events. Most people think that the jogging boom started in America. However, in reality in was born in Auckland when a group of men who had had heart attacks decided to let Arthur change their lives for the better.

Arthur would talk passionately about jogging as a preventive measure against heart disease. He would look at overweight businessmen and say “You expect your wife to be slim and beautiful. How do you think she feels when she’s in bed watching you get undressed?”

Note: Both Arthur and Bill were interested in running shoe design and they shared their ideas on the subject during the New Zealand tour. Bowerman went back to the States and with one of his former athletes and his wife’s waffle maker they started the world’s greatest sporting brand.

LSD is relative!
It was Joe Henderson, writer for Runner’s World magazine and author of more than 25 books on the subject of running, who came up with the term “LSD” in 1969 as an alternative to the PTA (pain, torture, agony) system athletes were using in the 1960s. In fact, some of the interval workouts that athletes were doing may have seemed like pain, torture and agony. On the other hand, Arthur was getting his pupils out running for up to two and a half hours. Because his athletes were not sprinting around the track like everyone else, it may have looked as if they were running slow. However, they were always running at a high aerobic pace, which is anywhere from 70 to 100% of your maximum aerobic heart rate. The simple formula of 180 minus age (years) can be used to approximately estimate your maximum aerobic heart rate.

Arthur knew that in order to achieve the best long term results, runners must first achieve a high level of cardiac efficiency. They have to train the heart to become a strong and economical muscle that can pump enough oxygenated blood to the muscles. The only way to do this is to increase the volume of running. Therefore, the running has to be aerobic — running at a speed where our body can operate without going into oxygen debt. This doesn’t mean they are running slow, it just means they are not crossing over the aerobic/anaerobic threshold. Arthur’s men would run a hilly 22 miler (35km) almost every weekend in around 2 hours, 20 minutes. Race pace for some people — a sub-3 hour marathon!

It takes about five weeks of alternating hard speed work and easy jogging to develop anaerobic capacity to its maximum. There is a limit to the amount of anaerobic speed work we can do. However, there is no limit to how much aerobic training we can do. We can continue to build stamina for years. After about 10-12 weeks of high aerobic running Lydiard’s athletes developed a “tireless state.” They could run long and still use their natural speed. Next was hill training for about one month and only then would his athletes begin anaerobic training. Arthur’s training system was all about achieving a proper balance between aerobic and anaerobic training. He was the master of periodization and peaking. It’s like baking a cake — the speed work is only the icing — long aerobic running is the key ingredient. To illustrate this analogy Lydiard would often ask “Why is it that many athletes have no problem running 400m in under 60 seconds but they can’t get even close to breaking four minutes for the mile?”

Peter Snell, Lydiard’s most famous pupil, is a fine example of why his training system works. At the 1960 Rome Olympics, Peter was an unknown athlete and when he made the 800m final people dismissed his chances because compared to the other finalists, he was the slowest over 200 metres. Before the race Adidas gave all the other finalists except Peter a new pair of spikes. But Because Peter had been trained with Arthur’s marathon training system, he had built up so much stamina that he could run close to his maximum speed at the end of the race. The other athletes couldn’t – they were not strong enough. For a middle or long distance runner, natural speed is of very little value if you don’t have the strength. Peter took the gold wearing a pair of spikes Arthur had made for him. Bad luck, Adidas. Thirty minutes later another one of Arthur’s boys took gold in the 5000m.

• Snell ran a full marathon in 2:41 during base training and broke the 800m world record 6 weeks later.
• At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Snell went for the 800/1500m double — a highly risky challenge. However, because he had so much stamina from the aerobic running completed in the first half of his training program, he could handle six races in seven days. Another two gold medals!
• Lydiard would say if you don’t do the high aerobic running first, the speed work isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

After Tokyo ’64 Arthur moved from coaching athletes to coaching coaches. Unfortunately, administrators of Athletics in New Zealand didn’t offer him the opportunities he deserved. At first they thought his ideas were too extreme, and in recent times when they needed him most he was considered outdated. However, Lydiard’s influence in regards to training methods will never die. The great Kiyoshi Nakamura (Seko’s coach) used Lydiard’s ideas, and Japan’s best runners today are still guided by his methods. Lydiard also coached abroad and it is interesting to see how Olympic success soon followed when he went to other countries to teach his training system.

Conclusion: To run fast, first run long (but not so slow).

Practical use
Now that the concept and LSD history has been explained, we must figure out a way we can incorporate these ideas into our training. In a perfect world we would all enjoy our jobs and have plenty of time for running. But in reality we work too hard, have other commitments, and are sometimes just too tired!

I’m often asked by clients, “What is a good training pace?” To that question my answer is always “What is your goal?” If we have a goal in mind, for example a full marathon in the fall, then we should target our training towards that.

If you have a fall or winter marathon in mind, try over the summer to fit in three runs a week at high aerobic pace — the ideal marathon training zone — a pace that is somewhere between jogging pace and your goal marathon pace. For example: I would like break 2:25 for a full marathon this year (about 3:25/km pace) and I can jog comfortably at 4:30/km pace, so I should be doing most of my training around 4 minute pace.

Many of my running team members have run personal records for the marathon recently and this is largely due to the fact we have been doing 20-30km training runs at close to marathon pace about three times a month. Sometimes you feel like doing something shorter and faster for training but you have to remember the marathon is a race of constant pace and that people’s weak point is slowing down after halfway. Start at an easy pace and let your body tell you when to speed up. Over the last quarter of each training run imagine running the last 10km of a marathon and concentrate on holding your speed and keeping good form — arms at about 90 degrees, hips up nice and high, and shoulders relaxed. If you have time to run more than three days a week, find a place where you can run some strides for about 100m. On grass is best and remember to warm up and warm down. Including hills is also good for building strength and will teach you good running form.

Happy training!

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