Welcome to Healthy Intelligent Training
This book is for all serious middle distance athletes and coaches. It is based on the proven principles of New Zealand’s Arthur Lydiard, the Runner’s World ‘Coach of the Century’, who trained a motley band of neighborhood kids into feared Olympic medalists, and kept on doing it, around the world.
These principles have since guided athletes from many nations to world records and Olympic Gold medals. Now you can plan your own campaigns, and understand exactly what you’re doing at every step. This book can be used and understood by everyone.
Successful middle distance training
How to reach your peak performance
The methods of the “Runner’s World Coach of the Century” for today
“The most comprehensive description of Lydiard’s training ever written. It blends the scientific explanations of his training with fascinating examples and interesting anecdotes of real situations. If people followed this through as it is written by Keith, they will certainly become champions.”
Brian Taylor, (Christchurch, New Zealand): 43 years of coaching runners to national and international levels following the Lydiard methods as well as 22 years teaching human physiology and biology at secondary and tertiary levels.
HI! Middle Distance Training can be described best as an Art, Philosophy and Science. It involves training THREE differing energy systems and muscle fibre types, hopefully to a point where each system is fully trained, and fully rested, “ready to go” at the most important time of the season. This book is based on the work of the legendary New Zealand middle distance coach, Arthur Lydiard, and explores the basic physiology of what his simple system did to produce multiple Olympic gold medals and world records.
Sprinters can get away with working predominantly in one energy system (the alactic or creatine phosphate system) and training one muscle fibre type (the explosive 11B fast twitch) and one neurological pathway.
Distance runners concentrate on the other end of the spectrum, and can again reach very high levels by concentrating mainly on one system (the aerobic) and one muscle fibre type (the slow twitch type 1 fibre).
However, middle distance training is different and far more ‘complex’. It requires a good grasp of the main three energy systems and muscle fibre types involved in racing, and the varying ways we train specific speed endurance and explosive speed in the context of a constantly underlying, highly developed aerobic background. You’ll see, from reading this book, why each of the very fast, powerful anaerobic energy systems relies ultimately on the lower intensity aerobic systems being well-trained and well-rested going into competition.
Enjoy the site, and I’ll keep posting new information as time goes by.
Keith Livingstone