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What impact did Arthur Lydiard have on running?

Arthur Lydiard had been a very significant distance running coach coming from New Zealand and his legacy has had substantial influence over the training of runners today. Arthur Lydiard has been recognized for making running or jogging popular in the late 60’s and early 1970’s. Many have even proposed that Arthur Lydiard possibly even created jogging. He coached many Olympic winners from NZ in the 1960s (Peter Snell, Barry Magee and Murray Halberg) together a tremendous impact via some other mentors on various other prominent NZ runners for example John Walker who was the first person to run greater than 100 sub-4 minute miles and also run a mile faster than 3 minutes and 50 second. He was born 6 July 1917 and passed on on 11 December 2004 at the age of 87. He has had been given a number of accolades in his own NZ and in Finland where his guidance became accountable for an increase of Finnish distance running during the early 70’s. The publication, Runners World named Lydiard as the coach of the century as part of their millennium issue. As an athlete himself, Lydiard took part in the marathon at the 1950 British Empire Games, finishing thirteenth having a time of 2hr 54m. Lydiard’s influence on running continues to be enormous and way over and above his personal achievements as a runner himself.

As for Lydiard’s running approach, he believed in separating the season into unique training periods or stages. The base or background time period was the endurance phase which was comprised of at least ten weeks of highest miles that the runner is capable of doing in order to improve their aerobic foundation or background. That’s where his common 100 miles each week originated from as he deemed this to be the optimum. He strongly suggested for the lengthier runs would be about 20 miles. These kinds of distances are run at a pace that was slightly below the anaerobic threshold and is maintained as a stable aerobic speed. The aim should be to build the largest endurance foundation possible for the subsequent phases. The subsequent period had been the uphill training phase which usually chiefly consist of uphill bounding or springing exercises to build power in the legs which was commonly carried out three times a week. Some middle and long distance aerobic work is still done throughout this period which may go on for approximately four or so weeks. The subsequent 4 or so week period was called the sharpening or speed period in which some anaerobic interval and speed work training is completed so the athlete may improve your speed. After that 4 week phase, the difficult running is backed off and the concentration will then be on remaining sharp and fresh for racing.

Many think about it unlikely that any coach are ever going to have more impact on the coaching methods of middle and long distance runners than him. The plan which he created transformed middle and long distance training with regard to the level of work he believed a runner must be undertaking. The running plans was comprised of lots of working hard. The majority of coaching programs made use of by runners nowadays can track their origins back to what was recommended by Arthur Lydiard.

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Abebe Bikala, the barefoot marathoner

The marathon is really a hard distance to run; it is 42 kms of hard running. It’s hard on the body, particularly the feet which is why all marathon runners spend such a lot of consideration to exactly what is on their feet. Marathoners spend considerable time getting the appropriate running shoes and a lot of money is involved in running shoes. Back at the 1960 Rome Olympic Games, Abebe Bikala from Ethiopia turned up for the marathon and there were no running shoes remaining in the teams supplies which would fit him, so he ran the marathon barefoot and went on to win the gold medal. This is often commonly acclaimed as a tremendous achievement. Recently there has been a group of runners who are suggesting the running footwear is not all they can be claimed to be and are recommending that running ought to be done barefoot, much like nature intended. After all, we were not born with footwear and historical humans had to run large distances without running shoes to survive as animals needed to be hunted on foot over long distances.

Running footwear are really only a relatively recent invention. Those who promote the barefoot approach to running love to point to the achievements of Abebe Bikala as even more validation that we don’t need running shoes. There are certainly a great many other justifications both for and against barefoot running, with not much scientific data supporting it. Whilst Abebe Bikala winning gold medal at the Rome Olympics barefoot certainly suggest that it is possible, what those who like to promote his achievements as evidence often leave out that he later went on to win the gold medal as well as break the world record in the marathon at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic games. Abebe Bikala managed to set the world record this time wearing running shoes; in other words he had the ability to run faster when he was wearing running shoes. We may well have evolved to run without running shoes, but we also evolved in an environment prior to concrete and hard surfaces emerged. While the achievements of him were extraordinary, making use of him as proof that it is better does not stack up to scrutiny.

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Why was barefoot running such a fad?

Barefoot running has been a large novelty about 10 years ago which lasted a couple of years and pulled in a lot of curiosity, particularly in social media. At the end of 2008 to early 2009 there was growing comments that running shoes were really bad for the athletes and was the reason for the vast majority of injuries which athletes were getting. It was despite the phenomenal volume of research and technology which went into creating running shoes to stop these injuries. These claims produced a fad for runners to experiment with running without making use of running shoes and going barefoot or using what become known as minimalist athletic shoes. These kinds of athletic shoes had negligible technology or characteristics within them and were merely a protective covering up of the feet.

The without athletic shoes running fad had been motivated by a substantial existence in social media. There were plenty of web sites, publications, programs, journals and message boards focused on and advocating without running shoes running. A lot of incredible assertions were made for barefoot running as to what it is going to do for the runners. It was believed that up to 25 % of runners may have played around with in some way with without athletic shoes running. Nevertheless, by late 2013 and early 2014 involvement in barefoot running had evaporated away and athletes weren’t any longer enthusiastic about it. This was despite all of the astounding promises that got made in regards to the advantages of the idea as well as the comments from a few that it was about to put the running footwear providers out of business. This never ever happened.

The trend dropped since the claimed advantages rarely accumulated for the vast majority of athletes who attempted it. There initially were a lot of comments made how the science supported without running shoes running, when in actuality there wasn’t any research that demonstrated that it had been better and following research has revealed how the overuse injury incidence in barefoot or minimalist running isn’t lower than people who run in the padded athletic shoes. There was a lot of research carried out on barefoot and minimalist running, however that science failed to show that it turned out any greater, it really indicated that that it was different. The fact that there was a great deal of science which was misinterpreted by individuals who touted barefoot running as showing it had been superior, when that isn’t what it proved.

At the end with the barefoot trend, the Hoka One One running footwear company introduced some maximally cushioned running footwear that were laughed at and loathed by individuals advocating barefoot running. Despite that, runners liked this footwear and the Hoka’s are now a strong player in the running shoe marketplace and since 2014 the trend has been for the much more maximally padded running footwear from all of the running shoe manufacturers.

There is certainly however a little group of hardcore barefoot runners which was always there. At this time the minimalist athletic shoes have made up approximately 0.3-0.5% of the running footwear market for the previous few years. Those maximalist running shoes continue to dominate the marketplace for the past 5-7 years and there is no hint in any drop in their share of the market or a come back of any affinity for barefoot or minimalist running footwear.

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World Athletics welcomes Swiss Federal Tribunal decision on its Eligibility Rules for Athletes with Differences of Sex Development (DSD)


Press Release:

For the last five years World Athletics (formerly IAAF) has fought for and defended equal rights and opportunities for all women and girls in our sport today and in the future. We therefore welcome today’s decision by the Swiss Federal Tribunal (SFT) to uphold our DSD Regulations as a legitimate and proportionate means of protecting the right of all female athletes to participate in our sport on fair and meaningful terms.

We are committed to the full participation of women in the sport of athletics, be that as elite female athletes in fair and meaningful competition, as young girls developing life and sport skills, or as administrators or officials. While there is a lot of work to be done, we are at the forefront of this work, not just for our own sport but for all sport.

World Athletics fully respects each individual’s personal dignity and supports the social movement to have people accepted in society based on their chosen legal sex and/or gender identity. As the SFT specifically recognised, however, the DSD Regulations are not about challenging an individual’s gender identity, but rather about protecting fair competition for all female athletes. The Swiss Federal Tribunal acknowledged that innate characteristics can distort the fairness of competitions, noted that in sport several categories (such as weight categories) have been created based on biometric data, and confirmed that ‘It is above all up to the sports federations to determine to what extent a particular physical advantage is likely to distort competition and, if necessary, to introduce legally admissible eligibility rules to remedy this state of affairs.’

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) agreed with World Athletics in its 30 April 2019 award and now the SFT has also agreed that ‘In some contexts, such as competitive sport, biological characteristics may, exceptionally and for the purposes of fairness and equal opportunity, trump a person’s legal sex or gender identity’.

The SFT concluded: “Based on these findings, the CAS decision cannot be challenged. Fairness in sport is a legitimate concern and forms a central principle of sporting competition. It is one of the pillars on which competition is based. The European Court of Human Rights also attaches particular importance to the aspect of fair competition. In addition to this significant public interest, the CAS rightly considered the other relevant interests, namely the private interests of the female athletes running in the ‘women’ category.”

Throughout this long battle, World Athletics has always maintained that its regulations are lawful and legitimate, and that they represent a fair, necessary and proportionate means of ensuring the rights of all female athletes to participate on fair and equal terms. It has rejected the suggestion that they infringe any athlete’s human rights, including the right to dignity and the right to bodily integrity. We are very pleased that the highest court in Switzerland has now joined with the highest court in sport in endorsing World Athletics’ arguments. World Athletics remains committed to applying the regulations carefully and sensitively to ensure that 46XY DSD athletes who wish to compete in the female category are able to do so safely and fairly.