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Introduction to the Lydiard System
The meat and potatoes of the conditioning period is the
long runs, three a week. Many parts of your physiology improve as a result of these
longer runs. The under-developed parts of your circulatory
system are enhanced; neglected capillary beds are
expanded and new ones are created. This increases oxygen transportation and utilization,
thereby improving your Steady State. Also through aerobics training, your heart,
which is just another muscle, becomes bigger and is able to pump more blood with
each contraction and to pump the blood faster. Your lungs become more efficient,
with increased pulmonary capillary bed activity, which improves the tone of your
blood, allowing you to get more oxygen out of each breath. Blood circulation though
out your body becomes better, waste products are eliminated more easily.
Anaerobic Training
Once you have developed cardiac efficiency though
aerobic exercise, it is time to develop your ability to exercise anaerobically.,
to increase your ability to withstand oxygen debt. The absolute limit of oxygen debt
that a person who has exercised consistently for a long time can incur 15 to 18 liters.
If you have a Steady State of 3 liters a minute and you run at a pace that requires
4 liters of oxygen a minute, you will be able to last for about 15 minutes--one liter
of debt per minute. If you increase your pace and now require 5 liters of oxygen
per minute, your debt increases to two liters a minute, and you will be empty in
about 7.5 minutes. It's common sense, the slower you run, the farther you can run;
the effort and speed are determined by your aerobic capacity. When your Maximum Steady
State is low, you can be running anaerobically at a relatively slow speed. As your
fitness improves, the speed that was anaerobic before is now high aerobic. Therefore,
you want to get your Steady State, your best aerobic pace, at a high level before
tackling anaerobic training.
With anaerobic training, your objective is to create a big oxygen debt and lower
your blood pH level so that your metabolism is stimulated to build buffers against
fatigue. This is done with interval or repetition training.Once you have built those
buffers, your anaerobic training is complete: to continue this type of training is
to invite injury.
Similar to the three long runs in aerobic conditioning, you should run hard (anaerobically)
three times a week during the anaerobic phase. Be sure to allow yourself to recover
between hard workouts, at least a day in between. The idea is to stress your system,
recover completely, then stress it again.It is not all that important what the distances
or speeds are, just run repetitions and intervals until you are tired and
have had enough for the day. No coach can tell exactly how many repetitions you can
do, or what your recovery intervals should be, on a particular day. So trust you
instincts and use any schedule as a guide only.
It is not necessary to run you anaerobic work on a track. In fact, you may enjoy
it more if you do your workouts in an area more comfartable to you; a forest trail
or grassy field. Just pick a tree or a marker to run to and jog back after each run.
Do this until you have done enough, malking yourself tired with speed. The one important
thing to keep in mind is to make your distance at least 200 meters or more; it takes
a distance of this much to lower your blood pH level generally.
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