Lydiard Hill Question? Nobby, HRE, West Coast. et al

Well, digging through some emories and handy books here what I recall is that the schedules are fairly broad in dealing with the specifics here. I often had achilles trouble when I tried springing so I've rarely done it, but that doesn't mean everyone will.

I think that in Running the Lydiard Way Arthur suggested alternating springing on one rep with bounding on the next rep. That probably would be the most logical way to start.

If you want to think a little more about this, you'd think that the springing develops drive from the ankles and feet and bounding is going to develop knee lift and thighs as well. I favored bounding because I naturally have very little knee lift when I run and as mentioned, had achilles trouble with springing. So I'd start off by alternating the two but paying attention to what happens as you do the sessions.

I also note that in some of Arthur's schedules it says, "Bounding, springing, or steep hill running." Barry Magee told me NOT to do any springing or bounding but simply to do hill reps. But I was over 50 at the time and I think we were both concerned that I might have some problems if I ran with a stride that was really different from my normal one. I found that to be pretty effective and now kind of think that if I were being real conservative in advising someone who's doing hills that I might just have them find the steepest hill they can and do reps. But Arthur probably would have disagreed with me.

I do two footed jumps rather than hill springing. I do a few bounds, but not a lot. The danger of injury from any type of plyometric work is quite high, so I am ultra cautious.

Thanks HRE.

Actually, concerning the plyometric side of things, I found the hill bounds far easier to do uphill than on the flat - and easier to teach on a hill as well. I never really did the"springing" part, simply because my college experience was with bounds alone. One thing I did do, though, was work into it over the phase - I.E. started with less time/distance the first week (say, 1:00-1:30 worth of bounding), and work up to 2:30-3:00 the final week. The rest cycle was the same (3 min easy, downhill, flat work, 3 min, start again), but the hill lengthened as time went on.

J.O. wrote:

I do two footed jumps rather than hill springing. I do a few bounds, but not a lot. The danger of injury from any type of plyometric work is quite high, so I am ultra cautious.

Gosh, J.O., when someone asks about Lydiard hill training, you just can't help but butt in and talk about YOUR hill training, don't you? Just kidding; I'm just giving you some $hit! ;o) Forgive me.

Actually you're right and there's nothing wrong with two-footed jump. In fact, when Lydiard came to Japan in 1991, he showed this very exercise and called it "frog hop" and his assistant, Helen, did the demonstration and I have the article with the images. The only thing is; if you do it this way, and if you actually go all the way down in a squat position, your knees will get a lot of stress and may lead to some knee issues. Plyometrics is plyometrics; you can do it as a "frog hop", you can do it like "depth jump" like Seb Coe used to do. You can do it like one-leg hop or whatever. The thing you'll need to remember is; that he placed hill training as a mean to add onto yet another element in development. In other words, with what we call a Lydiard Pyramid, you develop your aerobic capacity first with long slowish coneinuous running; then comes hills to introduce power and flexitility in your legs AS WELL AS maintaining your well-developed aerobic capacity. In other words, and Lydiard had said this many times over, if you want to introduce power and flexibility by lifting weights, that's fine too. But you have several tasks at hand during this phase; (1) to introduce power and flexibility in your legs; (2) start to teach your body to exercise anaerobically to slowly introduce some faster running; (3) maintain your aerobic capacity development. In other words, once again, if Lydiard placed his hill training between Marathon Conditioning and Track Training and you're supposed to fulfill these above points, but you decided to go off tangent and decided to just work on your leg strength, well, you're not going to be ready for "Lydiard" track training; you might as well follow some other training program because now your whole program is not going to be balanced. You can still work on weights of gym (jumping, hopping, whatever) as long as you do long runs to maintain your aerobic capacity and do some strides or something to introduce some faster running. All these things, as Lydiard had reasoned, if you have lots of time to do all this, fine. But back then, Arthur's runners had to work 40 hours a week and they really didn't have time to waste; the best approach to get all these at once was a type of hill circuit he advocated.

Now, going back to the original question; I wouldn't really try bounding or springing unless you're a middle distance runner. I think marathon runners benefit so much more if they work on long steep hill and do the steep hill running (like that Seko's footage I posted on facebook). Bounding/springing is really hard on your legs and tendons, as J.O. pointed out, unless you know you can handle it well, I wouldn't recommend it. Of course, the rule of thumb in running training is to move from high volume low intensity to low volume high intensity. You should do the same with hills too; if you're not used to this kind of exercise, do long hill and just run up with exaggerated knee lift and ankle snap. Gradually, as your legs get stronger, do shorter hill and more demanding exercise as bounding or springing. If you want to do it that way. I'm sure Arthur would have answered: "Do what you feel comfortable with, as much as you feel happy about..." I really don't know how else to say given the fact we have no knowledge of your background; event you're training for, how much of this kind of exericse you've done, or a former triple jumper...

The difference between bounding and springing is not that much. I always view that as more to do with the available hill. If you have more long gradual uphill, bounding is more appropriate; it's hard to go up and down like a pogo stick on gentler hill. If you have short steep hill, springing is good. Basically, if you go up and down more vertically, that's springing and it works your ankle really well. If you leap forward horizontally, it's bounding. Good knee lift; back leg extension. Understand your weaknesses and strengths and modify the exercises accordingly. Otherwise, you may follow a program blindly but you won't get anywhere.

north coast wrote:

Actually, concerning the plyometric side of things, I found the hill bounds far easier to do uphill than on the flat - and easier to teach on a hill as well. I never really did the"springing" part, simply because my college experience was with bounds alone. One thing I did do, though, was work into it over the phase - I.E. started with less time/distance the first week (say, 1:00-1:30 worth of bounding), and work up to 2:30-3:00 the final week. The rest cycle was the same (3 min easy, downhill, flat work, 3 min, start again), but the hill lengthened as time went on.

North Coast:

I am very impressed! Bounding for 3 minutes!? I don't think I could ever do more than a minute... Lydiard's hill circuit has a bit of a flat area half way up and, if they can't do the whole way up, they used to take a bit of a breather there. Once Arthur moved more toward bounding/springing, he started to recommend more like 200m hill instead of 800. I don't think not very many people, even Peter Snell, could do a whole 800m bounding up.

I definitely couldn't do 800m worth of bounds, that's for sure. I think the hill I used was more like 5-600m. But I found the bounds immensely helpful for my 5000 time also, and I saw big jumps in performance with each transition from one phase to the next.

As an observation, I had a season where the best hill that was available was only about 1:15-1:30 long. I did the 4 hill cycles, but could only go that long before I reached the top. I always thought I felt best that year in races, for what it's worth.

I agree that it would be less important for longer races and up to the marathon - the bounding.

Consider it like resistance work, like you would with lifting weights and consider that with lifting weights you don't put that sort of stress on your muscles, tendons and connective tissue. Like Nobby said, if you are not used to it....if you are not prepared....you cannot just flip a switch and be bounding or springing or even doing sharp anaerobic hills without sending out an invitation for injury to show up.

Did anyone mention surface yet?

Anyway, you will want to have introduced hill-oriented running throughout the aerobic phase too - adapting, before applying the full-on phase, which by the way, Lydiard changed. If you read an early schedule of his, it included several days per week of hill stuff and later he backed off the quantity somewhat.

Hills are your friend and are like magic...they should always, to some degree, be a part of your training.

I probably repeated what others have said, but I saw my handle and voila! RSVP'd on the invite to post.

Nobby,

Thanks for the feedback. I am actually training for the middle distances, so it sounds like the springing and bounding is the way to go. I am in my early forties and training after a 10 plus year lay off.(good marathon conditioning phase behind me btw)

You might also want to think about running steps somewhere, e.g. stadium steps.

Wetcoast,

Thanks also for the input. I did a lot of hill running in my base phase so I am finding the transition manageable. It will to the pay off when I get the the track.

HRE, In today's workout I did alternate the two (springing/bounding), as you suggested this morning, with lots of jogging and 100m down hill (quick) stride in between. I think the will work well. Thanks again

xcr,

Good for you. It will be interesting to hear how your phase and season went. If you haven't you can join the Lydiard Foundation or the Lydiard Legacy facebook group. It will be easier to know how you did, rather than look through the weight of threads and posts here....

Good luck.

Wetcoast, I am already a member of the Facebook group. I just transfered the posts over. I was not sure if HRE is a member so I posted it here originally

IMHO Ron Daws version of Lydiard's bounding (more pushing off the balls of the foot) are the best 'book' description. That and that daws said he tended to do more running thn bounding....betch u r just itching to read Daws aren't u westcoast....

ITCHING.

CORRECT.

I HAD BEER MONEY ON ME.

But alas, I am here for a few more nights and have a 4 x 4, if it snows, I can still make you drink beer.

Thanks Nobby. That's pretty much what I have been doing.

Another thing I do is to actually measure the length of each bound by counting the them over a measured hill with an even grade. As I mentioned on the other thread, I did 300 meters up a 5% grade in just under 156 strides.

I agree it's much easier to do that than on the flat. Today I did the same on the flat and got under 33 bounds for a 140 meter strip of newly laid smooth road that I use to test how well the stride development is going.

I got down to under 33 bounds, and it felt quite efficient too, more like real running than bounding. So I know these training methods do really work. I followed that up with 3 miles of off road hilly fartlek, so I also know that if you do it right, it doesn't take too much out of you or cause injury.

Nobby,

what's your opinion on running hills on a treadmill? if possible could you describe a treadmill hill workout that could be used in place of a Lydiard hill circuit

Thanks