7 Principles of Training — Introduction
Arthur Newton was a self-coached English born distance runner who competed in the 1920s and 1930s. He took up the sport at age 38 and won the Comrades Marathon five times. He is little remembered today, but is someone who I, along with other coaches, consider the grandfather of the modern training approach to distance running.
Here is Percy Cerutty, “Perhaps the greatest debt of all is owed to the late Arthur Newton, who, more than any other, showed the way to running success is by daily and hard training, both in season and out.”
Newton, like so many innovators, was far ahead of his time. In an era where the popular training practices an emphasis on walking, not running, Newtown advocated for year-round, running of 10-20 miles a day. In fact, he shunned walking as a mode of training. His view was clear: Walking is a waste of time. Long walks, even quickly, do not help a person run fast. He was labeled an outcast and eccentric by his peers, his training methods viewed as excessive but history, and the SAID Principle, has proven him to be correct.
It seems very likely Newton’s thought influenced Lydiard. Thirty years after Newton, Lydiard advocated very similar principles for training, namely, 100 miles per week as the standard for base conditioning, emphasizing endurance training by steady running (not walking or jogging) before speed training, and the pitfalls of too frequent racing off of too little background of tough training.
Newton wrote four small books on running training in the 1930s and 1940s. They’re very hard to find now. Tim Noakes, in the Lore of Running, reviewed them and found a handful of sound training principles Newtown outlined which are still valid today, almost 100 years later.
What’s old, is new.
Over the next series of Bell Lap blog posts I will review 7 of these principles more in depth.
Here’s what’s coming up:
Principle #1: Train under a coach
Principle #2: Try to Achieve as Much as Possible on a Minimum of Training
Principle #3: Understand the Balance of Training (hard/easy, speed/endurance)
Principle #4: Don’t Overtrain
Principle #5: Train the Mind
Principle #6: Train Frequently, Year-Round
Principle #7: Rest before Races