Arthur Lydiard
Coach
Pioneer of the aerobic-base philosophy that shaped modern endurance training. The base principle is well supported; the dogmatic “100 miles a week” is coaching lore.
Arthur Lydiard (1917-2004) was a New Zealand coach whose emphasis on a large aerobic base reshaped distance training and helped popularise recreational jogging. He coached Peter Snell, Murray Halberg and Barry Magee to Olympic success and later influenced Finland’s distance revival in the 1970s.
His system builds a long phase of high-volume easy running, then layers hill resistance, anaerobic development and sharpening toward a single seasonal peak. The core idea that a large easy-running base underpins later performance is well supported by the modern volume-versus-intensity and base-building evidence. The packaged structure, and the dogmatic “100 miles a week” applied universally, is coaching tradition rather than tested prescription, and high-volume prescriptions carry real injury risk for non-elite runners. See training philosophies.