Cerruty offered this admonition to his athletes: "It is almost universally desired to discover the 'schedule' that the successful athlete has trained to, as if the copying of any schedule could be expected to produce the same result for another athlete irrespective of place age, type, disposition, initial strength, initial ability and other factors."
You may recall reading previously that it was Cerutty's desire that his athletes would eventually become independent, able to formulate their own training programs.
I think that as novice runners we all once tried to follow a schedule that we found in a magazine or a book. I know I did, many times. I remember the wise words of Arthur Lydiard when he said at a seminar I attended in the early 90's: we are to use his schedules as a guide. He said we should customize them to fit us without altering the essence(a progression of base, to strength, to speed, to racing).
When I first began coaching high school and younger athletes, I quickly found that they had a variety of strengths and weaknesses. There was no, one size fits all program I could give them. Out of about 25 to 30 distance runners I had to break them up into 4 groups with different training schedules to meet their needs. Needless to say, all began with some type of base program.
With the New Year here, this is a good time to give thought and consideration about your training program. Evaluation and re-evaluation should be the order of the day. What have you found to be your strengths and weaknesses this past year? Is your schedule addressing these issues? If not why?
As far as a training program, I assume we all have one.
If we claim to be committed and dedicated, it is only natural we will have one.
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