Within the last two years (1960 and 1961), runners from sparsely populated New Zealand have broken no less than eight world records.  Behind this astonishing success is the teaching of an athletic iconoclast, Arthur Lydiard, who sets for his pupils the world’s hardest training regimen.  He will, he says, gladly match it against any other method yet developed.  In the article below, Lydiard describes in detail his rigorous theories of success and suggests that even businessmen should run for their money. be.  In fact, I don’t k now how this business about pushing back pain barriers or driving beyond points of collapse ever got started.  My system is as simple as it is effective; build up your endurance through marathon running.

In theory, I am trying to develop my runners until they are in a tireless state.  In practice, this means I am trying to give them sufficient stamina to maintain their natural speed over whatever distance they are running.  Stamina is the key to the whole thing, because you can take speed for granted.  No?  Look here.  Everybody thinks a four-minute mile is terrific, but it is only four one-minute quarter miles.  Practically any athlete can run one one-minute quarter; but few have the stamina to run four of them in a row.  How do you give them the necessary stamina?  By making them run and run and run some more, until they don’t even think in terms of miles.  There is no psychological magic and no pain barrier involved.  It is merely a process of gradual conditioning.

This is the reproduction of an article written by Arthur Lydiard himself for Sports Illustrated in 1961.