An Athletics Compendium

The Literature oAf thletics Dyson's rational, scientific approach to coaching transformed the athletics literatureof the post-war period, bringingto it a newqualityof thinking.It alsobrought with it a devaluation of practical experience,with writers vyingwith each other to be biomechanically correct, rather than drawing from any strong body of practical knowledge.Pearson's Athletics (1963) is a good exampleof the genre, an uneasymix of oldOxbridge(A.G. K. Brownon four hundredmetre running)and the Dyson (G. F. D. Pearson on shot). A. A. Gold's chapter on high jump provides a good example, a masterpiece of biomechanical/descriptive gobbledegook, of little practical value, calculatedmore to confusethan to enlighten. In the 1950s, the keyworkon distance runningwasunquestionably Fran% Stampfl on Running (1955). Stampfl's contribution to Roger Bannister's breaking of the four minutemilebarrierin 1954has never been entirelyclear.He became,however,with the publicationof Kunning, a major influence upon British middle-distance running in the 1950s. Stampfl's devotion to the German physiologist Gerschler's interval running methods was absolute,and Running could wellbe called the first progressive resistance book of middle-distance training. Most of the book consists simply of progressively faster setsof repetitions,aimedat the improvementof the cardiovascularsystem.Other muscular systemstend to receiverelativelyshort shrift, and thereis in Runninglittle sense of the inevitable ebb and flow of an athlete's development or of athletic psychology. Stampflwas,however,an eclecticcoachof worldclass,as he later showed in hisworkin Australiain the 1960-80period. The seminalworksof the 1960son middle-distancerunningwereunquestionably PercyCerutty's Athletics: How to Become aChampion (1960) and Arthur Lydiard's Run to the Top (1962).In both books the personalityof the coach stridesout from everypage.And, though the AustralianCerutty'straining methods failed to gainanylong-term currency, his 'stotan' philosophyhad great impact at the time.In the nineteenthcenturypurgatives had been the purifier,but in Cerutty'sworld of Portsea sandhills the purifier was pain itself. Cerutty's philosophyhad an immediateappeal to the Spartan world of distance running and in the early1960srunners allover the world sought out sand and sea to test their bodies to the limits. In some ways,with his emphasis on diet and conditioning, Cerutty was an old-style Mussabini-type trainer. Where he differs is in his 'stotan' approach to athleticspsychology.For, if coachingis adisciplinewhichadmits no limitto human potential, thenPercy Cerutty was a coach par excellence. ArthurLydiard'smethodswere similarlybased on trialand error, this timeon the hillyroadsof NewZealand,but achievedgreatercurrencyand remainthe basisof much modern distancetraining.It hasbeen saidthat the sports scientist is amanwho discovers that something works in practiceand returns to his laboratoryto discoverif it alsoworks in theory.Lydiard's empiricismwas later found to be broadly justified in physiological terms by sports scientists, and over the years his methods have been modified and enhanced.This rationalscrutinyof the empiricalacceleratedin the 1980swith the mass marathon movement, and the time from1980 to the present has probablyseen more scientificscrutinyof distance physiologythan any previous period. [ xlii ]