Healthy Intelligent Training

Arthur died in Houston in 2004, aged 87, while touring North America on a speaking tour.  From humble beginnings fostered initially only by a desire to get himself fit for playing club rugby in the late 1940s, he gradually put together an endurance training system that he tested on himself.   This resulted in him becoming a New Zealand marathon champion and Commonwealth/Empire Games representative at an age when most men of the era assumed they were ‘past it’ for such pursuits.

Over time, he acquired several enthusiastic pupils from his local neighbourhood, and by the mid-1950’s he had his system “ready to go”.  So successful was Arthur with his training of ‘ordinary’ local kids, that he coined the phrase “Champions are Everywhere- they just have to be trained correctly!” Arthur’s system was the first organised, periodised training method of modern times, and is totally based on proven exercise physiology principles that were largely unknown when Lydiard first started training himself in the 1940s.

In the New Zealand running culture of the 1970s, it was accepted routinely that large volumes of steady running mileage could turn pack-runners into championship contenders.