Is Running Success based on Talent, or Skill?
There’s a world of difference between talent and skill. Talent implies natural ability. There are plenty of talented athletes who never make it to the level of performance their inherent talent seems to indicate they are capable of. Skill implies a trained ability. In...
“Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down”
How much sugar does your body really need at any one time? If you believe the manufacturers of sports drinks, athletes need far more glucose than is required for simple good health. Our body is actually designed to run very efficiently on a TOTAL blood glucose of...
Energy Systems and Muscle Fibre Types for Endurance
There are two main energy systems and two distinct muscle fibre types involved in all endurance exercise. By far the most important energy system to train for endurance is the vast aerobic fat-burning system. The muscle fibre type most associated with fat-burning...
What happens in our bodies when we run?
At a training talk, a keen young athlete asked me what the best way to train Max VO2 was. He said he was told by his coach to “go and do a few 1000m reps at your best 3000m race pace, with about equal time jogging recovery in between hard efforts”. Somehow his coach...
The Great Secret of Peaking for a Middle Distance Race.
It sounds ridiculously simple, but many great athletes or their coaches have failed on the major stage because they forgot one simple thing. That simple, major thing is called R-E-S-T. It’s a four-letter word to some hardened athletes or their coaches, so used to hard...
Dr Livingstone has just released his account of his survival: Staring Down the Beast-How I Enjoyed Myself Well from a Terminal Brain Tumour Death Sentence