Arthur Lydiard Quotes

Encourage kids to enjoy running and play in athletics. Don’t force them to run too much competition.

I have a saying ‘train, don’t strain.’ The Americans have the saying ‘no pain, no gain’ and that’s why they have no distance running champions. They get down to the track with a stopwatch and flog their guts out thinking that it’ll make them a champion, but they’ll never make a champion that way.

When aerobic running becomes a daily habit, strength and confidence follow.

You must realize one thing. In every little village in the world there are great potential champions who only need motivation, development and good exercise evaluation.

Athletes need to enjoy their training. They don’t enjoy going down to the track with a coach making them do repetitions until they’re exhausted. From enjoyment comes the will to win.

The idea that you can’t lose contact with the leaders has cut more throats than it has saved.

My most frequent admonition to athletes and coaches is: train, do not strain.

They have a word in Finnish called sisu, which basically means guts. It’s the strongest word in the Finnish language. You tell a Finn he doesn’t have sisu, that’s like spitting in his face.

There are champions everywhere. Every street’s got them. All we need to do is train them properly.

No one will burn out doing aerobic running. It is too much anaerobic running, which the American scholastic athletic system tends to put young athletes through, that burns them out.

Well, no athlete respects a big, fat coach who’s going to stand there and rest the watch on his stomach.

I get more gratification out of getting some obese person who had a heart attack running around and enjoying life within a year. I get more gratification from that than putting a person in the Olympic Games. The Olympic athlete probably doesn’t appreciate what you’ve done, but the other guy does. I think it’s really rewarding.