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John McDonnell on Physiological and Psychological Preparation “It’s important to not just physically prepare athletes, but have them in the right psychological state of mind as well.” —John McDonnell My philosophy has always been that strength is speed. If you do not develop the body physically, it will never develop mentally. I learned that from the early stages of my own running career. A lot of things I did as a coach were things I did myself. I always thought more was better, but I learned that more was not necessarily better. Part of the reason I thought that more was better was because I always felt when I was in great shape, I was confident and everything went well, but if you weren’t in great shape, it was like you were walking on thin ice waiting for it to break. A lot of that relates to Arthur Lydiard. I read his book, and his philosophy was that with more strength the faster you are going to get and the more confident you are going to get. People would ask me, “How do you get someone to concentrate and go out there and push themselves to the limit?” It starts by being aerobically prepared for a race. I always say if a kid comes to me and is an 800-meter runner but asks to try the 1,500 meter, I usually already had in the back of my mind they were going to do it eventually. If they ask about trying it in the first meet this year, I’d say no, but we’ll try it in the first meet next year. That’s the thing. If you are in great physical shape with great strength and not even much speed and can go three-quarters of the way without hurting, it really helps your concentration. Early in my coaching career we did 120 miles per week. People just did more mileage at that time. Dave Bedford and Gerry Lingdren did over 200 miles per week, and so there was vast experimental volumes back then and you had to find your own because nobody agreed on anything in those days. I remember myself when I was down in Louisiana with an English guy named Malcolm Robinson. We worked out, and when I think about what we did, it was asinine. I ran twenty-four 400s on a cinder track and I was wearing 9.9 sprint shoes. All it had was a little bitty pad on the heel and lateral 111 6 movement, and the heel was rocking. My Achilles hurt so bad the next day. That was the year I beat Jim Ryun, and I was going to do it all but that derailed me. That was just a lack of direction. My gosh, I wish I had someone to tell me to run in flats. Shoes were terrible back then. Lydiard was one of the first to come out with literature that was complete, and it was kind of simple. People say I had simple training, well, so did Arthur Lydiard. He had more Olympic champions than anyone, and most of those athletes were from his own neighborhood. I thought he had a lot of the answers, and he was very down to Earth. At the same time, Herb Elliott’s coach had some ideas about training on sand dunes that we didn’t have. People would try to do that and hurt their Achilles. He also had great ideas, but I felt like he exaggerated and didn’t give you the whole story. I believe Arthur Lydiard got as close to it as possible because he took his own training methods as a marathon runner, and that’s what he did. I also initially learned from mistakes from my own personal training such as running in the heat. I’d get cramps in my calves and nobody knew what you were supposed to take. They’d give you these salt pills and that was it. Now we take an array of minerals like potassium and calcium. So we learned the hard way, much like Lydiard. I have tremendous belief in his method of training because it worked—and for different types of people. It wasn’t just Peter Snell and those who won gold medals. He had others run really well for him. It goes back to strength and development and the things I learned. When O’Shaughnessy was here, I was smart...

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