Arthur Lydiard Quotes

I have to change a lot of things before I become a good marathon runner.

To be a top-class athlete, you have to train hard, you have to eat right, you have to get enough rest. I feel the way golf is going nowadays, you have to treat yourself as an athlete.

I work with a place in Santa Monica called Phase IV. My doctor recommended them to me when I started losing weight. They help people train for things like triathlons or biking and running races. They offer physical therapists, testing, lectures.

I believe you can be young and compete in gymnastics if you have a coach who is looking out for you and if there is a good gym environment where the coaches are taking care of you emotionally and physically.

I have a Ph.D. in philosophy and sports science. At 14, I went through this really tough Soviet training system. A lot of my roommates got psychologically broken or physically injured. Either you came through, or you were out. I made my Ph.D. work in the field of young athletes aged 14-19 because at this age any human is changing.

My biggest problem was to get the coaches to understand that I was a runner, and I wanted to prepare myself based upon the calisthenics I did and get myself ready. For example, I used my forearm when I ran the ball, so I didn't want to do pushups because I wanted my forearms to heal.

Obviously we've got a lot of science behind football these days and we've got a lot of people that can advise us on how best to look after our bodies.

It's important as an athlete to know your body and how things affect it.

Being an athlete, my job was to physically perform.

For me, what works is keeping training short but with high intensity and then recovering well. Physio, massage, icing, things like that.

I don't think you ever feel 100 percent throughout a season. If you ask any player, I don't think they ever feel 100 percent fresh every week.

I was really just too small for football.

I found ways to maintain my performance through working with professionals and doing things that other people weren't doing. Later in my career, I had a great physical therapist who kept me out on the track. We were doing innovative things like ice baths back in the early '80s when everyone else thought it was crazy.

Coping with injuries is always difficult for athletes because all we want to do is, basically, to have our best performances unhindered.

Sport is healthy, but it can be the opposite of that at the top level. You have so many injuries; you put your body through so much. You wake up at 2 in the morning, and you cannot move.

The big goal is playing in June, so I'd rather be in the best shape I can be in health-wise than be dragging with nagging injuries or not being 100 percent trying to get to the Finals.

The usual practice just isn't enough. I want more edge over my opponents. Cross-training is so important. I can improve myself and have a lower impact on my body.

Being a winger or a wide mid, I have to run continuously for 90 minutes, which not only takes endurance but also strength in my legs to be able to be explosive for 90 minutes. I think weight training has really allowed me to sustain for those 90 minutes.

The operations were big ones, so I knew it'd take a lot of hard work. It's hard, you know? You're in the gym for hours on end doing strengthening exercises, and that's just so you are able to start running again. You can't even think about getting on the pitch to start with.

As much as it hurts to work out after a game, it helps that much more.

I still work on it almost every day in the gym. You have to know your body and that also means knowing when it's time to rest. Sometimes the coach will manage me and give me a day off so that I'm right for the weekend.

I'm training at Phase 1 Sports in Las Vegas, and it's a very high-end training facility for a lot of top-level athletes. I have been able to add a lot of power and the endurance to keep that power going. I've always been powerful, but the muscle conditioning I've been able to add has been a tremendous amount of help.

Looking back in hindsight, I really stunted my growth as a fighter by constantly cutting weight all the time.

Every coach in every sport, one of their larger concerns is the balance between work and rest. We all think about it all the time.

What batsmen like me do for fitness is often a bit different to what bowlers like Jimmy Anderson or Stuart Broad do but everyone in the squad has a big focus on core strength. It is really important for batting, bowling and fielding. You need a strong core and spine so your movement isn't restricted out there.