Episode 5

Arthur Lydiard, Running's Rebel - Part 2

Arthur Lydiard wasn’t just refining training in Part Two — he was fighting a system that didn’t yet understand what he had uncovered. In this episode, we follow Lydiard as his methods collide with sporting authorities, medical orthodoxy, and coaching traditions built on shortcuts and intensity. What began as personal experimentation had now produced world-class athletes, Olympic medals, and an undeniable truth: aerobic development is the foundation of all endurance performance.

Through controversy, exile, and eventual global recognition, Lydiard held firm to a philosophy centered on patience, periodization, and respect for human adaptation. His insistence on base training, timing, and restraint reshaped how athletes peak — and exposed the long-term cost of rushing results. Part Two captures the moment when Lydiard’s ideas moved from local rebellion to global blueprint, influencing generations of coaches and permanently altering how the world understands training, performance, and longevity, in sport and beyond.

Buy the books:

Arthur Lydiard, Master Coach by Garth Gilmour: https://amzn.to/3Z9EhJR

Running with Lydiard by Arthur Lydiard and Garth Gilmour: https://amzn.to/4qrfEEO

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About the Podcast

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Tacticians
History's greatest sports coaches.

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About your host

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Michael Dardanes

Michael Dardanes is a storyteller, strategist, and lifelong student of mastery.

As a founder, coach, and educator across multiple disciplines, Michael brings a uniquely panoramic lens to the lives of history’s greatest sports coaches — revealing not just what they accomplished, but how they became who they are.

He has spent decades immersed in leadership, sport, philosophy, psychology, yoga, and human performance. His ability to read slowly, think deeply, and retain the architecture of a story allows him to connect ideas across eras, cultures, and sports in a way few people can.

Michael doesn’t just summarize biographies — he reconstructs the inner journey behind them.
With Tacticians, he sets out to explore the forging of genius: the childhood environments, failures, obsessions, mentors, breakthroughs, systems, and spiritual frameworks that shape extraordinary leaders.

Through long-form narrative and a cross-sport lens, Michael studies the coaches who rewired the way the world thinks — from Jackson to Cruyff, Walsh to Wooden, Ferguson to Bielsa, Summitt to Latynina.

Listeners come to Tacticians for more than stories. They come to understand how greatness is built from the inside out.

At the heart of Michael’s work is one belief: If you want to understand excellence, study the people who create it in others.

Tacticians is his long-term canon — an exploration of the minds that shaped the games we love, and a blueprint for leadership, clarity, and mastery in any arena.