Mihály Iglói: A coaching genius well ahead of his time
Mihály Iglói was an ingenius, innovative Hungarian coach from the 1900s who completely diverged from the training norms of competitive running for something much more interesting...
WEEKLY WISDOM: IGLOI KNEW WHAT’S UP
Roughly two months ago, I decided to go all in on the Scholar Program, an educational program—largely curated towards coaches—led by the well-known coaches Steve Magness and Jonathan Marcus, containing courses on a variety of topics: biomechanics, the history of running, designing a training program, and so much more. Why did I go all in on this (not super cheap) membership? You could probably guess based on today’s topic… Igloi!!! I couldn’t help myself after developing a lot of intrigue around him just from listening to their podcast (which I would HIGHLY recommend), and they offered a free first month with discount code ‘igloiftw’ which I simply couldn’t say no to.
With that being said, I’d like to give credit to Steve and Jonathan for their content from the Scholar Program’s “History 402: Mihali Igloi” course, as a large majority of the information discussed today comes from that wonderful resource.1
WHO IS THIS MAN?
Alright, so I’d imagine a large majority of you do not know who the heck this guy is. There’s not much out there on this guy, but I’ll do my best to summarize based on my (and Steve and Jon’s) limited findings.
Before Igloi became a notable coach, he was first a somewhat successful track athlete, winning the junior pole vault championship of Hungary at the age of 19 years old (which would be roughly 1927).2 In terms of distance running, he was not the most talented and had to work hard. For context, at the age of 17, he was running 2:13 in the 800 meter. However, by 1937, around 29 years old, he had worked his personal bests down to 1:53 in the 800 meter, 3:52 in the 1500 meter, and 14:45 for the 5000 meter. So, pretty dang fast but nothing spectacular.
After World War II, having been a captive at the Soviet prison camp, Igloi started coaching some notable Hungarian athletes including Sándor Iharos, who in 1955 held the world records over the 1500-meter, 3000-meter, two mile and 5000-meter, and István Rózsavölgyi, who obliterated the 2000-meter world record in the mid 1950s in 5:02.2. With his growing success as a coach, it was looking promising for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, but unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse, due in part to the Soviet Invasion of Hungary in October of 1956, and his athlete’s performances were less than stellar. Following this disappointment, Igloi took a risk and immigrated to the United States to coach the Los Angeles Track Club (and eventually the Santa Monica Track Club), bringing one of his athletes, Laszlo Tabori, with him. In Los Angeles, CA, he coached some of the best American runners of the 1960s including Jim Beatty, the first man to run a four-minute mile indoors who also set world records over the two mile (both outdoors and indoors), and Bob Schul, who set the two mile world record (8:26.4) and won the 1964 Tokyo Olympics 5000 Meters.
HIS COACHING METHODOLOGY
Igloi’s coaching philosophy is best described as high-volume, interval-based training. The fascinating thing is that ALL sessions were interval-based and on the track; they did not run workouts anywhere else… Intervals typically ranged from 100-400 meters in length, but sometimes went as high as 2000 meters or just over. Igloi’s concern was that making the hard work too long would have a negative impact on their biomechanics, which is largely why he stuck to the shorter intervals (on top of the locational limitations of LA). Additionally, all workouts were run by feel using Igloi’s tension-based effort system:
Easy: Jog
Fresh: 40%
Good: 60%
Fast Good: 75-80%
Hard: 90%
Very Hard: 95%
He rarely, if ever, shared times with his athlete, and much preferred teaching them how to feel out various intensities rather than worrying about time. This would take the pressure off of his athletes (a.k.a. bye ego) and allow them to work the desired stimuli from session to session. It also helped them become very in tune with their bodies—something that’s being lost in the newer generations of runners with the improvements in watch technology and data.
In terms of the actual structure of an Igloi workout, it typically looked something like this…
10x100m warmup
Main set #1
Clearance period
Main set #2
Clearance period
Main set #3
Clearance period
(Optional) Tester rep/set
10x100m cooldown
His prescribed sessions always started and ended with 10x100m at defined efforts (e.g. 10x100m alternating fresh and good). The first 10x100m was used to gauge what the next part of the workout would look like, and the last as a cooldown to flush out the system (e.g. 10x100m alternating fresh and easy). The tester rep/set at the end was occasionally incorporated to see how fast his athletes could run on their accumulated fatigue.
Moving to the main portion of the workout, the main sets were where the harder work was done, and the proceeding clearance sets were used to help bring the athletes back to life and ready to run another harder set. These clearance sets were not always easy jogs, though. Sometimes, there would be some level of difficulty to those sets, but they’d be easy enough to promote recovery in the body. The beauty of these clearance sets is it enabled Igloi to both get more out of his athletes at the desired stimuli (i.e. a higher volume of work at X, Y, and/or Z efforts) but also extend time under tension (or time where their body is under stress). Without these clearance sets, the total number of higher-intensity intervals would have to be significantly lower or else you’d be asking too much of your athlete.
For example, in a more traditional workout such as “4x1600m at 10k pace w/ 90 seconds rest, 2-minute rest, 2-4x200m strong w/ infield walk,” the fatigue is ever-building and there isn’t much time to recover. Each 1600-meter rep is harder than the last, and by the third and fourth, you’re likely feeling the effects. On the other hand, if this session were Igloi-fied (yes, I’m coining that term), we could extend the 10k work by shortening the 10k intervals and adding clearance periods to break up that work. As a result, we might be able to get, say, 8000 meters (5 miles) of 10k work as opposed to 6400 meters (4 miles). The Igloi-fied version of the above mile repeats workout could be…
10x100m alternating fresh and good
400m jog
6x400m at 10k pace w/ 100m jog
400m jog
5x400m at 10k pace w/ 100m jog
400m jog
4x200m at marathon pace w/ 50m jog
200m jog
5x400m at 10k pace w/ 100m jog
400m jog
4x400m at 10k pace w/ 100m jog
400m jog
10x100m alternating easy and fresh
Mind you, the above workout would take significantly longer than the traditional version given the frequent injections of rest and relatively short 10k intervals, but there’s a lot of value to doing something such as the above from time to time. And yes, it’s a lot of laps on the track, but maybe that’s your thing! If it isn’t, you should probably stay away from Igloi-style workouts, that’s all I’ll say (lol).
As another example, here is one day of work that was prescribed to Steve Magness by Joe Douglas (who was personally coached by Igloi):
AM (< 5 miles):
2 miles easy
Light “primer” workout:
10x100m at mile pace w/ 5-10 seconds recovery
2x100m at 800 pace
2 miles easy
PM (11 miles):
2 miles warmup
Harder workout:
Staple warmup set
10x100m alternating 2 reps easy, 1 rep fast
Main set #1
4x400m w/ 200m jog in 59/59/59/56
Clearance period
800m jog
Main set #2
3x400m w/ 200m jog in 59/59/56
Clearance period
800m jog
6x150m cruise w/ 50m jog
At this point, Joe noticed he was feeling the effects of the workout, so instead of throwing him right into another hard set after the 800-meter jog, he threw him a bone with some relatively easy intervals to promote further recovery. Cruise pace was probably something around marathon effort or slower, so only doing 150-meter repetitions at that effort with 50-meter jogs is quite easy. It’s almost like a very small tempo.
400m jog
Main set #3
3x400m in 62/59/57 w/ 200m jog
Clearance period
400m jog
Tester
400m in 54
1.5 mile cooldown
10x100m strides
So, maybe you have a decent grasp on this concept by now? That’s what I’m hoping!
DRAWING PARALLELS TO SWIMMING
What made this concept of tension extension (say it, it’s fun) click for me was when I realized that’s exactly what is done in swim training. During my time as a competitive swimmer in high school (yes, I swam), the workouts were characterized by roughly 3-4 harder main sets, broken up by easy, longer swims of roughly 200-400 meters in length, depending on the intensity of the prior work. In addition, in the main sets, we typically stayed within the range of 25-meter to 200-meter repetitions with relatively short rest. For example, a set would be something like “10x100m freestyle in 1:15 on 2-minute cycles” or “6x200m freestyle in 2:40 on 3:20 cycles.” So, a full session could be…
Warmup
200m freestyle easy, 100m backstroke moderate, 100m butterfly easy, 100m freestyle moderate
Main set #1
20x50m freestyle in 35-30 on 50-second cycles
Clearance period
200m freestyle SLOW
Main set #2
6x200m freestyle in 2:40 on 3:20 cycles
Clearance period
300m freestyle SLOW
Main set #3
10x100m freestyle in 1:15 on 2-minute cycles
Cooldown
300m freestyle SLOW
Let’s just say I was REALLY geekin’ out when I made this connection to Igloi-style training… Moments like those are when concepts can get cemented in your head, which is why there’s tons of value to learning in other domains outside of running (once you have a solid foundation of knowledge in running)!
Well, I hope to at least SOME of you found this to be interesting, and hopefully it made some sense. Funny enough, my friend and athlete, David, was a willing guinea pig and took a risk with me by doing an Igloi-style 10k workout on Thursday of last week. He had to write the workout on his hand, and I don’t blame him (lol)! For those curious, this was his workout (written in my alien-like workout language):
800 MP
400j
3x(400 at 10kP, 600 at MP)
400j
4x300/100j at 5kP
400j
3x(400 at 10kP, 600 at MP)
400j
200 send
400j
800 MP
I suspect my other athletes (and future ones) will be seeing these, too… Fair warning, ya goons. I can’t wait to do one myself once I’m back to proper training (hehe).
If you have further questions, please ask me of course! See my contact information at the bottom of this post; I would love to help.
You can also check out this Google Sheet which contains all the notes I took on the Scholar Program’s Igloi course.
Next up on All Things Running… Patrick Lister: Breaking down the Gettysburg Marathon and looking forward.
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If you want personalized coaching and/or training advice, I’d be happy to help. You can email me at jacobreesmontgomery@gmail.com or send me a direct message on Instagram.
I believe they misspelled his name based on what I’m seeing in Google searches.
Congratulations! Fascinating piece!