ok thanks. r u doing the spp program right now
No, I’m a coach-I just lift and do some occasional(very) tempo at this point.
Been a while since I’ve seen this one.
CF, so would a logical adjustment for the gpp to spp transition be to lower the volume while keeping the same distances?
In viewing the spp I thought to change the volume but especially reduce the intensity limits and bring them up fairly gradually. Could that be an effective way to set up a program?
reduce the intensity limits from the GPP forward (I assume that’s what you mean) if necessary.
Would this be why its important to have those transition weeks. Where you add in one day on the track with two hill days, to the next week with two track workouts with one hill then following it up with a week of all track workouts? On the third week would you still lower the intensity limit even though you had those transition weeks, to adjust for full track work?
Yep from the gpp on.
Another related question is how to transition from the short recover 60s to special endurance runs. Any advice on that since some will be going out as far as 400m indoors(actually going to implement either s to l or l to s with some 800m people, possibly).
I’ve used that transition sequence a fair bit. What I always do is throw in some 3x2x120 0r 150’s with a 2m and 7 min recovery. By doing this wo every 3rd or 4th week you can transition up to SE runs.
You can also do a mixed intensity wo. One we like is having a46-47sec 400 runner go through 200 in 26 sec and runnig as fast as possible for the next 50 meters for a full 250 run. Or run as fast as possible for 100m to complete a 300m run. We do 3 of these with a rest of anywhere from 10-20 min depending on the intensity.
I also coach 800 people and none of this is to relevant for them. You can use it but there are much more important things you need to do if your trying to bump up a 400 man or woman to the 800.
Jerry, Please explain the there are “much more important things you need to do if your trying to bump up a 400 man or woman to the 800” comment in your post.
The reason I ask is I was reading the lactate threshold thread last week and after hearing Charlie say in person that “the key to greater speed for … will be in drills that are exactly the same as for 100m runners- flying 20m drills, etc. - and NOT in a higher volume than a sprinter would do (speed is speed).” I understood him to mean for 800 runners as well.
I am curious to hear why you could not use a S-L or L-S type program(with increasing distance) for an 800 runner as opposed to a program like something recommended in Jack Daniels’ Running Formula.
Charlie
The 800 is much more aerobic than the 400. It is like night and day. You really need to get your athlete caught up aerobically. At the college level (my level) Your taking a 400 kid who probably hasn’t done much over 15 -20 miles of work a week.
Now your moving them to an event where many of the top people are 800-1500 people who also run x-country. Some of these people have been building their aerobic base for years. We had one such runner who ran between 70 miles a week on avg his frosh year up to 115 his senior year. He scored at NCAA’s in both the 800 and 1500 races.These races were less than 90 min apart also you have trials and finals.Other schools have the same type of kids.
Now you tell me what you think is more important getting a bit more speed or getting stronger. It’s a no brainer. You have aerobic capacity, VO2 max, lactate threshold,lactate power anaerobic work, etc to work on many of these things are closely related and really overlap but they take time to develop. You never want to abandoned speed work, but it has to be put in it’s proper place,and not be prioritized at the expense of the other more important elements of 800 training that really need to brought up to top level.
Remember if your bumping a 400 kid up then he/she probably already has good top end speed.
Look at the USA. We totally dominate the 400. No one is even close. Now how many of these guys have successfully transitioned to the 800 on a world class level?
Though working with college kids now and not as much directly with the 800 kids I come from the opposite direction. I’d rather stay on the speed side of things as I don’t see the event as being so heavily aerobic. More aerobic yes but not so much as to drastically change heavily from 400 prep. Different yes but not so different.
Much like some of the 400 guys taking a speed reserve approach to their event, I took the same approach for the 800 guys. Improve their basic speed over 30/60m to improve the 400 in order to further assist in developing their 800 ability.
When I look back and looked at the volumes I had my best three girl 800 runners and my best 4 guy 800 runners, most of them were typically doing less than 2000m of tempo 2-3x wk with no long runs. Some I did average up to 3500m of tempo but most did not-with a cap at 4000m.
Of course I was moving people up from sprints and not bringing them down to the 800 with the exception of probably two of them.
I’d rather, personally, come from the speed side of things. Unlike the 400 people, I did take some of the 800 people out on special end. runs up to 500/600m in addition to running their 200-350m s.e runs.
Thinking back now, for my best girl(2:16) we ran a sprint program with full speed work and complete recoveries and Wednesdays being the strength endurance days(weeks before the special endurance work to be done later) where we would go for 9+ second sprints on a hill(not very steep) starting at about 7-8 reps and finishing at about 13-14 reps. Each had 3 min. rests and the work was not broken down into sets-just straight reps with the 3 min. rests. Looking back, in combo with the pure speed training(she competed in all events during her junior and senior years from the 100 to the 800), it seemed to work well. Looking back the main thing I might have done differently would be to add more ext. tempo volume as she would often run as little as 1000-1400m of such work and even during the middle of the season and not just in a taper. That and more of a focus on both static and dynamic stretching as she was very inflexible.
After all of that, thought I’d bump this question up for CF.
Jerry, I am not a track coach, just an Army soldier who is interested in coaching one day, so I appreciate your response. I agree with you on all of the physical adaptations you need to improve, but as Pioneer posted with his focus more on speed and less on endurance, is still is there another way to skin the cat? Before a year ago or so I would have agreed with you 100% that these higher distances support the 800, as I attempted to do the same over the years for myself thinking more was better. This approach for me usually ended in injury… I am interested to see if less a distance, focus on speed can get you to the same place (times) or better than the 70-100 miles a week range you describe above. I am interested to see if there are successful coaches/athletes who train on a similar program the High intensity/low intensity workouts that are described by Charlie and others here.
As I wrote above I was definitely one of those who trained long distances, but my thinking now is why would you have to run this increased mileage per week to run a 800 (I understand what you are writing about in the double above, but I am asking about a one race day)? When is enough enough. I was reading the lactate threshold training this past weekend which really caused me to think this through more. Here are a couple of quotes I pulled from KitKat that hit the spot for me “Anyone who thinks more volume will compensate for less speed is kidding themselves. Bite the bullet, get into the rhythm of your race and get used to it.” and this quote of his is how I kind of look at things right now:
“It’s not how Hard you train that counts, it’s How you train … hard.”
I am interested in your response.
Charlie
Cjenks. I am primarily a 400coach so I understand the speed dynamic of track and I once believed that moving up to the 800 was simply a matter of ramping up the 400 training.
Remember kk’s quote is in relation to the 400.If you are a 45 sec 400 runner this may involve speeds of 23.5 for 200 roughly the come home pace of the runner. So this is training race pace speed. Now look at a women who runs the 800 in 2;10 her last 200 is going to be roughly 35-38 sec. this women may be a 56-57 400 runner if shes bumped up, or slightly slower if she comes from the 1500. If you run perfect even splits your still only running 32high for 200. So increased 30 fly speed is not an over riding factor. The main factor is holding 32high for 4 straight 200 segments.
Ive been doing tons of research and I have talked to many people who specialize in coaching the 800.I’ve also looked at the training of many of the worlds great middle distance runners. You just can’t get away from the fact that if you want to be successfull you need to increase your aerobic capacityalong with the other elements I previously mentioned.
I’m not discounting or abandoning speed I’m just putting it in it’s proper context in regards to the 800.
Pioneer if you don’t mind my asking what were the times of your girl in her sprint events?
100m(h.t. of 12.3(I still question if she was quite that fast, though, likely more like 12.5/12.6 h.t. and never ran the 100 or other sprints in many big(fat) meets after her soph year, 200 best of 26.4 or so(this was 9-10 years ago so I’m trying to recall all of this from some time back), best 400m split of around 58.6/58.8. She started as a sprinter, was very thin and was about 5-5 maybe 110 or so at her heaviest.
Ok. Good I think as a high school kid your training may have worked because you only had her for a short period of time.
Your anaerobic system is limited. You can only go into a certain amount of oxegyn debt before your body will not physically allow you to go further. Oxygen debt is a function of how much faster than your aerobic threshold you are running.
In a season it takes roughly 4-8 weeks of anaerobic training to reach your maximum potential. people have different ways of implementing this. Lydyard used to split his into 4 weeks of traditional anaerobic interval training. Then he would implement 4 weeks of faster work more like sprint training.
Danials devotes 6 weeks of his 24 week cycles to hard anaerobic training, but he introduces some interval work a few weeks earlier.
My self I do sprint drills most days along with short accell work and about every 2 weeks we do some anaerobic work but it is a small part of the general training. Near the end of the year we go into 6-8 weeks of anaerobic work.
Over a career your main source of improvement is aerobic strength NOT a stockpile of anaerobic conditioning. Once you stop anaerobic workouts,you lose the benefits you gained from them,but your background of aerobic conditioning stays with you. You draw off it every time you run. Thats why people who do hard intervals all year round get burnt out and don’t improve as much. Your anaerobic development is limited by your oxygen debt,but your aerobic development is not.
This is one of the reasons I believe it is vitally important to devlop the aerobic system before we get to caught up in hard speed intervals on the track.
This is just my opinion based off of my own research and talking to people in the bussiness that I respect.
I had her for four years but only moved her to the 800 after her soph. year-previous two years 100-400m. It worked and that’s the why I liked the program. Could she have progressed off a different program and possibly achieved higher levels, perhaps, but perhaps not. Others are free to interpret why something may have or may have not worked and that is fine.
All of what you say regarding aerobic vs. anaerobic I’m aware of but in my personal implementation I was able to train such athletes with minimal volume and avoid much in the way of injuries that many higher volume programs might subject their athletes to. Could they have benefited from different programs maybe, maybe not but all I have is that specific history from which to make my assessment.
I did minor in ex. sci. so I do have some background in phys. but in practice I used another way than was probably common among 800 people. Granted, I was not working(in that case) with an elite athlete but it served me well. Had I worked with her for a longer period of time, I would have likely shifted some of her training but the pure speed element would have likely remained in my program. I was never one to have an athlete do any volumes of int. tempo for 800 people. I know that is much more the norm but I was not comfortable with such an approach and the athletes I worked with(the ones moving down that previously had done such) performed better while not on such a program.
The volumes of special endurance I used were never very high at all but usually of a sufficient quality. Again I was moving sprinters up and the program I’ve described represented a shift in their training yet it was mostly seemless and helped to maintain the speed qualities that allowed most of them to be decent 400 kids in the first place.
You have your way you and most others seem to be comfortable using and have confidence in one approach and I have another. The methods you are describing are, no doubt, much more common among w.c. athletes than anything I’m describing. To each his own-more than one way to success. Again, in my current situation I’m not really working with the 800 people very much other than wt. work/drills.
Seb Coe reciently said, the reason why the 800m event in the once dominant England now is at the sad levels it is, is that everybody doing that event is trying to only Master that One event. They cannot now see how off season X-country runs help an 800m event, and it now shows with England producing nothing of substance for years now.
People like to shoot up the old BASE volume thing to pieces - yet Lance Armstrong did it… Seb Coe and the other English superstars at the time did it… And who do you think does it now? Kenyans come to mind? they run run run run. They would run rings around most Westerners - and they have Speed to back that up.
I have seen guys here saying they feel fast running a 49sec 400m - try running a 52sec 400m after 9600m!! A kenyan can!
There is no reason at all as to why Kenyans should be the masters of 800m events and up! People have just got to start running more.
Being super fast in a 800m event is like being super strong for a 100m event - it will only help if other factors are in place as well. A powerlifter cant run the 100m, and somebody who can only run a fast 60m cant run a 800m.
There is no reason why a good 400m runner following Extra work cant run a good 600m and be winning a 800m up untill then - however, the 800m event STARTS at 600m!
Basically its a 200m event with a rolling 600m start…
Bold Warrior, I really couldnt agree more.
The great coach Renato Canova has also articulated alot of these same ideas.
Of course Seb Coe, himself, is a guy who advanced his performances in both the 800 and 1500/mile via many non-traditional means and was never known to be a high mileage guy-at least from what I’ve read. He was well known, training wise, to utilize methods that many other guys of his time were not with extensive weight work(and not simply the light weight/ high rep protocols that many mid and long distance guys seem to favor year round-for those who actually lift, that is), plyometrics(including bounding), pure speed work(probably more in the earlier stages of his career), circuit work(the Coe Commando drills or similar name), consistent use of power-speed/sprint drills.
These were, of course, used in conjunction with some of the more traditional middle distance training methods.
As is often the case, there is typically more than one way to achieve success.
i have a yearly table aged 16yrs - klm ranged per wk from 24 - 63 at the highest
aged 18
per wk from 35 - 76klm at the highest
later in the book, says he ran up to 145klm max for a wk.
His training is very complex like you say -
He never left speed work for more than a couple of wks at a time - even when under high volume x-country.
his weights were typically a combination
heavy sets
light and high reps - typically used in the Circuit sesions
plyros
and flexibility was big
One big thing with the volume aspect, was to push it hard to get Vo2 Max as high as they could, (which they use test equipment to find out - and compare to last yrs) then back off that work and concentrate their energy onto lactate threshold and speed work.
Everything is pretty much done year round - its just the emphasis at each point that changes.
As CF says, add new things to your program and you’ll get sore, cant train as hard, and not improve as fast. Seb was no different.