Al of this begs the question of: Why? (although, I have run it so I have a pretty damn good idea why)
Why will all those women running sub 11s and close to 22 flat allow medals in the 400 to go for the asking when they have no chance in the event they’re in now?
Will Bolt drive significant numbers into the 400m for men?
LaShawn Merritt - progression:
(Courtesy Boldwarrior)
2009: World Champs gold medalist (44.06WL), 1st at USA Outdoors (44.50)…1st at Baie Mahault (44.50)…1st at Reebok Grand Prix (44.75)…1st in 300m at Nike Prefontaine Classic (31.30)
2008: Olympic Games gold medalist (43.75, WL & PR)…Olympic Trials champion (44.001st at World Athletics Final (44.50)…1st at Nike Prefontaine Classic (44.65)…1st at Berlin (44.03)…1st at Baie Mahault (44.34)…1st in 200m at Doha (20.08)…1st in Greensboro (19.80w)…ranked #1 in world by T&FN…bests of 43.75 & 20.08.
2007: World Outdoor 4x400m gold medalist (2:55.56)…World Outdoor 400m silver medalist (43.96PR)…USA Outdoor runner-up (44.06)…Tyson Invitational Indoor champion (45.51)…2nd at Reebok Grand Prix (45.09)…2nd at Nike Prefontaine Classic (45.17)…1st at Kingston (44.95)…1st at Paris (44.62)…1st at Rome (44.44)…1st at Monaco (44.38)…1st in 200m at Thessaloniki (20.02)…2nd at London (44.23)…ranked #2 in world, #2 U.S. by T&FN…bests of 43.96 and 19.98.
2006: USA Outdoor runner-up (44.50)…1st at World Cup (44.54)…3rd at World Athletics Final (44.14PR)…runner-up at USA Indoor Champs (46.17)…1st at Nike Prefontaine Classic (44.88)…4th at Rome (44.77)…5th at Lausanne (20.10)…2nd at Stockholm (20.25)…ranked #3 in world (#2 U.S.) by T&FN…best of 44.14.
2005: 4th at USA Outdoor Champs (44.73)…2nd in 400m at Nike Prefontaine Classic (45.57)…1st at Powered by Tyson Invitational (44.93i), the 3rd fastest indoor time in history…1st at Kingston, Jamaica (44.66PR)…ranked #10 in the world (#5 U.S. by T&FN)…best of 44.93i.
2004: 2004 World Junior 400m ( 45.25), 4x100m (38.66WJR) & (3:01.09WJR) gold medalist…USA Junior champion (200m-20.72), (400m-46.80)…ranked #9 in U.S. by T&FN…best of 45.25.
2003: Virginia State HS 100m (10.47), 200m (21.13) & 400m (47.69) champion…best of 47.69.
Link to PDF of Dwayne Miller’s 2008 presentation detailing his 400m preparation, said to be broadly what he prescribed for LaShawn Merritt.
Sadly my attempts to lift the actual cycles of training within the graphic framework has been totally unsuccessful (so far).
To witness: …
2008 USATF SuperClinic
Dwayne Miller
From prep to pro: the 400 meters
FALL SEASON
Week#1
Week#2
Week#3
Week#4
M: 1 mile/ weights
1.5 mile/ weights
2 mile/ weights
2 mile/ weights
T: 1 mile/ weights
1.5 mile/ weights
2 mile/ weights
2 mile/ weights
W: Drill outs
Drill outs
Drill outs
Drill outs/strides
Th:1 mile/ weights
1.5 mile/ weights
Maybe I can get the ‘Fundementals’-thread alive again!!
Some athletes and well known National coaches visit our country at the moment - to train in warm weather. One of my athletes met them last week - and an interesting conversation took place. The one coach is known for VERY large volumes of training in his weekly programme (in ALL phases) - therefore, LOTS of his athletes either quit or go to other coaches … due to injuries. He had success in the past - but normally only once in the ‘lifetime’ of the athlete.
He tried to convince my athlete that the ONLY way to prepare for different rounds in the 400m is: 3 x 350 [8’] (for the usual 3 rounds). This must be done at FULL speed. Another session -to work on the first 200 of the 400m - the athlete MUST be able to complete 8 x 200 (FIRST 200m RP) with a jog back recovery.
Since I ‘met’ Kitkat on this Forum, I have a rest day on Wednesdays (throughout the training year) - and my athletes SELDOM get injuries. This ‘foreign’ coach could not BELIEVE this. According to him - how COULD a coach take a rest day in the middle of the week, preparing an athlete for a 400m!!!
My athlete now wants to train on Wednesdays … !!!
Your input?
Who is the coach and who are his studs? Most of the truly intelligent coaches I’ve met (and I’ve met most of the 400m coaches doing the rounds since 1980) have been fairly flexible, not dogmatic and realise there is more than one pathway up the mountain.
Personally I don’t give my athletes one day off a week. I give them two days off - almost always Saturday and Tuesday so as to fulfill a two-days on, one off, three on, one off structure. Without “supporting means” or the capacity to be a fulltime athlete with experts staff (masseurs, chiros etc) on hand, I found that building in rest days served to release pressure. If this coach has had a male Olympic finalist run 44.3 “clean” on his program and stay injury-free for seven years straight under his program (collecting world merit rankings in five of those years as well as Com Games gold and meet record and a World Indoor medal (while on holidays :), I will be officially impressed… kk
is this the same athlete that went to Melbourne then quit then started again?
If he wants to train on Wednesday, have him wash your car 3 times:)
Seriously, was that an european coach?
Tony Lester … Coach of oft injured Tim Benjamin … Eliminated seond round in 46.2 in 2004, failed to even get on the track 2008: they were his two Olympic results. Quit due to injuries 2009.
that is the cynical info 
the other one is
Tony Lester
Tony has been around UK athletics as a professional coach since he left the Royal Army Medical Corps, shortly after the first Gulf War in 1991. His long and distinguished military career saw him rise to the rank of Warrant Officer.
His knowledge of fitness, conditioning and motivation is second to none, as is his unique ability to transfer this to others.
Presently employed by UK Athletics, the governing body for the sport, Tony nurtures world-class talent for tomorrow, working with young sprinters such as Tim Benjamin and Abi Oyepitan. Already, he has transformed many athletes into World and Olympic medallists, including the likes of Roger Black, Mark Richardson and, most recently, Marlon Devonish, Gold Medallist in the 4x100m relay in Athens.
Fresh from his outstanding successes at the Athens Olympic Games, Tony’s skilful use of anecdotal and amusing stories will reinforce a desire to create a winning environment that gives an organisation the ability to achieve more.
“During my final preparations before Sydney when my hurdling wasn’t going well it was Tony that turned it around”
Denise Lewis Olympic Champion
“In 1996 I won a Silver Medal at The OlympicGames in Atlanta in the 400 metres. I would not have won this without the help of Tony Lester”
Roger Black MBE
“Tony Lester ignited my self belief in competing with the best athletes in the world”
John Regis European Champion 200m
“Tony has identified my weaknesses and addressed them in a constructive manner, Tony is a true professional”
Marlon Devonish Olympic Champion
During Tony’s inspirational presentation he speaks on the following themes;
Coaching
Peak Performance
Mentoring
Teamwork
Reaching Your Potential
http://www.speakers-uk.com/profile.phtml?id=381&act_id=2&sid=41
There is a poster on this forum who has very intimate knowledge of “Sergeant Lester” and his methods. Whether he chooses to chime in with his insights is up to him, but suffice it to say that our man Tony’s military experience carries over into his training methodology. Tim Benjamin will was so broken that he couldn’t even stay in the sport with the motivation of running before so many friends and family.
On a side not, I cannot see how Kevin Tyler and Lester could get on as their training philosophies are very much at loggerheads.
Tony lester…isn’t the same guy ha MLF run morning miles n asphalth to get in shape?
I see an endorsement of Lester from Regis who seemed to do all his best times after training with John Smith.
I take athlete endorsements with a rock rather than a grain of salt as they are often based on personal loyalties. In this case it could be a matter of profit. How many of Lester’s athletes does Regis represent?
Also…Roger Black, was trained by another coach…
“During my final preparations before Sydney when my hurdling wasn’t going well it was Tony that turned it around”
Denise Lewis Olympic Champion
“In 1996 I won a Silver Medal at The OlympicGames in Atlanta in the 400 metres. I would not have won this without the help of Tony Lester”
Roger Black MBE
“Tony Lester ignited my self belief in competing with the best athletes in the world”
John Regis European Champion 200m
“Tony has identified my weaknesses and addressed them in a constructive manner, Tony is a true professional”
Marlon Devonish Olympic Champion
None of them really mention physical training coaching, they all mention he helped.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all he did was help their confidence or mention something about them to make them think and change it.
That’s possibly because it is promoting Lester as a public speaker, not an athletics coach. I wouldn’t read anything into it.
http://www.uka.org.uk/e-inspire/hall-of-fame-athletes/roger-black/
Roger Black Date of Birth:1966
Born: Portsmouth
Club: Southampton & Eastleigh, Team Solent.
Coach(s): Mike Smith, Mike Whittingham.
Black Magic
However… Lester is attributed as Roger’s coach in 1996 and there is no doubt that Tony has had some world class results, one of the more impressive of late being Nicola Sanders who was Osaka 400m flat runner-up, but whose 50.71 for fourth in Beijing semi-final No. 3, was not fast enough to make it to the final.
An IAAF Report stated of Sanders: "But it was only after moving back home and linking up with Tony Lester, the man who coached Roger Black to Olympic 400m silver and Mark Richardson to European 400m bronze, did she start to make real headway.
Sanders thrived on the extra workload and at last started to fulfil her potential.
“It was pretty tough,” Sanders admitted of Lester’s training. “But if you are in a new situation it pushes you more. I just got stuck in and probably did more training than I thought I was capable of. At Loughborough, with hindsight, I perhaps didn’t push myself as much as I thought I could.”
So it looks like if you can survive the Lester program you can run well in the short term but you may be marked down as AWOL a season or two later.
THIS IS AN INTERVIEW IN WHICH TONY LESTER SOUNDS AS REASONABLE AND AS RATIONAL AS ANY GOOD COACH
Tony Lester
Senior Performance Coach, UK Athletics
Duration: 37:03 mins
File Size: 34MB
Estimated Download Time: 5 minutes
Download: MP3 / WMA
Tony Lester, a former warrant officer in the British army, is one of Europe’s top sprint coaches. Currently he is a senior performance coach with UK Athletics, and his resume includes training the likes of Olympic 400m silver medalist Roger Black, Olympic medalist Marlon Devonish, former world junior 200m champion Tim Benjamin and 2007 World 400m silver medalist Nicola Sanders. Although having experienced success in all the sprint events, Coach Lester’s expertise is mainly in the 400m race.
In this interview with Coach Lester, he begins with a discussion on his background and upbringing as a coach in the sport. He then offers his ideas on the training of the 400m, such as the role of maximal speed and speed endurance in this event, the structure of a weekly plan, and the development of strength he employs. He offers his views on planning and periodization, planning for a major competition such as the recent Olympics, and the importance of therapy in his program. Tony also reveals his thoughts on the coaching structure and athlete development system in the UK as we move towards the London 2012 Olympics.
I last talked with Tony Lester four years ago and, judging by the audio interview he has matured. Thankfully. But I would still suggest that if he finds fault in a program or in the progress of an individual, he should best address his inquiries to the coach - not the athlete. Athletes are too often gullible, desperate, always thinking the grass will be greener on the other side of the fence. Maybe it will, but so often it isn’t. What Tony has done in the case of sprint_coach is destablise that coach-athlete relationship. That particular athlete was getting the best support available in his country, given many administrative difficulties with the local national federation. He has also shown himself to be highly unstable, coming and going from the sport. He owes his current long-term coach a massive debt because sprint_coach has treated him like a son. And still he is ungrateful and unaware of how fortunate he has been to have this coach so loyal to him despite his gypsy ways.
Great posts KK and Robin.
I may have something to add to this discussion.
Once the Olympic cycle is taken into account and removed (using a centered moving average), a trend in the eighth ranked athlete emerges, showing that the times are getting faster. Because just taking the eighth best time is fairly arbitrary I don’t think we can read too much into this. Using some form of average over the top 16 times and performing a time series on this, may allow you to draw stronger theories about the progression of the event over recent history.
The other is, that the move to the three round format does not appear to have had a significant effect on the time required to qualify for the final. It does appear to have made the range of times required to get in to become narrower. This may not be so much to do with the number of rounds themselves, as much as it has to do with the fact that instead of the top four in each semi qualifying, the seventh and eighth athletes progress on the basis of times. For instance this may mean that the third and fourth placed athletes cannot afford to back off as much as they had previously been able to get away with.