What sort of formulas would you suggest to apply to 55-59 sec high school girls?
The base formula I use for 400m is
400m = (200m x 2) x 1.1
Work backwards for 55sec
200m = 25 sec
The first 200 is run 1-2 seconds therefore 26-27 sec
The second 200m is run 2 sec slower therefore 28-29 sec
Without knowing the athlete, the 59 sec runner is probably not 2 seconds slower over 200m then the 55 runner, but lacks the general conditioning. Without seeing and knowing more that is guess.
But still trying for about a 2 second differential between 200s, or would this move up to about 2.5 sec b/c they are slower?
I guess that is the aim.
The 59 runner is either slower over 200, and if this is the case the last 200 will be slower than 2 sec due to having less in reserve or they are not as well conditioned as I suggested and they may not be able to maintain a higher speed anyway.
Personally I tend to say this is what I want you to run the first 200 in, which is based on their 200 speed and see what happens in the last 200.
A pure speed-power animal will often blew the doors off the hinge in the opening 200m and might crawl home over the last 100. I’ve seen differentials blow out to nearly 4sec in women’s races. Some of the poor differentials can be due to lack of pace judgement, some due to lack of specific 400m endurance. Two seconds is considered pretty good. Sub-2sec is what we aim for as coaches in the 400m. Easier said than done, as you know 
My girl who ran a season best of 61.3 was a 28/31. In timing many high school girls, they seem to be closer to 3 second differential. In my 49 second boy, he was 2-2.5 range every race.
I found that a 40 second 300 time would get you close to 54 seconds at the high school level, for both boys and girls.
I’ve always wondered whether the concurrent program - or at least the fundamental ideas underpinning it - which I designed 24 years ago and which is described in this thread, would have application to sprint swimming.
Afterall, the time-span for a great men’s 100m freestyle is 47/48sec and for a good 400m run about 44/45sec. Both events could be described as power-endurance activities. I’m hoping to have some news on that around mid-August after I chat with a particular swim coach when he returns home from the FINA world championships in Shanghai… maybe, just maybe… watch this space 
Vladimir Issurin has praised the American swim coach (Olympic Hall of Fame) James Counsilman for the ideas he used that, to the contrary, resembled the block training system; and Alexander Popov’s coach (Gennadi Touretski) followed block training principles as well.
While it’s clear that linear, concurrent, and block models are all appropriate when used on the right population/sport/trainedness; it is my feeling that at the elite levels of competitive swimming a block model is more logical.
That said, I have a feeling that when you layout the details of your concurrent idea for swimming you will outline more thematic commonalities between your idea and those influenced by block methodology.
I know Pakewi will have insightful comments to share based upon his experience with high level swimmers.
I expect to be able to post a significant Q&A interview with Brant Best, personal coach of the new 100m freestyle world champion, James Magnussen, within the next couple of weeks. This should shed light which reveals their “state of the art” - quote Magnussen, swim training program which bares an astonishingly close resemblance to the concurrent concepts laid down in the lactate threshold thread as well as an actual attribution. Magnussen swam 47.6sec which is fastest ever for a man swimming in a textile suit, so we can call it a virtual world record. The time for 100m freestyle (especially when you take away the underwater glide time component following the entry dive) is very close indeed to what constitutes a world class time for the men’s 400m track sprint. Food for thought. Well, I’m off to the pool now. kk
In the last 10 years swimming has seen a significant shift to concurrent type training. As with many sports they realised training the speed out of them and leaving qualities untouched produced very good slow swimmers.
The very good programs (back end) programs have been re-rewarded from the removal of the rubber suits as the drop dead sprinter types from sprint based programs have found the last 15m in a 100m can be a painful journey if the back end qualities aren’t trained.
Its like the 300m sprint…a good male short sprinter and longer sprinter can run fast over 300m…however add on another 100m or 11-12s and then you find out who has done the quality work at the right speeds at race specific ratings while maintaining stroke length.
With all these matters, the issue which invites program structure experimentation is the need to improve front-end race rhythm without damaging (and indeed continuing to enhance) back-end speed. Individual sessions are obviously important but it’s how they are sited within the plan(s) that enables the athlete/swimmer to take what s/he wants from each session - be it pure speed, pure power, speed endurance, power endurance etc. Again, contrast and recovery within the plan are key and so the concurrent structure enables that, imo, better than the traditional long to short (pyramid) or even short to long (inverted pyramid).
I look forward to reviewing the interview you spoke of in a previous post.
As for what you’ve described here, have you given thought to how the needs may be addressed within the block system structure? I ask because, the very premise of its creation hinged upon the need to further intensify the specific needs of the training without continuing to increase the annual load volume and the nature of cyclic disciplines, such as swimming, are highly conducive to its use.
Hi James
I guess it’s all in the implementation. I did use the block process for many seasons. It is what I learned when I sat for the various coaching levels. But even then I was having trouble and in formulating the concurrent method, I was able to get results without changing volume at all. The intensity didnt change either, not for the front-end race sessions. By intertwining the volume cycles with the high intensity cycles we were able to improve speed and endurance concurrently throughout the year and could come up fresh enough on short notice to race reasonably well, even without a taper.
What I mean by “no change to volume or intensity” is that the effort was no greater at any stage of the annual plan. The speed came as specific fitness rose. And you know that especially with the 400m you cannot just go out there like King Kong and bash the race. You lose the elastic response when you get that aggro and tighten up. So that is by way of saying, no, the intensity didn’t change although the time to run sets was reduced as we went along…
Results speak, I appreciate you sharing your experiences in this regard. That said, I’m interested to know your thoughts on why the adaptation response was more directed towards sport improvement when you transitioned from a block system to a concurrent one. Considering the cyclic nature of the sport structure it would follow that the opposite of the situation that you described would have occurred- (ergo the concurrent method would have eventually ceased to provide a significant enough stimulus for the high level athlete to continue to yield positive adaptation and thus a block approach became necessitated in order to provide the necessary stimulus without increasing the annual load volume).
I do, however, fully appreciate the advantage presented by concurrent planning with respect to the need to perform at a high level on short notice; something that someone in the middle of the ‘wrong’ block would be rendered caught with their pants down so to speak.
I would have to review what the actual block system that you used consisted of and compare that against the concurrent one that followed in order to make sense of the situation and I’m certainly not going to ask that you share either one as that is proprietary information. None the less, I appreciate the dialogue.
Hi James,
I have laid out in this thread the processes and structure of the concurrent program as I developed it for my own athletes who trained for the 400m. I am not a sports scientist, nor a professional coach. I could not survive a week on what I’ve ever earned through coaching. To me there has always been something wonderful about the way athletes improve but I have said before and will state it again now I am not sure why they improve. I could put forward some thoughts but I could just as easily be wrong and the athletes improve in spite of the reasons I propose, rather than because of them. I leave it to others to tear the system apart and come up with the reasons it works. But work it does because the results are on the scoreboard. So as Charlie has said, this is a history lesson. If others can improve on it, go right ahead. But it is not a scenario where something was right or wrong. It’s just a little bit of personal history that I went through with several athletes. I say that now to the coaches I mentor. I’m up front and totally honest about my own - no doubt many - deficiencies as a coach.
As for increasing the loading over time to progress year by year: Much of that was organic. The program states that on a given day you try to run 6x200m off 2mins in 23sec or faster. But the athlete may start out being able to jog only between reps 1 & 2. And they may not be able to run more than the first two reps in target. And even then they may have run 23.9sec. But over the course of numerous cycles and seasons, the athletes have built up to the point where Darren Clark, for example, was able to run all 6 reps in 23sec or under (a few were into the mid 22secs) and the recoveries went from walking 2min+ to jogging on average 1min 40sec.
I appreciate your candidness. My first year coaching was the year I joined Charlie’s site (in 03) and I’ve no doubt been through this thread and collected exceptional data from it over the years. I only mentioned my curiosity regarding the swimming program because your reference to initially having employed block system training got me thinking that it may have been something other than what has been discussed here already.
Interesting that you make the 200m repeat reference as this is, on the surface, reminiscent of Clyde Hart’s philosophy; though only at first glance as you’ve already made clear that the loading wasn’t linear which, as an aside, is something that I’m compelled to question about Hart’s programming due to the exceptionally clear argument Charlie provided in reference to the pitfalls of the linear approach in which work capacity is lost over time due to the insufficient volume that exists by the time intensities are high enough to develop race specific speed and, by default of the approach, too much time goes by before the runs are actually fast enough to develop speed.
I agree with you on Hart and yet there is old Clyde with a phenomenally successful set of high end results. Then again he had his pick of some mighty talented sprinters. I’ve met and talked to Clyde a few times. He gave me his home number and I’ve used it. He’s a wonderful guy in my personal experience. Once again, his work and results are a history lesson. Take it or leave it, his system works. But as we have seen in the Beijing Olympic year, it works best when he’s running the show because he is a master of his own methods. He probably does things intuitively as much as work off his own charts.
THIS INTERVIEW IS ULTIMATELY A DISCUSSION ABOUT PROGRAM STRUCTURE, RELEVENT JUST AS MUCH TO ATHLETICS AS TO SWIMMING COACHING…
Inside story of James Magnussen’s success - Q&A with his coach Brant Best
• Mike Hurst
• From:The Daily Telegraph
• September 02, 201112:00AM
Excellent interview and great read kitkat1
Interestingly enough, I found his answers to be much more consistent with block versus concurrent methodology.
- He seems not to include any sort of general organism strength work in the training
- while he shifts emphasis of the cycles (speed, race speed, speed endurance, back end) their seems to be unidirectional, not multi-lateral, focus during any given cycle and the cycles are long enough (3-4weeks) to induce strong adaptations via concentrated loading
- the strength work appears to be very specific and by his own admission, if it doesn’t directly relate he isn’t including it in the training