Ok, I will read through this when I get some time, but you stated that my current on focus’s on one part (sprint training), but not the other (SE).
So, I could interchange the current one, and this one:
Mon: Accel out to 40mx5-7
Tues: Tempo
Wed: SE (2-3x300m) (3-5 Minutes rest)
Thurs: Tempo
Fri: SE (3x200m) (3-5 Minutes rest)
Sat: Rest
Sun: Rest
Also, on the other training, I can’t get Sat training, because my weekend job wont let me get it. I may add it in, but when I get a chance to train, it will be night time.
One thing though, how would I do long to short training thing to this one? Would it be start at the highest volume, and shortest rest. Then decrease volume, and increase rest?
Comancho9 you really need to read the thread. These issues are discussed. Alternatives have been suggested to the traditional long-to-short method. It has been referred to here as “concurrent” development. The volume and recovery times don’t vary much from week one to week 51. It’s a different concept. Get into it, you might like it.
kk
I agree - this is a relatively new, but MOST enjoyable concept … maybe not for you, kitkat, but for us, using it for the first time! The athletes (in my group) AND the coach (myself!) enjoy this way of training! And I am looking forward to the results next year, especially with my “star” athlete - in the CG. Also with a junior, who will be going to Beijing for WJ. (Did you see the timetable for CG, kitkat? NO REST DAY between the SF and F of the 400m! It will be a disaster for those athletes who did not prepare for 3 x 400m in 3 days.)
I will complete the first 4 weeks of the “transition” period this coming Saturday, and I can promise you all - everything in this thread (the posts from kitkat) is true.
Kitkat recommended no meetings during these 4 weeks - with two of my juniors, I had no choice; they had to run in a school meet. But as predicted, they could not produce fast times. The others in my group were not allowed to compete - except for odd relays in between. I will keep you updated about their performances, once they start with competitions.
All coaches AND athletes - it will be worth while to MAKE TIME to read through the whole thread - these ideas, next to those of Charlie, will produce CHAMPIONS!!
(Don’t be at ease, kitkat and Charlie, my questions for the way forward will follow. I do not have answers on ALL my questions, yet!!)
He split 21.58sec, which means he finished in 22.80sec for an efficient differential of only 1.22sec and a final time of 44.38. This was a third-round result by the way, backling up from a 44 effort a day earlier. He backed up to run 44.5 a day or two later.
kk
As I have previously indicated, I have completed the 4 week “transition” cycle with my athletes yesterday. They ran a 4 x 300m relay event, and managed to do very well - finished with a good running style, stayed in rhythm, did not loose form, etc. I was impressed.
But now, the way forward? We have a local meet beginning of December, and our first important meeting will be mid December. After that from 13 January, national meetings every Friday until our National Championships mid February.
My planning:
(1) 3 weeks back on the 6 week GPP cycle - faster than before (emphasis on 2nd 200m of race)
(2) First 400m individual race beginning of December.
(3) 2 weeks (up to mid Dec) individual preparation - speed, speed end and special end - faster than race speed.
Questions:
(1) The session 5 x 200m - do you rather stop if the athlete cannot keep up the 200’s at 23 - 23,5 OR do you concentrate on the volume and let the athlete completes the session, regardless of times?
(2) The session 2 (300+150) OR 2 (2 x 200) - with the 2’ rest in between - is the 2’ rest not too long? Kitkat - did you ever make the rest shorter - e.g. 90" or 1’? Or do you prefer to stay with 2’? What are the ideal times for this session - if you have 44" in mind?
(3) Acceptable to stay with training: 2 days, 1 rest day, 3 days per week?
(4) WT - when do you change it to 2x per week? More power?
(5) Functional strength - e.g. jumps, circuit training, med ball … do they have a place here?
(6) In the last 2 weeks before the first important competition - what are the ideals for 300m?
(7) Did you ever do 350m - or no further as 300m?
What do you think of the above mentioned planning? (After the meet middle of Dec, we can plan for the next 8 weeks until the Nationals.)
I just want to add - although we are suppose to be in spring time, we have AWFUL weather - strong winds, rain, etc. Up to now, we have managed to cancel only a FEW sessions due to the weather. We survive!!!
I don’t know how your group (inc your Comm Games chance) is handling the work, but the 300m relay sounds like they’re showing the ability to maintain good technical form which is one of the most important outcomes from the GPP and transition phases.
I would probably have inserted a little Rest and Test phase, probably a week just to freshen them up a bit and let them get their legs back, take a security policy against injury. You can also get an idea of your squad leader’s current 300 best (standing start).
If the speed is coming up nicely, yes I’d consider going back into 3 weeks of the GPP phase, but which three weeks? You have to make that call since you’re on the spot.You are the only one who can see what they still need and you have to make that call against the time-line through to your Com Games trials.
You are not going to get everything you want constructed before the trials. You will either not get the endurance targets ( ie 3x3x300 in sub 44sec on synth; 6x200 in 23sec or faster) or you will run out of time to reach you max velocity objectives and become stable and comfortable in that speed band.
So resign yourself now to having to compromise. You’ll be very fortunate (with weather, health, injury, venue access, personal issues, national federation imperatives etc) to complete your perfect program leading into a major. But that in itself is normal.
The important thing now is that you work toward speed coming up. Strength without speed is not going to do the job for you.
A to Qs:
Depending on the time-line for your season, I try to keep the 5x200 reps and target time but expanding the recovery times. Try to jog between the first few reps, then walk or take a rest. If you’re talking about target times for your top guy, sometimes they will drift out of the target zone because of a pacing misjudgement, or maybe because he didn’t commit to the acceleration phase. Tell him to go hard in the first 50m and cruise the rest. That’s a simulation of the 400m race strategy anyway. He just needs to get moving quick enough to elevate his hips so that his ground contact time is reduced and your athlete is able to establish a functional and (therefore) economic running action.
Sometimes I’d break the 5x200 into two sets of 3x200 and then 2x200 with a 10min or so break between and try to keep reps in 23sec.
Sometimes your athletes will be down on energy due to burning candle at both ends (having a few late nights, not eating nutritious food - although I almost gave up on that in the early 80s when I saw Don Quarrie dining routinely at Crystal Palace McDonalds).
Sometimes the athlete just isn’t recovering from previous sessions due to lack of rehab (massage, triggerpoint therapies, spas, etc). Rehab/regeneration must be done as often as possible.
And as implied above, sometimes there are elements of the program your athlete is just not going to master this time around. The next time he goes through the cycles of work, he will do better. If this was easy, there would be gold medallists everywhere.
AT this stage of your time-line though I would seriously consider reducing the 5x200 to 2x2x200m. Or if you want a bridge to that and you want an element more leaning toward strength, go to 3x200m in low or sub-23sec. (off sub-2min recovery).
Rest periods between first and second reps of 300+150 and 200m+200m.
I’d keep the rest periods as they are due to my personal experience with the program. I was always fearful I would produce a good 500m or 600m runner and a sluggish 400m runner.
Ideal times: These sets I found were rarely consistent week in, week out. That was because the energy demands were great overall and each week you might find one session was a little off the boil. Tracking directly to a 44sec 400m was more psychological I think. You provide the elements of training, targeting times etc, which theoretically should arm your athlete with 44sec guns, but if he doesn’t commit early and throughout the race, he’d not going to get his 44sec even when he’s fully freshened up.
But you know from your target models that he’s got to be able to cruise through the opening 200m in mid 21-sec and he’s got to be able to run sub-24sec for the backup 200m. He’s also got to be able to run 300m in low 32sec or faster. So this info informs the way you load and weight your sessions. (Back in 93 my best guy did a pre-departure time trial over 300m around two bends, one straight in 31.5 handtimed rounded up. Unfortunately got extremely sick :mad: in Oslo and had to withdraw from Stuttgart worlds).
The ideal 300 + 150 session therefore would be something like 32sec + 16sec, but in training you’d be happy with 33 + 18 because great competitors are mostly going to save their great performances for competition.
In the 2x 200+200 ideally you’re asking for 21.5 + sub-22sec.
My top guy mostly saved his seering runs in 200 + 200 for sessions when he could take a much longer recovery time between reps, at least 10mins. And mostly during the leadup to a major tournament, he preferred to test his strength by moderating the set so that he would run the 400m race model split (say 21.5) and then, off 2mins, try to negative split the backup rep. This was a set that was tough but didn’t leave him torn down and it was obviously good race modelling and conditioning preparation.
BUT NONE OF IT MEANS ANYTHING IF YOUR GUY CANNOT GET THROUGH 300M IN 32SEC.
You need to keep his speed thread building toward 32sec and set your schedule so that he has a couple of months in that 32sec zone so that he tolerates it really well. That speed development thread must come the day after each of his two rest days per week.
You don’t need to run seering 300m efforts on both of those speed development days, but at least on one of the days. The other day can be 120 up to 250m into and out of the 400m turns on the back-straight or wherever the wind is favourable that day.
Not sure what you mean here. I would just stay in the safety-first rhythm of 2 days train, 1 day rest, two or three days train, 1 day rest. (The third day straight of training is usually race modelling down at tempo for technical correction - usually rehearsing all the bends in the 400m, coming off the bend and then entering it, particularly transiting from the backstraight when you go through the 200m start zone and make that 90-degree left moving at 10.3sec pace).
WT, If the weights is leaving your guy too tired for track, drop one session, or back off the legs, or reduce the total reps. Or apply all three options simultaneously and if the opportunity arises, pop in a couple of sessions where you drop the quality and up the volume, but never by too much. We never went more than 6 sets of 6 reps in accumulation sessions and then the intensity was down to around 80 per cent of 1rmax.
IN WEIGHTS IT’S NOT THE KILOS THAT KILL IT’S THE REPS . You can lift pretty heavy, even on an extended in-season maintenance schedule, so long as you reduce the volume of repetitions. So I might use 8 reps to warmup, then jump up in weight and down in reps to 4, then jump up in kilos again and reduce reps to 2 or one and so on. So he might do a workout on cleans, or squats or bench and in any of those he would not raise the bar more than 18 times in that routine which would include the 8 reps warmup. Those singles at the top of your routine will help keep your athlete pretty strong and won’t tear him down. It’s the reps that destroy, not the poundage.
I should advise that my top guy was forbidden from squatting by his chiropractor due to a low back problem. It was felt that loading the spine was an unacceptable risk, so he did hamstring curls at high speed and leg extensions at high speed on the Keiser pneumatic machines (same as Mike Powell did before going wr long jump). MOst physiotherapists use Keiser for rehab. Much better than the machines which are computerised and far more expensive but leave your muscles corrugated. We also did leg-presses and supplemented with hip-flexor machine as well as all the GPP hill sprints which really light up the glutes if run correctly.
Jumps, circuits, med…I used them more in GPP and transition. I was always terrified that the plyos would bring on injuries. (And I’m speaking as an ex-long jumper).
One plyo I did routinely encourage was 2 x 80m high skips on the grassy infield as a component of warmup on the two speed-development days. I looked for triple extension. Sprinting is the ultimate plyometric activity anyway. But I found the high alternative leg skips encouraged full extension of the hips, knee and ankle joints and added that little bit of vertical power. These high skips are really just “take-offs”. Done as suggested, over the course of a season, they can be quite helpful. Some athletes benefitted from speed bounds, but so few could do this without losing the pelvis neutrality I found it led to jamming of the lumbar spine and we lost more (due to inflamation, injury, tension and time-out) than we gained.
He needs to be able to at least roll a 300m in low-32sec, so you need to adjust your schedule to meet that time-line. By then he will have the strength, but he needs the sharpness and the finesse to be able to utilise his newfound strength.
Yes, sometimes out to 350. Often 320. Maybe 350 would have been better but it’s getting so close to 400m you may as well have just raced 400m and received the reward.
There was one session my main guy ran 350 (43.3sec), 300 (36.2), 250 (29.2), 200 (21.8), 150 (17.4) threw up, 100 (10.5), walk back same distance, turnaround and go. That was two weeks before the first domestic grand prix of 1990.
Another session you might like on a speed development day. Due to speeds involved, for safety-first reasons this was done on a speed-development day (ie, the day following a rest day, so that the athlete was relatively fresh and rested):
2 x 3 x 150, remainder of lap walk recovery between reps, then 35mins rest between sets.
He did all reps mid-to-low 15sec from a three-step rolling start.
Another similar set seeking the same sort of outcomes:
150 (15.2sec), jog 250 then 150 (15.2sec), then jog 250 then 150 (15.5) then 30sec rest, then 60m, 50m, 40m, 30m, 20m. (looking for triple extension and vertical thrust in the short the backup reps).
UNDER the Planning and Periodisation category there is currently some outstanding information by Charlie in a thread titled “High Intensity training volume”. The reps and recoveries here would be the sort of training I think should most often be used during 400m training transition into and including the competition phases.
The full recovery sprints would be sited once or twice a week on the day following a Rest day to give the athlete every chance to deliver a performance not prejudiced by residual fatigue carried forward from an earlier session (such as split sets directed at replicating the come-home end of a 400m so as to build tolerance).
*Sprint Coach, how is you main man progressing in his move to 400? Is he finding any rhythm yet? When he feels that coming on, his times will drop. But you need to create the conditions - on the appropriate timeline for your season - to give him his legs back so that rhythm at PB race velocity can be re-established.
kk
Hi Quik,
I’m not sure what else you’ve been doing (other than the tempo) , but on the face of it I think it might be a jolt to go from accelerations (up to 60m) and then straight up to distances of 150-200m in a backup situation.
Maybe you could fit one session per week (or a mini block of two sessions per week for, say, two weeks) of full recovery extended sprints of something like 40, 80, 120, 160. Maybe do one set with full recovery. I know it’s special speed endurance but I reckon that’s what you need more than anything to run a good 300m.
I’d be thinking to extend the range (“short-to-long”) over which you can hold a high percentage of your max velocity (as it is right now) before going into severe split-runs.
What I’d be concerned about should you go from stuff like 5x200 tempo into 200+100 (or any of the other examples) is that your running “may” be a bit too “soft” from about 70 through 200 or 250.
kk
KitKat,
Thanks for the response.
I have found that throughout the course of the year my max veleocity doesnt seem to change much whether or not I train it specifically. The speed work I have done so far has been accels up to 60 as well as 3x3x50 with 2/5’ rest. Also judging from the 300 and 150 time trials I did I think I am the fastest and strongest I have ever been this early in the year. I think this is due to the fact that I did intensive tempo, hills accompanying lactate work for much longer this year so far. So my only concern right now is finishing the 300 strong. Last year my splits were 23.0 and 13.1 for the 300 in my first competition and I think that 13.1 is a bit slow and needs to drop to say around 12.6 in order for me to reach my goal of sub 36.
Comments?
As a teacher - as I have mentioned before - time is not your own … especially at the end of the year with all the marking, lists, reports, etc. Luckily I have a December holiday in sight - no sun, no sea (the usual holiday), but HARD training … for my athletes to be ready for the CG. At least, no normal school days to interfere with coaching!
That was the reason for my “golden silence” the past days/weeks. From now on, the communication channels will be OPENING!
My athlete is on his way to Melbourne. He LOVES the programme, he experiences improvement - and above all, when he has a bad day, he no longer sulks. He knows tomorrow, or even the day after, the results will change.
One example: Up to now, the best results for the session 2 (2 x 200), were 45,2 and 45,5. This week, after a hard session on Monday, I have decided to do only one set of 2 x 200 - and after that 3 x 150m (slow/med/fast). The reason - my athlete will run his first 400m in this season on Saturday. And I don’t want him to be “dead” at the first race of the season! You will NEVER believe the result - 44,31!!!
After Saturday - a local meeting - the next (National) meeting will be on 16 December. After that date, we have about a month (with Christmas and New Year in between!) until the next National meeting.
My questions will follow!
At this stage I am VERY positive - and so is my athlete. He never “dies” in the last part of any race (training) any more. He keeps his rhythm and, very important, even when he is tired, he still can accelerate. Furthermore - something that is MORE important - he is in control … of his mind AND his body. It does not matter that he did not compete at this stage - as he experiences the results in the training, his confidence improves and therefore his mind-set as well. He handles EVERY session with great confidence - and whether it is hard or not, he once more enjoys athletics!
I am looking forward to see what the results will be when there are different rounds. My athletes are prepared to handle that - with the 2 x 6 weeks GPP. At this stage, we are still in a phase of 1 rest day, 2 days training, 1 rest day, 3 days training per week. I feel this works!
I will keep the Forum updated with results and planning for the way forward. I do hope that other coaches will gain knowledge with our discussions. I have certainly learned a LOT!!
Hi Sprint Coach
It’s wonderful to read your findings. They are consistent with my own when I was actively coaching and had the sort of great talent who could make the most of the program. Your 44.3 for 200+200 sounds like a nice race model of 21.3+23.0.
Just a thought regards the period entering competition: If you haven’t already done so, you should routinely now introduce a more specific element of “race modelling” into your training, perhaps twice or three times a week.
The most obvious day to do this on is the last training day of the week, and also on other days as a glorified warm-down when the difficult stuff has been accomplished or in lieu of the difficult stuff if your athlete comes up tender or tired.
The race modelling as I’m sure I wrote elsewhere at some time, would consist of “grooving” on the pace and the mechanics of the ultimate race goal for your current season.
That might mean practising the first 100m of the 400m, initially from a three-point start and eventually from blocks. The purpose here would be to get him responding in a predictable and therefore (for his own confidence) reliable way through a gradual acceleration pattern until he is fully upright. This should occur where the javelin runway intersects the first bend of the 400m race - at about 50m to 60m. Watch from the infield (yeah, watch out for javelins too :). If he is not displaying triple extension then call off the run. He must reach that by 60m. In a race he just has to keep that in mind as a primary objective because the acceleration phase has the twin purposes of establishing momentum sufficient for him to establish the mechanics he will hold together for the rest of the race.
Don’t allow him to just run and gun off the quads. That’ll have disastrous consequences for the home straight.
He must establish clean and efficient movement by the top of his acceleration phase. Then he can pretty much switch into “auto-pilot.”
So you may wish to rehearse the acceleration and lift into TE maybe three times in a particular session before resting him properly and then taking him through the next three corners of the race (the three 4x1 relay exchange areas roughly-speaking).
He needs to be upright, or with a very slight forward lean (maybe only a couple of inches forward lean - NOT bending from the waist). That just assists a bit with directing force. He needs then to be in this nice tall position (TE) before he enters any bend and he needs to hold this position through the bend and hopefully gain a little “sling-shot” effect using the centrifugal force to throw him down the next straight (or comparatively straight) section of the track.
The key to this is his (your) awareness of mechanics on the bend. Most people will tend to hunker down as they come into a bend and try to accelerate through it by dropping onto the quads and gunning it. This is not good and will have severe negative consequences for fuel efficiency and muscle function later in the race.
The 400m is cunning running. It’s a lot about efficiency and relaxation as well as power and pace all bonded together through rhythm.
The correct technique around a bend requires an awareness that the inside leg (left leg) achieve full triple extension all the way around the bend. From the infield again, you can observe whether he is achieving this. If not, advise him, call it to him during the run so he can self-correct and achieve TE.
[Oddly enough, correct arm action can often be a key to keeping leg mechanics open and efficient. Hands should reach no higher than shoulder height in front and (post initial acceleration-phase at least) elbows should maintain at around 90-degrees. Don’t allow elbows to jack-knife closed frontside at the top of the upswing since an open, natural swing of arms helps stablize overall mechanics and control ground forces.]
You must ensure he does not drop the left hip towards the infield, or bend the left knee (a natural consequence of dipping or “dropping” the left hip infield). Once they break at the knee on the bend it’s awfully hard to climb back up tall again (because they are often by that stage already tired and sometimes tense), although if it happens he can re-establish TE you should congratulate him for “saving” the run. Better yet however not to need to rescue anything by getting the position established by the top of the acceleration phase in the first 60m of the race.
In race modelling I usually did 2 runs of about 100m [ 50m buildup into and 50m maintained through and out of each turn ] (to rehearse the actual bend mechanics entering at race pace and then maintaining TE exiting the critical part of the bend), so that amounted to a total of 6 x 100m effectively. These were done for rhythm and through that speed came.
Once you create the conditions for a good opening 100m the rest of the race model probably does not need timing. The Opening 100m time may be somewhere between 11.1 manual and 11.3sec manual. That would be a reasonable starting time for someone looking to go low 45 and faster for 400m. My guy sometimes went through in 10.9sec manual, but his fastest 400m times were achieved from a slightly more conservative opening 100m segment.
kk
PS:
The “race modelling” - particularly around the first and second (4x100) exchange zones - became the primary part of my group’s pre-race warmup from club through to Olympic finals races.
PPS:
The aforementioned “breaking at the left knee” on the bends was worth a full second over the course of a 400m race. Sometimes it explains a slow time when you may have anticipated better. Sometimes this “collapse” would be triggered early-season by severe competition (distracting pressure) particularly at the most crucial 200m start zone.
PPPS: Good luck to your 400m man this Saturday. I’m sure you will be getting as much data as possible from his first race. I used to get reliable people to grab 100m segmental splits at each bend. That liberated me to observe the athlete’s mechanics and flow efficiency which told me as much or more than the splits. Very excited for you. Sounds like it’s going to be a season of fun coming up fast.
kk
We will have to wait for 16 December. Apart from my athlete, there was only one 15 year old boy (with a PB of 53") entered in the 400m. The race was cancelled. And we were so READY to GO!
At that stage, we have decided to do a time trial over 300m - 32,45 (hand time). For the first time since 2003, his 300m is below 33".
In spite of the disappointment, we still are VERY positive!
Thanks for the interest!
Furthermore - Thank you very much for the extra info that I have received. I will certainly work on the RM during the coming weeks. I have a few questions … but firstly, I want to “take you out of your misery”!
Sprint Coach, well done if you don’t mind me saying so. You keep pulling the right rein. What you did is exactly the correct thing in that situation.
Nothing tardy about 32.5sec first up. Did he run from blocks?
He’s now got the sort of speed to 300 he needs for you to set up some split-runs that can really develop lactate tolerance to simulate and prepare him to go 44-low (or better!) in a real race because he’s going to need that ultimately.
With some of the Aussies already posting 45.5 and the Kenyans undoubtedly will field at least a couple of high 44 guys, the Comm Games final may take a 44.5 for the win like it did when Iwan Thomas won it in KL94 (when they had a rest day before the final).
But from what you’re revealing I’d say your guy is tracking for that in a multi-round situation.
with the spilts runs you target the 1st 200m at the estimated race pace, on the 2nd rep do you ever do this from a walk in start or always a standing start…
Either. It depends on how beat up your athlete is at the time of the backup. Everything is contextual. You can construct equally reliable models, although the walkup rep will often be faster (assuming the accleration pattern is as aggressive as in standing starts) therefore your total combined time for the set will usually be faster (than if you used a standing start on the backup). I used both at various stages of the year for various situations and depending on the individual.
But these issues are matters of relative inconsequence compared to getting right the event training philosophy, the annual timeline, the phases, the implementation and loading of the many performance threads, the quality-quantity balance, prioritising of mechanics and designing a program which permits mechanics imperatives such as triple extension (hip, knee & ankle) to be implemented all year round, race strategies and race modelling.
Nanny69 the answers to most if not all the questions your raising with regards the program you’ve posted on the 400 thread are in the lactate threshold thread. The LT thread is where I’ll probably restrict my two cents worth most of the time. ‘Time’ being the x-factor for me these days. If you read the LT pages you’ll understand I’m not a fan of long reps unless they are run as a race/time-trial, so no need to ask me what I think about a session like 3 x 500m. kk
This setup looks OK. I would shorten up the rest intervals on the first tempo day. Maybe up to a minute after the 300s, 45 seconds after 200s and 30 seconds after 100s.
Don Quarrie dining routinely at Crystal Palace McDonalds).
. You can lift pretty heavy, even on an extended in-season maintenance schedule, so long as you reduce the volume of repetitions. So I might use 8 reps to warmup, then jump up in weight and down in reps to 4, then jump up in kilos again and reduce reps to 2 or one and so on. So he might do a workout on cleans, or squats or bench and in any of those he would not raise the bar more than 18 times in that routine which would include the 8 reps warmup. Those singles at the top of your routine will help keep your athlete pretty strong and won’t tear him down. It’s the reps that destroy, not the poundage.
pneumatic machines (same as Mike Powell did before going wr long jump). MOst physiotherapists use Keiser for rehab. Much better than the machines which are computerised and far more expensive but leave your muscles corrugated. We also did leg-presses and supplemented with hip-flexor machine as well as all the GPP hill sprints which really light up the glutes if run correctly.
Come in Sprint Coach - how’d he do? The SUSPENSEISKILLINGME!