Will this tapering be exactly the same as before the Nationals?
Thanks and all the best!
It worked before - therefore I won’t change the “recipe”! Maybe small changes, if we need to.
Thanks for the “best wishes”!
How often would you use tempo work for HS 100-400 in a 12 week season? Would the duration of this season be considered a micro, meso, macrocycle. What are these anyways and how are they divided?
If you are having meets all season, you’d probably want to do about 2 speed sessions for training plus the meet (total 3 speed/high intensity sessions per week). You’d probably want to do tempo work on the other days and be sure to include at least 1 day of rest per week.
A microcycle is generally a week.
A mesocycle is a phase of training (ex: GPP then SPP mesocycle). A lot of exercise books will list mesocycles like:
General Conditioning= meso1
Strength Development=meso2
Speed Development=meso3
Competition/Peaking=meso4
A macrocycle is a large block of training… a season, a year, or even 4-years for olympic athletes.
You’ve done this before 
. Elegantly explained.
I may have missed what you did for your taper if so I apoligize could you post what you did the last 2 weeks to achieve such great results.
trk 400
i think you may need to look back further then 2 weeks to see how sprint coach got the results… but take some time and read the entire thread it truly is a must…
special notice of Kitkats threads and you’ll learn plenty.
I agree! The last 2 weeks before a major race MUST be built on what you have done before. See kitkat’s programmes, where the athlete is prepared from day 1 (GPP) … to run 3 rounds in 2 days!
Furthermore - Michael Johnson’s comment on tapering is - “race and rest” … exactly what kitkat “preaches”.
Therefore - be VERY specific the last 2 weeks. Concentrate on RP, RM and sometimes faster than RP. In between, REST. If the base was good, the results will follow.
For an update, my athlete is still improving. The faster times are coming back. 250 - 26,7, 150 - 15,2 … HT. (Fastest in more than 2 years). My aim is still a sub-20 on the 200m before the 400m-major competition!!
On top of this - at this stage he can handle volume at the fast pace as well. Why did we struggle for SO LONG to get to this!!!
Thanks again to all for listening to my “moan and groan” of the past few weeks!
We feel your pain. 
kk
The thing about the 400 is that perhaps the most important element in sprinting the distance is the athlete’s capacity to maintain a fast cadence.
That sounds an idiotically (is there such a word?) obvious thing, but what I mean by that is that so much success in the 100 and 200 is dependent on a scintillating acceleration phase.
Whereas in the 400 the acceleration velocity really isn’t that big of a deal by comparison.
A 400 guy may struggle to run 200m better than 20.8 off the blocks, but if you send him away from a rolling start he might be able to give you 19.8 and 31.5 etc which would be far better indicators of 400m success.
So it suggests either that this guy needs to put a lot more time and effort into improving his acceleration, or that (since he can roll sub 20, sub 32) he actually does have sufficient acceleration qualities for his specific needs and he is free to invest that additional time and energy saved into something more meaningful to his 400m - the ability to finish the last 100m.
Coaching all events is a balancing act involving time (to train) and energy (brought to the session and expended during the session). But in the 400m the wrong mix can leave you seriously underdone. kk :rolleyes:
This is so true! I have a female athlete I work with but don’t coach directly who runs 53.5. She can’t break 8s for 60m or 12s for the 100m but can run 11.2 electronic from a 10m rolling start. Her ability to lift her bodyweight from the blocks and put out for the first 30m seems to dramatically affect her ability to maintain her speed over the full 100m.
I assume CNS fatigue is proportional to rate of acceleration so for the 400m it would probably be a good idea to avoid very rapid accelerations anway and use the extra CNS energy to maintain cadance at the end of the race. At least that is my thinking at this moment in time…
TC
It has long been a view of mine, supported by some prominent examples I can’t think of right now :rolleyes: , that too many coaches basically throw away talent because the athlete doesn’t perform well in one area, therefore they “must not” have the ability to perform another event (or do the event well with a different approach). Does the athlete have the main attribute required? If so, maybe they can work around their weaknesses.
Just a question that came to my mind reading this.
Is it possible that with improved acceleration trough training, the athlete can get to top speed sooner? Or maybe she can accelerate the same with less energy so she will last longer in the race before “dying” and becausse of that she’ll have a better result?
I think i read allot in this froum about acceleration is a key factor in speed, for speed reserve i am not sure. But maybe you guys can help me out.
Kind of like an acceleration reserve? That is an interesting idea because I was talking to a coach who has a lot of contact with John Smith. He was saying that John Smith trains his athletes like 400m runners in the sense that John appears to have the belief that you should never reach your absolute top speed (e.g. go only to 99.9%). Buffering… Perhaps he has a point?
Always questioning myself!
I was watching the HSI videos again and in the 400m section John talks about “going out hard” to 60m. The reasons he gives are metabolic, “if you don’t use it you loose it”. I assume he means that if you don’t use your ATP-CP system early in the race to get your acceleration done you will have to use other methods of energy production to do it and will have lost your best weapon (ATP-CP) for achieving this goal. What are other people’s thoughts on this idea?
Thanks,
TC
One of my old coaches used to preach this as well (he was from Poland). He had us all start fast, even the first few steps during our warm-up accelerations.
Two things come to my mind,
what is this other system if not the ATP/CP for acceleration, and
what could it possibly be the relationship between this system and the last, say, 50 m?
Make it three ( ), which HSI part talks about the 400 m?
Thanks!
Funny that JS, as an athlete, experimented various tactics and had his best result (440y WR in 44.5, worth 400m in 44.2) with approx. even pace.
As a coach, JS had his best result with Quincy Watts who ran his 43.50 with a 20.9 split…
The acceleration portion uses some different muscle action with more movement around the knee joint, which isn’t done at any other point in the race, so no use saving it.
Also,the top speed in the 100m will almost always be a bit less that the max possible, as it is combined with an aggressive acceleration, whereas an easier start could lead to a momentary higher speed but a lower overall performance (as in Ben’s 12.35m/s in Zurich vs 12.1m/s in Seoul).
I agree with this. Used to take it out passivley in high school… I found out that taking the first 60 or so out aggressive will result in better performance in the 400m. Went from 53.31 9th grade to 51.79 10th grade when I started to ‘get out’ faster!
Recap for metabolism during 400m (highly simplified):
Anaerobie alactic system (ATP and CP) 0-80m
Anaerobie lactic system power (Glykolyse) 50-250m
Anaerobie lactic system capacity 200-370m
Anaerobie system (oxydation) 350m-…
The anaerobie alactic system is of paramount importance because the power of the lactic system depends on it. So there’s a high interest in training the anaerobie alactic system in order to have a high speed reserve and use it during the 400m competition. Analyses of the female WR holder’s 400m races showed that she reached her highest speed in the 30-50m section! The proponents of ideal 800m-type of runners making the best 400m runners forget that Juantorena did 20.3 at 200m (training) and Quirot 23.07 (competition).