Thanks trk400,
It is very interesting to see how successful coaches work, and under the prevailing circumstances you are unquestionably successful. Thanks for taking time to post in such detail, which is the only way the rest of us can understand and learn from your experience. kk 
KK- check your e-mail in-box
Got it! Hmmm “Secrets to a sub-40sec 400m (and that’s for women!)” . . . catchy title.
Intriguing. I’ll read on and report back asap.
kk
The other thing I should add is UMinn coach P. Lundin has great knowledge. and can give lots of info. Ultimately I have found it is not so much the program but the willingness of the athlete to work hard . Pretty much anyone could coach my athletes and do as well if not better than me. Because they will do anything you ask and are very dedicated. The men and women that pay attention to the little things and are willing to sacrifice will always make a coach look good.
Or, trk400, its the coach that the athletes respect and due to that, want his repect and praise, to do so, they do as they are asked.
sprint_coach, thanks for the response! I enjoy your posts, as they always show your enthusiasm for what you are doing with your athletes! Needless to say the approach you are describing is of necessity to all of us, I think, as you never know what the next day can bring out.
My guys are either about to start SPP I, or have started it already and overall getting towards indoors, hopefully. You see, for them 200 m is like the marathon! They are short sprinters… Any tips to keep them humble? 
Make sure you let us know how things are going over there! Keep enjoying it! 
trk400, thanks for your posts! A question, if I may: I can see your limitations in doing proper speed work (i.e., weather, etc) and how you are trying to compensate perhaps (i.e., power hills?), but why did you feel the need to switch from full to partial recovery in the longer hill sessions?. Sorry if this has already been answered somewhere in your posts! Thanks!
To nikoluski; The partial recovery on the hill runs actually happened by accident. I am now working with a few women 400h people who are trying to move up to the 800 for indoor. In order to get the correct amount of volume of hill running in before it got dark out I had to shorten recovery times. This I would have done eventually anyways. As the 800 is much more aerobic in nature. And my two women have virtually no aerobic background. The thing was they are both very strong phisically. One can squat 275x2 reps currently and clean over 135. So they were able to power their way up the hill and still run pretty fast even though the rest was shorter. And the next day they said that they felt fine.
So when the 400 runners went to the hill I decided to try the same thing. I had pretty good results. Plus my young runners who are not of the same strength and fitness level as the older kids were able to handle the hills easier also. Not running full out seemed to leave just enough fuel in the tank for them to finish the wo without feeling totally spent.
Keep in mind we are still running pretty hard there is only a few seconds difference between the fullout runs and what they are doing now.
I think we may also do a wo where we go fullout for 1or 2 with max rest then do a series where we use less intensity and go slightly slower. Hills give you many oppurtunities to be creative. I’m still thinking of things to do for the upcoming months. We have also done hill run jog to the track and run a rep on the track, then back to the hill. Of course you cant have snow on the ground for this wo. I hope this answers a few of your questions.
It does, trk400, thanks! It just shows how different approaches can be equally successful! If nothing else varied stimuli are provided to one’s system and progression is made one way or the other…
Sanya Richards’ 2006 Season!!!
200 m
22.62w 1 Arlington TX 1 Apr
22.42w 1 Carson CA 21 May
22.25 1 Gateshead 11 Jun
22.35 2 Stockholm 25 Jul
22.52 2 Birmingham 20 Aug
22.17 PB 2 Stuttgart 9 Sep
22.23 1 Athens 17 Sep
400 m
52.10i 1 Boston MA 28 Jan
51.76i 1 Boston MA 25 Feb
51.28i SB 1 Boston MA 26 Feb
52.25i 1 Moskva 10 Mar
52.46i 4 Moskva 11 Mar
50.44 1 Johnson Waco TX 22 Apr
49.89 1 Kingston 6 May
50.89 1 Eugene OR 28 May
49.82 1 Bislett Oslo 2 Jun
49.27 1 Indianapolis IN 24 Jun
49.73 1 Saint-Denis 8 Jul
49.31 1 Roma 14 Jul
49.05 1 London 28 Jul
50.18 1 Zürich 18 Aug
50.02 1 Bruxelles 25 Aug
49.81 1 Berlin 3 Sep
49.25 1 Stuttgart 10 Sep
48.70 AR 1 Athína 16 Sep
[b]The Duration Of Her Season Is Impressive, Sanya Richards’ Racing Sequence From January To September.
The Obvious Question As Regards Training Program Theory Is: When Does She Do The Gpp/base For Such A Long Competitive Phase? It’s not just that she’s racing for such a long time, but that she’s winning at world class for that entire period.
Obviously Oct-Nov-Dec Are The GPP, But She’s Going To Be In Transition Very Soon After Xmas To Be Racing That Well Indoors By Late January. Worth A Discussion?? Kk[/b]
Richards was unbeaten in 13 finals over the full lap, succeeded in her Jackpot chase, and capped her season with one of the most phenomenal performances of the season: her 48.70 U.S. record at the World Cup in Athens, finally breaking the 48.83 set by Valerie Brisco at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, before Richards was born. Her dash in Athens was the fastest in the world since the 1996 Olympic Games.
Looks like she is doing 2 races or so a month. Perhaps these early runs are part of her training and she doesn’t really cut back too much until june? So much for no speed work if that is the case!
Perhaps the approach itself allows such an extended competitive period, as there doesn’t seem to be any (narrow) peak and the aerobic component -if this is the case with their training system- supplements that, too, as in purely endurance athletes and their racing plan. Wasn’t M.J.'s case similar? Or J.W.'s this season except his little injury half-way (?) through? Having said that, there is a gap during June and a 3- or so week gap beginning of August in her case (and she came very strong after that) and most other races are “packed”. July was full on! Others?
I clearly remember thinking in myself in Moscow, what is she doing here? She didn’t look much concerned about the competition. It was really obvious she wasn’t in shape, especially against women who were specifically prepared : Krasnomovets was supreme indoors but didn’t compete outdoors (injury? pregnancy?). I thought Stambolova would break the old WR but her tactic (slow starter) really doesn’t suit indoor 400m. Amertil was prepared for this comp as she wanted to do well in Melbourne CG, except that between the 2 competitions, she had to comeback to USA, so jet lag killed her.
Anyway there was a reason why Sanya was there but i don’t know it.
I spoke to Hart in Bruxelles, he said it will be the last year he plans such heavy season for SR and JW. This season had no major Champ so JW chased GL jackpot, but next years it will be impossible to do all the GL and try to win WC or OG. The choice will go to major Champs.
Is this much different to someone like Michael Johnson coming out early in the season and running mid 45s? training through it? And then finishing the season with a mid 43s?
It seems very similar that when you are ahead of everyone else, you can still be very competitive even in the middle of your training. Obviously incorporating the racing into the training. And then, as the season winds down, so does the training and a taper occurs, and then they streak away from the rest of the field.
MJ could do it as he was so much better than anyone else
Sanya can
Asafa probably can
El Gerrouj could do something similar - come out running ‘only’ 3:35 in the beginning, train through, and end up with 3:28!
That’s not the whole of it though. Since at least the early 1980s there have been athletes in almost every event, going right down their top-10 event-list, who have had these highly successful and very long seasons.
Their performances are at near-pb level five to 10 times in a year. Track & Field News annual rankings edition is forsensic in its identification of this fact.
There are Specificity implications to attaining and then maintaining performance at world class from January to September.
Therefore there are program design implications.
The long-to-short concept requiring a broad-base pyramid design (in it’s traditional form as espoused by many if not most coach-education papers) would not easily facilitate an excellent sprint performance in January.
That seems to be so when you think that post-season the athlete has probably taken at least a couple of weeks’ rest before returning to the program.
Which in Sanya’s case might mean she would - based on this year’s racing schedule - resume training at the very earliest on November 1. She would then be required to train in such a way as to produce a world top-4 performance indoors by January 28.
If nothing else the time schedule suggests she maintained quite a high degree of race-specific fitness throughout the GPP.
Even to consider the “break” from her 400m races on March 11 to April 22 as an opportunity to “return to training” (to extend or “top-up” her strength base) there is the matter of the April 1 200m race in 22.6 (albeit, windy).
So the notion that there was little or no race-pace training going on during the GPP is open to question.
I just read the “Train slower to race faster” thread and the article that goes with it. Now you can’t trust articles but based on the information presented in it the picture i was getting of the programme was that it comprised an extensive tempo base (8x200 in 28s with 90s rest) which is used to “recharge” the atheletes - e.g. get them generally fit combined with speed work over short distances (it talks specifically about 60m and in the training journal posted on the site the guy talks about Wariner running flying 20s or whatever). It also talks about splitting the year into stages and starting over each phase with the high volume of tempo. So basically every time they finish a phase they have time to recover thier CNS, detoxification system becuase they return to non lactic based workouts.
So what i see is a high low system but with the low part focused around strength endurance/tempo endurance. Instead of making it deliberately easy they overload by reducing rest. So the low isn’t quite as low and the high isn’t quite as high (in terms of overall vol x intensity) but perhaps the drain on the CNS in total is about the same?
For me this is like going to altitude. It reduces the intensity but increases or maintains the energy system load. Interestingly i recently heard that Kerron Klement used Altitude training quite a bit (and others have used hypoxic training to induce a parsympathetic response in thier sprinters).
When Hart says he trains slow he is talking about in comparison to traditional 400m programmes. So less 500,400,300,200 flat out off of short breaks - totally killing the athlete after the first 2 reps and then getting them to hold on - and more a gradual decline. In essence he is giving the cns more time to recover and then letting them fly over short distances to keep thier natural speed. To me this all looks like a very interesting twist on the CFTS!
This is not very hard to believe. Talking to a very successful high jump coach who does the same thing. After the end of year break they do quite a bit of technical jumping work because they carry their specific fitness through from the last season so why not take advantage of it! Therefore, i can’t see why you couldn’t do a bit of GPP but maintain the speed you had from the year before and be in a position to kock out a 52 indoors.
In fact this reminds me of the problem one of the athletes i work with but don’t coach directly had last year. They ran PBs at the very end of the outdoor season, then after a GPP came out indoor and broke thier outdoor PB in the 3rd race. However, when they went into a hard block of lactic training they came out of it for the outdoors slower. Eventually they decided to return to thier more aerobic based GPP training and then again broke thier PB at the end of the outdoor season off of pretty much extensive tempo! What i am trying to say is that as maximal speed is less of an issue in the 400m perhaps maintainance of speed from the previous season + increase in “strength” is all that is needed to get you ready for the indoors? However, by march you start to loose speed (perhaps because of the higher volume of lactic or speed work) so you need to top this up but not overdo it? This thread has really got me thinking!
There is also the consideration, as I think you allude, of the CFTS “rule” of Separation of high and low Intensity, rather than confusing them.
Wariner’s reported routine set of 8x200 in 28sec off 90sec is certainly adhering to Charlie’s principal of Separation of Intensities (given Wariner’s 200 pb of about 20-flat el).
Playing devil’s advocate against my own program, it may be argued the 6x200 in 23sec off about 1min 40sec jog 200m recoveries was getting too close for comfort to the max velocity band. This session would appear significantly tougher than 8x200 in 28sec off 90sec.
Then again, repping 200s in 23sec should not “confuse” the body if it is capable of going sub-20 on the fly.
And the fact he (the best guy I ever worked with) was able to go sub-20 (hand-timed in training off a 3-step walk up start in the Olympic village) (and 31.5 ht for 300 around two bends) suggests that repping in 23sec did not retard his speed development.
Perhaps these athletes “raced themselves fit”, which in essence is special endurance training.
There is certainly an element of that, but it is so in every case.
The thing the “successful” programs do have in common is they can all produce an athlete ready for a world class performance straight out of a training phase.
That of course has a lot to do with the qualities of the athlete over and above the specifics of his/her program.
But so often I’ve seen athletes dominate the domestic scene in southern hemisphere nations (Brazil, Sth Afr, Aust, NZ) and qualify for Olympic selection (with usually a mark that should get them into the top-16 [semi-final], the criteria for selection in most of those countries and elsewhere when first past the post is not the solitary basis for selection).
Then they are first-round eliminations at the major tournament during the northern hemisphere summer season.
Yet the coaches will preen themselves and expect homage like some kind of guru during their own domestic season, insisting it was their program which produced the fine performance.
In fact most often it is a combination of several months of weekly competition (specificity) underpinned by the aforementioned training program of non-specific general conditioning.
Five months after their domestic season wraps up they bounce into Europe, the specific fitness of their domestic season long since lost, and they get trashed at the Games.
Then again - and I’ll use the example of the best guy I worked with because it is a factual situation I can personally corroborate - this guy ran 44.3 and had only three or four previous races that year (47.1, 46.2 and 46.1, the best being the 46.1 six weeks before the Games where he hit a sequence of 44s).
Having said that, I have absolutely no doubt that had he been able to get clear of injury in time to race freely in Europe that year he would have popped out some 44s before heading to the Games and then we might have seen some real fun at the Games.
He would indicate that 18 months later when he ran 44.60 in his fourth 400m in exactly 28hrs to win the Com Games (where, incidentally, a Jamaican named Trevor Graham failed to reach the 400m final. In fact he may have been eliminated in the first or second round).