Re: How is my 400/200 training. Advice.

Expert Discussion Planning and Periodization
1

My schedule I’m posting is going to be from February to May. I’m currently in high school, a junior, 16, and plan on doing my own training program this year. This current High school doesn’t have a good program, and my season paid for it last season. I talked to my old coach, I went to another high school freshman year, and got this program from him. I started going to this current high school sophomore year, and they don’t know too much about training for track.

Starting in January, I will start distant running while still lifting weights Mon, Wed, and Fri. I’ll phase it in slowly, and phasing out plyos maybe the second week of January. After that, I will begin this program from February, till the end of the season, which should be state.

Mon:
1st week: 6x200m; 2:30 break
2nd week: 6x200m; 2:00 break
3rd week: 6x200m; 1:30 break
4th week: 8x200m; 2:30 break
l
l
l
V
Continue same cycle of break with 10x200, and then bring back down to 8x200 after 10x200 finishes. The second 8x200 is near the end of the season, and assume it follows the same break cycle. Maybe I will change that to 6x200 instead of 8x200. Any ideas?

Tues:
Walk, jog, stride, sprint; in 50m increments. I’m assuming you do this 200m thing twice each lap, but what would you people recommend? At the beginning of the season, do this for 2-3 laps. Near the end, do this for 4-6 laps.

Wed:
500m “Blast”
400m- Around 85%-90%
100m- Blast last 100m
Do this 4 times. Assume rest stays constant throughout season (2:00-3:00), but could be wrong.

Other thing for Wed
600 thing
Good 200
Jog 200
Good 200

Do these two routines on alternate weeks.

Thurs:
8-12 100s with 1:10 break between.
This one I assume many of you will disagree with, but I could be wrong. If you disagree please give me an alternative idea. Also know, I’m weight training on this day.

Weight training

Fri:
300mx4-8
Do 4 near the beginning of the season; bring it up to 8 by the end of the season.

I believe on alternate weeks, they also do a thing where you stride 100 and sprint the last 50m or so; really until form breaks down. The rest of the lap, you jog, and continue this thing for 6 laps.

I believe you do one week, the 300m thing, and the next week, do the 150m thing.

Sat:
Weight training

Sun:
off

I will weight train on Thurs and Sat. It will consist of only the main lifts. That is Bench and Squat will be done on Thurs and Sat. I may add in abs training on Thurs, and Pull up on Sat, or do those on the same day. Volume won’t be that high. Each week will alternate with 3x3, 5x3, 5,3,1 for the main lifts; and continue that cycle with main lifts till end of season.

Also, this schedule is for February. I will take out Wednesday’s training March through May, because that is when meets are. This is the basic schedule, which may vary, do to date changes in meets, or meets being held on another day of the week, besides Wed.

Any ideas, comments, or criticism?

And some more, extra information, I may have to do unattached, because the coach’s at this school are messed up. This guy may say no to everything, even though he knows he doesn’t know much about track, or training for it, to make his ego feel better or something. I will, in that case, go unattached. I have 8 meets lined up, each on Saturday. I may be able to find more later on, but that it for now. Lets assume that this doesn’t occur, and I run for this current school. Thanks for any help.

2

I posted this in sprinting, and havn’t gotten much yet, so maybe this is a better place to post it. Someone already said I need speed work, anyone know how I could do that into this program? Anyone disagree with that advice?

3

You have no real short speed work. You could take a day and have acceleration development and maximum velocity developed that day. Also, the rest of your runs are some form of tempo and not really special endurance. Runs done full speed with full recovery will help you most in developing your speed. There is too much to go into here. Look at the Lactate thread in the sprint section and do some searches on posts from “kitkat.”

4

Well, how about I do speed training on Friday. Considering that I will be having a race every week, til the end of the season, til the end of the season, would speed training be needed when meets start? How about I do speed training Friday, and then when meets start, change Friday to special endurance. I’m not sure what would be the best to go about doing special endurance though.

Actually, when I look at it Thurs looks like a speed training thing. Maybe just change the amount and do that as speed training. When meets start, change that over to something else.

And Friday, when I look at it, already seems like a special endurance kind of thing. 300m are pretty much are all out, with full rest (2:00-4:00). When I look at special endurance thread, this seems to fit what that thread looks like.

Do you disagree?

5

2-4 minutes is not adequate for special endurance unless it is split reps.

6

Although you run the 400m, you still are 16 years old. I would drop some of that “longer runs”. In my opinion as I always belived in, is that it´s easyer to build endurance than speed.
My advice would be to build up your shortsprint speed 1-2 years, and you could still compete in the 400m during this period.
I´ve done some of my best times in the 400m, by just doing some SE1/SE2 3-4 weeks before the race, still I didnt feel so good afterwards. The body wasn´t used to all lactade.
Still my advice is to build up a good speedlevel first, there is no reason to rush when you´re only 16. But there could be others that think diffirently, good luck. :slight_smile:

7

2-4 minutes is not adequate for special endurance unless it is split reps.

Then 6-8 minutes for the 300m runs. The problem is that is if I do that 8 times, that going to take pretty long time. So instead I should probably keep the amount between 3-6. Agree/Disagree? If you disagree, could you tell me what you would do instead?

8

Special Endurance runs are run at 95-100% with full recovery meaning at least 15-20 mins. Usually if running 300’s no more than 2 reps are done. Think about it can you run 2x300 with 6 mins rest at 95-100%?

9

Ok, so changing Friday to a speed day would be best. I’m thinking 2x300, and 2-3x200m, does that sound good? Or just do 300 and thats it? And keep rest around 15-20min long. I will do that in Febuary on Fridays, and when meets start, should I keep it Speed Endurance, or change it back to what it was?

10

Where is the short speed?? You have no work 100m and under. You need some sort of speed reserve through development of acceleration abilities, top end speed, and basic speed endurance. You should have some sort of speed work 2-3 days a week at this point I would say.

11

Also, what are your PR’s like? You may no even need to be doing so much 300m work and work on short speed and speed endurance to 150m or so and then work on general fitness.

12

My Pr Freshman Year was: 400m= 56.01
200m= 25 something sec
My PR for Sophomore Year was: 400m= 53 something sec
200m= Didn’t do it sophomore year.
The sophomore year was with practically no training. And when I say that “hardly any training”, I mean hardly any training, with no plan behind it, and having an injury.

If I had training, I know I could have hit at least a 50sec. You can say that impossible all you like, but I know I could have, and thats all that matters.

I’m disagreeing with you on this whole short distance stuff. I’m not a 100m racer, THIS IS THE 400M/200M. And, my old coaches plan worked pretty well last time. Dropped down from around 62sec or 60sec to 56.01sec. And there is a methology around this whole plan. You basically build up the reps til around mid season, and after that the reps start going down, and you do faster with less reps. I agree with what he does, but I can see that a special endurance work could be added into Friday, until meets come into play. So what would you say about just doing 300mx2 with 15-20min break? Or would 400m/200m need some 100m work? I’m not trying to shoot at you for helping, I’m just not used to people doing 100m for 400m/200m? Does Charlie agree with this? He doesn’t do 400m/200m, at least to my knowledge he does mostly 100m, but I’m sure he knows something about it. Please enlighten me if I’m wrong, I need any help I can get. And this track meeting happening next week, and hope to get everything straight by then.

13

YOU ABSOLUTLY NEED SHORT SPEED WORK FOR THE 200 ESPECIALLY!!! If you cannot accelerate properly to max speed you will not reach max speed and be able to maintain it for long(speed endurance). And besides being able to accelerate to max speed you need to improve your max speed. The only way you can do this is by training your central nervous system to run at your max speed repeatidly with long recoveries. You reach max speed at around 20-30 meters and can only maintain this velocity for 2-3 seconds. That means any work over 60 meters is speed endurance. You must do 30 meter reps with full recovery to work on your accleration and flying 20’s or 30’s with a 20 meter runup as well as straight 50’s or 60’s to improve your max velocity.

14

Then how about this. I do the Special endurance 300mx2 til meets start. Then in March, I change Friday’s over to purely speed work. 60m stuff, 30m stuff, and even 100m training. What rep scale should I do for those? And what rest should I do in between each go?

Agree/Disagree?

15

I lost you. Please post sample weeks and I will try my best to help.
Do you understand what were saying and why accel and max velocity is impt for even 200/400 runner though?

16

To answer you question, not really? If you could explain a little that would be great.

Here is a sample workout for the 4th week of Feb:

Mon: 8x200m; 2:30 break

Tues: Walk, jog, stride, sprint; in 50m increments. Do this continuously for 4 laps.

Wed: 500m “Blast”
400m- Around 85%-90%
100m- Blast last 100m
Do four, have 4:00 min break

Thurs: 100x8 1:10 break

Fri: 300x2 15-20 min break.

The only thing i see needing change is Thur/Fri, could be wrong. And the thing that will change is Wed will be a meet, March-May. When, I would change Fri from a SE to a pure speed day, when meets start up. But I don’t know exactly what to do on a pure speed day. Reps/Distances/Rests? Or should I do it the other way around, meaning do Pure speed on fri. in Feb, and do SE from March-May. Any ideas?

Also, extra information, I’m lifting weights on Thurs and Sat. Sticking with the basic lifts (Bench, Squat) in 3x3, 3x5, and 5,3,1 (setsxreps). I will also do sits up and pull ups in no perticular rep/set scheme. Probably for pull ups, 5x3, 4,4,2, and static holds. Sit ups, I have a way to do that a low reps.

17

You should be doing speed all year round as it is the most important aspect of the sprints (100-400). Whether you want to believe it or not, the 400m is highly dependent on your short speed ability. MJ’s 19.32 and Wariners mid 20’s in highschool are no coincidences to their 400m success.

You also need to have a high/low structure to your schedule. Monday-Wednesday-Friday you can and probably should have speed work of some kind. Even if you are doing long-to-short as opposed to short-to-long, you need to be doing some kind of speed work these days. This would include SE, accleration, max velocity, and short speed, depending on what point of the season you are in. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday you can add more low intensity work like high volumes of extensive tempo and other GPP type work.

You can do all of the intensive tempo type work you want like you have right now, but it won’t help you beat a guy if you run even your 200m PR twice in your 400m race! You can run 25x2, but if some other guy can run 23-25 splits, they are still going to beat you, even without the lower levels of fitness.

The lactate thread from before discusses on how ONE PARTICULAR SESSION can progress through the year. You don’t do that type of work every day. If you read the thread, kitkat even states that you should be doing short-to-long type work for short speed as used by CF with short sprinters.

18

You also said that meets will be on wednesdays? Is there any other meets besides wednesdays? Cause in some cases of 2 meets per week you will need only 1 other high intensity workout. The meet(s) will act as the special endurance session.

19

There is only one meet per week, March-May. I might go to a meet this year on Saturday, instead of a Wednsday one week. But only one meet per week. Lower State and State are held on I think Saturdays mostly.

So Mon, Wed, Fri, due speed work. And I’m thinking I misunderstand what you mean by short-to-long. I thought you were talking about Endurance to speed work. Could you explain that a little? And here would be the changes I would make according to your advice.

Here is a sample workout for the 4th week of Feb:

Mon: 3 or 4x100 15-20 min rest.

Tues: 8x200m; 2:30 break

Wed: 3x60m 15min rest

Thurs: 500m “Blast”
400m- Around 85%-90%
100m- Blast last 100m
Do four times, have 4:00 min break
Weights

Fri: 300x2 15-20 min break.

Sat: Weights

Does that look better. The only thing is, is that I think Thursday would be somewhat challeging, and then to do weights an 1-2hours later. Is that a good decision, or should I change Thurs to something else? Or should I move my weight sessions? Remember, Wed will disapear after Feb, meets then. And also, how do you progress with SE, and speed training? Does your times decreasing do the progressing?

20

I think you should buy CFTS and do some searches on special endurance on the forum