Featuring guest post by Sean O’Connor.
Track season has just finished for nearly all of us, but that just means we are just beginning to strategize for next year’s journey. One of the areas of track and field that seems to have the most fierce debate is how to train 400m runners. This argument is actually a fantastic one, because there are many ways to accomplish this mission. Ryan Banta has a great success record with high school athletes, so we’ll take some pointers from him in coaching this great event.
In a double dose of areas where there are many roads to Rome, we’ll get Ryan and Sean O’Connor’s takes on strength and power work for the mid-distance events. Speed reserve is key to being a winning mid-distance runner, but what is the best approach to create the power that assists building it?
Highlights and Main Points of Interest:
• Ryan uses a short to long system in training the 400, starting with 350m and 150m sprints, and progressing to 450m and 250m efforts.
• Combining 400m and 800m groups is a useful team and speed building dynamic.
• Classifying athletes by groups according to ability level promotes healthy competition to move “up the ladder” in a practice setting.
• Creating high-stakes competition amongst athletes with various ability levels in practice is a great way to improve sprint quality.
• Hill training, and short, efficient strength training sessions featuring full body, ground based lifts, are a great way to meet the strength requirements for the middle distance events.
Just Fly Sports: What are some staple 400m workouts in your program? How do you approach maximal velocity development in light of a 400m runner’s needs?
Ryan Banta:
The link above is the video of our 4×400 from the conference championship. At the time, we ran the race it was the fastest in the state of Missouri. We ended the season finishing second at the Class 4 State Championship. Coming into the year I knew our team had some athletes who could be players on our 4×400 and 4×800 relays at the state championship.
Our staple workout is 2×450 meter and 4×200. Some programs do this same workout every week. This workout is a focus of our program, but we build to the workout with shorter intervals or fewer repetitions. For example, we might start the season doing this workout with 2×350 and 3×150. In each passing week, we will add distance. Eventually, we push past even 2×450 and 4×200. The longest interval we might do in a similar workout could be a 600.
Surprisingly, because we have built up to the distance over the course of the season, our sprinters typically handle the 600 intervals with little to no problem. Once we reach the 2×450 and 4×200 workouts, I will add in extra 250, 300, or 350 intervals. Even if the focus of your workouts might be the same at certain points each following week I believe that slight changes keep things fresh, keep the athlete from plateauing, or peaking too soon.
Like the distance runners, we want to have this work out on a Monday and run just above or below race distance. Having the training on Monday means the vast majority of my athletes are having their toughest workout of the week at the same time. Aligning the days allows cross over between different training groups with greater ease. Unlike some sprint coaches, I am not afraid of special endurance and speed endurance work. Again this allows them to feel in practice what they are likely to experience in meets.
For my long sprinters, I like using the split 800. Moving sprinters up a distance can be emotionally taxing. Moving up to the 800 can be a deal breaker. Even if the athlete has been convinced to move up to the 800, they need to be prepared to handle the race distance. You always want the first time they compete to be the best possible performance they can have for their first time.
Part of this success can be accomplished by entering them in lower-level meets, hiding them on relays, or seeding them in a slower heat. In those situations, you can never guarantee the outcomes. Since nothing can be ensured, I feel it is important that you figure out a way for your sprinters to experience handling those loads in practice.
Once of my favorite workouts to help move sprinters up is the “Split 800.” In this workout, you have the sprinter run a 600-meter interval at what you believe could be their pace for an 800 through 600 meters. Then after running what should be an aggressive 600-meter interval the athlete gets only 45 seconds rest and must then run a 200 as fast as possible. A sprinter doing this workout will not need a large number repetition to get something out of the training session. The number of repetitions you choose should consider the time of year, end of season goals, and number of events you plan on your athlete running in the major championships of the season. Psychologically 600 meters does not seem as scary as 800 meters even if you will run the complete distance after an extremely short break.
Another tweak on our special endurance workouts is what I call the “chaser.” In the chaser, we challenge our athletes by sending each one at different time intervals on the same repetition in practice. We start the workout from slowest to fastest. In the workout, each athlete is separated by the difference of the personal best of the sprinter in front of them.
For example, if a young lady runs 1:01 in the 400 and the athlete behind them runs a 58 second for dash the difference is 3 seconds. The three seconds is the difference between starting time after the athlete they are chasing. If they catch the athlete in front of them, the sprinter who was caught would have to do pushups and sit-ups. If the first athlete were able to hold off the sprinter chasing them, the entire workout they would get what we call is an interval card. An interval card is a ticket that can be cashed in to get out of an interval during another practice at a later date. One particular workout with the setup led to serious competition and some of the fast 350s we ever had in practice. I know based off this workout we were ready.
Finally, it is important to create training groups that can help push one another to achieve the desired results in practice. Who your athletes are training with in practice is a significant factor in reaching their goals. Two years ago I know we had a few talented sprinters and middle distance runners. Based on our relay goals we knew these athletes would benefit from training together more frequently in practice. To accomplish getting our athletes together, we decided to train our best sprinters and middle distance runners together every other day.
Combining these groups together raised the expectations of all the athletes. Workouts were a higher quality and both groups quickly improved. During training, all these athletes training together can create a crowded track. To fix the problem, we decided to divide our training group into their divisions: the “Baylor”, sprinters, and distance sections.
The “Baylor” group was made up of our most talented sprinters and middle distances runners. We hyped this group up in practice frequently and told the kids if they wanted to be part of our best relays you had to be in the Baylor division. The division was called Baylor because of the University’s standing tradition of excellence in the long sprints. If kids worked hard and showed improvement; they would be rewarded by being moved into the Baylor division. On the flip side if athletes didn’t meet the expectations they would be demoted out of the group. These workouts became every coaches dream and created practice accountability amongst the athletes within the training session. It was common to see athletes challenge each other to make sure other athletes weren’t slacking in practice.
Just Fly Sports: What types of strength and power work do you do for mid-distance events?
Sean O’ Connor: We do a couple of things depending where we are in the season. In the preseason we start with general strength and mobility while mixing in hill sprint circuits. Our hill circuit is an 80m hill into a 50m strider on a flat section which then goes into another 50 hill. We will do 3-5 reps of this 1-2 times a week. As we get closer to the season I’ll replace the hills with bounding and we will do it on the track.
Once we are in the season our strider/bounding circuit progressed into just striders, which we will do after every recovery/long run. The bounding portion is replaced by lifting in the weight room. I try to keep our lifting routine short and sweet because the ultimate training focus is running so the lifting should never detract from it. I actually had Ryan Banta, author of the Sprinter Compendium and contributor to this site, help me create it. It consists of various reps and sets of squats, RDLs, power cleans, bench, pull ups and rows. What I like about it is it only takes the kids 20-30 minutes while achieving a nice balance of upper and lower body lifts.
One thing on the lifting that I believe distance runners need to learn is that they aren’t going to get “huge” from lifting. In fact there are many studies that show strength and power development leads to increased performances in all distance races. The first thing they should know is since they are good at distance running their muscle fiber composition (predominately ST vs FT) will prevent them from looking like body builders. Secondly, endurance running will cause interferences at the molecular level which prevent the body from getting big. Another way to think about it is that the body is pretty smart. It realizes its runs for long periods of time on a daily basis and won’t make its job harder by bulking up!
Just Fly Sports: What types of strength and power work do you do for mid-distance events?
Ryan Banta: I have discussed this before in previous blogs on this site. So if you permit me, I would like to go in a different direction. Distance runners need to have the speed endurance or special endurance to cover these distances in an enormous amount of discomfort. As I explained previously, training has consequences and believing it as a coach, it is important to put the runners through training what they experience in the meets.
Research has shown that training just above or below the race distance in practice has the highest correlation to improved sports performances. Frequently training near the desired race distance gives a runner the “strength” to cover the distance in a meet. Additionally, these athletes in high school and college must have the power to repeat these efforts many times to run multiple events or relays.
Some coaches have bought into low volume type of distance training middle distance runners. Training volume should accumulate to the point that a middle distance athlete has a chance to improve and handle the number of events/rounds they might see in competition. Interestingly, in the recent USATF world championship trials some the winners in post-race interviews talked about the need to peak at the right time or how their coach had given them the training to handle the rounds.
All of this means at least once every microcycle the middle distance runners need to complete a speed endurance or special endurance workout. Typically, we do these workouts in our program on Monday. This workout placement is done because Sundays are our one day of passive recovery. The body, mind, and CNS is probably the most recovered it will be for the week.
Philosophically, if this is the key to our training, it should be given the respect of having the athletes be able to give the most of themselves in this training session. Early in the year we will train at a relatively high volume but when we reach our peak phase we reduce the volume but dramatically increase the recovery time between the intervals. The increased recovery is built in to simulate what athletes will experience in a track meet without keeping a kid in practice all day. Depending on the circumstances, some of my middle distance athletes could have up to twenty minutes between repeat intervals. The longest interval we run in track season is a 1600 meter interval. However, middle distance athletes will have shorter intervals that fit the particular needs of the 400-800 runners.
About Ryan Banta:
Ryan Banta is Parkway Central High School Girls Head track and field coach 2003 to the present, and Parkway Central High School Head XC coach 2013 to present. Ryan’s coaching tenure has yielded 84 school records. 2 top 4 finishes in 2008 and 2009, District Champs 2007, 2008, and 2009, four runner up finishes at districts 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, two state records 4×800 and 3200 meter run, 14 nationally ranked events, 34 all state performances, 7 runner up finishes, 8 state championship events and 70 state qualifiers(track and xc). Ryan is the MTCCCA Vice President and MSHSAA advisory board member. He is a writer for elitetrack.com and speedendurance.com and has his USATF Level II in Sprints, Hurdles, Relays, and Endurance, as well as a USTFCCCA technical certification.
About Sean O’Connor:
Sean O’Connor is a Lafayette track and field distance Coach. He has had 14 All State Athletes, 4 State Champions, 3 State Runners Up at Lafayette as the head Cross Country Coach, as well as 1st place as a team in the state championships, 3rd place as a team in 2013, 2012, 7 individual All-State Athletes, lowest score in Class 4 history (41 points) in 2014, and was MTCCCA Boys Class 4 Coach of the Year 2014.
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