400m Coaching

I am a 14 year old boy and have just started training for the 400m about 3 weeks ago. Could you give training tips like circuits i could do in my house with no equipment. Also there is a competition coming up in 4 weeks for my school and their is a boy who is also going to compete for the 400m but I would like it. It would be greatley apreciated if someone could give me tips

Best event in athletics. Tough event........you need the speed of a sprinter and the stamina of a 800m runner.

Try this session................................

4 x 4 x 100m x back to back x Set target time say in your sons case 13 secs or there abouts. He runs 100m fast/ smooth/ concentrate on technique in approx 13 secs slow down take 20 secs rec and do the same coming back hence back to back. at the end of 4 runs you give him approx 5 minutes then do again till you have done 4 sets.

Since you are responsible you will have to judge wether your son is "FIT ENOUGH " to do this. If he does this and you record his times then you will be able to assess his base fitness.

See how it goes.

Any athlete aged between 11-16 should still be working on very general fitness parameters with very little sports specific training (technical work with sports coaches excluded). You are in a 'sensitive' period of maturation/development where you will almost accelerate your learning of new skills and movements. It is important that these fundamental skills (balance, coordination, agility) are not neglected. You will make more progress in the long term ensuring that you have mastered these simple tasks as later in life they will become harder to develop and you will not of attained physical mastery of key skills. Being physically literate/able is more important than short term success. Would you prefer to be a great sprinter at 14 or a world champ at 24? Great youth sprinters dont necessarily make it as world class. Those who have great fundamental movements and skills who can develop them into sports specific skills later in physical development will ultimately be more successful.

That said, learning technique of key movements that will be used later in training (olympic lifts, squats etc) can be worked on with minimal loading. You will become stronger by increasing the nervous systems ability to control movement (judge amount and direction of force needed). The use of medicine balls is great too. Learning the basis of moving is going to be important. This stage is where the volume of training will need to increase to start to prepare you for training for competing purposes. When you are 16-18 years old, you will be wanting to develop max strength, being more specific with your training so having a capacity to work at higher volumes of training and intensities is going to be important to develop now (its got to be done gradually and sequentially so not to overload the body to injury and chronic fatigue).

Also it is important to note that at your age that development of the cardiovascular system through aerobic training is still important with little emphasis on anaerobic based training until later in physical development. The biological systems (heart lungs etc) is indiscrimanant at your age so completing back to back session of 100m's is not going to be particularly effective in this develop at this stage. 4 x 400m would be more appropriate with a little recovery. You have plenty of time to develop this anaerobic ability but maximise your physical potential before being too specific. It is important not to milk down advanced junior (18 years old +) and seniors programmes down for youth development - it just wont work in the long term. Although short term results maybe impressive, long term the athlete will suffer.

An excellent book looking at physical development of youths is Drabiks 'Children an Sports Training: How Your Future Champions Should Exercise to Be Healthy, Fit and Happy.' This can be purchased from http://www.flexcart.com/members/elitefts/default.asp?m=PD&cid=220&pid=74

There are some other good books from this site on youth development and training.

Remember you have a long road of training to be specialised at your sport. The more mastery you have of fundamental skills and movements and maximising your natural potential, the better the road to potential success.

Hello,

I'm in the last year student in Aristote University in Salonika and i'm doing a project about 400m tatic. I'm looking for the best tactic to have the maximum benefit in the race. If you can help me about this i will be very glad.

Excellent articles, nothing new but the re-invention of the wheel is always interesting to read. Enjoyed the vibration bit but have also read contridictory articles and research papers re this approach. Having had the pleasure of working with the best that G.B. had a few years ago the ESSENCE is SPEED and of course SPEED ENDURANCE. In some ways coaches in Britain have lost their way in this repect........................get the raw material with the talent, work HARD and in 8-10 years you will produce a World Class athlete over 400m. :D

As little as possible.
Still growing, should not specialise till about 15 or 16.
Keep it FUN.

Regards,

Max. ;-)

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