Applying Feed the Cats to the High School 400m Dash
I’m not a college coach. I don’t think I would ever want to coach at the college level. Too much time. Too many choices. Too many cycles of training. I think I would second guess myself into a state of coaching paralysis.
I have a solid not great understanding of charts like these.
Source: Book of Running.com
The thing that catches my eye is the *400m: 38% aerobic*. I have seen the number lower and higher.
Sometimes the numbers look like this:
Source: Ron Grigg: Keys to Developing the Combo 400/800m runner
The shorter the race, the more anaerobic. The faster you run, the more anaerobic.
Thankfully, I just a high school coach. My job is simple compared to a college coach. I’m not in the business of recruiting elite athletes and taking them to the next level.
I like the chart below.
Great stuff, but I don’t have that many months. When it comes to the programming of workouts for the 400m, I have to coach the athletes in front of me. I can’t copy the recipe of a college coach or model my training from an energy system chart. High school quarter-milers need to get faster. They need to experience pain. They need to breathe hard. They need to rest, then go like hell again.
The 5/13ths Effect and Aerobic Work
Let’s start with the biggest constraint we face. Time. The average high school season for track athletes is ten weeks in duration. Minus Sundays, that’s only sixty days. If there’s an indoor season, it might be twenty weeks. 5/13ths of the year. Kids spend less than half a year on the track team.
Our indoor season starts the Monday after Thanksgiving. We had a meet 12 days later. How do you get ready in 12 days? Twelve days into it, those energy system charts get blown up when kids open up with a 300 and 4×400 double. We want to give the kids a chance to succeed, but we don’t want to rush things. The first meet is just the first meet.
For some athletes, their preseason is a fall sport. Soccer and basketball players are naturally predisposed to being 400 meter runners because of the anaerobic component of their sport.
For others, the transition is less than ideal. Some of my kids show up to practice with the imprints of video game controllers still freshly indented into their thumbs. These kids probably wont be running the 400, at least not this season. The talent and mindset isn’t there yet. I will be happy if they can correctly skip by the end of the season.
When it comes to planning macrocycles for the 400 meters, how do we get the most out of our athletes in the time we have, and more importantly, how do we get them to want to come back?
We have a weekly and season-long plan, but because of space limitations and bad weather, I consider our indoor season, the season before the season.
Very few athletes love track and field the way coaches love track and field.
Through my lens, most kids…
A) Want to use track to get better at another sport (kudos to them for that realization).
B) Are enamored with the idea of being good at something.
C) Enjoy being on a team.
D) Their parents made them do a sport.
Feed the Cats takes care of A, B, C, and D. In addition, kids may speak highly of track to their friends.
High School Kids are Afraid of the “Dark Place”
One of my favorite quotes that captures the imagery and anguish of a well-run 400m dash is the following:
“I ran. I ran until my muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. Then I ran some more.” – Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
Predictably, most kids fear the 400. I wish that weren’t true but it is. The most beautiful event in track and field (IMO) often ends up relegated to the “B-Side”.
Look at these memes, probably made by high school kids.
Mindless, comfortable reps of aerobic work won’t conquer the fear factor. Track athletes are afraid of the 400 meters because they are afraid to hurt. Before the gun goes off runners suffer from trepidation and doubt. Fear is not a performance enhancer.
Practices are as much about the mental as they are the physical. This is the essence of Feed the Cats. The choice is theirs each week. Sprinters can choose to be a jungle tiger or a zoo tiger. They can live wild or comfortably bide their time until the season comes to a close. We must put kids in positions in practice where they make high-intensity efforts. Then we must celebrate their improvement.
Workout selection sometimes feels like we are reaching in the dark. There’s no certainty in training, but good coaches are fairly certain of what doesn’t work. Good coaches avoid disasters.
Some coaches argue that the aerobic running gives kids the confidence to attack the 400. In my experience, aerobic running may help once the all the other pieces are in place. This brings the Clyde Hart workouts to mind. Athletes who have maximized their speed, have experience running the 400, and have conquered fear may benefit from Clyde Hart training. They may benefit from early-season aerobic work.
This is why talent and mindset is so important in the 400. Overdone aerobic work, in my experience, confuses sprinters, especially those in their early development. Instead, athletes need to develop a speed base.
I do some aerobic work with my 400 runners and but it depends on age, gender, how much, and when. Regardless, gone are my days of always searching for answers at the bottom of the extensive-tempo 70% barrel. Aerobic work is time consuming and I don’t have much time. The aerobic system can maximize the power of the lactate system. However, conceding this point doesn’t mean you will find the answer in the 40% (aerobic) if the other 60% (anaerobic) is junk. Working the 60% early and as often as possible is a recipe for success. Feeding the Cats shifts the focus to speedy anaerobic work.
We had a repeat state champion in the 400 meter hurdles (54.58). He did some aerobic intervals but he also could run a sub 1.00 10 meter fly. We made a decision that this was going to be his event and 22.5 speed was going to be enough to get the Division 4 meet record. He wasn’t confused by the aerobic work because the other aspects of his training were already laid. This is how “Feed the Cats” can be bent to fit the needs of your athletes. His focus was the 400 hurdles, which has been shown to be more aerobic than the 400m flat race. We focused on the minimum effective dose. It’s not that hard to make a high school sprinter’s lungs ready for the 400, at least when compared to speed development. In other words, aerobic adaptions are easier than getting fast.
It is important to make appropriate progressions but there are no magic workouts. There’s no guarantee workouts will always yield the same results. I am trying to be more selective with the “what” and “who”. Feed the Cats presents itself as a more of a cultural shift predicated on first getting faster and being proud of it, rather than a specific set of rules. It’s a way to cook, not a recipe.
The Races and Lactate Workouts
As a young coach, having lots of time between meets was something I enjoyed. It was time to train and get better. I was going to write THE WORKOUT that took my kids to THE PROMISED LAND. Like most coaches, I look back with some regrets. Nothing we prescribe in practice simulates a race. Not even close. I would rather a kid double up 400 and 4×4 in a Saturday meet, than run a special endurance II workout of 2 x 450. They will go through the motions in practice reps, but they will race at a meet.
Last year we had three straight weeks of Wednesday-Saturday meets and our mid-season performances couldn’t have been better. I agree with Tony Holler that peaking is often more often a product of psychological arousal rather than great coaching decisions. Athletes always run their best times at the end of the season because they are rested and they get jacked up for the big races. Even back when I was over-prescribing things, my kids wound up fine during championship season. I took my kids’ success as confirmation of the validity of certain beliefs I held. You can’t clap your hands and proclaim, “voila”, every time someone does something halfway decent.
We all have those workouts we hold close to our heart. The ones designed to get them to the next level. Some of the ones we use are Feed the Cat staples and they fit perfectly. 4×4 Predictor, Critical Zone Workout (200/200 + 150/150). 23 Second Drill.
I recall a practice recently in our season where I administered a “Tony Holler special.”
Invariably, I started by winding them up by talking about Viking Berserkers, stories of venturing off bravely into the Great Lactate Abyss. I was desperately trying to get them to believe in themselves for a few short reps. Lactate workouts must be sold to your kids!
After the workout (3 x 200) their shell-shocked, red faces stared back at me, eyes bleary, and most wore unrecognizable expressions. Their silent mouths hung agape, seemingly asking the question, “What just happened?”
Feeding the Cats happened, that’s what. Lactate workouts hurt. Battery acid, kids, battery acid.
Would two reps of 500 meters yield the same result? Maybe, with certain athletes, but most athletes don’t want to run reps of 500 meters and if they do, the quality is absent.
The Little Things Are Really THE BIG THINGS
X-Factor: A variable in a given situation that could have the most significant impact on the outcome.
The little things are really the big things. Feet. Ankles. Hips. Trunk. These circuits are my favorite adaptations of The Feed the Cats philosophy with our long sprinters.
I teach reading at the elementary school. Under the umbrella of reading, you have things like vocabulary and phonemic awareness that hopefully lead to the overarching goal of comprehension and enjoying stories. Reading, in and of itself, doesn’t solve the issues of your struggling readers. Reading makes strong readers better, but what makes a 5th grade reader great doesn’t guarantee future success in reading. Readers need to be challenged repeatedly. You differentiate based on need.
This concept of part and whole can be applied to training in the 400. In track and field, the goal is to get your athletes moving fast once they deserve to. Often times you have a kid that is naturally fast right away. Yes, you need to sprint often but without going into depth here, taking the time to work on the little things can make a huge difference.
Ankle mobility and work on stiffness can pay huge dividends when talking about shin angles in a block start or the ability to bounce down the track. Ankle rockers, rocker shuffles, rocker squats, stair drops, and ankle pops have all become a part of our warm-ups and circuits.
When you look at coordination erosion in the last 100 meters of a 400, what is the best way to correct a kid who is a lumbopelvic mess? Should you do additional tempo work or should you spend your time doing strength and coordination first to improve efficiency? You can cue them to “stay tall” all you want, but if they can’t do it, they can’t do it.
Since the implementation of these regeneration x-factor circuits we’ve had fewer injuries, improved technique, better posture, and way more fun. I think we take ourselves too seriously as coaches. Fun should be a goal. I will leave the “grind” to their college coaches.
Truly, I don’t know which exercises have been the most successful in this regard. I don’t know what exercises will work for your kids. I try to keep it varied, simple, and fun (and chaotic when necessary).
Style it to Your Program
All of this calls to mind Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.
One of the lines says, “And if he were made to look directly at the light of the fire, it would hurt his eyes and he would turn back and retreat to the things which he could see properly, which he would think really clearer than the things being shown him.”
As coaches we must look at our athletes and decide if trying new stuff is better than the things we hold near and dear to our hearts.
Our athletes at Triton may stand in stark contrast to the ones at your school. I’m not sure I have any prototypical cats. As a result, we spend a lot of time doing series or blocked complexed exercises on acceleration and max velocity days. They need the extra reps that are shallower as potentiation or reinforcement. It holds their attention and supports the day’s theme. The user fee at our school is $350 per season, so some days I have to take my time and do more than the minimum, even though a 40-minute practice is possible.
We don’t have a single football player running track, so maybe my reality is a really different from yours. When you Feed the Cats, you give athletes what they need to be successful without killing their love for the sport.
Professional coaches have complex and individualized training programs. High school coaches need a simple plan for dealing with wide-ranging kids. The plan for 400 meter runners can be as simple as making speed the primary focus and then doing a few strategic lactate workouts.
By Graham Eaton
@GrahamSprints
Sprint Coach
Triton Regional High School
Byfield, Massachusetts
