The 4×1 Exchange

How much time can you take off your 4×1 by improving your exchanges?

As the outdoor season nears, a panic comes over most sprint coaches. The 4×1 exchange. We know from US Olympic history that it certainly haunts the US teams. It’s certainly haunted me. One of my teams featured twins blowing a 2-3 exchange which resulted in a fight between the two as the race continued. They were both kicked out of the meet for fighting which put a damper on the rest of the meet. I’ve had a team botch an exchange where the baton landed outside the fence. My worst was in a 4×2 where my #2 forgot to get to his mark and my #1, eventual All-State outside Linebacker Jalen Slater, decided to just run the leg of #2 and ran his best-ever 400 split. I have had teams disqualified in sectionals where we were top seeds. I’ve also suffered disqualifications in the state prelims and state finals. Two of those disqualifications cost my teams state championships.

(2017 IHSA State Meet, photo credit – Coach Holler)

To exorcise this demon, I have tried all kinds of tricks and techniques to perfect something that seems almost impossible to perfect. 2 tennis balls, secret words, distracting teammates, flashing lights, none of which seemed to have any impact. Then I saw the Olympics and watched the Japanese team place very well with sprinters who didn’t make the finals in the open 100. I studied the film to realize they were underhand passing and never broke stride. I was sold. So, as the season approached, I decided that we were going to underhand pass. We even used the word Tokyo for our verbal command. I really didn’t know what I was doing so we experimented. With limited knowledge we were getting the stick around well indoors. When we went outside, we had to figure out the steps to make it work but eventually we figured it out. We didn’t blow an exchange all season. I am not saying they were all perfect but we had no disqualifications and no stand-still handoffs.

I still had a bunch of questions about the underhand pass, like how to adjust the baton so that the next runner had enough baton to grab. Soon enough, my questions would be answered. When Tony and I were planning for TFC-6, Tony found a coach from California who was the master of the underhand pass. When I saw Brian Fitzgerald’s presentation, I was not disappointed. Brian broke down the 4×1 like a football coach would break down film from Friday night’s game. He knew every meter of that track and where the baton should be and more importantly where your athletes should be. He even showed a trick in the second and third exchange that could cut as much as a second off your time. About half-way through Brian’s presentation I said out loud, “Where have you been the last 25 years?”

TFC filmed his presentation and is for sale at this link, https://sellfy.com/p/DTkW/

You won’t be disappointed.

You can find many 15 more videos here – TFC Videos