Coach ,

Wayde Van Niekerk's historic performance in Rio, where he broke the 400m world record from lane eight, showcased his exceptional speed and strategic race tactics. 

Starting with a blazing 10.7 seconds for the first 100m, Van Niekerk's top speed of 10.6m/s set the stage for his record-breaking run. He reached 300m in an astonishing 31.0 seconds, significantly faster than his previous best. 

His strategic approach and remarkable speed, especially in the early stages, played a crucial role in breaking the world record with a time of 43.03 seconds. 

Ernie Clark, who coached the NCAA D2 400M record holder, recently sat down and discussed his #1 goal for 400M runners and #1 indicator for potential in sprint events from 100M-800M. 

Link: Goal as a 400M Coach

How do you get a 400M runner faster with this method? Bob Thunhoffer describes it as having a bias towards the early stages of the race when designing training for 400M runners. 

Conditioning the sprinter to faster velocities for longer amounts of times using a specific race modeling process. He explains more about his preference to spend time on speed training rather than voluminous endurance. 

Link: Bias Towards Early Stages 

Balancing training and putting a greater emphasis on the early stages of the race in developing your training plan is essential to developing elite 400M performances. 

An example of just how little volume you need to run fast was best illustrated by Kahmari Montgomery while in high school at Plainfield Central (IL) prior to his 2018 USA Championship in the 400M. 

Link: Kahmari Montgomery

In conclusion, let’s reexamine something from Wayde Van Niekerk’s world record 43.03 run in comparison to Michael Johnson's 43.18 previous world record 400M.

Below are the splits of each runner in route to their best performance. Where do you think the race was won?

Van Niekerk was significantly slower than Michael Johnson in the last 100M of his race but still got the world record. That's because the race was won in the first 200M. Using your speed early is crucial in order to reach record heights or new personal bests. If an athlete is not fast enough, the answer isn’t more loads of volume and strength. Coaches must focus on the early stages of the race. Bias speed and watch the athlete grow.

If you love training your 400M athletes to be fast, you’ll absolutely love a continuation of this discussion from Bob Thurhoffer. He detailed the specifics of how to build and bias speed in 400M training in a recent three-part series during his 2023 Track-Football Consortium presentations.

Always be growing,

Coach Rathke and the T&F Community of Coaches helping Coaches

P.S. If you happen to be in Southern California next week there will be an in-person clinic Feed The Cats seminar featuring Holler-Korfist in Irvine, Ca Feb 2nd and 3rd. Learn more here --->