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Coach,

I have traveled to Europe this year to graduate so my training program has been disturbed. I have trained about 2 times per week for approximately 2 months. In the beginning I wanted to start John Smith's Program for the 400m in January 2004, but I am not ready to begin track workouts and I want to avoid injury.

Can you assist me with a pre-preparation program? I would like to have a program for 3 to 4 weeks of preparation.

Tarik

Work on acceleration. Work on 10 meters to 40 meters.

Repeats of 50 meters to 80 meters. Three to Four sets of 3 to 4 reps.

Repeats of 80 meters to 150 meters. Two sets of up to 5 reps with 2 to 5 minutes recovery between sets, and 8 to 10 minutes between reps is recommended.

Repeats of 170 meters to 250 meters. One set of 1 to 5 reps.

Repeats of 250 meters to 350 meters. One set of 1 to 4 reps.

Spend a minimum of 2 days a week on speed work depending on your conditioning. If your body can recover and handle more, add another day of speed work. Progress slowly and work up to the maximum sets and reps. Work on acceleration every time you do speed work. Make it part of your warm up. Rotate these workouts from the bottom up. If you can do hill repeats 2 days a week, use one of the rotating distance workouts.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Coach Payan