I want to drop 5-6 seconds off my natural 400m time in 4 months. Is it possible?

You probably can! Literally just learning to pace it correctly will probably save you a couple seconds.

Do more heavy lifting if you can, work on strengthening the muscles around your shoulder joint as well, I’ve found having arms that don’t give up on you the last 100m helps a ton.

If you’re training as a mid or distance runner, vary between running either a few 100s, 150s or 200s after your easy runs. Don’t run it all out but run them hard enough that you feel your muscles straining a bit by the end.

Do drills like skipping, butt-kickers and high knees every day. Focus on hitting the ground with a lot of force but lifting back off of the ground very quickly.

I can usually run a 58ish 400m when I’m out of shape, once I do the above for a couple months I usually drift down to sub 52 shape, so I’d figure you could at least go sub 54.

For pacing the 400 I have a very hard time describing the feeling, so maybe you won’t understand what I’m saying, but once you get to that near all out sprint effort you feel this certain tightness in your muscles that makes you say “okay I’m going hard”. You might think that’s the necessary effort to run a fast 400m but it’s not. You want to feel very light on your feet and smooth the first 250-300, and then start that all out effort on the death march home.

Good luck!

Not unrealistic at all if you are untrained in it. Just focus on developing speed and specific endurance. Don't bother with anything else that compromises that.

The biggest challenge will be the mental shift from volume to intensity. You will want to do more, but that will likely be counterproductive. Make sure you come into each session physically recovered in order to achieve the outcome of that session.

Yes, you can do it. As CopperRunner pointed out, the 400m is a very technical race. It's worth a couple of seconds just to figure it out. Spikes might give you another half to full second. Then, it's up to you to develop more speed and speed endurance for the last 300m.

If you focus on the 400 almost exclusively, your distance running will suffer.

I found that traditional 400m training didn't emphasize a couple of important points so I'm adding them here.

Cadence. You need to practice picking up your cadence over the last 70m or so of your 200m repeats. You should NOT speed up. Just try to get your cadence up to at least 220 and to 240 or higher if you can. If you speed up, you won't be able to start your next 200m on time. I typically do 3 sets of 3x200m. On the last rep of each set, I will go high cadence AND fast over the last 70m. This workout combines a traditional 200m workout with the Flying 40s that sprinters use for the 100 and 200m.

Arm swings: Arms will help power you over the last 200m and help with the start. You need to get accustomed to swinging your arms 220-240 times per minute. You can do this by taking short choppy steps and doing arm swing drills at 240 steps per minute for 20 seconds. Rest. Repeat.

Obviously, when you are swinging your arms at 240, your cadence will be 240.

At first, your arm swing drill will have you moving at a snail's pace, but even so, you will get tired very quickly. If you can't hold a high cadence arm swing for 60 seconds in a drill, you won't be able to hold it for 50 seconds in a race.

Likely, yes.

I went from 69.x seconds (no sprint training at all, in flats, feeling like it's my limit) to 66.x (a few months of gentle sprinting once a week, doing only 60 to 200s, so no lactate tolerance work at all, in spikes and feeling like I can shave at least 3 more seconds with more specific work/better pacing. Oh, and I was in the middle of 90 miles week doing that, too).

Great post!

Top-end speed is the difference between the runner winning the race and the mid-packers. Your goal of 5-6 seconds is no different than a 15:00 guy wanting to run 14:00.

My guess is :57

So I'm assuming you ran 4 years of XC and track.

You have already been training for a few years in running....not sprint specific, but still running.

Are you going to find people to race?

:58 more likely, maybe high :57.

Alan

No. And 53-54 would still be terrible

another opinion wrote:

No. And 53-54 would still be terrible

It's not terrible. A strong distance runner can break 9:00 with that kind of speed.

it's a great time. It's terrible for an olympic champion distance runner, yes. But great for what he is going for.

another opinion wrote:

No. And 53-54 would still be terrible

Well aren’t you a sad person?

I’m willing to bet money that compared to elites you were relatively garbage/ still are garbage at whatever you run.

At the highschool level, sub 54 for a mid d or distance runner is a really big deal. That signifies the raw speed to run some very fast (at the high school level) times.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Top-end speed is the difference between the runner winning the race and the mid-packers. Your goal of 5-6 seconds is no different than a 15:00 guy wanting to run 14:00.

I don’t think that’s a very fair comparison. 59 is not equivalent in skill to a 15:00. I’d think of it more like an 18:30 guy wanting to go under 17:30, which is a lot more realistic to do if the athlete isn’t specifically trained for the 5k.

If the guy hopped on here and said, “can I get my 400m from 53 to 47 in one season?“ I think that’s when this comparison would make more sense.

CopperRunner wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Top-end speed is the difference between the runner winning the race and the mid-packers. Your goal of 5-6 seconds is no different than a 15:00 guy wanting to run 14:00.

I don’t think that’s a very fair comparison. 59 is not equivalent in skill to a 15:00. I’d think of it more like an 18:30 guy wanting to go under 17:30, which is a lot more realistic to do if the athlete isn’t specifically trained for the 5k.

If the guy hopped on here and said, “can I get my 400m from 53 to 47 in one season?“ I think that’s when this comparison would make more sense.

I ran 14:50 with 59 speed. My 14:00 teammate could run about 53.

in.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Top-end speed is the difference between the runner winning the race and the mid-packers. Your goal of 5-6 seconds is no different than a 15:00 guy wanting to run 14:00.

this is not at all the same thing lol

SDSU Aztec wrote:

CopperRunner wrote:

I don’t think that’s a very fair comparison. 59 is not equivalent in skill to a 15:00. I’d think of it more like an 18:30 guy wanting to go under 17:30, which is a lot more realistic to do if the athlete isn’t specifically trained for the 5k.

If the guy hopped on here and said, “can I get my 400m from 53 to 47 in one season?“ I think that’s when this comparison would make more sense.

I ran 14:50 with 59 speed. My 14:00 teammate could run about 53.

Right, but that doesn’t mean 14:50=59 skill wise. I’m in high 15s to low 16s shape and may be capable of sub 50 by the end of this season.

If you look at it from the flip side, say you take a 51 guy that coach forced to do cross country so he runs like 19:30s. If someone with 55 speed shows up to XC and runs a 20:00, says “I want to go under 19:00 by the end of the season”, 51 guy isn’t going to tell him, “that’s unrealistic, my 400 is 4 seconds faster than yours and I run 19:30”

I’d say 59 in the 400m is about the same skill wise as an 18:30-19:00 5k. A decent time, and in both cases a lot more people than you realize don’t have the genetic build to go much if any faster.

If you can run either of those times untrained however, it shows you’ve got the talent to improve a lot more.

I hope I conveyed my point well.

FutureOldHead wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Top-end speed is the difference between the runner winning the race and the mid-packers. Your goal of 5-6 seconds is no different than a 15:00 guy wanting to run 14:00.

this is not at all the same thing lol

The OP did not share his PRs. If his PR is 15:00, then of course it's exactly the same thing. If he's a fun runner that's never trained seriously then maybe he can take a few seconds off of his 400 time.

you're gonna get arguments on this, but a 59 kid in high school is pretty similar in talent to an 18:30 to 19 kid.

BUT, a person who can run a 59 has the ability to be far faster than that in a 5k. I would call myself an 18:30 to 19 while im at a 65. a 59 probably gives a lot of people close to 17 speed.

To have a meaningful discussion, the OP needs to give us some PRs. I dont consider a 18:30 to 19:00 kid to be much of a distance runner and his 400 speed is almost irrelevant.