Height and weight vs 400 time

You gotta ask Matt London. But I think you have to be 40 years old and maybe know your myostatin status.

Your age? Your running background? Should we assume you were a college 800m & 1500m athlete? With your 400m P.B., we should assume you have 800m & 1500m sub-1:50 & sub-3:40 personal bests, correct?

I am the same height and 180-185. How on earth can you get to that weight? I’d love to get down to 165

give us more data ... wrote:

Your age? Your running background? Should we assume you were a college 800m & 1500m athlete? With your 400m P.B., we should assume you have 800m & 1500m sub-1:50 & sub-3:40 personal bests, correct?

I wish I had those PRs...

I'm 20 now and ~ 3:51 and 1:53

qsdcfgtyhnkol. wrote:

give us more data ... wrote:

Your age? Your running background? Should we assume you were a college 800m & 1500m athlete? With your 400m P.B., we should assume you have 800m & 1500m sub-1:50 & sub-3:40 personal bests, correct?

I wish I had those PRs...

I'm 20 now and ~ 3:51 and 1:53

If you are a U.S. college athlete, you have to blend your 400m goals with team goals. If you are a European club runner and you have thrown in the towel in regard to training for 1500m, you will improve your 400m at your age if you focus your training there.

50.5/1:53/3:51 is fairly normal for a solid collegiate runner who has good turnover.

No amount of lifting weights will take you from 50.5 to 47.5 for the 400.

I would stick to the 800/1500 and try to hit 1:48/ 3:45.

window seat wrote:

50.5/1:53/3:51 is fairly normal for a solid collegiate runner who has good turnover.

No amount of lifting weights will take you from 50.5 to 47.5 for the 400.

I would stick to the 800/1500 and try to hit 1:48/ 3:45.

If O.P. has been training as a 1500m man who also races 800m, you cannot state if O.P. were to narrowly focus his training on 400m, he cannot sprint 47 1/2 400m. He is still young. In order for O.P. to race in neighborhood of 47 1/2, he cannot solely add weight training, he would have to cease training as a 1500m athlete. O.P. may have his reasons. Mileage may be ruining him.

give us more data ... wrote:

If O.P. has been training as a 1500m man who also races 800m, you cannot state if O.P. were to narrowly focus his training on 400m, he cannot sprint 47 1/2 400m. He is still young. In order for O.P. to race in neighborhood of 47 1/2, he cannot solely add weight training, he would have to cease training as a 1500m athlete. O.P. may have his reasons. Mileage may be ruining him.

I would agree with this. With only knowing his PRs and nothing about his training, it is kind of hard to make any predictions for potential 400m times. Maybe he is training like a 4/8 now, so training exclusively for the 400 wouldn't result in much improvement. Or it could be like you said and he is training for 1500, then I would be more optimistic about his potential to improve in the 400.

I had a similar background to the OP at his age while training for 800, and then switched to the 400. I only improved a little bit over the next 2 years. It was disappointing. The reality is that if you lack raw speed, that starts to becoming a limiting factor in the 400. My best 100m was only 11.4, so it was tough to make too much gain in the 400. 50 flat is already within 8% of 100m pace. Thats about the same percentage as the best 400m runners in the world, kind of hard to hope to improve much beyond that.

Op should find out his raw 100m time to help get an idea of his potential.

Im 6’1 and just a tad under 170 atm.

I have about 50-1:53-3:55 fitness at the moment, so very similar to you. It’s all about fiber muscle composition and what not.

Adding muscle really helps some runners but hurts other runners. I used to try to keep my weight around 155-160 and could only run 54-55 at the time, so I believe adding muscle mass actually really helped a lot in the mile and under. I’d talk to your coach about maybe trying to make the relay team for the 4x4 SMR or DMR to try and portray value in focusing on 400m improvement.

Getting to 47-48 in the 400m may be what it takes for you to run sub 1:50 in the 800m, which is probably your best event IMO. So I don’t see a reason not to get in the weight room and work on sprinting a bit over the indoor season and see what it produces.

Just FYI Cliff West was a 4:06 miler for Cal in the 70’s. Several years after graduating he tried the 400 and pretty quickly got down to 46.6. (Don’t know how much weight he gained. )

qsdcfgtyhnkol. wrote:

I am 6'3" and 149-153lbs in the morning, which is pretty skinny, but this is LRC.

I have also run a 400 in 50.5. I generally consider myself to be a mid-distance runner because 50-mid isn't turning any heads, but I was wondering whether I could make serious gains at 400 and below if I trained sprints, lifted, and gained muscle.

How fast could I run at 170? 190?

Don't worry about weight, rather worry about power and speed. See this video to get inspired:

hound dawg wrote:

You gotta ask Matt London. But I think you have to be 40 years old and maybe know your myostatin status.

lol. if this is not your first thought upon reading thread title, you are not a true LetsRunner!

i think a key comment here is that you used to TRY to keep your weight around 155-160. This is probably an indication that you were fighting your best natural physiology. This could be true of op as well, but it also might be the case that bulking up would not be as effective at increasing his speed if he does not have a body that naturally wants to be that big.

we are all an experiment of one...might as well take a shot at it, even if 5 lbs at a time.

there does tend to be a wide variance in successful body types in the middle distances compared to longer distances.

Don't make gaining muscle a priority. It may be a product of more sprint work, but isn't going to serve any purpose in itself.

A far better question would be how fast can you run at 22.5s 200m speed. Work on that instead.