400 Meter Training Workouts – the Descending 6×200 meters

Last Updated on March 12, 2013 by Jimson Lee

In the past, I wrote about several 400 meter training workouts such as:

1. Bud Winter’s 352 yard workout
2. the 2×300 meters (or 40 seconds) workout
3. the 2×350 meter indoor workout
4. the 3×300 meter workout
5. the classic 600-500-400-300-200 breakdown workout
6. the Clyde Hart 8×200 meters and Tom Tellez 6×200 meter workout.

Here is another variation of a 6×200 meter workout that I’ve seen at the high school level and college level.  Names and schools withheld to protect the guilty.

The Descending 6×200 meter Workout

This is a single 6×200 workout where each interval and recovery are as follows:

1. 29 seconds, 75 sec recovery
2. 29 seconds, 60 sec recovery
3. 29 seconds, 45 sec recovery
4. 29 seconds, 30 sec recovery
5. 29 seconds, 15 sec recovery
6. 29 seconds, puke

As you can see, this workout is a slight variation to my turnaround or greyhound workouts, where you run 100 meters on a grass surface, slow down, stop, turn around, walk to the line, and run another 100 meters.  Rinse and repeat.  If you want to melt excess fat, add 10 pushups on one end, and 10 sit-ups on the other end.

It’s also similar to the Tom Tellez 6x200m workout in Week 2.

Like losing weight, the secret here (or demise) is the INTENSITY.

My only caveat would be seeing coaches increase the speed of the 200 meter times and this ends up being a medium intensity butt-locking lactic workout.  Garbage can (or puke bags) required.  Some may even quit track if performed early in the season.

If you really want to train “aerobic conditioning” to get through the rounds, that’s one thing, but NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF YOUR OTHER ENERGY SYSTEMS.  Don’t tax your speed and CNS or overall recovery if you kill your athletes with too much medium intensity training with high mileage.   The recovery demands are just too high.  Low intensity training should be at 65-75% of top speed.

So if you are going to attempt this workout for a 22 second 200m sprinter, I would start at 33-34 seconds (i.e. 22 x 0.65) but no faster than 29-30 seconds (i.e. 22 x 0.75).  I would also do these on a grass surface, either as a long straightaway, or inside Lane 1 of a track if possible.