Improving your 4×100 meter Relay (Part 1)

Last Updated on April 19, 2013 by Jimson Lee

This is Part 1 of a 3 part series.

This tutorial will dramatically improve your 4x 100 meter relay times because you will identify your weak points.

You will need 2 Freelap watches and 5 TX Junior Transmitters, but you could do it with 3 or 4 transmitters as a bare minimum.

You place the TX Junior Transmitters at 10 meter intervals, starting from 10m behind of the acceleration zone, exchange zone (start, middle, end) and 10m beyond the exchange zone.

Note the “Go Mark” is about 25 “steps in your spikes” behind the acceleration zone.

What you will initially measure is:

• Incoming runner 20m splits for 70-90m, and 90-110m
• Outgoing runner 10m, 20m, and 30m Flys

There is more information that you can interpret from the splits… for example, you should always aim to have the exchange take place at the fastest part of the zone. Usually it’s the 2nd half of the 20m zone, and in same cases it’s the last 5 meters!

You can also determine if the outgoing runner is not going aggressive enough, based on 10 meter flys on regular practice. 

You can also see if the incoming runner is “dying” on the last 20 meters.

The minimum time between intervals with the Freelap is 0.78 seconds and the last time I checked, Usain Bolt’s fastest 10m split was 0.81 seconds. The rest of the world is 0.83 for sub 10 second 100 meter sprinters.  So 10 meters splits won’t be a problem.

A lot of coaches worry about baton speed in the exchange zone, but at the end of the day, it’s leg speed all the way.  The legs will carry you to a sub 38 second 4×100 relay and the baton is just bonus.  Just execute the fundamentals, get 3 crisp exchanges, and the 50 meter segment above will speak for itself.  In ideal conditions , you are looking at 4.62 seconds.

Why 4.62 for 50m?  Since 8x50m = 400m, and  4.62 x 8 = 37 seconds, add 1 second for acceleration out of the blocks, which makes 38 in a perfect world.  See Valeri Borzov – Training Procedures in Sprinting that uses the1.0 second rule from crouch to flying.

More Relay Articles

Here are 12 previous articles from technique, strategy and history over the past 3 years:

• Fun Workout #1 – The N x 200m Relay
• Calculating 4×100 meter Relay Potential
• Exploiting your 4×100 meter Relay Personnel
• 4×100m Relay: Thoughts on the European Athletics Championships
• 4×100 Relay Baton Passing – Upsweep, Downsweep or Push Pass?
• 4×100 Meter and 4×110 Yard Relay Trivia
• Baton Exchanges: How to Run the 4×200m & 4×400m
• The Last 4×100m Mixed Team to Hold a World Record
• Remember when France had the 4×100m WR?
• Jamaica 4×100m Relay Potential – A Sub 37 Second WR?
• More History of the 4×100m Relay
• Track and Field 4×100 meter Relay and Exchanges