Or “How to boil your athletes alive” or, more formally, 12×400 with reducing rest.
I’m not 100% sure what inspired me to write this session; we were nearing the end of road and track season and starting to train for the cross country season. Track and road racing tends to have me focusing on short reps with plenty of recovery whilst cross country tends to have lots of ‘over / under’ threshold (maximum lactate steady state) and thus this set.
Its a very simple set – its 12 x 400m; between the first and second 400m you have 120 seconds rest, then between reps two and three you get 110 seconds rest and the rest gradually reduces until you only get 10 seconds between the last reps.
Which leaves you thinking a) 12 x 400 – that’s not too bad and b) 120 seconds rest; that’s loads!
The reality is that once you get past rep 4 then most people are down to less rest than rep time and things get serious – by rep 8 everyone was really suffering – by rep 10 some athletes need to use their 30 seconds for a lie down.
However, it is an awesome set and well worth a try!
Coach Alex Masidlover 