April 14, 2014
I was listening to the song “Shoulder Lean” by Young Dro last night as I was putting together the finishing touches of the latest issue of The Hurdle Magazine. As the hook settled into my consciousness – “let your shoulder lean, shoulder lean” – I found myself unconsciously relating the message to hurdling. Let your shoulder lean.
I found myself thinking back to my college days, when I was adjusting to running over 42’s. To avoid hitting hurdles while still maintaining momentum, I learned to shift my weight slightly to my lead leg side as I took off. So, as a right-leg lead, the right hip was slightly in front of my left hip, and my right shoulder was slightly in front of my left shoulder.
Both hips and both shoulders were still facing the front. I wasn’t twisting my hips or shoulders. But by shifting my weight to the lead leg side, I felt like I had more power and speed going into the hurdle. And as long as my trail leg didn’t delay in driving to the front, I never had any issues with balance.
Last night, while trying to think of a hurdler who hurdles with the shoulder lean style, David Oliver immediately came to mind. The hurdlers I’ve coached over the years who are students of the event have always questioned how Oliver is able to run so fast, considering he doesn’t have the trail leg execution of an Allen Johnson or Liu Xiang, and he doesn’t explode into hurdling position off the track the way an Aries Merrit or Jason Richardson does. What Oliver does well is he shifts his weight onto the lead leg, he leans hard over that lead leg, pushing it back down to the track.
Check out this photo from last year’s World Championships:
At first glance, it appears that D.O. is off-balance, that he’s veering to the right. But that isn’t the case. He isn’t veering. He’s shoulder-leaning. To quote the song, he’s letting his shoulder lean. All of his momentum is pushing forward as he attacks the crossbar with his lead leg. Notice how deeply he is leaning over the lead leg, pushing his chest down onto the thigh, not just over the thigh, ensuring a quick, forceful, explosive snapdown of the lead leg.
The shoulder lean also serves the purpose of raising the trail leg. Whether that’s intentional or not doesn’t really matter, because that’s what happens. Whenever Oliver has balance issues on the trail leg side, it’s because the trail leg waits too long before driving to the front, or it’s because he comes out of his forward lean (over the thigh) too soon. But as you can see in the above photo, the trail leg is in excellent position to drive forward over the crossbar, even if it isn’t as high as Liu’s might be at this point in hurdle clearance.
Meanwhile, if you’re feeling reminiscent like I was last night and want to get your shoulder lean on, here’s the song:
