Letter from the Editor
Happy April, Readers! Welcome to the April 2015 issue of The Hurdle Magazine. In this month’s issue, we have a nice collection of articles for you as you head into the meaty part of your outdoor season.
In “Tall Girl Problems,” I discuss the idea the issues that taller female hurdlers face in the 100 meter hurdles, and at the end I offer some suggestions for drills to help taller hurdlers negotiate the space between the barriers.
“Keeping the Hips Up” is an expanded version of a blog post of mine from earlier this month. In this article I discuss how to prevent the hips from dropping during hurdle clearance, and how to keep the hips pushing forward. At the end of the article I include some pics of my hurdlers and a short video clip of a hurdler doing drills that help to work on keeping the hips tall.
In “Developing the Steeplechaser” Chris Repecki returns to The Hurdle Magazine after his excellent article about lactic acid in the 400 hurdles in last month’s issue. A distance runner himself, Repecki provides us with our first-ever article about the hurdling events’ distant cousin (get it, “distant” cousin?). In the article, Repecki discusses hurdle clearance, water jump clearance, overall race strategy, and training ideas for this most demanding of events.
This month’s workout, “400H Start Workout” is designed to help the 400 hurdler to establish a stride pattern to the first hurdle and off the first hurdle so that the first half of the race is consistent and fluid.
The companion piece to this month’s workout is the article entitled, “The Start in the 400m Hurdles.” This article discusses in detail the issues one faces at the start, and how the start will affect the rest of the race.
Finally, “Anticipation” continues on the theme of timing as presented in the last three issues of the magazine. Here, I discuss the importance of being able to anticipate each movement in hurdle clearance before making the movement.
This month’s instructional video should be completed by the weekend (April 19th).
Thanks to Chris Repecki for contributing another outstanding article to the magazine, and thanks to all of you subscribers. Good luck with everything as the outdoor season gets into full swing.
Steve McGill
4/14/2015
