Letter from the Editor
This month’s issue of The Hurdle Magazine comes out right in the midst of the Olympic Games. Already, there have been some insanely good performances, and the hurdling events are on deck. So hopefully, all of you are getting your fix of track and field the same as I am. This month’s issue doesn’t focus on the Olympics however, as I’ll wait until next month to take a look back and provide some evaluation and analysis.
The primary focus of this month’s issue is geared toward looking ahead to the 2017 season for those athletes whose 2016 has already been completed. And yes, that would be just about everybody except for the Olympians and the professionals who will be competing into September.
With the article, “Fall Training Ideas,” I provide some tips on creating a weekly training plan in the fall, centered around endurance hurdling workouts, cross training, weightlifting, plyometric work, and speed-endurance. I believe that hurdlers should train specifically for the hurdles from the very start of their training program as opposed to waiting to incorporate hurdle workouts later in the winter or spring.
This month’s workout, “Leg Strengthening Workout,” gives a specific example of a solid fall workout designed to increase leg strength plyometric exercises.
The featured article of this month’s issue, “A New World Record,” provides an inside look at Keni Harrison’s 12.20 performance in the 100 meter hurdles that she ran in late July, just a couple weeks after falling short of her dream of making the Olympic team.
In “The Coach: One Person, Many Persons,” I take a look at the many roles the coach plays in an athlete’s life, and how coaching is therefore more of a vocation than a career.
In “A Genuine Path,” I take a look into a recent CNN.com article on martial arts master Bruce Lee, building upon an article I wrote on Lee a few issues ago. Lee was a thinker, a reader, and he applied readings and perceptions to his chosen art form. That’s what we in hurdle land try to do, which is why I find Lee’s example to be such a relevant and important one for us to study. Finding “the right way” to hurdle as opposed to finding the right way for you are two very different things. One is rigid and restrictive; the other is creative. In hurdling, when talking about how to approach the event, nothing is more important than creativity.
“Hurdle Doubling” is an article by a question posed by a hurdles group on Facebook, where one of the members brought up the fact that doubling in both hurdling events is quite rare at the elite level. In the article, I also propose the idea of adding a 200m hurdle event to the competition program.
Thank you for your continued support of the magazine and of my efforts to bring you quality content every month. It’s been a full three years since our inaugural issue. Hard to believe that so much time has flown by.
Enjoy the Olympics, and see you next month!
Steve McGill
