With and Without Hurdles Workout

This month’s workout is designed for the 300m/400m hurdler as a speed workout and a rhythm development workout. Because the speed component of the long hurdles can often get overlooked in the  midst of doing speed-endurance work, a workout like this one would fit in nicely mid-week in the early spring season, as the emphasis on getting the fast-twitch muscles going begins to become a focal point.

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For the 300m hurdler, the workout would be as follows:

8×150 at 90-95% of full speed, from a standing start

• Odd-numbered reps with no hurdles
• Even-numbered reps over the first four hurdles.
• Take 4-minute rest between reps.
• Goal is to keep the hurdle reps within two seconds of the non-hurdle reps. So if you’re hitting the flat 150’s in 18 seconds, for example, you’ll want to hit the 150’s over hurdles in 20 seconds.

For the 400m hurdler, the workout would be as follows:

6×200 at 90-95% of full speed, from a standing start

• Odd-numbered reps with no hurdles
• Even-numbered reps over the first four hurdles.
• Take 4-minute rest between reps.
• Goal is to keep the hurdle reps within two seconds of the non-hurdle reps. So if you’re hitting the flat 200’s in 26.0, you’ll want to hit the 200’s over hurdles in 27.5 seconds.

As is always the case with workouts similar to this one, it is okay to increase the rest period by :30 or 1:00 later in the workout if you, as the coach, feel that doing so will enable the athlete to continue hitting the target times consistently. If the hurdle reps end up becoming 3 to 4 seconds slower than the flat reps, the purpose of the workout gets lost. The goal would be for the athletes to get to a point where they can do the entire workout without adding extra rest prior to any of the reps.

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