Learning how to Feel the Event
by Steve McGill
The original title of this article was going to be “Learning how to Think the Event,” but I changed it when I realized that that wasn’t what I really wanted to write about. This article isn’t about the mentally lazy athlete who relies on his or her athletic abilities and isn’t willing to be a student of the game. While that’s a very real issue with a lot of talented hurdlers, there is another very real issue that can be identified when coaching athletes who are students of the game, who do study the event and who do put in all of the work needed to excel. Hurdlers who take their craft seriously can often tend to be over-analytical when assessing their own race and can often over-think when thinking is not what is needed most. These hurdlers lack what I call “hurdling instincts” – the ability to react to whatever is happening in the moment, the ability to make micro-adjustments on the fly, in the heat of the battle.
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This lack of ability to feel the race largely stems from the ease with which we can review each and every rep that is recorded on the coach’s or parent’s smart phone. Back in the days, recording any part of a practice session was a rare treat, and even recording races didn’t happen very often. As a result, athletes like myself had to rely on our instincts because we couldn’t see what we were doing. Jean Poquette, Renaldo Nehemiah’s high school coach, once said that, when coaching Renaldo, he would instruct him to focus on the feeling. For example, if they were emphasizing the trail leg action in a particular session, Poquette would tell Renaldo that once he felt the trail leg pulling through with a timing that was in sync with the lead leg snapping down, all he needed to do from there was “duplicate the feeling” on the next rep. In that manner, Nehemiah’s body ultimately became his coach. Gradually, he knew that when it felt right, it was right. He could trust how the feeling to guide him. As a result, when it didn’t feel right, he could sense it instantly, and make the necessary adaptations. That way, even if he did make a mistake, he wouldn’t make it over more than one hurdle. He would correct it by the next hurdle.
Recently I was working with a high school athlete, Josh, who has run sub-14 in the 110 hurdles, and who is possessed with a very inquisitive, insightful mind. For a high school athlete, he thinks the event like a professional. He is able to break down film of his own reps. He studies the styles and techniques of professionals and asks very intelligent questions in regards to what they are doing. You talk about a student of the game – Josh is on the case!
But in this particular practice session, something was bugging me, but I couldn’t quite identify what it was. We were doing some block starts over three or four hurdles, and I filmed each rep. After each rep, we’d review the film together and discuss what he needed to work on for the next one. Finally I realized what was bothering me: we were spending so much time looking at the film that we weren’t getting in a lot of reps. And the way the body ingrains new habits is by doing reps. I realized that the reason we weren’t making much progress in terms of fixing his flaws was simply because we were spending too much time talking and not enough time hurdling. After one rep, instead of going straight to the film, I asked him how his trail leg felt. It had been a good rep. He didn’t hit any hurdles, and the knee of his trail leg came through much higher than in the previous rep. “Tell me how it felt,” I said. He kind of hesitated, then asked to look at the video. “No,” I said, “before looking at the film, just tell me what felt different about that rep.” He couldn’t answer. That’s when I realized he was totally reliant on the film to inform him what he was doing right and what he was doing wrong.
Later that week, he texted me a few reps from a session he did with his club team, asking me to provide a critique. In one of the reps, his trail leg flattened out and he hit three hurdles in a row with the ankle. Bang! Bang! Bang! In our text conversation, I explained to him that after hitting one hurdle, he shouldn’t have hit two more. He should’ve known to get the knee up. He responded by asking, “I should’ve been thinking about my knee?” No, I explained, it’s not about “thinking” about the knee, but being able to react when making a mistake. “You shouldn’t have to wait until looking at the film before realizing your knee wasn’t coming up,” I said. “You should be able to identify why you hit the hurdle and fix it instantly by the next one.”
To put it simply, video gives you feedback after the fact, whereas the body provides feedback during the fact. The body provides immediate feedback. So, the hurdler who doesn’t learn to listen to his or her body is not going to be able to make in-race adjustments. Wrong should feel wrong. You want to be able to correct the mistake when it occurs, and listening to your body is what enable you to do so.
This lack of instinct is something I encounter all the time. Maryline Roux – the masters athlete that I talked about at length in another article for this issue – once got annoyed with me because I wasn’t filming her reps. “I’m a visual learner,” she said. That’s all well and good, I responded, but if you can’t feel that your arm is swinging back so far that it’s causing your whole body to twist, then how are you ever going to fix it?
At the Team Steve camp this past weekend, I had a few kids complaining in the quick-step drill that the hurdles were “too close together.” Bruh, that’s the whole point of the drill. You have to adapt your rhythm to the spacing. Same with the long-hurdle drill with the random spacing. Adapt, adapt, adapt. On the fly. Mid-rep. When you develop this ability to trust your body’s instincts, you can enter into races confident that you are ready to deal with whatever may happen. As the season goes on and your speed and strength increase, you’ll still be able to negotiate the barriers and the space between them.
I feel that the purpose of film should be to corroborate, to validate what you already felt; it shouldn’t be the primary source of information. The body should be the primary source of information. When you finish a rep, you should be able to tell me how that rep differed from the previous one. If I say to you, “You were higher over hurdle three than you were over hurdle four. Why?” You should be able to give me answer based on how you felt.
The hurdler who can develop such instincts is at an advantage over his or her opponents. In a race, things may very well happen that you didn’t plan for, but if you can adapt on the fly, then you will not be at the mercy of fate; you will be in control of your race.
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