Early Spring Circuit Workout
by Steve McGill

This month’s workout is one that I had my sprinters and hurdlers do last week, and I liked how it went. The purpose of it is to build leg strength while also working on drive phase mechanics. Also, because we don’t have a track and basically train on a sidewalk and a very small uneven field, I have to be creative regarding how I get things done. Finally, because getting into the weight room is darn near impossible for us time-wise and space-wise, I try to incorporate strength-based work into the running workouts as often as possible. Here’s the workout:

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5 sets of the following:

• 30 meter frankensteins
• 30 meter lunges
• 10 reps of hurdle hops over five hurdles
• 2×90 meter uphill sprints

Now for the details:

The frankensteins are a common warm-up drill in which you hold your arms out straight in front of  you and walk/march forward swinging your feet up to your hands. In the warmup version, you lift a leg every third stride, but in this workout version, you lift a leg every stride. Also, it’s important to make sure the hands aren’t swinging up and down. The hands need to stay in place so that the feet come up to the hands instead of the hands coming down to meet the feet in the middle. I also have my athletes clasp their  hands together so that the hands don’t separate too far from each other. 

After finishing the 30-meter frankenstein, turn around and do the 30-meter lunge in the other direction.

With the lunges, the arms should swing up and down in a precise range of motion in unison with the legs. With each stride, the knee should lightly touch the ground without resting on the ground.

After finishing the lunges, go straight to the hurdle hops (which will already be set up; I set them up before practice starts or during warmups). I will generally set up two rows of five hurdles. In one row the hurdles will be set at 27 inches, and in the other row the hurdles will be set at 30 inches. I instruct the athletes to do their hops in the lane that represents their level of ability. Don’t go in the lane with the 30-inch hurdles if you’re just gonna knock them all down. The hurdles will be four or five feet apart. I keep a close eye to make sure nobody cheats by taking a build-up step in front of the first hurdle. Start with both feet together. And keep both feet together the whole way through. Some of the more athletic kids will want to go too fast and they end up losing form. Reps done incorrectly don’t count. Go back and start the rep over.

After finishing the 10 reps of hurdle hops, go straight to the start line for the uphill sprints. I like the sprints to be done from a 3-point start so we can work on drive phase mechanics. After finishing the first 90-meter sprint, walk back to the start line and do the second sprint. After finishing the second sprint, I give the kids a water break that should not involve any sitting down. The water break will last a maximum of three minutes.

Variations:
You can play with distances, first of all. The distance for the frankensteins and lunges can go up to 40 meters and even fifty meters. With the sprints, if you don’t have access to a hill nearby, then doing them on the track is fine. With the hurdle hops, the heights of the hurdles can be raised if athletes are not being challenged at 30 inches.

This is definitely an early-season workout that I wouldn’t use past mid-April or so.

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