Quicksteps as a Teaching Tool Workout
by Steve McGill

The quickstep drill is probably the one I use most often in my coaching of hurdlers – either that or the marching popover drill. I first started using the quickstep drill as an endurance hurdling workout in fall training. Back then (about twenty years ago, I guess), I had been using the back-and-forth workout as my endurance hurdling workout. In the back-and-forths, which were originated by Renaldo Nehemiah’s high school coach Jean Poquette, five hurdles are set up one way 12 yards apart, and five hurdles are set up facing the other way right beside them. The athlete runs up and back as many times as they’re able to before taking a break and doing another rep. There are many variations to this drill, but that’s the basic version. I found that my athletes were getting so tired so early into the workout that I wasn’t getting out of it what I wanted. So I decided to just have the athletes go in one direction, and then turn around and jog back in the other direction, back to the start line. And instead of having the athletes five-step, I’d move the hurdles in to about eight yards apart and have them three-step. I found that the jog between allowed for higher quality reps for longer, so the quickstep became my go-to endurance hurdling workout.

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But for hurdlers who are either new to hurdling or who have developed a lot of ingrained technical flaws that need to be addressed, doing the quickstep drill as an endurance workout can be counterproductive, as it can serve to further ingrain the habits we’re seeking to break. In such cases, we adjust the drill, and how we use it as a workout. This summer, I’ve started working with Raelle Brown, a rising junior at a nearby school who, as a sophomore, ran in the mid-15’s in the 100 meter hurdles. In looking at race footage from last year that her dad sent to me prior to our first session, I noticed several notable flaws: the lead leg was locking at the knee, the lead arm was swinging across her body, she was too upright between the hurdles, she was too upright out of the blocks, and her trail leg was too flat. The fact that she ran in the mid-15’s looking like that really excited me. I told myself that once we put in the work and correct these flaws, she’s gonna be zooming.

She grasped the marching popover drill very quickly, and was able to do it without any mistakes. The lead leg knee was driving higher and the foot was cycling down under the hip; the trail leg was raising high and tight, and the lead arm was staying on that side of her body, punching up and down.

But when we graduated to the quickstep drill, all the flaws came back. Here’s the setup that I had with that drill:

Five hurdles at the 30-inch height.
32 feet to the first hurdle; six-step approach
22 feet between the hurdles; three-step rhythm

For males it would be:

Five hurdles at the 36-inch height.
33 feet to the first hurdle; six-step approach
24 feet between the hurdles; three-step rhythm

As an endurance workout, I’d have the athlete do two sets of 10 reps, with jog-back recovery (slow bop on the balls of the feet), with a five-minute rest between sets.

But for someone in Raelle’s position, who is still learning proper hurdling mechanics, I don’t put a number on how many reps we do, and I do a lot of teaching between reps (analyzing the footage from my iPhone, providing a critique of the previous rep, and strategizing what to lock in on for the next rep). In a recent workout, as she continued to kick out the foot of her lead leg, I decided to slow it down. I kept the spacing the same, but told her to just boppity-bop to the first hurdle with high knees, and then five-step the rest of them. I was hoping that five-stepping would give her time to do more thinking between the hurdles, allowing her to execute the motions. And that’s what happened The lead leg knee drove higher, and it extended at a slightly downward angle without locking at the knee. After about three or four reps of five-stepping, we went back to three-stepping, but only over the first two hurdles. No point in going over all five if you’re not doing it right, right? After a few reps over two, we graduated to three hurdles, and then to five. The last three reps or so over five looked as good as the five-stepping reps had looked. The lead leg was cycling, not kicking, no longer locking at the knee.

Between sessions, while analyzing the film, I noticed that there was still a slight twist in her hips upon landing off of the hurdles. What was causing the twist? The lead arm swinging side to side usually causes that, but the lead arm wasn’t swinging anymore. I had thought that I had seen some back-kick in the trail leg, and though I was correct, that didn’t seem to be causing the twist, as the knee was driving to the front with the knee leading the way. Then finally I figured it out: the lead arm was pulling back instead of punching down as she was descending. That pull-back action was causing the twist.

So, next time we met, we followed the same pattern. Four or five reps of five-stepping, working on cycling the lead arm. Then, quickstepping over two hurdles, then over three hurdles, then over all five. And it went very well.

By using the quickstep drill as a teaching tool, I’ve been able to make rapid progress with Raelle. We’ve been able to put a lot of things in place so that once she is ready to go full speed from the start line, her body will have these new, good habits ingrained, and she’ll be able to focus on getting faster instead of thinking about technique.

Below is a video from a recent workout with Raelle doing the quickstep drill. All the reps in the vid are three-step reps, although we did start with five-step reps.

In this video from my Instagram page, she is quickstepping again. The first rep in the vid is a five-step rep, and the rest are three-step reps.

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