Popovers and Crouched Starts Workout
by Steve McGill
In past years, when deciding what to do on hurdle days, I’ve usually reserved one day for hurdle drilling (with a heavy emphasis on technique) and a second day for either going for more volume (with a heavy emphasis on rhythm) or going faster (with a heavy emphasis on speed). But sometimes on full-speed days I’ve been noticing that my athletes are having trouble picking up where they left off from the previous workout. In the beginning of workouts, especially, I’m seeing old habits return before we correct them again. As a result, we don’t make as much progress by the end of the workout as we would have if the beginning of the workout had been better.
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Generally, on full-speed days, I don’t want to do any drilling, because I want the legs to be as fresh as possible for as long as possible so that our full-speed reps are all high-quality. But losing some of that quality in the beginning of workouts has had me re-thinking that strategy, and so I’ve changed it and noticed immediate positive results.
One of the athletes I’m coaching, Janie Coble, has good technique, but tends to let her lead leg hang in the air instead of driving it down with force. She’s 5-8, so there’s no need to extend the lead leg too much, but it’s a habit she developed when she was first learning – when I was trying to get her ready for races and didn’t have time to address that habit. Though making it a point of emphasis once our season ended, the problem persisted. In our last two sessions, instead of going straight to the full-speed reps after warmups, I had her start the workout by doing some marching popovers. The first time, we used five 27-inch hurdles, and the second time we used five 30-inch hurdles. We did five reps, with the hurdles spaced twelve feet apart. Our focus was on the lead leg – drive the knee up, drive the foot down.
After that, I set up three hurdles at 33 inches, one foot wider apart than race spacing, and had her high-knee up to the first one, and then five-step between the last two. The logic was that I wanted her to warm up over the 33’s before going full speed over the 33’s. She did three reps of that, and then we began the workout, which consisted of one rep over one hurdle, one rep over two hurdles, and five reps over three hurdles. The second and third hurdles were moved in one foot from race spacing. We used a crouched start, but will probably graduate to a block start next session.
To summarize, this is what the workout consists of:
- Five marching popovers over five hurdles (27 or 30 inches for females; 30 or 33 inches for males)
- Three easy five-stepping reps over race-height hurdles, with the second and third hurdles moved out one foot from race distance.
- One full-speed rep over the first hurdle (from a crouched start, three-point start, or block start).
- One full-speed rep over the first two hurdles.
- Five full-speed reps over the first three hurdles.
Variations:
More hurdles can be added. I’m sticking with three for now because I want her to master that part of the race.
If the athlete is not ready for race height, the full-speed reps can be done with the hurdles a click below race height.
For the full-speed reps, the hurdles can be moved in two feet from race distance if the athlete is overstriding between the hurdles with them moved in only one foot. If the athlete is still overstriding with the hurdles moved in two feet from race distance, that indicates they’re not ready to do this workout yet, and should do some straight speed work instead.
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