Why the Start Determines Everything
by Steve McGill

The start is obviously a hugely important part of a sprint hurdle race because getting out well puts pressure on your opponents and allows you to establish a rhythm and a confidence level that makes the rest of the race easier. But the start is also important for reasons that aren’t so obvious. With the way I coach hurdlers, the start is the last piece we’ll add in after working on technique and rhythm for months. We do it that way because once you’re working on your start, the start needs to be your total focus. If the start isn’t on point, then you won’t be able to execute the things you were doing in your drills. The start determines your take-off distance to the first hurdle. And if the take-off distance isn’t on point, or if there is no cut step, then you’re going to run into trouble later in the race. Let me discuss a couple examples from this last weekend, when I worked with two out-of-town kids who traveled to me for some training. 

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Both kids were from West Virginia, although that was incidental, as they did not know each other. The first was a male, a high school junior named Peyton who has attended a couple of my camps in the past. Peyton and I had been messaging back and forth on Instagram for a good while before he came here, and in the videos he showed me, it was evident that he was having trouble maintaining his speed late in races. I saw a few technical things he could fix, and decided we would work on those when he came here.

But early in his visit, in our first session, it became evident to me that his technique was quite solid, although he was hitting hurdles with his trail leg a lot. In our first block start rep over a 39-inch hurdle, he clobbered the hurdle so hard that it bounced into the air. I was like, “Dang Peyton, I didn’t know you were that strong.” I wasn’t referring to how hard he hit the hurdle, but to how much ground he covered in his eight strides to the hurdle. He explained that he had gotten injured in the off-season and couldn’t do anything but lift weights. Well that explained it. Here’s what I came to understand, as I explained it to him:

His problem of slowing down late in races had nothing to do with a lack of speed-endurance, but had everything to do with the fact that he was getting too close to the first hurdle. Getting too close was causing him to hit hurdles, and it was also forcing him to jump too vertically over the first hurdle. As I explained to him, when you get too close to the first hurdle and are forced to go vertical over it, that kills all your forward momentum, forcing you to speed up all over again on the way to the second hurdle. And the interruption in your natural acceleration is going to lead to fatigue issues further down the line. So, I said to him, “in order to address your late-race issues, we need to adjust your start.”

So Peyton was taking an even eight strides to the first hurdle, with no quickening up the cadence or shortening the stride length as he moved closer to the hurdle. First I suggested that he focus on shortening/quickening his last three strides — powerful for the first five, quick for the last three. And I put a cone where the 7-foot take-off would be. At first it worked — he wasn’t hitting the hurdle and he was accelerating off of it very well. But as he got more accustomed to it, he started getting too close again. That’s when I said let’s flip it — let’s take three powerful strides, followed by five quick strides. This did the trick, at least for now; at some point he might need to seven-step — not this year but maybe next year. Anyway, I now feel confident that we identified the root cause of his problem and that he knows what to do to address it when he goes back home. But back to my larger point: that story shows how important it is to get the approach to hurdle one just right.

The second athlete, Milleah, a female and also a high school junior, has come to me about four or five times this year and has been making good progress every time. The biggest thing I’ve been harping on with her is that she needs to run more aggressively. She’s tall (about 5-10), she’s fast, but she also tends to run cautiously. So I’m like bruh, what’s the point of fixing anything in her technique if she’s not attacking the hurdles? She had a bit of a breakthrough in her last meet, so I want to build on that during her visit here this weekend.

After one block start rep over two hurdles, I really liked how her legs were cycling and how she was keeping everything in a straight line, driving the knees the whole way. But she wasn’t bringing ruckus. That sense of urgency I was looking for wasn’t quite there. So I told her I wanted to see more speed between hurdles one and two. “You wanna feel like you’re too close,” I explained to her. “Force yourself to be quick.” But then I realized that if I wanted her to be faster to the second hurdle, I would need her to be faster from the very beginning of the rep. So I added, “It starts with the very first step.” 

And sure enough, she was flying to the first hurdle and she was super-fast to hurdle two. I did a Busta Rhymes-like “Oh my God, yes! Oh my God!” And I said to her that if she does that in a race she’ll drop another half-second instantly. Back to my main point, making the start faster is what made the speed to the second hurdle faster. So again, the start is everything. 

The reason I knew in Peyton’s case that his approach to the first hurdle was causing his late-race fatigue was because I’d seen something similar happen with 7-steppers I had coached in the past. With them it was different, though it amounted to the same thing. With them, they weren’t getting close enough. Or, they were getting close enough, but without a cut step to propel them though the first hurdle. Without the momentum that the cut step provides, these 7-steppers were getting out well but fading around hurdle six and struggling to maintain their momentum. Once we addressed the issue and covered more ground in the first six strides, then we had our cut step and the problem of falling apart late in races disappeared. 

So yes, when working on the start, be aware of how it affects the whole race, and not just the beginning of the race.

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