From Five to Four-Stepping
by Steve McGill
The second girl I’ve started working with in the past month, Olivia, is not as talented as Kate, but is a hard worker who wants to get better. And that’s all I need. I’ve met with Olivia three times so far. A junior, she ran both hurdles last year. She found out about me from Kate, her teammate on their school team. Olivia doesn’t remember what her personal bests are, but she thinks she ran in the 21 range in the 100m hurdles, and I’m assuming somewhere in the 55-56 range in the 300m hurdles. In the footage her mom sent me from a 300m hurdle race from last year, it was evident that Olivia’s sprint mechanics needed a whole lot of work, and that she didn’t run aggressively.
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In talking to Olivia at the beginning of her first session, she told me that in the 100m hurdles, she took ten steps to the first hurdle and five steps between the hurdles last year. Well dang, I told myself, if that’s the case, we have to address that right away. It should be illegal for a coach to put an athlete in the hurdles who is taking ten steps to the first hurdle. That’s straight-up neglect to not teach that athlete to cut the ten steps down to eight.
As with Kate, I had my yellow practice hurdles with me. Even though there were plenty of regulation high school hurdles at the track, there was no way we could start at their lowest height of 30 inches. We needed to start at 21. Again, as with Kate, we had to work on sprint mechanics before we could put any hurdles up at all. Unlike Kate, who was a heel-striker, Olivia ran on her toes, which meant that her toes were pointing down, and her feet landed in front of her hips, with her upper body leaning backwards, which meant she was putting the brakes on every stride, forcing herself to work extra hard just to move forward.
With Olivia, I could’ve literally spent the whole first session working just on her sprinting posture, but I wanted to address this issue with 10-stepping and 5-stepping, recognizing that she should be able to transition to 8-stepping and 4-stepping even with flawed sprint mechanics.
I started by having her sprint from the start line to where the first hurdle would be, placing a cone at the spot. At first, her eighth step was way too far from the first hurdle to clear it. Then I gave her an instruction that has worked in the past: take bounding strides to the first hurdle, exaggerating the arm swing and the knee drive. When she tried it, her toes were still pointing down, but the exaggerated arm swing did help her to cover more ground each stride. Meanwhile, she was also totally erect from the giddy up, so I told her to use a crouched start and drive forward more. Always, with every athlete, I’m giving instructions on a level they can understand and execute. If I had asked her to do a three-point start, we would’ve been stuck on that forever, which is why the crouched start made more sense. That adjustment helped, but she was still standing too tall too soon. By step three she was fully erect. “Drive,” I instructed her. “Stay forward the whole time as you’re approaching the first hurdle.”
She got to a point where her eighth step was about five feet from where I had placed the cone, so I decided it was time to put up the first hurdle and see how she looked. She was able to eight-step by the third attempt. The first two times, she was looking like she was going to 8-step, but then she added a couple quick steps at the very end right before clearing the hurdle. Of course, it was another case of the body clinging to its old habits, so I encouraged her to keep trying because she was generating enough speed to 8-step. Once she got it, we did it a couple more times to make sure she wasn’t just reaching the hurdle in eight steps, but was gaining momentum that would at least give her a chance to 4-step the second hurdle.
She had never alternated legs before, and I decided, in the interest of time, not to teach her that yet. I’ve noticed over the years that female hurdlers have a lot less trouble learning to alternate lead legs than male hurdlers do. So I was trusting that to be the case with Olivia. Also, with the hurdles at 21 inches, even a mistake wouldn’t mean a tumble to the ground, especially considering how light the practice hurdles are.
My theory proved correct. With the second hurdle moved in one foot from race distance, she was able to 4-step it on her second try. On the first try, she paused after landing off the first hurdle, so I instructed to get rid of that pause, get rid of that doubt, and to trust the speed she had generated while approaching the first hurdle. Lo and behold, on the next rep, her speed did take her there in four steps, and when it was time for her weaker lead leg to clear the hurdle, it did so.
“That’s a new rhythm,” I explained to her about 4-stepping. “Now we gotta get more reps in 4-stepping so your body gets used to that rhythm and doesn’t wanna go back to the 5-step rhythm.”
As the workout progressed, I was able to add a third hurdle, a fourth hurdle, and a fifth hurdle. Also, we were able to raise the hurdle to 24 inches.
The next time we met, we started with the hurdles at 24 inches, and were able to raise them to 27 inches by the end of the workout.
In our most recent session, we started with the hurdles at 27 inches, and were able to raise them to 30 by the end of the workout.
This gradual, incremental progress gives the athlete confidence. It’s like building a house. You have to establish a solid foundation first before adding another floor.
Meanwhile, we’ve continued working on sprint mechanics. Her A-skips are looking great now, and her posture is improving when she sprints. There are lots of things to fix still in terms of her technique, but we can work them in as we keep getting her used to the new rhythm. Always, in her first rep of each workout, she 10-steps to the first hurdle still, so that habit hasn’t disappeared completely. I told her that she shouldn’t try to 4-step in a race until we’re able to do so in practice over the race height hurdles of 33 inches. That might be next week, or it might not be until the weather breaks and we get some warm, sunny days for training.
I know some coaches don’t approve of 100m hurdlers 4-stepping, and I used to feel that way. But when you have a hurdler who doesn’t have the foot speed to 3-step, 4-stepping is a viable alternative until they do. Then we’ll just have to redo the process we used to switch from 5-stepping to 4-stepping. In the meantime, 4-stepping should help her to get her time down from the 21 range to the 18 range, and it’ll give her a skill (alternating) that will directly benefit her 300m hurdle race, which will most likely be her better race.
Below is footage from our most recent session. Most of the reps are over 27s, and the last two are over 30s.
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