Keeping the Heel Disciplined
by Steve McGill
One of the hardest habits to break in hurdling, especially if the habit has been ingrained for over more than a year, is that of kicking upward with the foot of the lead leg when attacking the crossbar instead of driving the knee toward the crossbar. Hurdlers who kick, or swing, the lead leg, tend to have multiple other issues caused by that mistake, such as hips twisting, shoulders twisting, arms crossing the body, and upper body posture being too erect. The bigger faster stronger athletes can mask this mistake or compensate for it with their speed and power, and might even have very successful collegiate and professional careers hurdling that way. But for the non-freakish athletes, the mere mortals of the world, swinging the foot instead of driving the knee is a momentum killer that forces the athlete to work so hard that they can never finish races well. How do you address the issue? I say, by focusing on what the heels do.
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In the summers I tend to work with a pretty high number of athletes, as they find me in their search for assistance during their off-season. I’ve worked with about seven athletes so far this summer, and one consistent theme I keep seeing is that those who lead with the knee run aggressively, and those who swing the foot can’t maintain their aggressive body posture no matter how hard they try. In correcting the problem, I always focus on the heel because the heel is almost always the culprit. When I work with someone new for the first time, and I’m watching them warm up, watching them do their sprint drills and warmup sprints, I’m looking for key things. Mainly, I’m looking to see if they’re keeping their ankles dorsiflexed, if they’re landing on the balls of the feet. An A-march will expose a hurdle flaw before I’ve even seen the athlete hurdle. If I see that foot swinging out in front of the knee a little bit, instead of rising up directly under the hamstring, I know we’re going to need to fix the A-marches before we even think about going over a hurdle.
Still, sometimes, I can get faked out. Recently, I was working with a girl who runs the 400 hurdles and just finished her freshman year at a college in Atlanta. I had worked with her one weekend last summer as well, when she was just learning how to run the long hurdles after running the 400 in high school, and we did a lot of work on her sprint mechanics. This time around, her sprint mechanics looked great, so I checked that box in my head and decided to work on the things she said she needed to work on — her stride pattern over the first two hurdles and her arm action over the hurdles. While her approach to the first hurdle looked fantastic, her clearance of it was not so fantastic. Hips twisted and arms swung side to side.
So, after one of the reps, I was showing her the importance of keeping her hands moving in an up-and-down motion. I stood in front of her and showed her proper arm action, mimicking going over a hurdle, then asked her to do it with me, still facing me. What I ended up noticing was that every time she mimicked the hurdle action, her foot swung in front of her knee. I pointed it out to her, saying, “look at what your heel is doing, then look at what mine is doing.” Mine was driving up under the hamstring. I told her that’s what she needed to do. “You’re doing it in your A-marches now,” I said. “You’re doing it in your A-skips. You’re doing it in your high-knee drill. You’re doing it when you sprint. But when you hurdle, you revert to swinging the foot. Keep the heel tucked!” (I said it nicely though).
Lo and behold, when she did her next rep, and did keep her heel tucked, the arm swing went away, the hip/shoulder twist went away, and she had much more speed coming off the hurdle.
One of my regulars over the past two years, Raelle Brown, who just graduated and will be running in college next year, came to me with the habit of kicking her lead leg. We addressed it a lot in drilling in our first year together (her junior year of high school), but never mastered cycling the leg the way I would prefer, despite making improvements. This past year, she had significant back issues that forced us to just focus on maintaining speed and rhythm without worrying about addressing technical flaws, as she was only good for a handful of reps each session before her back pain started flaring up again.
In our most recent session, after her school year had ended, we went back to basic drilling, basic technique work. She asked me, “Do you think I’ll ever be able to get out of the habit of kicking my lead leg?” I paused for a second before responding, “You’re gonna have to get reps in consistently to get rid of it. Because of your back, we didn’t have time this year to address it the way we needed to.” She nodded in agreement. For the workout that day, I had her five-step with the hurdles on the boys’ blue marks, focusing on keeping the heel tucked under the hamstring at take-off. She was able to do it with no problem. So, it’s in there. But ingraining new habits does take consistent practice, constantly adding new levels of challenge, but not too much too soon.
The final example I’ll point to is that of Keni Harrison, the long-time professional hurdler whom I coached during her last two years of high school, and with whom I still have a strong relationship. She sent me some practice videos recently of her clearing hurdles at full speed, doing the “zone drill,” where the middle hurdles are left out so she has crazy speed heading into the last three hurdles. She noted that her trail leg was very flat over the last three hurdles. I suggested that she raise the heel of her lead leg higher, with the logic being that raising the heel will raise the knee, which will allow the lead leg to cycle instead of line-driving, which will allow the trail leg to raise higher. She tried it the next workout, and it worked. She didn’t hit any hurdles, and she was faster off the hurdles, and she ran her best time of the year for the drill. It hasn’t translated to races yet, but it will.
So, to conclude, drive the heel up under the hamstring — every stride, and especially when attacking the hurdle. The video below is from the five-stepping drill workout with Raelle.
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