If They Can’t Do It, Don’t Do It
by Steve McGill

The title of this article comes from a quote said by NBA basketball coach Glenn “Doc” Rivers, in referring to designing plays and running plays for his team. His point was that a coach shouldn’t ask players to do anything they’re not ready to do or not talented enough to do, or that doesn’t fit the overall skill set of the personnel. I’ve learned that same lesson in the classroom, teaching English. Last year, in my English Composition class, I planned a lesson on how to write and punctuate complex sentences and compound-complex sentences, assuming it would all be review content. But after about 30 seconds of staring at blank faces after I asked a basic question, I realized I had to start at a lower level. These fools didn’t know the difference between a clause and a phrase. So, if I wanted to teach them how to write compound-complex sentences, I would first have to teach them about clauses and phrases. I would have to explain that a clause has a subject and a verb. I’d have to write example sentences on the board and underline and identify each part of speech. If I was going to teach them what I wanted to teach them, I had to first teach them the material they needed to know to learn that material. 

Applying that idea to hurdlers, particularly beginning hurdlers or experienced hurdlers who have a lot of flaws to fix, trying to do too much too soon can be quite debilitating and could even ruin their development. You have to meet them where they are, and build them up from there. The inspiration for this topic is a high school junior girl that I’ve recently started working with in my private coaching. She’s tall — about 5-8 — very athletic, with strong legs and a muscular, toned physique. When I first met her on the track for our first session, my initial impression was, this girl is an athlete. 

But as our first session got underway, it became evident to me that she was hesitant to attack the hurdles. I had to keep urging her to take off faster to the first hurdle, to be more aggressive. But her tentativeness remained. At the end of the workout, after we had drilled for a while and addressed some technical flaws, I set up three hurdles at 27 inches (I was using the yellow practice hurdles), with the second and third hurdles moved in three feet from race spacing. I like for an athlete to be able to do something three times in a row before I feel confident that whatever it is we’re working on is becoming ingrained. In this case, I just wanted her to 3-step for three consecutive reps. She 3-stepped the first two reps, but on the third rep, she kept stopping in front of the third hurdle. We tried several more times but she kept stopping. So finally I ended practice and told her we’d work it more next time.

In one of the earlier drill reps, she had fallen and scraped her arm, which got me thinking that her fall might’ve been the reason she was so tentative. But no, I remembered, she had been tentative the whole workout, even before the fall, which is why I switched to drilling to begin with before coming back to the full-speed stuff. So, I asked her about her background, which my dumb ass should’ve done before the workout began, and discovered some things that were quite enlightening.

Firstly, she had run the 100 hurdles four times for her school team, and her best time was in the 19’s, and she had never 3-stepped before. She had five-stepped all four races. Also, her mom told me, she had fallen a few times before, and “one time was really bad,” her mom said. “Took off a chunk of skin.” So now it all made sense to me — her tentativeness, her lack of confidence, her fear. Just looking at her, I had assumed she was already a three-stepper and I had been feeling baffled the whole workout as to why she wasn’t able to do it here in practice. Come to find out, she had never three-stepped. Five-stepping was all she knew.

When we met again a few days later, I decided to focus on the 300 hurdles to see what she looked like there, as she had told me she preferred the long hurdles over the short hurdles anyway. I was hoping to see more aggression and confidence, but I didn’t. I set up the first two hurdles and she was taking 19 strides to the first hurdle and 19 to the second one. In my mind, there was no doubt she should’ve been able to get 17 to the first and 24 to the second. 

So we worked on just the first hurdle for a while. Nineteen again, and again, and again. And I have to admit, I was getting frustrated, which hardly ever happens to me. I wasn’t frustrated with her though; I was frustrated with myself because I wasn’t able to figure out how to help her. Finally, I remembered a strategy that worked for me when helping tentative hurdlers in the short hurdles to switch from 9-10 steps to the first hurdle to eight steps: instruct them to bound. Don’t run. Bound. Push off the track with force. Cover ground. Exaggerate the arm swing and the knee lift. I instructed her to bound for the first four strides, and then transition into her natural running rhythm. On the next rep she followed my instructions and was able to clear the hurdle easily in 24 strides. For the next rep, I said let’s get over the second hurdle as well, and just keep the speed going that you have through hurdle one. Take it to hurdle two.

But on that next rep, although she did get 24 to the first hurdle, she got 19 to the second one. No shame in the game. This time, I said, preparing her for the next rep, bound for two strides off hurdle one like you bounded for the first four strides off the start line. She did so, and voila, 24 to the first hurdle, 17 to the second. She was able to do it again for three more consecutive reps. We were building new muscle memory, a new rhythm, and a new confidence.

After those reps, I decided to go back to the 100 hurdles and try to 3-step again over three hurdles with the second and third hurdles moved in three feet, just like last time. This time, she got it on the first rep, and on the second, and on the third. I then moved the second hurdles out to just two feet in from the race marks, and she did three reps in a row again, over 30-inch hurdles. Success!

So what were we doing in that workout, and in the previous one? Undoing a whole lot of damage that had been done by whoever it was who decided to throw her into races before she was ready to race. Part of the work was physical — coaching the body out of the choppy, short strides and into powerful, open strides. Learning to take off aggressively, from step one. Learning to stop measuring the distance and hoping things will work out when you get to the hurdle. Part of the work was psychological. Most of it was. Building confidence. Staying in attack mode even though you’ve fallen before. Trusting in your athletic ability. So many times I told her, “When in doubt, be an athlete.” Which is a way of saying that everything doesn’t have to be perfect. Technique doesn’t have to be perfect. Rhythm doesn’t have to be perfect. Be aggressive, be an athlete, and good things will happen. 

So the main argument of this article is that coaches should not put hurdlers into races before they are ready to race. Doing so is simply irresponsible behavior.