Off-Season Training Tips for Newbie Hurdlers
by Steve McGill

For the first time in a long time, I have athletes to coach on a daily basis during the winter months. Up until last spring, I hadn’t coached for a school team since 2013, so all of my coaching consisted of private coaching and my Team Steve Camps/Academies. Then, last spring, when I took on the roll of head coach at the school where I teach — Davidson Day School in Davidson, NC — I had a girl, a sophomore named Grace Galloway — who began hurdling about halfway through the season, when it became evident to me that our conference was very weak in the hurdles, and that if I could get anyone on my team to jump over 10 hurdles and cross a finish line, that person could probably score some points. 

Grace four-stepped her way to a sixth-place finish at our state meet — we’re a 2A private school, so there aren’t a lot of high-level athletes — and we both agreed that if we had time in the off-season to work on three-stepping, she could be in the mix for a state championship next year (which is now this year). Meanwhile, another girl, Marie Madsen, who is in the same grade as Grace (they’re both juniors now) ran cross country in the fall, and on the weekends I started teaching her the basics of hurdling. Now that cross country season is over (and volleyball season is over for Grace), I am now coaching both of them on a regular basis. So, we’re able to get in plenty of conditioning work, plyometric work, weight room work, and hurdle work, which has rejuvenated me in a big way, as I have space to be creative in mapping out our training schedule. We have already built a very strong bond between the three of us, and we are going to go where the hurdles take us.

In my work with Grace and Marie over the past two weeks, we have been doing a variety of stuff — none of it new or inventive, but all of it with the goal in mind of hitting the ground running when the spring season starts. If you’ve been subscribed to this magazine for a while, you know that I’m not a big fan of indoor competition, and that I prefer to train through the indoor season instead of racing a lot. So, with two newbies who have tons to learn before they can race with confidence while trusting their instincts, this training time is precious, and I don’t want to rush them into races just because there are races available. 

So a typical weekday workout will consist of the following:

• A regular dynamic warmup that begins with dynamic stretches, then sprint drills, and then 3x50m sprints.
• The workout itself, which is usually speed-endurance based — 6×200 or 3×400 or 4 sets of 4×100, etc. Every rep will be timed and rest periods will also be recorded.
• After the meat and potatoes portion of the workout, we’ll conclude with some combination of hurdle drills (walkovers, side walkovers, marching popovers) and/or plyometric exercises (med ball throws, hurdle hops)

One day a week will be a speed day, in which we do something like 4 sets of a 40/50/60m ladder, 3 sets of 5×50, or something like that. At the end of that workout, as with the other days, we’ll finish up with some hurdle drilling and/or plyometric work.

One day a week, we’ll focus exclusively on leg strength. A typical leg strength day will consist of six sets of: 1x100m sprint, 1x40m frankenstein, 1x40m lunge, with three minutes rest between sets. Once that portion of the workout is completed, we’ll work on our quick, lower-leg explosive power with some jump-roping. Typically we’ll do three sets of 30 seconds left leg, 30 seconds right leg, 45 seconds both legs together. The length of time will increase by five seconds each week until we get up to 45 seconds for each individual leg and 60 seconds for both legs together.

Because I consider the frankensteins, lunges, hurdle hops, and jump-roping (and hurdling too, for that matter) to comprise our leg strength work, we don’t dedicate a day to lifting for legs in the weight room.

We’ll head to the weight room once a week for upper body lifts, and we’re keeping them pretty basic: dumbbell arm curls, dumbbell tricep extensions, bench press, forward shoulder raises, shoulder raises to the side. Then we’ll go into our core work, which consists of a variety of exercises, including med ball twists, pull-ups, handstands (with the feet against the wall), and wheel rolls.

Sunday, aka “hurdle day,” is our most important day of the week, as it is the day that all of the other training is preparing us for, and it is the day that we’re seeking the highest level of quality. For that reason, we want the previous day, Saturday, to be a rest day, so that we can have fresh legs for our hurdle workout. Because neither Grace nor Marie has ever three-stepped, I’m not doing much of any quickstep drilling with them, although the quickstep workout is my favorite. But because we can get on a track only once a week (our school doesn’t have a track), something has to be sacrificed. Marching popovers can be done on grass without the quality of the reps being negatively affected. Such is not the case for quicksteps though. So, on our Sundays, it’s all about speed. 

So a typical Sunday workout will consist of full speed reps over hurdles from a 3-point start. The first time through, I set the hurdles at 21 feet, moved in three feet from race distance. By the end of that session, I raised the hurdles to 24 feet. The second time through, we started with the hurdles at 27 inches with the same spacing. Grace was able to 3-step consistently whereas Marie struggled. This workout, coupled with the fact that Marie isn’t nearly as strong or explosive as Grace, informed me that it was time to start focusing on the long hurdles with Marie. So, next week, I’ll see if we can start working on her stride pattern in the 300h race. With Grace, we’ll continue to pursue the 3-step mastery. Because of the shift in focus for Marie, that means that the weekday workouts will now change for her as well, so she and Grace won’t be doing the same workout every day anymore. All of this willingness to change plans and adapt to what is happening is part of the “we’ll go where the hurdles take us” philosophy. 

Below is a video I compiled of clips from several training sessions from the first two weeks of November. In this video you’ll see many of the drills and workouts discussed in this article.