Madi from Ohio
by Steve McGill
This summer has been a very busy one for me. I was expecting to devote the entire summer to finishing up the biography I wrote on 1972 Olympic 110m hurdle champion Rodney Milburn and preparing to send the completed manuscript to my publisher. While I have been working diligently on that, I’ve also been doing a whole lot more coaching than I had planned. Even though I’ve been coaching for over twenty years, the number of people who seem to be finding me and seeking private training has really spiked lately. This summer I had hurdlers come to train with me here in Mooresville, NC from places like Florida, Maryland, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and various parts of North Carolina. And then there’s Madi Campbell, who lives in Ohio. This article is about her.
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Even though she comes all the way from Ohio, Madi has become one of my regulars. I first started working with her last summer, when her parents drove her down, along with three of her teammates – one female and two males. In that initial session last summer, I was truly starting from scratch. Even though Madi was a sophomore and her male teammates were juniors, they had no clue about warming up or doing basic sprint drills properly. I started them off with A-marches, A-skips, wall drills (for sprinters, not for hurdlers), etc. I was teaching them how to keep the ankle dorsi-flexed, in order to land on the ball of the foot with the foot under the hip. In that very first session that weekend, we didn’t even get to any hurdling.
At that time, Madi didn’t stand out from the rest. She and her female teammate socialized a bit too much for my liking, and she sometimes seemed a bit disinterested when I was giving instruction. I later came to realize that she simply wasn’t used to receiving such specific instruction and being asked to think so much during practice sessions. But no, initially, I wasn’t impressed.
By the end of that weekend, I had noticed a marked improvement in her attitude, in her ability to listen to instruction, and in her overall running and hurdling form.
After that first weekend coming down here, Madi came about three or four more times last year. The second time, the boys didn’t come, as both were dealing with injuries. The third time, only Madi came, as her female teammate had suffered a hip injury. The fourth time, it was only Madi again. This summer she came down twice, and again, it was only her. With each weekend visit, it grew increasingly evident to me that she was taking her hurdling more seriously. She started her warmup unprompted, listened attentively as I explained how to address certain technical issues, and developed the very good habit of asking intelligent questions regarding my feedback. In short, she was focused.
When I first started with her, Madi was a four-stepper between the hurdles who could compel herself to three-step by over-extending her stride and bounding. The first thing I did was switch her start. She had been taking nine steps to the first hurdle, not even realizing that that was a problem. The nine-step start, I explained to her, is such that it sets up a four-step rhythm between the rest because the nine-step approach requires similarly shorter, quicker strides. It took a little while to adapt to having her other foot in front and taking more explosive, forceful strides to the first hurdle. But once she got the hang of it, her eight-step approach looked pretty solid.
Meanwhile, we were making progress with making her three-step between the hurdles faster, less of a lope. But being so far away from each other, we didn’t meet often enough to make continuous progress. Her dad would tell me between meetings that she was able to three-step for part of the way in races, but that she would lose it in the middle of the race or toward the end, and have to switch back to four. With the weather in Ohio being what it is, there were some races in which she didn’t three-step at all, and she was losing confidence.
We had one more session in April, I think it was, prior to her big end-of-season meets. That session went great. It was a nice warm weekend and we were able to get in a lot of quality work. Her eight-step start was looking very aggressive, and she was looking fast between the hurdles. We were able to get over four hurdles from a block start with the hurdles at race height, and she left feeling very confident in herself.
She ended the season on a high note; I can’t remember her time, but it in the 16-low range. She three-stepped all of the hurdles except the last two, and she said it was the fastest she had ever felt.
To me, this was a good way to conclude the season. Now the goal, heading into her junior year, would be to three-step an entire race, and to do so with speed and aggression the whole way. No loping, no bounding, no puddle-hopping.
When she came down for a weekend this summer, that’s what we focused on. Now that we weren’t in a rush to prepare for races, we could slow things down and do things right. By the time she came here last month, her technique had improved drastically from when I first started with her. She had had a tendency to drift to the trail leg side of the lane, and to sometimes even hook the trail leg. This tendency was caused by her tendency to look the knee of her lead leg. The trail leg would inevitably hang, and then swing wide when coming to the front.
But we had fixed all that. Her arm action was still a bit wishy-washy, but her angles were okay there. Now we just needed to focus on getting faster and running faster. I started by setting up two (then three) hurdles and have her attack them from a three-point start, with the second and third hurdles moved in one foot from race distance. That’s my usual practice distance, by the way. What I noticed though, was that she didn’t trust her speed. She was still loping a bit, still bounding, especially with the second stride coming off each hurdle. She didn’t really need to, but she was so used to doing so that she still did it. I instructed her to think in terms of running through the hurdle, not just running to the hurdle. Think like a sprinter.
To facilitate high-quality reps (because nothing annoys me more than wasted reps), I moved the hurdles in three feet from the race marks. I wanted to get the puddle-hopping muscle memory out of her system. And the only way to do that was to move the hurdles in closely enough that she absolutely did not need to puddle-hop. Just keep running and the hurdle will be there. For me, three-stepping in and of itself is not what I am aiming for with my athletes. I’ve seen plenty of three-steppers who bound and lope their way down the track get beaten by quick-stepping four-steppers. To say “I three-step” means nothing to if the three-step isn’t aggressive, if it isn’t a sprint.
So by moving in the hurdles three feet, I was ensuring the type of cadence we would want when the hurdles are at full distance. The logic is, once her body feels the rhythm, and feels the difference between sprinting and loping, that new muscle memory will continue to guide her when the hurdles are moved further apart.
The video below shows some of our reps from that weekend.
We’ve got enough time between now and next season to do things right and to go at a pace that ensures progress. Eventually, three feet in will become two feet in, will become one foot in, will become race distance. Meanwhile, I instructed her to work on tightening up her arm action, on being more forceful with her arm, especially with the lead arm driving up and punching down. I also instructed her to get in a lot of sprint workouts – short distances, between 30 and 80 meters. Such sprint work will enable her to work on her arm action, her force application, and her turnover. As I told her, her technique is good enough now that if she simply gets faster, three-stepping will feel as natural and easy as a jog in the park.
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