Technical Connections
No, this isn’t an article about computers or smart phones. It’s an article about how the various aspects of technique are connected. In working with a few of my regular kids in my private coaching, I’ve noticed some connections that I wouldn’t have thought to consider before, and I’d like to point them out and explain them here.
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One kid I’m working with, Jaden, is a high school sophomore. He has been hurdling for a couple years, but we just started working together this past September. He’s about 6-1, solidly built, probably about 180 pounds. In working with him over the weeks, it became evident that he had developed a lot of bad habits. That’s always the most difficult challenge for a coach – eliminating bad habits and incorporating good ones.
His three glaring bad habits were as follows: 1) he ran flat-footed, and heavily stomped the last step into each hurdle. 2) He swung his lead leg from the hip, causing a twist in the hips and a lead leg that spent too much time in the air. 3) He wasn’t truly sprinting between the hurdles. Although I wouldn’t call him a puddle-hopper, he could’ve been much faster between the hurdles than what he was demonstrating.
So, problems 1 and 3 were inter-related. If he was running flat-footed, he couldn’t truly sprint even if he tried to. We’d have to address that with sprint drills – A-marches, A-skips, high knees. I wouldn’t incorporate B-skips because he was already extending his lead leg too far over the hurdles.
Problem 2 could be addressed with slow-speed hurdle drills over low hurdles. Also though, I recognized that a hurdler who sprints flat-footed and takes off into hurdles flat-footed cannot help but to swing the lead leg from the hip. Therefore, addressing problems 1 and 3 would be the key, and would largely help problem 2 to correct itself naturally.
What I quickly discovered was that Jaden wasn’t very responsive to hurdle drills. Most hurdlers who have been hurdling for a fairly long time but without consistent coaching are slow to respond positively to drills. And with Jaden being a sophomore who I only see once a week, I knew I couldn’t spend too much time on drills, that I would have to cut my losses.
Meanwhile, he quickly picked up on the sprint drills. It didn’t take long at all to get him running tall on the balls of his feet, to get his knees up, to get his heels coming up under his hamstrings. We did a lot of sprinting with no hurdles to get him in the habit of staying on the balls of his feet. When it came time to hurdle, I kept the height no higher than 36 inches. In addition, I abandoned hurdle-drilling and let him do all of his hurdling full-speed out of the blocks or from a three-point start. My thinking was that I would have to take a different approach than my usual one in order to achieve the ends. Instead of my usual approach of meticulous hurdle-drilling, we would focus on the sprint drills, and count on the improvements in sprint mechanics to carry over to hurdle mechanics.
In short, it worked. Jaden’s lack of speed between the hurdles had never been from a lack of aggression, but a result of faulty sprint mechanics. Once we was up tall on the balls of his feet between the hurdles, with his upper body pushing forward, he suddenly transformed into total beast mode between and over the hurdles.
But the lead leg still needed work. Even though it was no longer swinging from the hip, it was still extending, locking at the knee, when it should have been descending, attacking the track. When we tried to put everything together over the hurdles, we kept encountering glitches. When he really sprinted full blast between the hurdles, he was getting crowded. To avoid getting crowded, he would slow down between the hurdles. Obviously, I didn’t want him to back off speed-wise. We would have to keep that lead leg cycling instead of kicking outward.
So in hurdle reps we focused on all three at once: stay on the balls of the feet, stay aggressive between the hurdles no matter what, and cycle the lead leg back to the track.
For the lead leg, I told him something that I now say regularly to my hurdlers: Do the A-skip motion over the hurdle. Don’t think in terms of a B-skip. Don’t consciously extend the leg. Drive the knee straight up as you attack the hurdle, then drive the foot straight down when you descend off the hurdle. In the A-skip motion, there is a pulling under of the heel at the very end of the movement. So it’s not strictly a straight-up/straight-down motion. A cycling action occurs if the motion is completed properly. Going over a hurdle, the lead leg knows to extend. It will do so naturally. When you consciously try to extend it, you extend it too far, and for too long. And at too horizontal of an angle. When you mimic the A-skip motion instead, it doesn’t extend too far, it doesn’t hang in the air, and it extends at more of a vertical angle, cycling back to the track. This keeps the motion continuous, with no pauses.
With Jaden, it took several reps over 36 inch hurdles before it finally all came together in a workout a couple weeks ago. With everything in place, he now looked both powerful and fluid. This past week, with the early reps looking good, we were able to raise the hurdles 39 inches – race height – and still keep everything tight and efficient without much of an adjustment period.
As we move forward, we will continue to ingrain his new habits – running tall, sprinting aggressively, attacking each hurdle with a bent lead leg that cycles. What I have learned thus far from working with Jaden is that mastery of hurdle drills is not an essential skill in developing technique. For an athlete like him, who is already tall, strong, and fast, it’s best to cater to his strengths. Also, my philosophy that flaws in hurdling mechanics are rooted in flaws in sprint mechanics was reaffirmed.
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