The D.O. Tilt
by Steve McGill
The hurdling style that I refer to as “The D.O. Tilt” is a power move that was used most effectively by David Oliver throughout his career, and which was also noticeable in other power hurdlers like Roger Kingdom back in the day, and also in a lot of hurdlers who employ a straight-leg lead leg. What it is, basically, is a slight shift in weight during the take-off into the hurdle. The torso and the hips slightly “tilt” over the lead leg, giving the lead leg more of a push and drive as it attacks the crossbar.
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Such hurdlers will often ride their lead leg all the way down the track; the trail leg will lag behind a little bit and the hips will be slightly off balance all the way. But when the style is mastered the way Oliver mastered in the latter stages of his career, the tilt doesn’t cause any balance issues because the lead arm stays in a tight up-and-down motion. Also, the hips, although they do tilt, simultaneously push forward, enabling a tighter, higher trail leg action.
This is a style that I have never taught any of my hurdlers, as I prefer to keep everything in the middle of the lane, pushing forward, pushing forward, pushing forward. I prefer for both legs to be working in unison, emphasizing a big push off the back leg at take-off, while the D.O. tilt puts a heavy emphasis on the lead leg.
But I’ve never been one to say never. And recently, when working with one of my athletes, I found myself in a situation in which the D.O. tilt would be a good idea to try.
The athlete is Matt Garrett – the high school freshman that I begin working with last year, when he was at the top of the 13-14-year-old age group, competing over the 100 meter distance over the 33-inch barriers. With the added distance and the hurdles that are six inches higher, we’ve had some struggles adapting to the high school race. While he has grown an inch or two, he is still small for the 39’s – he’s maybe 5-9, but probably more like 5-8.
In Matt’s first couple of indoor races, he was hitting hurdles with his trail leg – smacking them pretty hard, actually, to the point where the contact caused balance issues and a considerable loss of speed between the hurdles. I was sticking to my mantra of “push off the back leg with more force” to get the extra height needed for clean hurdle clearance, but that wasn’t working. And he was kind of compensating on his own by widening the path of the lead arm, which did help when it came to avoiding contact with the barriers, but caused contact with the hurdler in the lane beside him.
During one practice session when he was warming up, I noticed that his hips dipped a little to the right as he jumped over the hurdles, but that they would straighten back out as he landed. That’s when it came to me: the D.O. tilt! He was already subconsciously making that adjustment, so why not insert it and make it work?
So I explained to him what the D.O. tilt was, and showed him a photo of Oliver doing it that I found on my phone. We worked on it, primarily with quick-step drills, and we worked on personalizing it, refining it to suit his specific needs. For us, the tilt wasn’t a power move like it was for Oliver and Kingdom. We were just trying to figure out a way to stop smacking hurdles with the trail leg, and to do so in a way that didn’t cause us to sacrifice speed.
What we discovered is that the tilt does, in fact, raise the trail leg. That was of huge importance to us. Hitting hurdles hurts. It slows you down, it messes up your rhythm, and makes for a grumpy hurdler who rapidly loses confidence. Just realizing that the tilt solved the problem of hitting hurdles was enough cause for celebration.
As we did more reps and refined it, we wanted to make sure that the tilt didn’t cause other problems, which can often be the case in the hurdles – you fix one problem, but the fix causes another problem. Fortunately, from having watched so many hurdlers over the years, I knew what problems to look out for. Chiefly, we didn’t want Matt to become a lead-leg-dependent hurdler who rode the lead leg all the way down the track. We wanted to stay in the middle of the lane. Doing so proved to be relatively easy. Matt would tilt over the lead leg during take-off, hold the tilt over the hurdle, and then straighten back up during descent off the hurdle. Also, we made it a point to keep the lead arm tight; we allowed it to swing out just a little bit to give the trail leg space to pull through, but we placed an emphasis on punching the hand down during descent.
In Matt’s first race after we implemented the D.O. Tilt, he ran an indoor personal best over the 39’s. Afterwards he said that was the best he had ever felt over the 39’s, and that he was starting to feel more like he had felt last year, over the 33’s.
He hasn’t raced again since then, but we’ve continued to work on the tilt in practice, and he’s growing more confident in it, more comfortable with it. In the video inserted at the end of this article, you’ll see one quick-step rep followed by block starts (with no commands) over one, two, and three hurdles, with all reps over 39’s. While, for the most part, he’s not landing off of hurdles perfectly on balance, you’re not seeing a loss in velocity; he’s still able to accelerate through each hurdle.
What I’m learning from this experience is confirmation of an old lesson that the hurdles have taught me many times before: for the sake of the individual athlete, you have to be willing to try something new, even if doing so means breaking your own rules. And as I told Matt, we’ll continue to employ the D.O. Tilt until he grows tall enough that he no longer needs it. If that time never comes, then we’ll just keep using it. Or if he outgrows it in high school but then needs to go back to it when the hurdle raise another three inches in college, he’ll have it in his tool box as a viable option.
To me, that’s the fun of coaching – learning and growing on the spot, experimenting with different ideas and figuring things out in the moment, coach and athlete together.
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