Hurdle Conditioning Workout for the 300m Hurdler
by Steve McGill
The Workout:
3 sets of 4×100, starting at the 100m start line, clearing hurdles six, seven, and eight on the straight-away, then running through the finish line.
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Recovery:
Walk-back recover between reps (no longer than 1:30), 3 minutes rest between sets.
Set-up:
Spikes are preferable, but the workout can be done in flats without sacrificing quality. Each rep will begin from a standing start or rolling start. Reps do not need to be timed, as the focus is more on rhythm, but they can be timed if the coach wants to record the athlete’s progression. If timed, the watch should start on movement, and should stop when the athlete crosses the finish line.
End of Warm-up:
Prior to starting the workout, the athlete should do a few reps just to the first hurdle to get the speed and stride pattern to hurdle one down pat. You don’t want to waste actual workout reps stuttering to the first hurdle. It’s important to hit that hurdle in stride, as the goal of the workout is more focused on rhythm and stride pattern than on speed.
When I had one of my athletes do this workout recently, for example, we settled on ten strides to the first hurdle, and seventeen strides between each of the last two hurdles. The goal was to be able to maintain that seventeen strides between the hurdles for the entire workout. Being able to do so, we agreed, would mean that his speed/endurance and hurdle endurance are improving.
Conditioning workouts are all about consistency more so than all-out speed. The logic is, if the 12th rep is looking as strong as the first rep, we can feel confident that the end of a race will look as strong as the beginning of a race. It will just be a matter of taking the same consistency mentality into the context of increased speed and a decreased margin for error. But the mindset stays the same.
Variations:
For 400m hurdlers, the number of reps would remain the same, but they would do 120m runs, starting at the mark for hurdle seven in a race, and clearing hurdles eight, nine, and ten of the race prior to sprinting through the finish line.
Rest for 400m hurdlers would be a walk-back between reps (no longer than 2 minutes) and 3 minutes between sets.
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