One of the greatest potential benefits and one of the greatest potential hindrances to a hurdler’s progress is the development of muscle memory. Muscle memory that ingrains good habits makes hurdling very easy, allowing the body to move naturally, unencumbered by a lot of thinking. On the other hand, muscle memory that ingrains bad habits makes hurdling a chore and causes the need for a lot of extraneous effort. Sometimes, muscle memory doesn’t come just from hurdling and/or sprinting;  it also comes from participating in other athletic activities that aren’t directly related to hurdling at all. In my coaching career, I have come across many athletes with backgrounds in other sports, and such athletes often bring flaws with them, although the flaws are not considered flaws in their other event or sport.

[am4show not_have=’g5;’]

[/am4show][am4guest]

[/am4guest][am4show have=’g5;’]

Think about it: if you have a prospective hurdler who has a background in ballet, but you are unaware of that background, you will be baffled as to why she always points her toes down no matter how much you I struck her to dorsi-flex the ankles and keep the toes pointing up. You might think that she’s being stubborn or that she’s just a slow learner. But for her, pointing the toes down feels right, because that’s what she’s been doing all her life.

A few years ago I had a new hurdler who, unbeknownst to me, had already spent several years in youth track long jumping. When doing even the most basic hurdle drills over very low hurdles, he would flail his arms wildly over every hurdle. No matter what I did to address this problem, nothing worked. One day his dad casually mentioned to me, “He used to do long jump, Coach.” In that very instant, his arm issues suddenly made all the sense in the world. I knew that the only way to correct this problem would be from the ground up. So I set up some cones about five yards apart and had him do A-marches stepping over the cones, keeping the arms in running posture. From there, we moved on to slow balls-of-the-feet trots over the cones. At first, even over the cones, he was still doing more work with the arms than necessary. But once he got the hang of the drill, the arms settled down and he settled into a rhythm. From there, it was relatively easy to replace the cones with low hurdles, and then to gradually raise the hurdles. As weeks passed, we were able to add more speed, as I always kept a close eye on his arms to make sure he wasn’t long jumping over the hurdles.

Most recently I started working with a 13-year-old girl named Falon who, her father told me, had finished second at Junior Olympic Nationals last summer at the bottom of the 13-14 year old age group. He told me that she had problems with her arms being a bit out of control, but when I worked with her on day one to evaluate her sprint mechanics, she looked outstanding for someone her age. Ankles flexed, on the balls of the feet, arms pumping up and down. Yes, the arms were a little high, but not to a severe degree. Over the hurdles I saw the same issues, but nothing major. And she already had a lead leg that cycled, that didn’t kick out and extend to the point where the knee locked.

I thought it would be a simple fix. Lower the hands, don’t extend the lead leg so far, get that trail leg coming through sooner. But by the third session I was still seeing the same problems. Particularly, very high hurdle clearance. Her angles were great – leading with the knee, hands up and down, trail leg knee driving to the front. But it all seemed to be happening in slow motion. When she already had enough height to begin descending and attacking the track, her lead leg still continued to rise, her lead arm still had yet to start punching down. She was losing speed in the air.

Finally, I remembered having coached a couple girls way back in the day who had had gymnastics backgrounds. Similarly, they did everything right angle-wise, but they too spent an inordinate amount of time in the air. So after one of her block starts last week, I happened to ask her, “Have you ever done any gymnastics?” She answered that she’d done gymnastics for nine years. “Oh,” I said, “well that explains everything.”

Now I knew what I was dealing with. Now I knew the why behind the what, so to speak. I found myself thinking that when I take on a new athlete, I should have a questionnaire that I have the athlete fill out that includes questions about past experience in other sports and other track and field events. I actually think I will start doing that. If I had known Falon had done gymnastics for nine years – which is basically her whole life for a 13-year-old – I would have known to look for signs of elevating too high, exaggerated arm action, etc. Same with that kid who was a long jumper. As it stands, I kind of wasted a few sessions due to my inability to identify the root causes of her issues.

Though I still have to work around competitions, I am now focused on giving Falon the type of heavy drilling repetitions that she needs to reduce her air time, etc. In the video at the bottom of this article, you’ll see that I spent an entire session in which I had her go through the progression of drills that lead toward full-speed hurdling. We started with the marching pop-overs, then progressed to the cycle drill, then progressed to the quick-step drill before doing a three-point start over two hurdles.

In the video you can see that, as the spacing increased and the speed increased, the old habits became more pronounced. In the marching pop-overs there was no floating; she cycled the legs perfectly and the arms stayed nice and tight. But with the cycle drill the lead leg started to extend too, and it do so even more in the quick-step drill.

Moving forward, I’ll have to give her heavy doses of the marching pop-overs and cycle drill in the next few weeks, and then add in the quick steps, knowing that in her races we won’t yet see any noticeable improvement. But if we keep drilling drilling drilling, the pay-off will come by springtime, and the pay-off will be huge when the summer Junior Olympic season hits.