Push off the Back Leg
by Steve McGill
Over the past couple weeks I’ve been working with a lot of hurdlers who have come to me seeking help to get better. Because I was on spring break this past week, I had more time than usual to work with athletes, so I granted every request to connect and get together. What I’ve noticed is that every session tends to follow a similar progression, regardless of what my plans may be and what the athletes tell me they need to work on. Of all the elements of hurdling that I teach, the one that consistently seems to help everybody, and that no one seems to do naturally, is pushing off the back leg with force during take-off. Once they understand what this means and learn how to do it effectively, I see a big leap in their progression. So even though it takes a while to do it the way it needs to be done, the effort it takes to get to that point is worth it, because it seems to incidentally improve other elements of technique as well, and it enhances speed noticeably — into the hurdles, over the hurdles, off the hurdles, and between the hurdles.
[am4show not_have=’g5;’]
[/am4show][am4guest]
[/am4guest][am4show have=’g5;’]
The idea is simple. We always say “lead with the knee” — that ‘s probably the most fundamental instruction regarding technique that coaches provide. However, pushing forcefully off the back leg is not something that coaches emphasize nearly as much, but it’s actually equally important, and it must occur at the same time as the knee-drive into the hurdle. Additionally, it helps to ensure a proper knee drive. The idea is to push off the ball of the foot forcefully, which raises the hips, making the hurdle smaller, creating a downhill angle. For taller hurdlers, it creates an exaggerated downhill angle, which is absolutely fine, because the more downhill the better. The push off the back leg also creates speed going into the hurdle as the knee of the lead leg drives forward, with the heel of the foot of the lead leg staying under the hamstring initially, before it extends toward the crossbar. The key here is to make sure the hips push forward at the same time to prevent the hips rising (and then falling during descent), which would cause an increase in air time and a feeling of floating over the hurdle.
But without the forceful push off the back leg at take-off, the athlete will attack the hurdle at a flatter angle, leading to a greater susceptibility to making contact with the crossbar, a flatter trail leg action as it drives to the front, and a lead leg that kicks out/up instead of cycling. All of these issues can lead to fatigue becoming a factor sooner rather than later, leading to even more serious technical mistakes in the latter part of the race.
View this post on Instagram
The athlete in the video above is a college senior who is hoping to set a school record before she graduates. Prior to coming to train with me, she had read a lot of my articles and watched a lot of my videos on Instagram, so she was knowledgeable about what I teach. But she was still hitting hurdles and still having trouble maintaining her speed late in races. In videos she sent me, she looked really good, so I couldn’t really tell what the problem was. She said something about the hurdles being moved in during practice making it harder to adjust to the regular spacing in meets, but I dismissed that explanation because I regularly discount the spacing in practice and my hurdlers never have any rhythm or speed issues when racing at the regular spacing.
So when we met in person, I took her through my gamut of drills, confident that we’d be able to pinpoint and correct the problem. Early on in the session, I discovered two basic issues: she wasn’t pushing off the back leg with force (she was “line-driving” it, as I like to say), and she wasn’t maintaining a forward posture with her torso off of hurdles and between the hurdles. Her too-erect posture off each hurdle and between the hurdles meant she was losing her acceleration in the early part of the race, thereby forcing herself to fight harder to stay fast. So I had her do the marching popover drill, emphasizing the push off the back leg. She struggled at first, like everybody does, but I explained to her that the push should send her forward, not upward, and that the speed created by the push is something she would need to allow to happen. Don’t put the breaks on, don’t control your speed. When you feel yourself speeding up, let yourself speed up. When you feel too crowded between the hurdles, adjust by being quicker. When we transitioned to the quickstep drill, some contact with the hurdles occurred, but she knew what to do to correct it: push off the back leg with more force, and keep pushing the torso forward. It worked very well, and by the end of the session we were able to do a few block starts over the first three hurdles. We had the speed we were looking for, we had the acceleration we were looking for, and we weren’t hitting hurdles. Obviously, three hurdles isn’t the same as ten, but she left the session knowing what to do, how it’s supposed to feel, and how to maintain the rhythm for a whole race.
The same thing happened with Peyton Milleson, a Team Steve Hurdling Academy alum who came down for some private training. Peyton really clobbers hurdles with his lead leg, partly because he’s a lot stronger and faster than he was since the last time I saw him, which was just this past summer. “I’ve been in the weight room,” he said. So, like I told him, for a hurdler, being faster and stronger means needing to adapt to the improved speed and increased strength. Below is a video from his visit:
View this post on Instagram
In the above video, you can see how Peyton was hitting hurdles when we first transitioned from the popovers to the quicksteps. During that session, I was having a lot of trouble figuring out why he kept hitting hurdles. It took me a while to realize that he wasn’t pushing off the back leg with force, I guess because he’d attended two of my camps so I was subconsciously assuming he must be pushing because he knows that’s a staple of what I teach. But he doesn’t have a hurdle coach, which means he can easily forget key cues. At first I thought he was getting too close, so we were making adjustments with his approach, but he was still clang-clanging the crossbar. Finally I suggested he try pushing off the back leg more forcefully, and that’s when he stopped hitting hurdles. He was staying aggressive, still in attack mode, but, as I’ve said above, the push off the back leg was now giving him the hip height he needed to avoid contact.
I have plenty of other examples I could point to, but you get the point. Teaching hurdlers to push off the back leg with force, even when doing basic drills like the fence drill, will pay dividends long-term, and even short-term. To put it in simple phrasing, without the push off the back leg, hurdlers need to hurdle; with it, they can sprint over the hurdles. Both legs can cycle, with no kicking.
[/am4show]
