Teaching Beginners to be Aggressive
by Steve McGill
In the context of this article, the word “beginner” doesn’t just include athletes who have never hurdled before or who have never run a hurdle race before. It can also include hurdlers with one year of experience, two years of experience, or even three years of experience but have developed the habit of running tentatively when there are hurdles in their way. In that sense, they are beginners to the idea of sprinting full speed to the first hurdles and between the hurdles instead of running from hurdle to hurdle. They fixate on the hurdles instead of focusing on sprinting. Though such an approach is most common to athletes who are new to hurdling, they can also be evident in hurdlers who weren’t coached to be aggressive.
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Often, beginners have poor sprint mechanics when there are hurdles in their way, even if their sprint mechanics are sound otherwise. In some cases, beginners have poor sprint mechanics, period, and therefore must be taught efficient sprint mechanics before they can be taught how to hurdle. In some cases, second or third-year hurdlers may have learned how to three-step by stretching out their legs and reaching with their feet with their ankles plantar-flexed and their toes pointing down. This “fool’s gold” version of three-stepping can lead to ingraining poor sprint mechanics, and consequently poor hurdling mechanics, that have to be torn down before proper sprint mechanics can be built.
In the last weekend of August, I, along with my good friend and fellow coach Kevin Howell, conducted a mini-camp consisting of three athletes, all girls, one of whom I’ve worked with several times last year, but the other two were new to me. All were of high school age, with at least two years of hurdling experience. But the two new girls, Kylie and Katelyn, were beginners in my eyes, meaning they didn’t know anything about hurdling with an aggressive mindset and aggressive body posture. They were both athletic and they were both hard workers who were open to instruction, so the aim of Coach Kevin and I was to make the most of the two days we had with them.
The first thing I started with was body posture, and that’s always the first thing I start with when conducting camps, no matter the number of kids attending. An aggressive body posture, by my definition, consists of running tall on the balls of the feet, with the chest pushing forward, the eyes looking forward, the neck and shoulders relaxed, the hands relaxed by driving up and down from cheek to cheek, the knees driving up and the feet attacking down, ankles dorsiflexed the whole time. The first session of any camp will consist totally of basic sprint drills, teaching the athletes to establish and maintain this posture in A Marches, A Skips, and high-knee drills. The logic is, there’s no point in running fast if the running posture isn’t aggressive. I want to be sure that when we do go faster, the posture is already in place.
Once the athletes are running tall on the balls of their feet with their chest pushing forward, we can begin to implement speed.
Meanwhile, while it’s so important to emphasize proper sprinting mechanics and hurdling mechanics, the aggressive mindset must be developed right along with it, or else the athletes will become so focused on mechanics that they forget to sprint when it’s time to sprint. With that thought in mind, before I dive deeply into hurdle drills, I’ll have the athletes sprint full speed over the first hurdle a few times just to see what their body posture looks like when a hurdle is up, because a lot of times beginners will rock back on their heels or run flat-footed when a hurdle is up even if they fixed those issues in regular sprinting. The very presence of the hurdle can shift the mindset and the posture from aggressive to passive. So I’ll put the hurdle at a lower height — all the way down to 24 inches if necessary — so the athlete can focus on sprinting more so than on hurdling. If I’m seeing progress, I’ll add a second hurdle, moved in a foot or two, to see if the athlete can maintain the aggression and speed off of hurdle one. If I’m not seeing progress, then we’ll go to hurdle drilling at slow speeds over low hurdles. The drilling allows more processing time for the mind. I like to start with the marching popover drill, because upper body posture and marching on the balls of the feet to the first hurdle will determine the level of success in executing the drill. With this drill, the athletes can begin to understand the concept of what it feels like to stay forward and stay aggressive instead of allowing themselves to stand too erect and heel-strike.
With Kaylie and Katelyn, both of whom were eager to please, the marching popover drill helped, so we were able to steadily graduate to the faster quickstep drill. The second day, we were able to graduate to going full speed from a three-point start. At that point, I noticed stagnation, even with the hurdles very low. Finally I had to get a little angry and instruct the girls to just go! Forget all the stuff I’ve been teaching you and just go, I said. I’d rather you make technical mistakes being aggressive than not make any mistakes running tentatively. This simple instruction seemed to free them of the fear of making mistakes, and I noticed immediate results. They were attacking the first hurdle, not just running up to it. I was able to add a second hurdle with continued success.
With the second hurdle up, the key was to maintain the same posture and same aggression off of hurdle one. No standing up erect, no reaching with the foot. Drive the hands up and down, drive the feet up and down, drive the knees up and down, all while pushing the chest forward and pushing the hips forward. I wasn’t going to be happy — and I didn’t want them to be happy — with three-stepping if the old habit of reaching with the foot came back. It’s only a good rep if we’re sprinting between the hurdles.
We got in good reps and were able to add the block start to the mix by the last session of the second day. The camp ended with me and Kevin feeling like the girls had a lot of good stuff to take home with them and continue to work on. The key to developing an aggressive mindset in beginners is to work on technique and speed pretty much simultaneously so that they can see how one affects the other.
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