Working with New Hurdlers within a Limited Time Frame
by Steve McGill

With the indoor season winding down, and the outdoor season either having already begun or about to begin, many coaches have many new athletes coming out for the spring season who have various levels of experience in track and field. Some of these athletes may play other sports and only run track in the spring, while others have run track before but haven’t tried the hurdles before. For the spring season coach, who only has about three months to identify potential hurdlers and develop them into competitive hurdlers, managing time wisely can prove to be a very tricky thing to try to do.

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Finding an athlete who can jump into the hurdles in March without having hurdled before is rare. I’ve had a few who’ve been able to reach a high level of success in that short time frame of the spring season. But I’ve been coaching close to thirty years now, and I wouldn’t need more than one hand to count the number of them who really flourished until the following season. I came late to hurdling myself. I didn’t start hurdling until about the third week of practice in my sophomore year of high school. I started somewhere in the 19’s my first race and ended the season with a personal best of 17.2. By the end of my junior year I got down to 15.9, and by the end of my senior year I pr’ed at 14.9. (Everything was hand-timed back then). Because hurdling is a skill event and technique event in addition to being a speed event, development can’t be rushed. But for the spring season coach, rushing is pretty much a necessity. So, what should be emphasized in such a scenario? And what will have to wait till later?

Speed should be emphasized. If you’re in a rush to develop a new hurdler, choose someone who is fast enough, fearless enough, and tall enough that they don’t need to have perfect technique to three-step. As long as they can get the rhythm down, they can progress. Someone who has the speed but who lacks the aggressiveness could be a long-term project. In such a case, I might have that athlete practice the hurdles on hurdle days, but not compete in the hurdles until the last few regular season meets, or maybe not even until the next season. But with the ones who have the speed and the aggression, we’ll do mostly full-speed reps from the three-point position or from the starting blocks. And yes, I’ll discount the spacing by a foot, and will probably discount the height by a click some of the time as well. I always say that hurdling is the combination of three major factors: speed, rhythm, and technique. With a hurdler who is just starting out in the spring season, speed and rhythm can take the athlete pretty far before technique is addressed specifically.

Basically what I’ll do is emphasize speed, which naturally leads to developing a rhythm — 1-2-3-lead with the knee. When a hurdler has established a rhythm, they can lock into that rhythm and learn to maintain that rhythm even when making technical mistakes. Like I always tell my hurdlers, speed can compensate for technical flaws, but technical precision can’t compensate for a lack of speed. If you’re not sprinting, you’re gonna get smoked, no matter how nice your technique is. So, as much as glossing over technical flaws drives me crazy, I will gloss over many technical flaws if I know I don’t have time within the season to correct them to the point where the muscle memory I’m trying to inculcate becomes ingrained.

I have two non-negotiables when it comes to technique, even within the limited timeframe of the spring season: stay on the balls of the feet, and lead with the knee. Stay on the balls of the feet in every sprinting stride, lead with the knee in the stride clearing the hurdle. The reason those two technical elements are non-negotiable is because they’re the ones that can sabotage a hurdler’s speed. Not just because they’re problems unto themselves, but because they lead to so many other mistakes, as discussed in another article in this month’s issue. But a lazy trail leg, as long as it’s not smacking hurdles all the way down the track, is something I can live with if I have to. The arms being too high or too wide, the lean not being deep enough are also issues I can live with, even if I’d rather not. 

Ideally, the hurdlers will have two days a week to work on hurdles. One day would consist of drilling, and the other day would be the block starts I was talking about earlier. If a drill day can’t be worked into the schedule, then drilling for fifteen minutes at the end of practice, after completing running workouts, would be acceptable if done two or three times a week. And when I say drills I’m not talking about side drills or one-step drills. I’m talking about drills done over the top of the hurdles to a three-step rhythm, because we have to ingrain the race rhythm.

Of course, the best-case scenario is to work with potential hurdlers in the off-season — preferably starting in the fall, but even the winter is soon enough. Starting that early allows for time to implement the foundational elements of technique and rhythm before adding in the speed element. When I’ve had that kind of time with athletes, I’ve been able to work wonders. By adding the speed as the final element, the full-speed reps will always be high-quality reps because the athlete doesn’t have to think about technique. The technical focus has already been taken care of in October, November, etc. The rhythm has already been ingrained through the drilling. Then adding in the block start and the full-speed component is like adding the star on top of the Christmas tree, when all the other ornaments have already been placed on the lower branches. Instead of worrying about technique, we can worry about the things that are going to make us faster — adapting to the decreasing space between the hurdles, learning how to react more quickly. Keni Harrison is my greatest success story in that regard. I started with her in October of her junior year and she was among the best in the nation by the end of that summer. But she isn’t the only one. Within the last six years or so, I’ve had two athletes win age group Junior Olympic championships — one a girl and the other a boy. In both cases, we started together in the fall, and we stuck together through the summer.

So, when working with athletes who don’t start training till the spring season, you kind of have to go in reverse order. The speed, which would be added last if more time were available, must come first. The rhythm is developed as a result of the speed, in spite of technical flaws. Then you pick and choose which technical flaws must be addressed, and to what degree. 

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