The Hurdles: A Metaphor for Life
by Steve McGill
There are two journeys, occurring simultaneously. There’s the outer journey, and there’s the inner journey. The outer journey has to do with what we do; the inner journey has to do with who we are. The outer journey is what the world sees. The inner journey is what informs what the world sees. For hurdlers, performances in races represent the outer journey. The training represents the inner journey.
In life there is a flow. In hurdling there is a flow. In life, it can be seen everywhere in nature — in the changing of the seasons, in the birth and death of leaves on the trees, in the rising and falling of the tide, in the cycles of the moon, in the planets’ orbits around the sun, in the migratory patterns of birds. This flow is constant, and we are a part of it. There is also an inner flow, an inner rhythm that has to do with our natural tendency to engage in activities that we enjoy, to explore subjects, topics, and endeavors that pique our curiosity and that inspire a sense of wonder within us. When we have the space to go with this inner flow without fighting against it or trying to control it, we thrive. We feel good about ourselves. But we are often taught to pursue the path of the practical, and to repress that which is natural. Thus, an internal conflict occurs. The person that we reveal to society is not the person we feel ourselves to be inside.
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I became an English teacher because I loved reading and I wanted to continue to pursue that love and I wanted to share that love. I became a hurdles coach because I loved the hurdles and I wanted to continue to pursue that love and I wanted to share that love. I knew I wouldn’t make a lot of money as a teacher or as a coach, but I trusted it would be enough to live on. The desire to become wealthy was not a factor in my career choices. I followed my bliss, to borrow the phrase of educator and author Joseph Campbell, from his book, The Power of Myth. I found work that mattered to me and that I felt would allow me to continue to evolve personally. I had already observed that people who followed their bliss — people like Van Gogh and Dostoyevsky and Coltrane — were inspirational figures without making an effort to be, simply because they were authentically and uncompromisingly themselves. They pursued their passion relentlessly and shared their gifts with the world.
To make an analogy, in hurdling, coaches and athletes have been arguing over the years as to which leg is more important to running fast races, the lead leg or the trail leg. When I was a young hurdler back in the 1980’s, conventional wisdom said that the lead leg was more important than the trail leg for the obvious reason that it clears the hurdle first. When I first started coaching in the 1990’s, that school of thought was still the most prevalent. So, in training hurdlers, coaches like myself would spend the bulk of practice time getting the lead leg to where it was quick, fast, and snappy. Then once that was established, we’d start working on the trail leg.
After a while, I came to observe that this way of hurdling, and of coaching hurdlers, was leading to hurdlers who were too dependent on their lead leg to take them all the way down the track. Balance issues were chronic. Shoulders and hips would be twisted sideways for entire races. The trail leg was always lagging behind, so the first stride off the hurdle was always really short, with no explosive power in it to create speed between the hurdles. Plus, the hurdling action lacked fluidity; it looked too robotic — kick the foot out, pause, snap it down.
I knew there had to be a more efficient way to hurdle, and when I attended a coaching clinic in the fall of 2003, the coach who was running the clinic was emphasizing the trail leg, saying that the trail leg was actually more important than the lead leg. His words struck a chord with me because it validated some things I had been thinking based on my own experiments with technique back when I had been functioning as my own hurdle coach in my collegiate days. Back then, I had discovered that getting a good push off the back leg helped me raise my hips high enough that I was no longer smacking hurdles all the time. And because I was leaning deeply from the waist, I wasn’t floating and losing time in the air. I had abandoned that approach when coaching my own hurdlers in favor of sticking with the more traditional approach.
So this clinic had me pulling my previous philosophy out of the closet. The coach at the clinic argued for a “bent lead leg,” meaning that the lead leg should stay at least slightly bent throughout hurdle clearance, which would allow the trail leg to come through without pausing. So there’d be a continuous motion. Long story short, this emphasis on the trail leg being the leg that creates speed (during take-off into the hurdle and by coming to the front so quickly) has become the foundation of my coaching philosophy when it comes to the hurdles.
But unlike the coach who argued that the trail leg is more important, I would argue that both legs are equally important, which brings us to the point I want to make with this analogy, which is that the outer life and the inner life are equally important. In hurdling, the lead leg and trail leg must harmonize with one another. They must work together as a single unit. The motion should be so fluid that it doesn’t look (or feel) like you’re hurdling at all, but like you’re simply running over the hurdle.
Yet even though both legs are equally important, the trail leg does come first. It’s the leg that initiates the cycling action, that propels you forward into and over the obstacle. The lead leg is already in the air, so it can’t push off. Then, the lead leg’s cycling action allows for the trail leg to do the same action right behind it. The legs are working together.
Similarly, though the outer life and the inner life are equally important, the inner life must come first. Being comes before doing. Discovering who you are enables you to discover what you should do. As a consequence, your outer life and your inner life reflect each other, and harmonize with each other, just as the lead leg and trail leg harmonize with each other.
When you are in tune with nature — specifically with your own inner nature — then you will live a life of no regrets. You will never look back wishing you had done something different, or chosen to go in a different direction. For me, it was natural to love to read and to love to hurdle. I never “chose” to love either one. The love was in me. So I read a lot and I hurdled a lot. Then I became an English teacher and a track coach. So what sense would it have been for me to major in marketing, or finance, or one of the sciences? Nobody would’ve disapproved if I had done so. I definitely could’ve made more money pursuing one of those paths. But it would’ve meant putting my true passions by the wayside. So even a “successful” outer life would’ve made me miserable.
Being in tune with outer nature is equally significant. Nature is a mirror. In nature we can see ourselves. Being aware of one’s inner nature makes it easier to see how one’s inner nature is reflected by nature in the outside world. With this awareness, we become less anxious, less eager to control situations, and more accepting of the natural rhythms of life. Nature teaches us to go with the flow. Nothing in nature is in a rush. Nothing in nature seeks to impose its will. Birds and animals adapt to their environment. When geese migrate south so they enjoy warmer temperatures, they don’t mourn the fact that they have to leave the North and they don’t celebrate the fact that they can find a new life in the South. They just fly. Humans cling to the past and hope for a bright future. Nature lives in the moment. By observing nature, we can learn to follow its example and live more natural lives. Flowers bloom when it’s their time to bloom; flowers die when it’s their time to die. Summer comes when it is its time to come. Summer goes when it is its time to go.
Nature is fluid. It’s not angular. It doesn’t stop and start. It flows continuously. Even though there is a particular day on the calendar when winter turns to spring, such is not the case in nature. Winter flows into spring, in a gradual process. Days start to get a little warmer, a little longer, and next thing you know the worst of the cold weather is gone for good. Nature teaches us that there’s power in going with the flow, there’s power in letting go of the illusion of control and allowing things to run their course without interfering.
Our inner nature and the outer nature of the world are one. But again, the inner comes first. By observing one’s inner nature, and then observing outer nature, the connection becomes clear and the relationship runs deep. For poets, novelists, artists, photographers, and many other artists, the natural world is an endless resource of story, imagery, symbolism, metaphor, etc. I would say the same is true for hurdlers. Why is it that hurdlers so eagerly look forward to “hurdle days”? Because those are the days when they can do what they love the most, and now they are the singers of the songs.
So you’ll never hear me say that the inner life is the only life that matters, or that the outer life is an artificial life that lacks substance or meaning. The whole purpose of evolving inwardly is to impact the outside world in a way that reflects who you truly are. Life is to be lived from the inside out, not vice versa, but inner and outer ultimately intertwine and work in a unified manner, just like the lead leg and the trail leg, and you can add the arms into the mix as well.
Being able to balance the inner with the outer is a matter of observation — observing without judging. Doing so with yourself, and then with others. Observing the way your mind works, observing your own thoughts and behaviors, observing the types of things and people that make you angry, that make you sad, that annoy you, that frustrate you. To observe without judging is to be a witness to your own life. When we judge ourselves we want to rush to “fix” ourselves or “improve” ourselves. It creates a tension, an anxiety. And tension and anxiety only serve to exacerbate problems that we’re trying to solve and flaws that we’re trying to correct.
Like I tell my track athletes, when you’re nervous before a big race, just observe the fact that you’re nervous. Don’t judge it. Don’t tell yourself that you shouldn’t be nervous, that you need to calm down. Just simply observe the fact that you’re nervous, without judging it, and you’ll already be less nervous, and more in control of your nerves.
Really, all any of us can do is surrender to that which we love, and surrender to that which we’re good at. I love the hurdles, and I’m a good coach. So I surrender my will to the hurdles, and to coaching hurdlers. I go where the hurdles take me. The hurdles are the river, and I’m just a boat on the river. I go with the flow. With no aspirations, no dreams, no hopes. I give to the hurdles because I love the hurdles. I give myself to coaching because I’m good at coaching. That’s it. When I first started coaching, it was just something to do in the afternoons after a long day of teaching English. I didn’t know it was a calling.
Zen Buddhists use the phrase “chop wood, carry water,” which is a way of saying keep performing the simple tasks, keep doing the daily work. Don’t look at yourself as more important than anyone else or less important than anyone else. The enlightened Buddha is no different than who he was before he was enlightened. The only distinction is, the unenlightened Buddha sees his work as tedious and small and seeks to escape it for something “better” or more meaningful or more world-changing, whereas the enlightened Buddha does his work in a spirit of joy and contentment because he knows that it matters.
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