Further Experimentations with the 7-step Approach
by Steve McGill

When I first started coaching Ayden Thompson in the summer after his sophomore year of high school, Ayden, who is currently in his senior year, was a bit of an awkward runner with poor sprint mechanics; his personal best of 17.02 certainly wasn’t putting him on the path to compete beyond high school. He and his dad committed to working with me as Ayden’s private hurdles coach so that he could put himself in position to run in college and hopefully earn some scholarship money. One of the first things we did after addressing his sprint mechanics issues was to switch from the traditional 8-step approach to the first hurdle to the less common 7-step approach. Now that he was running with more power and efficiency, he was having trouble fitting in his 8-steps to the first hurdle, as he was (and is) 6’4” tall. 

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So last year, we established the 7-step approach in the fall and into the winter, but once the outdoor season started we weren’t able to meet as often — he had a few injuries that took away some training time for brief periods, and because I was in my first year as head coach of my school team, I didn’t have as much time to meet with him. So, the progress we made in the off-season with his start ended up being all the progress we made. At that point, he was getting to the first hurdle consistently in seven strides, and he was getting a good take-off distance, and he was blowing away opponents to the first hurdle and through the first five or six hurdles. But he was fading in the latter stages of races, one of which I witnessed in person, as my team was at the same meet. 

In this race, Ayden was running against a rival who, like Ayden, had a personal best in the 15.5 range. Ayden blasted out of the blocks and took a huge lead. He was dominating through six hurdles and I thought it was a wrap. But he hit a hurdle, stumbled a bit, and the other dude kept making up ground hurdle by hurdle over the last three hurdles and then pushed past him at the finish line. At the time, I was thinking that he may have lost some conditioning from the time he had to sit out due to injuries. It wasn’t until the summer rolled around, and we had the chance to work together often again, that I realized that his start, in fact, was most likely the source of the problem.

The issue was, his seven steps were an even seven steps. He wasn’t propelling himself out of the blocks, he wasn’t covering significant ground with the first stride. Nor with the second, third, or fourth strides. As a result, there was no need to get quicker with the last three strides, with the seventh stride — the “cut step” — being the shortest and quickest. That’s what you want out of a block start, whether it’s an 8-step approach or a 7-step approach, so that the last three strides into the first hurdle establish the rhythm that will be carried through the rest of the race.

So we worked on pushing forward out of the blocks and maintaining that pushing/bounding action for four strides. That worked wonders compared to what we were doing before, but I still felt like he wasn’t really pushing through the first hurdle. His cadence to the second hurdle didn’t feel quick enough for me. If he were really pushing through the first hurdle, then the rhythm to the second hurdle would’ve been more of a bop-bop-bop! as opposed to the bop. bop. bop. that we had. Why did that matter? Because the slower cadence indicated that he was working harder than we wanted to. Which meant he’d fatigue sooner, which is what had happened in the race that I had seen. 

In late June of 2022, during a hurdle academy I was conducting in Maryland, my coaching partner Kevin Howell, who I consider to be a guru of the block start, was teaching the kids how to come out of the blocks. I noticed that one kid — a big strong kid who was a collegiate freshman — was employing what I refer to as a “football start,” meaning that he took lateral strides at the very beginning. I pointed it out to Kevin as a flaw, as the aim should be to run in a straight line and to limit lateral movement as much as possible. But Kevin explained that the lateral push in the early strides made sense, “because you’re starting from zero [miles per hour],” he said. So the lateral strides give you more leverage and actually help you to cover more ground. 

That was a light bulb moment for me. When I returned home and got back with Ayden again, I had Kevin’s advice in the back of my mind. During Ayden and I’s first session together in July, we kept with the same approach for a few reps, and then, based on Coach Kevin’s insights, I decided to experiment with the football start. Three strides where you push laterally, gaining leverage, I explained to Ayden, and then four strides in a straight line. The results were instantaneous. The very first rep, when it still felt awkward and confusing, put Ayden closer to the first hurdle and enabled him to push through it more easily. 

So we stuck with that for the rest of the summer. We got away from block starts in the fall training in order to focus more on hurdle endurance. When we came back to block starts in November/early December, I liked what I saw, but there was still something nagging at me. There was still something that didn’t feel right. There were still reps when he was taking off too far away. In looking at the film on my phone of some of his reps, I noticed that the fourth step might be the issue. When transitioning from the three big lateral strides into the last four straight strides, he was getting quicker with the fourth stride, probably unconsciously, and quicker, of course, meant shorter.

So I said to him, “we need to take a 3-1-3 approach, like a zone defense in basketball.” (The last part of that was a joke). Big and lateral with leverage for the first three strides, stay big for the fourth stride while transitioning to straight strides, then three quick strides right before clearing the hurdle. The fourth stride is the hybrid stride, serving as a bridge between the first three strides and the last three strides. Like the first three strides, it’s big and powerful. But like the last three strides, it’s in a straight line with no lateral movement.

This formula has been working out very well in practice. In his first indoor meet (prior to the 3-1-3) he ran a personal best of 7.84 in the 55m hurdles, breaking his school’s record. He hasn’t had an indoor meet since we’ve implemented the 3-1-3, although he did have a polar beat meet since then. A polar bear meet is, I think, strictly a North Carolina thing, where indoor distances are run on an outdoor track. I’m not a fan of such meets because it’s not a good idea to sprint or hurdle at full speed when the temperatures are in the 40’s. Ayden smashed the first hurdle in his race at the polar bear meet, but went on to run a 7.87. I feel confident that when it’s time to run indoors again, in a room-temperature setting on a mondo surface, we’ll see the benefits of the 3-1-3 approach. 

Below is a video of our most recent block start session, in which we used the 3-1-3 approach.

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