Running, Hurdling, & Lifting Workout
by Steve McGill

This fall and winter, as I’ve been looking for ways to incorporate a variety of training methods into small windows of time, I found that I’ve strayed from my usual method of having sprint days, speed-endurance days, hurdling days, and lifting days. Now, to make sure we get it all in and to make sure I keep workouts invigorating for the athletes, I’ve been combining elements much more than I used to. When coaching high school athletes who are in school all day and who have homework to complete pretty much every evening, I don’t like to work out more than two hours a day simply because their lives are already so busy and mental exhaustion can easily occur if I’m not careful. So, with the small group of kids on my school team that I’m working with this off-season, we’ll generally start practice at 3:45 and finish around 5:15 or 5:30. I’m finding it easier to get in all the food groups by shortening the running portions of workouts in order to add other portions.

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The trickiest portion is the lifting portion. While I could ask the kids to come to school early and get their lifting in before school starts, that’s a big ask considering their academic demands, when they’re staying up late doing  homework most nights. So, taking off a few reps of the sprints allows more time to get in the weight room and still complete the whole workout in two hours or less. 

Along those lines, one workout that we’ve been doing once a week consists of the following:

• 3×300 at 90% of full speed, with four minutes rest between each one.
• 6-8 reps over 2-4 hurdles from a three-point start. (We do this on the soccer field because we have no track, so I’ll move the hurdles in two feet from race spacing. Normally, on a track, we’d move them in one foot, and we’d do block starts instead of three-point starts if it’s warm enough).
• Weight room work, which, on upper body days, will consist of:
  • Bicep dumbbell curls, 3 sets of 12 reps
  • Tricep extensions with dumbbells, 3 sets of 12 reps
  • Forward shoulder raises with dumbbells, 3 sets of 12 reps
  • Lateral shoulder raises with dumbbells, 3 sets of 12 reps
  • Bench press, 3 sets of 12 reps
  • 3 sets of a series of abdominal exercises

A full speed-endurance workout would consist of 6×300, but by cutting the number down to three, that gives us time to get in hurdle work without having to wait until a hurdle day, and we also get in some weight work without having to arrive at school at 5:30 in the morning to do so. Also, I find that grouping workout portions in this manner not only works a variety of muscle groups, but also enables the athletes to see how everything we do works together. 

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