The Ongoing Journey from Four to Three
by Steve McGill

Long-time NBA basketball coach was once asked a question about trying different offensive schemes or something of that nature, and he responded by referencing something one of his coaching mentors had said to him in his early days as a coach: “If they can’t do it, don’t do it.” What he meant was, don’t try to force things. Don’t try to make an athlete do something he or she can’t do even if you feel certain he or she should be able to do it. Go with what works, and in the meantime, keep working toward making your vision become a reality. Rivers’ words are ringing true for me these days as I work with two high school girls who are between three-stepping and four-stepping. We started training in early November, right after our cross country season ended. I had thought that I’d have them rocking and rolling with the three-step by now, but that hasn’t proven to be the case. In this article, I’d like to talk about that journey, the progress we’ve made thus far, and my philosophy about 4-stepping.

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Grace, who is about 5’5”, is further along than Marie, who is about 5’7”. The reason is simple: Grace is faster. And really, no matter how you break it down technically, three-stepping successfully and consistently comes down to being fast enough to do so. Hurdling technique matters only in the sense that bad technique can inhibit the athlete from using the speed that he or she has. In the case of my two girls, their technique has come along nicely — to the point where it is not inhibiting their speed, even though, of course, there are still things that need to be fixed in regard to technique. But that’s true for high-level collegians and professionals, as far as that goes. 

The short video above is of Grace. And you can see that she has issues to fix — a pronounced last-step stomp, no forward bend from the waist, too erect too soon coming out of the blocks. (That was her first session using blocks, by the way). Yet despite these technical flaws, she was able to 3-step the second hurdle, which was moved in two feet from race distance, with relative ease on a 40-degree day in January. 

In our most recent hurdle session, we went to a nearby middle school track on a weekday, because the track is attached to a park and is therefore open to the public. The problem is that the track has a concrete surface, which is why I hardly ever go there. But we’d been practicing on the mushy soccer field at our school, slip-sliding away every day, and because Grace and Marie aren’t always available to practice on the weekends, it was imperative that we get to a track with lines on it during the week.

So, on this concrete middle school track, the plan was to find out where we are in regards to three-stepping vs. four-stepping. Now that the outdoor season is less than two months away, I wanted to start putting in a race plan — a “what would we do if we had to race tomorrow” plan. On the soccer field a couple days prior, I had both girls work on leading with the weaker lead leg so that they could 4-step if they had to. It was no problem for Grace because she had 4-stepped last year. And Marie, despite some initial tentativeness, picked it up very quickly. At the middle school track, we started with one hurdle and worked our way up to five. The hurdles were set at 30” — one click below race height, and were moved in two feet from race distance. 

Grace was able to 3-step the whole workout. Even over five hurdles she was able to maintain the rhythm; though I wouldn’t say that she was accelerating like you want to see in the first part of a race, she wasn’t losing momentum either. For Marie, who has been sick a lot (and recently found out that she has mononucleosis, which means she’ll be unable to practice for the next six weeks), she was 4-stepping the whole way at first. But then she was able to three-step the second hurdle, which actually ended up messing her up because of the difficulty of shifting rhythm mid-rep. But we kept at it, and by the end of the session, she was three-stepping hurdle two and then four-stepping hurdles 3-5. 

In both cases, I felt like we had something to build on. This is where I hold my ground on my viewpoint on the value of four-stepping on the path to becoming a three-stepper. I know a lot of coaches despise the idea of four-stepping at all, and I’d only agree with them if we’re talking about athletes who are obviously fast enough to three-step and are just scared. I always tell the story of how when I first started coaching Keni Harrison in her junior year of high school, she started off four-stepping. She simply didn’t know what she was doing. I said to her, “Girl, you ran 44.2 in the 300 hurdles last year. There’s no way you should be four-stepping these joints.” With her it was just a matter of building the confidence to go a little faster without fear of falling. Once she got the hang of three-stepping — about midway through that first session, she never looked back.

But for athletes who aren’t so gifted, learning how to alternate lead legs is a good way to at least be somewhat competitive while still working toward three-stepping. My whole thing, the three-step has to be legit. If there is a lot of reaching and bounding involved, then you’re better off four-stepping those hurdles. What happened in that session with Marie has happened for me several times in the past — the athlete learns to adjust to the different stride patterns just by getting reps in. And once it clicks, it clicks. Also, there’s the point that athletes who do struggle to three-step are probably better suited for the longer hurdle race anyway, where raw speed and power aren’t as essential. So learning to alternate lead legs is a skill that can obviously prove to be very beneficial in the longer race. 

I feel confident that Grace will be legit three-stepping a whole race over 10 33” hurdles by early April, based on the progress I’m seeing thus far, and based on the fact that we’ll continue working on her block start and her hurdling mechanics. With Marie I’m not so sure just because of the time she’ll have to take off due to mono. But she’ll be able to 3-step at least the first three hurdles by the end of outdoors. 

So, to conclude, I would argue that four-stepping on the way to three-stepping permanently is a viable road to travel. As I tell Marie and Grace, and as I’ve told athletes of similar ability levels in the past, once the four-step feels too crowded, that’s when we’ll know it’s time to three-step for more hurdles, until we’re three-stepping all ten. There’s no way to predict when the magic will happen, so you just keep training until it does. 

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