The Rise of Malik Mixon to Fastest 110 Hurdler in the Nation
by Steve McGill
If you keep up regularly with my YouTube channel as well as this magazine, you’ve seen videos and read articles in the past two or three years that feature or include Malik Mixon, a hurdler who lives in Atlanta, GA. Since his sophomore year, Malik’s parents have driven him to NC as often as possible to come train with me and the hurdlers I train regularly in my private coaching life. This summer, Malik won the Brooks Invitational in Seattle in a personal best time of 13.55. And then at the U20 National Championships in Eugene, OR, he won again in 13.28, although the wind (+2.6) was slightly above the legal limit of 2.0. In both races, Malik had slow starts before roaring back over the second half. In this article, I will discuss my journey with Malik, explaining, from my vantage point, how we went from being “the kid from Georgia,” as one of my athletes used to call him, to being the top prep hurdler in the nation.
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Back in Malik’s sophomore year, two athletes that I worked with were Alex Nunley and Brandon Johnson, both of whom were among the very best in the same age group as Malik in youth track. Alex just finished his freshman year running for NC State University, and Brandon just finished his freshman year at Cincinnati. The first time Malik came to train with us, I made the mistake of having him join the other two in competitive block starts over three hurdles. It was in the offseason — November I think — so I assumed it was obvious that we were just working on things and not really trying to beat each other. But Malik, who was losing every rep, kept getting more and more frustrated. At the end of the workout, I explained to Malik that he needed to focus on getting better, on improving his block start mechanics and hurdling mechanics, and not get so caught up in beating people in a practice session when there was nothing on the line. I preached my “you gotta be a student of the game” mantra to him, and it honestly wasn’t sitting well with him. We went back and forth for a while, him asking what he needed to do to get faster and to win, and me asserting that it’s not about getting faster, it’s about getting better.
Looking back on that session, I can see that the competitive fire he demonstrated that day is really his greatest athletic trait. He’s a warrior; he hates to lose. And that’s something that can’t be taught. It comes from within. You either have it or you don’t. What I realized was that I couldn’t try to extinguish that fire; instead, I needed to help him learn to control it. “Focus on mechanics,” I told him. “Focus on mastering the nuances of the race, and the result will come naturally. Don’t chase results. If you do, you’ll just keep getting frustrated and you’ll stunt your own progress.”
Though we started out with him coming up to NC about once a month, those visits became less frequent once the pandemic hit, and continued to be infrequent this past year, as he was going on many college visits on the weekends and was also dealing with a hamstring injury that took a long time to go away. So, each time he came up here, he’d either come for the weekend we’d spread the workouts out over two days, or we’d have one extended session that consisted of both heavy drilling and block-start work.
Gradually, more and more with each session, he was becoming a true student of the game. He became more adept at diagnosing his own flaws. Questions about technique became more common, and the tendency to compete every rep became less pronounced. We could look at video of reps together and he could pinpoint what he needed to work on or fix. We were having good conversations between reps, highly intellectual hurdle conversations between reps. If I recall correctly, he was a 14-mid guy in his sophomore year, and got down into the 13.7 range his junior year. Being the purist that I am, the progress into the 13’s kind of surprised me, because he still wasn’t executing in races the downhill style of hurdling that he was getting better and better at in our training sessions. It was like, when the gun went off, he was just being an athlete, a competitor, and bulldogging his way through races. He looked good, but he didn’t look fluid. He was working too hard. Lead leg was kicking out, locking at the knee. Upper body was too upright during hurdle clearance. Trail leg’s path was wide and flat. It was evident that we simply weren’t meeting often enough for him to ingrain the downhill style.
Though we only met a handful of times this past season (due to reasons mentioned earlier), it seems that the things I’d been teaching him in regards to hurdling technique started to click late in the spring season, as his hamstring was fully rehabbed and his explosiveness returned. He did come up to train with me one day early in the spring season, shortly after his return from the hamstring troubles, and I could see the rust, as my athlete Ayden Thompson, who runs in the mid-15’s was defeating Malik out of the blocks over the first three hurdles. The good thing was that instead of growing frustrated, Malik understood that he was still not yet at full strength. Hurdle-wise, we focused on keeping the heel tucked under the hamstring and exaggerating the lead-with-the-knee action. In the drills, he was really getting it and it looked quite impressive. At the end of the session, I instructed him to keep working on drilling that action and hopefully it would become second nature before the end of the season.
And long story short, that’s what happened. He kept dropping time at his regional meet, state meet, and state meet of champions. But heading into the Brooks Invitational, he was not a favorite to win. His personal best was 13.64, and there were three guys who had run faster, two of them sub-13.40. In that race, he got out slow but came on strong for the victory in 13.55. I was so amped up while watching the race live on the livestream that I didn’t even notice his technique at all. I was just so glad that he won a huge victory over competitors with better pr’s. Later, while looking at the replay of the video several times, I noticed something: he was doing it. He was doing the things we’d been working on. It had clicked. After the race, I texted Malik, congratulating him: “I see you Malik! Way to show them boys what time it is!”
The above video is from the Georgia Meet of Champions. Malik is wearing the bright yellow top in both races.
Malik didn’t text me back until a day later, but what he said really got me in my feels: “Thank you so much Coach Steve. It was that downhill hurdling style you taught me that got me the win.”
Then one week later, at the U20 meet, he ran the 13.28 that earned him another victory in a race that included some very fast athletes, including collegians who had already run in the 13.5 range over the 42’s. Again, here, the fluidity and ease of motion that defines the downhill hurdling style enabled him to make up for a slow start. I always say that this style is designed for a 10-hurdle race. Seeing Malik master the style at the end of his high school career was very gratifying for me. He has one more race to go — the U20 World Championships in the first week of August — before he goes off to the University of Southern California, where he will begin his collegiate career. He has all the physical, mental, and emotional tools to continue to excel at the next level.
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