Teaching a Long Hurdler to Adapt to the Sprint Hurdles
by Steve McGill
Usually when I work with hurdlers who do both the sprint hurdles and the long hurdles, they either have a background in both events or, if I start with them as new hurdlers, I’ll develop them in both events. In doing so, I’ll emphasize the sprint hurdles in our hurdle workouts and hurdle drilling, because that is where technique is learned and ingrained. Then, we’ll take those lessons into the long hurdles, where we’ll work on stride pattern and overall speed-endurance. Sometimes, however, an athlete might be more inclined to pursue the long hurdles, as the sprint hurdles leave so little margin for error, so it’s easier to get through a race in the long hurdles, especially for athletes who are new to the hurdles. But even experienced hurdlers who specialize in the long hurdles have difficulty when trying to adapt to the sprint hurdles. Recently, in my private coaching, I’ve been working with two hurdlers trying to do just that. One, Jeremy Prichard, is a post-collegian who owns a personal best of 51.46 in the 400 meter hurdles. The other is Lukas Valley, a high school senior that I started working with last summer. Lukas and I focused on the long hurdles for most of our months together, but recently put more emphasis on the 110’s, as he looks to score some points for his team at their conference meet and state meet.
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What I’m seeing is that the 300/400m hurdles is a totally different race rhythmically and technically in comparison to the 110/100m hurdles. Let me talk about Lukas first. Because I started with him in his senior year, I really wanted to hone in on developing a stride pattern for his 300h race, as the video he showed me of his state meet race from his junior year revealed that he had no idea what he was doing in terms of stride pattern. He was 15-stepping one hurdle, 19-stepping the next; it was just totally random. So, though I did start by establishing proper sprint mechanics (teaching him to dorsiflex and to eliminate his back-kick) and taking him through all the drills I use to teach hurdling mechanics, I didn’t nitpick the details that wouldn’t matter as much for the intermediate hurdles. Because we only met once a week once the school year started, we had to prioritize. So even though his lead leg kicked out some and he ran more upright over the hurdles than I would’ve preferred, I didn’t want to take time fixing those things, as doing so would’ve taken away time from our rhythm work. Were he planning to run the 110’s seriously, and to continue onto the 42’s in college, we definitely would’ve put more emphasis on fixing those issues.
In our stride pattern work, we made good progress, establishing a 22-stride approach to the first hurdle, and 15 between the rest through the first five hurdles. About a month ago, or maybe five weeks ago, he came to practice wanting to work on the 110’s. I already had a lane set up for my regular 110 hurdler, Ayden Thompson, consisting of 8 hurdles spaced 25 feet apart for the quickstep drill. So I told Lukas to hop into Ayden’s lane and do the same workout. Well, Lukas was clobbering hurdles right and left. For the first rep or two I remained patient, assuming he would adapt, but he couldn’t adapt. But he started looking visibly frustrated. Then he started complaining about his ankle and his knee hurting from all the hurdle-smacking. So I put him in a lane by himself and set up a few hurdles at 33 inches and took him back to the basics of “lead with the knee.” I basically had to teach him how to hurdle again.
In the next few sessions, we were able to build back up to the quicksteps, at race height, and then incorporate block starts. Gradually, I saw him ingraining the habits necessary for success in the 110’s. Driving the knee up higher than the crossbar prior to extending the foot, maintaining a forward lean, not letting the toe of the trail leg drop, maintaining an up-down action with the lead arm. And he was now negotiating the space effectively without hitting hurdles but without compromising his aggression. As a long hurdler, he was used to opening up his stride and bounding, so it took some time to get in the habit of shortening and quickening his stride.
Which leads to my discussion of Jeremy. He has a beautiful, graceful stride that perfectly fits the open 400 and the 400 hurdles. When I started with him this past winter, he said he wasn’t planning to compete this year, but wanted to start preparing to compete again next year. He also said that he wasn’t necessarily married to the 400 hurdles, but would be willing to try the 110’s. You don’t have to tell me twice. I set up a hurdle at the first 110 mark and told him to go at it full speed. The hurdle was at 36”. He sprinted from the start line and got way too close to it and had to swerve around it. For the next rep, I told him to switch his feet at the start, and he 7-stepped with ease, not even realizing it. I was like, “Okay, we got something here.”
He quickly picked up on all of the drills. The marching popover drill usually confuses the heck out of people the first time they do it, but he picked it up right away. He did the quickstep drill so well that Ayden raved about his ease of motion and the quickness of his lead leg, and began using Jeremy as a model. But what became increasingly evident, as I added more hurdles to the drills, was that he would run out of room between the hurdles and have to bail out. It was obvious that he didn’t have a 110 hurdler’s instincts. Being quick between the hurdles was a foreign concept to him. So I really jammed him, putting the hurdles 21 feet apart for the quickstep drill instead of the usual 25 feet. “Get your feet down,” I instructed him. “Quick hands, quick feet.” He got better with it, but it’s still a work in progress. His instincts are still telling him to open up his stride, so we’ll just have to keep repping it to instill new muscle memory. I think that if he grasps it, he can be a world-class 110 hurdler, as he has all the physical tools and intellectual capacities.
The video below is from a workout with Jeremy in which we were working on developing the 110 hurdler instincts. Some reps are better than others.
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