Popovers and Quicksteps Workout
by Steve McGill

Usually, this time of year, I place a heavy emphasis on speed in hurdling workouts, and we’ll go full speed from the starting blocks fairly often. But this spring, in my private coaching, I’ve gotten away from such an emphasis, and there is more than one reason why. Firstly, I only meet with my private-session athletes once a week, usually on Sundays. Usually, Sunday is the day after a meet, and even when it’s not, it’s still at least three or four days away from the next weekday meet. When I’ve coached for school teams in the past, I’ve always done a drill-heavy workout early in the week, and then did a speed-based workout closer to race day. So now, with only one day a week available, it makes sense to leave the starting blocks alone and to let the athletes do block starts over hurdles during one of their practice sessions with their school coach and teammates. 

[am4show not_have=’g5;’]

[/am4show][am4guest]

[/am4guest][am4show have=’g5;’]

Secondly, I’ve come to find that if speed is being emphasized effectively during hurdle-free speed days, then speed work over the hurdles isn’t as necessary. Instead, refining technique and learning to get quicker and quicker and quicker between the hurdles can be more beneficial to helping the athlete to drop time. For hurdlers who have mastered the three-step rhythm and are having issues with getting crowded, improving quickness is the most effective way to drop times, as it most easily leads to faster touchdowns, especially in the middle and latter stages of races.

So, the workout I’ve been using with my hurdlers the past four weeks or so has become my new bread-and-butter workout. It involves two of my most fundamental drills: marching popovers and quicksteps. Volume and setup can vary depending on the athlete’s experience and ability levels, but here are the parameters I use:

Part One

• 5 reps of marching popovers, over 10 hurdles.
• Hurdles are spaced 13 feet apart (males) or 12 feet apart (females).
• Walk-back recovery after each rep.
• Emphasis is on cycling the legs quickly from the very start and increasing the quickness as the hurdles feel more and more crowded. When fatigue sets in and concentration wanes toward the end of each rep, maintain the quickness while remaining mistake-free.

Part Two

• 2 sets of 4 reps of quicksteps, over 8 hurdles.
• 33 feet to the first hurdle for a 6-step approach (or 5-step approach for 7-steppers). Rest of the hurdles are spaced 25 feet apart (males) or 22 feet apart (females).
• Walk-back recovery after each rep. Five minutes rest between sets.
• Emphasis is the same as in the marching popovers; we’re just adding more speed to the equation here. But we want the cadence between the hurdles to feel as similar to that of the marching popover as possible.

I have found that this combination of drills has helped my hurdlers tremendously. Clearing so many hurdles each rep leads to an enhanced ability to focus and to stay relaxed through fatigue. It also forces them to minimize basic mistakes (like a lazy, late trail leg, a lead arm that hangs in the air too long, a lead leg that kicks out too far) because such mistakes take away space and make it nearly impossible to get through a rep cleanly. As a result, I’m seeing better execution late in races and more efficient technique overall, with minimal wasted effort and minimal wasted motions. 

The logic behind this workout is that for hurdlers who get crowded in races, it makes more sense to work on quickening the cadence than it does to work on speed development, as race spacing doesn’t allow room for sprinting in the truest sense anyway. In the hurdles, once crowding is an issue, the only way to get faster is to get quicker.

For athletes who don’t feel crowded in races, this workout can still be beneficial because it ingrains good habits that will be quite useful when a full-speed block-start approach is added to the equation.

By the way, in workouts like this one, I’ll film just about every rep and have discussions with the athletes on what to focus on the next rep every time. We want to progress every rep, with each one building on the previous one.

Below is a video of my athlete Ayden Thompson doing the workout described in this article.

[/am4show]