Developing the Intermediate Hurdler
by Steve McGill
Not often do I find myself with the opportunity to develop a hurdler for a full season, as many athletes either participate in other sports or have other outside obligations that prevent us from meeting on a consistent basis. As a private coach, I sometimes find that athletes I work with during the fall stop coming to me once the indoor season starts and they’re practicing regularly with their school team. Even those who do still come have to work around the competition schedule, which, depending on the level of the athlete, can be pretty demanding. In my private coaching, I like to meet with athletes at least once a week to keep the rhythm going and to make sure we’re continuing to progress, as opposed to merely avoiding regressing. One kid I’ve been working with consistently since this past July is Lukas Valley, a high school senior who ran 40.73 in the 300 hurdles at his state meet last year. Because Lukas and I have been able to meet on a consistent basis over the past seven months or so, I feel like I can point to him as a model of what I like to do in developing an intermediate hurdler.
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Lukas wanted to improve his time so that he could potentially earn a collegiate scholarship, which meant he would need to drop at least two seconds to have a shot at the type of schools he was applying to (small conference DI schools). Before we started working together, he showed me a video of his race at the state meet. What I saw in that race was an athlete who had no idea what his stride pattern was, whose arms were swinging wildly from side to side, but who was running like a man possessed in between the hurdles. So, it was evident that he was a high-energy, low-IQ athlete who could be molded. My job was to channel the energy, teach him how to think the event, and teach him how to run the race. But the first step would be to fix his sprint mechanics, as he was back-kicking like a big dog.
Our first session lasted two hours, and it consisted of me teaching him dorse-flexion, running on the balls of the feet, and pushing off the ball of the foot each stride. He looked at me like I was talking to him in Swahili when I told him he needed to push off the back leg. “What does ‘push’ mean?” he asked. I looked at him like he had three heads. “What do you mean what does ‘push’ mean? Push!”
So I was starting from ground zero, but he learned quickly. In that session and in the next two or three sessions, all we did was A-marches, A-skips, high-knee cycles, and short sprints at slow speeds, focusing on running mechanics. I even had him do the slow sprints in spikes so he could more easily feel when he was running tall on the balls versus when he wasn’t. Gradually, we were able to increase the speed of the sprints, and to add some super-low hurdles (24-27”) into the mix.
By September, his sprint mechanics were good enough that we could move on to the next thing — fall hurdle-endurance training. Usually, my go-to workout is the 100 meter back-and-forth, which involves clearing 5 hurdles in one direction, turning around, and clearing five more hurdles facing the other direction. But with Lukas, based on what I saw in his state meet video, I wanted to incorporate alternating lead legs into his toolbox, so that if he was going to go with the “whichever leg comes up” strategy, he’d be able to lead with either leg. In the state meet video, he went 25 strides to the first hurdle, 15 to hurdle two, 17 to hurdle three, and then 15 again for the next hurdle or two before I stopped counting. The point was, he had no idea what the hell he was doing. So I felt that learning to alternate would be important so that he’d have as many options available as possible.
So we started with 4-stepping over four hurdles, with the hurdles on the boys 110 marks. We started at 30” before working our way up to 33” and then 36”, which is as high as we needed to go, since that’s race height for the 300h. Once he mastered that drill, we moved on to 8-stepping over four hurdles, with the hurdles on every other boys 110 mark. With this spacing, speed became a legitimate factor, and it presented a real challenge. The faster you go, the more you want to get on your “good” lead leg, so you have to trust the weaker leg in order to keep the 8-stride rhythm going. With this workout too, we started with the hurdles lower before working up to race height. We’re always looking to build confidence, so we never want to make too big of a leap too soon.
By mid-November, we moved on from hurdle-endurance conditioning workouts and started implementing a race model. Because he 25-stepped the first hurdle in his state meet the previous spring, we first honed in on lowering his number of strides to the first hurdle down to 23. That took a while — partly because he wasn’t pushing out of the blocks at first, so I taught him how to drive before we even put the first hurdle up. Then, once it looked like he was covering ground sufficiently in his first 9-10 strides or so, we put up the first hurdle. Even still, he was struggling to get the 23 — not because he wasn’t running fast enough or because he wasn’t covering enough ground, but because he kept stuttering in his last few strides before the hurdle, subconsciously trying to fit in 25 strides. Once he finally executed the 23-stride rhythm, it looked awkward and he stumbled a bit coming off, but it was an important first step. From there, it was just a matter of getting in enough reps so that the 23-stride rhythm would begin to feel “normal.” Once we had the first hurdle on lock, we could move on to the second hurdle. Now, because he was 23-stepping to hurdle one, all he needed to do was maintain the same rhythm and stride length in order to hit the second hurdle in 15. So, getting 15 to hurdle two did not take us nearly as long as getting 23 to hurdle one had taken us.
Over the course of the next couple months, we continued to work on stride pattern, adding a third hurdle, then a fourth hurdle, and then a fifth hurdle, which is where we are now. At first, he was consistent with a 23-15-15-16 stride pattern through four hurdles, alternating lead legs at hurdle four. When we put up a fifth hurdle, he was able to go 16 again, for a 23-15-15-16-16 pattern. We kept doing the same workout, and he kept improving. On a very cold day with the temperatures in the high 30’s a couple weeks ago, he was able to go 23-15-15-15-15 through the first five on one of the reps. In our most recent session, he was getting way too crowded at hurdle one, so we did some experimenting with his start — switching his feet in the pedals and trying to 22-2step the first hurdle. He nailed it for several reps in a row, which could mean he might need to 14-step the second hurdle in the near future. It’s hard to tell. But if we have a goal for the end of the spring season, it would be to take a maximum of 15 strides between hurdles for the whole race. No 16-stepping at all. As the weather gets warmer and he gets faster and progresses into peak condition, we’ll let him grow naturally. Not until the last two weeks of the season will we settle into a stride pattern that he will use for the state meet.
If I were Lukas’ everyday coach, the non-hurdling days would include something like 400 repeats for over-distance, 200 repeats for speed work, an easy 2-mile jog as a recovery day, a technique day to just do hurdle drills, and we’d keep up the race modeling work we’re currently doing, and that workout would be the key one in measuring his progress.
To summarize the steps discussed in this article for developing an intermediate hurdler from late-summer through the beginning of the outdoor season, they would be as follows:
- Establish a strong foundation in sprint mechanics.
- Build hurdle-endurance and the ability to alternate lead legs.
- Establish the number of strides to hurdle one (even if it might change later).
- Work on race modeling up to five hurdles (or seven for the 400 hurdler).
- Keep making necessary adjustments to the race model as the athlete’s speed and strength improve.
- Settle in on a definitive stride pattern at least two weeks prior to the biggest meet of the outdoor season.
The video below is of my most recent session with Lukas:
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