Maximizing the Benefit of Indoor Competition
by Steve McGill

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a big fan of indoor track, although I’ve warmed up to it more in recent years compared to how I felt about it as recently as five years ago. My primary issue with the indoor season remains the same — too often, there is way too much emphasis on competing than on getting better. When I was in high school way back in the day, we approached running indoors (in our training and in our schedule of meets) as a way of preparing for the outdoor season in the spring. We didn’t set any goals for indoors except to enter the outdoor season already in shape. As a coach over the past few decades, I’ve basically taken the same approach. My attitude was, and still pretty much is, that races get in the way of training. To me, racing indoors is like an artist putting a work of art on public display before the piece is finished. It’s like a music band performing live before the band has had an adequate amount of time to rehearse. My philosophy has always been, Let’s get right first before we race. 

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But as Bob Dylan sang long ago, “The times they are a changing.” Back around 2007 or so, there might have been three or four invitational meets, then the state championship meet, and then one or two national meets, and you either went to one or the other. Nowadays, it’s quite easily possible to race indoors every single weekend, and also during the week. More and more meets feature national caliber competition. More and more value is placed on being an indoor champion, whether it be as an individual in an event or as a team. Even in the hurdles, where the indoor distance includes only half of the amount of hurdles as the outdoor race, the drive to be the best indoor hurdler is very real.

Why does that bother me? Let me break it down:

1) The heavier focus on racing not only decreases the amount of quality training time, but it also slows development. In a technical event like the hurdles, where it takes time to ingrain new methods and new movements, racing too often too early too intensely can lead athletes to abandon the process and become very emotional regarding how well they stack up against their opponents. Thanks to Milesplit (and I’m not hating on Milesplit; it’s a great resource), athletes are aware all the time of their local ranking, national ranking, etc. Such heightened awareness leads to anxiety; it leads to the feeling that I need to run faster now. Which, to be blunt, is delusional. You don’t need to run faster now; you need to keep getting better; you need to keep working on the things you’re working on until you can do them without thinking about them.

2) Speaking strictly for the hurdles, a 55-meter race or 60-meter race over the first five hurdles does not indicate who is the best hurdler. It’s like playing a basketball game or football game until halftime, and saying that whoever is ahead at halftime wins the game. That’s nonsense, right? As we all know, a team that is ahead at halftime can get blown out in the second half, and a time that is way behind at halftime can come back and win in the second half. In the second half, the game becomes a battle of wills. The team that maintains composure and makes the least amount of mistakes wins. I say, the same goes for a hurdle race. All of the coaching I do, and everything I incorporate into my coaching philosophy, is predicated upon preparing my athletes for a 10-hurdle race. 

So I encourage my athletes to use the indoor races the same way that I encourage my AP English students to use the in-class essays that I have them write throughout the year. What I tell my students is, every essay you write is preparation for the AP exam in May. So, I don’t grade every essay that they write. And of the essays I do grade, I not only give them the grade that will appear in the gradebook, but I also let them know how I would score their essay out of six points, which is how the essays on the AP exam are scored. These essays throughout the year, I constantly remind them, are helping them to know what they need to work on. These essays help them know how much of my teachings they have ingrained versus what still remains as a weakness. I remind them not to get upset if they’re not progressing as quickly as they would like. Keep working on your weaknesses and the progress will come. When push comes to shove, it all comes down to how they perform on that one day — the day of the AP exam. What they did throughout the year doesn’t matter. If you want to score a 5 on the AP exam and earn college credit, then you have to rise to the occasion on that day.

So when it comes to indoor meets, I try to instill the same mindset. It’s harder to do as a private hurdles coach who isn’t with these athletes every day. But one kid I’m working with, Ayden Thompson, a high school junior, has a school coach who is super-cool when it comes to trusting me and allowing me to provide guidance. I’ve written about Ayden before; I just started with him this summer, after his season was over. Then, he had just finished the season with a personal best in the 17-flat range, and was really raw because he had had very little hurdle training or speed training up to that point. He ran the hurdles because he was tall — 6-4. So in the summer and fall we worked on his sprint mechanics, and then we switched to a 7-step block start, and we did a lot of drilling to address the issues in his hurdling technique. Of course, being the meticulous tinkerer that I am, I did not feel he was ready to race when the indoor season began in December. But there were meets on the schedule. And I did agree that because he was so new to the event, he would benefit from getting some races in.

In his first 55h race, he ran in the 8.5 range, which would put him on pace for a 16.0-16.5 outdoors, depending on how well he finished. Not bad at all. But in his next two races he ran in the 8.7 and 8.8 range, respectively, and his confidence was shaken. This was what I had been worried about — the possibility of getting spooked by the level of competition and forgetting all the things he’d been taught. In looking at footage of the races, I noticed that his hips were rising at every hurdle clearance. So, in our next session together, I simply told Ayden “don’t get in your feelings” and said “Let’s work on pushing those hips forward at take-off.” It was a good session, and with the simple adjustment, he looked a lot faster between the hurdles. In his next meet, he ran in the 8.3 range in both the prelims and final, which should put him under 16.0 outdoors. 

So, that’s what I’m talking about. The subpar races served as good teaching tools. They helped me to identify what we needed to work on in order to further advance his development. He was happy that he won his prelim heat and that he finished third in the final, whereas I was happy that he was pushing his hips forward. Our goal, I reminded him, is to make as much noise as possible in the outdoor state meet. Everything we’re doing here is in preparation for that, and with the long-term goal being to earn a college scholarship. 

With this approach to indoor races, I find myself feeling thankful for the high volume of indoor competitions that are available now. Flaws are exposed, and can be addressed, so that we can hit the ground running once the outdoor season begins. 

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