Working 36’s: When and Why
by Steve McGill
One thing I very rarely do is have a hurdler of mine clear hurdles that are higher than race height. I hardly ever have high school boys work on 42’s, and I hardly ever have any female hurdlers work over 36’s. With advanced high school boys, i have done some 42 work senior year so that can begin preparing for the higher height they will face when they get to college. When of my athletes way back when, Booker Nunley back in 2008, was ineligible to compete his last year of high school because he had unknowingly taken too few classes in the first semester of his senior year, as he didn’t need a full load of classes to graduate. That ended up working out much better than we possibly could’ve hoped, as he had the whole year to train over 42’s, compete unattached in college meets, and still compete in post-season high school meets over the 39’s.
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There is danger involved in adding even a day of training at a height higher than race height. These dangers are the reason I rarely do it. Training at higher heights can mess up the take-off distance the athlete is accustomed to. The take-off distance when clearing a 39-inch hurdle, for example, will be closer than the take-off distance for a 42-inch hurdle. In addition, body angles will be different. The higher the hurdle, the taller the hips have to be. And the knee of the lead leg will need to drive up higher. And the trail leg will need to push off more forcefully. Getting acclimated to the higher height can create problems when the athlete comes back down to race height. It can lead to taking off too far away, raising the hips too high, floating over hurdles, etc.
But recently I encountered a situation with one of my athletes where raising the hurdles up a click to 36 made sense, despite the fact that she will never have to race at that height. The athlete, Falon Spearman, has been featured in many of my YouTube videos the past few months, and though she still has things to work on, I would definitely refer to her as an advanced hurdler, as she has a pb of 13.50 and has mastered the majority of the hurdling principles that I teach. But in a session a couple weeks ago, we encountered a problem that we needed to address.
The problem was with the trail leg. Although it was getting to where it needed to end up—knee high and tight and facing the front by the time the lead leg landed—it was taking a wide path to get there. There was some back-kick when the foot of the trail leg left the ground, and the heel was getting too far away from the hamstring. Falon, feeling the imbalance during one of our sessions, asked me what we could do to correct it. I pointed out the usual stuff—cue the heel, cue the knee, avoid a delay between pushing off and driving it to the front. But none of it seemed to make a difference. There was still that slight twist in the hips, and we couldn’t get rid of it.
So I suggested we try some drills over 36. Maybe some drill work over 36’s would further expose the issue so we could more easily address it. That did happen. We did some easy, super-slow drills before gradually graduating to quicksteps. As we progressed, it was super-obvious that she wasn’t leaning deeply enough. She was twisting the hips and stumbling coming off the hurdles. With her being only 5-3, clearing 36’s was like a 5-10 guy clearing 42’s. I was like, “these are 36’s girl, you gots to lean. Bring that chin down to your knee!”
So we exaggerated the lean, and lo and behold, the trail leg was coming through high and tight, with no twist whatsoever in the hips! Let’s goooo!!! After about three reps of that, we went back down to 33”, and she was humming over the 33’s. We kept going back and forth like that—a couple reps over 36 followed by a couple reps over 33. By going back and forth like that, we could avoid the possibility of the 36’s leading to the types of problems discussed above.
Ultimately, we did come to the conclusion that the lack of a deep lean was the source of her trail leg issues. We wouldn’t have been able to arrive at that conclusion without experimenting with the 36’s. Moving forward, we plan to incorporate 36 work into our sessions on a regular basis. It’s like I said to another of my athletes last year, in a different context: we have to expose the flaw in order to correct the flaw. In Falon’s case, that slight twist in the hips, in some of her races last year, became a major twist in the hips by the ninth and ten hurdles.
In deciding whether or not to train over hurdles higher than race height, and when to, I would make the following suggestions:
1) Only try it with an athlete who is very experienced, very mature emotionally, and very capable physically.
2) Be very clear on what your purpose is—what flaw you’re trying to address. Don’t do it just to say look we’re going over 36’s (42’s).
3) Always toggle back and forth between race height and one click above race height within the session. You don’t want the athlete losing touch with the rhythm and timing of race height.
The video below is from the session a couple weeks ago where Falon worked on the 36’s. There were plenty of reps that didn’t make the video, where the hips were twisting, etc. The reps in the video were her best ones, and though most are at 36, some are at 33. Spacing was our usual quickstep spacing—30 feet to the first hurdle and 22 feet between the rest. As her confidence rose and her proficiency improved, she increased her speed.
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