A Week with Evonne Britton
by Steve McGill
The first week of August 2021 was a very special week for me, as I had the opportunity to work with a very talented athlete, Evonne Britton, a 2014 graduate of Penn State University, who has a personal best of 12.74 in the 100 meter hurdles, and made it to the semi-finals at the USA Olympic Trials this past June. Evonne, who is 28 years old, still has yet to break through to the level of the super-elite who are running 12.60 and under, which is how fast she needs to run if she hopes to make an Olympic or World Championships team, as she obviously is well aware of. Earlier this year, back in late April or early May, I was watching an NBA playoff game on my phone when I saw a stream of notifications informing me of comments being made on my YouTube videos. Of course, I assumed it was someone asking me about spacing for a drill or something to that effect, but when I finally went and read through these new comments, I saw they were from a professional athlete asking very specific questions. It was Evonne. We engaged in conversation through the comment section for a while. After that, we went back and forth for a week or two via FaceTime training sessions, as I live in North Carolina and she lives/trains in California. Then she and one of her training partners flew in for a weekend so we could have a couple sessions face to face, and she also ran in a meet that weekend. She won the race but only ran 13-low, but came away excited about the possibilities for the future. After the disappointment of not making it to the finals at the Trials, and of not making any noticeable progress regarding her technical flaws, she made the decision to come visit me for a week. The first week of August was perfect for me because it was the only week all summer that I had none of my regular high school or youth hurdlers to coach, so I could give her all of my attention.
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It just so happened that I did, in fact, have another athlete to work with when she first arrived. A rising high school senior named Mason Reed had driven down with his mom from Maryland for two days. On Mason’s third session, which coincided with Evonne’s second session, I was helping him learn to alternate lead legs, as he runs both hurdle events and will need to learn how to alternate for the long hurdles. He 15-steps the first part of the race, but it’s a bit stuttery, and I think that a 14-step pattern for the first half would be a better fit for him. Anyway, as we were talking about it, I casually mentioned that I’ve only had one athlete my whole career who was truly ambidextrous, who could lead with either leg and both legs looked equally proficient. Before Mason could answer, Evonne chimed in, saying, “I can lead with either leg.”
My interest was piqued. “You can?” In our first session the previous evening, and during the weekend when she had come to NC back in May, it was looking like progress was going to take some time leading with her right leg–her dominant leg. The zigzag action to the first hurdle, the tendency to kick up with the lead leg instead of getting the knee height first and then cycling downward, the tendency to raise the elbow of the lead arm too high, the tendency to swing both arms laterally–all of these issues were going to take some time to fix. They had become ingrained, and they didn’t feel wrong, even though they were all inefficient movements. She had told me that she had a meet coming up in two weeks, which meant we were limited in the amount of experimenting we could do. So although the thought of seeing what she looked like leading with her left leg did cross my mind, I quickly squashed it.
But then it sprung back up again. We were doing a cycle drill, in flats, so she wasn’t moving at full speed. What could it hurt to see what she looked like leading with her left leg in this drill? When I suggested it, she gave me a look that said “Let’s not.” But then I said, “Hey you didn’t come all the way to North Carolina just to do the same old same old. Give me a rep leading with your left leg and if it sucks we’ll move on.” So she did a rep leading with her left and it looked fantastic. The arms weren’t swinging, the lead leg wasn’t kicking, and she came off each hurdle with speed. I was like, “Whoa!” Evonne wasn’t sure if it felt better or not. So I looked to Mason for confirmation. “How did that look to you, compared to the other reps?” Mason was equally stunned. “It looked ten times better,” he said. After a few more reps, Evonne was becoming convinced too, and she started thinking back on her whole career, about how she had run the 400 hurdles in college and had always alternated in that race, about how she had considered switching to a left-leg lead in the 100 hurdles as recently as last year but her coach had chosen not to pursue it. I was like “Girl, that left leg is on point.”
But she had a race coming up in two weeks. Would she be able to lead with her left leg for ten hurdles at full speed out of the blocks against hot competition? That was too much to ask. As the week progressed, we continued to do reps on both sides. At first, the left-leg lead continued to look noticeably better than the right-leg lead. I had no doubt that, long-term, she should switch to leading with the left, although I agreed that she should stick with her right leg for her next meet.
By the latter part of the week, the right leg was looking better. Much better. And she was looking faster, without really trying to run faster. The forward angles I was preaching about constantly were starting to come naturally. The feeling of “falling” off the hurdle and forcing her legs to “catch” her was coming naturally. When talking about it between reps, she was explaining that because the left leg hadn’t learned any of the bad habits that had been ingrained on the right side, the left leg could basically “teach” the right leg how it’s supposed to feel, and then the right leg was just copying what the left leg was doing. And all of that was happening organically, without either one of us planning for it or consciously choosing to go in that direction.
Her next race is on the 15th of August, against Sharika Nelvis and Danielle Williams, among others on that same level. I’m eager to see how she does. I don’t expect a hurdle revolution, but I’m more interested in seeing how she looks. I know the time will drop eventually, after she has an off-season to ingrain all of her new habits, but I’m hoping that she will look more fluid throughout the race and that she will look stronger in the last third of the race.
Having the opportunity to work with Evonne for a full undistracted week was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. It got me thinking, maybe I would like to coach at the professional level if the right situation presents itself. For sure, I learned as much from her as she learned from me. Every conversation about what we were working on and what we wanted to focus on was a mutually beneficial discussion. I love that type of interaction with an athlete, when I am forced to think outside the boundaries of my own knowledge base.
Moving forward, I’ll have to stay open to the possibility of repping both legs even for 100/110 meter hurdlers, where such a skill, on the surface, is irrelevant. Obviously, Evonne was starting from a place of already being proficient on both sides, but even for athletes who aren’t, the possibility is there that the “weaker” leg that hasn’t developed any bad habits can serve as a teacher for the dominant leg, despite the fact that the natural assumption would be that the dominant leg would serve as the teacher of the weaker leg. Either way, the bigger-picture takeaway for me is to always remain open to all possibilities, to all ideas. Just because something hasn’t been tried before doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tried; always put yourself out there where failure is a possibility, but never be afraid of failing.
Below is a video of reps at various heights and speeds from the last full session with Evonne. For each height and spacing, she did reps leading with her left, and reps leading with her right.
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