Pre-Meet Workout for 100/110 Hurdlers
by Steve McGill

Pre-meet workouts can be tricky. You don’t want to do too much, but you want to do enough to ensure that the athlete enters the competition confident that he or she is ready to go full speed ahead with no inhibitions. This month’s workout is the type of workout that serves the purpose of helping the athlete to get into the mental zone required to race at a high level, but does so without putting too many reps on the legs.

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The Workout:

1. Full dynamic warmup ending with three 50-meter sprints from a three-point start. These sprints should get progressively faster. I tell my athletes, do the first one at 75% of full speed, the second one at 85%, and the third one at 95%. That way, the last sprint is just a notch below the speed we will want at the beginning of the workout.
2. Put the spikes on.
3. One 30-meter sprint from the starting blocks, driving hurdler-style, not sprinter-style. I’ll put a cone at the desired take-off spot and will want the athlete to hit that spot with the eighth stride (or 7th stride for 7-steppers). Also, I’ll expect the athlete to drive head down, eyes down for two strides and then look up at the third stride in order to envision getting the eyes on the crossbar for when the hurdle will be there the next rep.
4. Next we’ll set up a few hurdles to get in a quick warmup at an easy pace. I’ll usually put up three at a spacing that allows for a quick but easy cadence. The point of this is to get the legs over some hurdles a little bit prior to going full speed over any hurdles from the starting blocks. We’ll usually do two or three light reps over two or three hurdles. Arguably, these reps can be done prior to the 50-meter sprints so that the speed element doesn’t go down before cranking back up, but I prefer this order because the benefit of the sprints and the hurdle-free block start won’t be compromised at all since we’re only talking about a couple reps.
5. One block start over the first hurdle, with no commands. The purpose of this step is to put in the drive to the first hurdle and to make sure we have our approach to that first hurdle exactly like we want it.
6. One start over the first three hurdles, with commands. This is where the workout truly begins; this is where we are now shifting (in regards to mindset) from warmup mode into race prep workout mode. All hurdles after the first hurdle should be moved in at least one foot, maybe two feet if you’re on a slow track and the track the athlete will be racing on is a significantly faster surface.
7. One start over the first five hurdles, with commands. Here, we’re just extending what we did in the previous rep over a longer distance.
8. One start over the first seven hurdles, with commands. Again, we are extending the distance to see if we are able to accelerate through the first three and maintain top speed through the entire second third of the race. 

For me, if we’re good to go through seven hurdles, we’re good to go through ten on race day. I always say that late-race mistakes in the last third of the race are caused by mistakes that were made earlier. In this workout, with each rep, I’m conversing with the athlete and we are deciding together what we want to focus on. Usually, since it’s pre-meet, the biggest factor is speed. Be fast, be fast, be fast. I also might add one technical cue, but no more than one. When preparing to race, thinking has to be at a minimum.

For this workout, I don’t put a clock on the recovery times. Instead, I will take a number of factors into consideration, including the temperature and humidity. I’ll also ask the athlete if he or she feels ready to go full speed ahead again, and even if the answer is yes I’ll read body language so that I’m the one making the final decision. Athletes often will claim to be ready because they don’t feel tired. But I want to know if the legs are ready to fire, which is totally different. In a workout like this, we don’t want a slower rep or a sloppy rep and be forced to add a rep to recover confidence. It’s on me as the coach to make sure the athlete is ready to go full blast before moving on to the next rep. For those of you who do want an idea of how much recovery to give the athlete between reps, I would say a minimum of five minutes after the rep over three hurdles, and a minimum of 7 minutes after the rep ove five hurdles.

In the video below,  my athlete, Falon Spearman, is doing this workout. I filmed the block-start hurdle reps.

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