Creating, and Solving, Rhythm Problems

by Steve McGill

A funny thing often happens to hurdlers on their way to better and  enter times: they stop improving. This happens to all athletes in all sports. They plateau. And the coach needs to come up with creative ways to enable more progression. In sprinting, more strength and explosive power developed in the weight room, as well as athlete-specific speed work, can lead to breakthroughs. But in the hurdles, there’s always the issue of dealing with these obstacles in the way. Whereas a sprinter can run faster by increasing stride length, hurdlers’ stride length is inherently limited by the amount of space between the hurdles. For a hurdler, stride frequency, along with technical refinement, becomes more and more of a greater factor when it comes to dropping time, because only a certain amount of speed can be used. 

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Also, there’s the problem that hurdlers often get locked into a rhythm. Their rhythm becomes their comfort zone. They run the same rhythm in races that they run in practice. Then when they’re racing against really tough competition or in high-stakes meets, or on tracks that are faster than the ones they’re used to running on, they suddenly feel more crowded between the hurdles because they are unintentionally opening up their strides, and next thing you know they’re having difficulty staying upright because the hurdles are coming at them too fast.

So, when you’re talking about your more advanced hurdlers, as opposed to your beginners and medium-level hurdlers, you’re talking about very different speed issues. Hurdlers who are struggling to three-step consistently, for example, are looking to gain speed. More speed equals a better rhythm which equals faster times. Such hurdlers, just like sprinters, drop time by getting faster and stronger. But once a hurdler reaches the advanced level — that of 14-low level and beyond — the shift changes from needing to increase speed to needing to increase quickness and thereby create more space. 

So, the solution is simple: in order to adapt to crowding issues in races, the coach must create crowding issues in basically every hurdle drill and every hurdle workout the athlete does. The coach must force the athlete into cadences that are quicker than the athlete’s cadence in recent races. The aim is for the athlete to stay aggressive, to stay in attack mode, so that he or she can enter the danger zone with full confidence that he or she can adapt to his or her own speed as necessary. 

My good friend Hector Cotto often uses the cycle ladder drill — a variation of the cycle drill — to help beginner hurdlers grow their ability to three-step. In the regular cycle drill, the hurdles are spaced about 17 feet apart; that allows the athlete to focus on rhythm without needing to think about speed. In the cycle ladder drill, the spacing keeps increasing by a foot, so it’s, say, 17 feet to the second hurdle, 18 to the third hurdle, 19 to the fourth hurdle, etc. That way the athlete is increasing speed without thinking about increasing speed. After a while, the increased speed feels natural and effortless. 

So, for advanced athletes, a cycle down the ladder drill is what makes more sense. Start at 17 feet to hurdle two, then down to 16 feet to hurdle three, 15 to hurdle four, and 14 to hurdle five. Of course, the hurdles would be very low for such a drill. The purpose would be to create the feeling of the space decreasing as you go, which is exactly the feeling advanced hurdlers feel when moving at top speeds. 

The “jamming” workout is another good one. Have the athlete run over the hurdles at full speed out of the blocks with all hurdles after the first one moved in a full two or even three feet from race spacing. Using a ladder method here could be effective too. Set up five hurdles, put the first one on the race mark, the second hurdle one foot in, the third hurdle two feet in, the fourth and fifth hurdles three feet in (never go closer than three feet in). Or set up seven hurdles, with the first hurdle on the race mark, hurdles two and three one foot in, hurdles four and five two feet in, and hurdles six and seven three feet in. The more crowded the athlete feels in races, the more crowding the coach must create in training sessions.

A couple basics when it comes to maintaining control of one’s speed: 1) Keep the eyes up. If the eyes stay forward and the forward lean comes from the waist, it’s easier to control one’s speed than if the eyes drop down. 2) Keep the arm action sharp and crisp and tight. Doing so limits air time and creates more space between the hurdles. 

A funny story: A couple years ago I saw an Instagram post by Aries Merritt in which he was doing a quickness drill designed to increase his cadence. He had about five banana hurdles set up — either 12-inch or 18-inch hurdles — and they were placed very close together; they couldn’t have been more than eight or ten feet apart. He was super-duper-quickstepping between the hurdles and basically all you could see was his lead arm punching down, punching down, punching down. His feet were skating along almost cartoon-like. I posted the video on my blog and wrote about how this was a very good drill for elite hurdlers trying to master the space between the hurdles. A coaching friend of mine who coaches at the youth and high school levels said she liked the drill and that she’s been using it for years. You have? I asked. Yes, she explained, “I use it for my beginning hurdlers to help them ingrain the rhythm and to help them get past the fear of the barriers.” So, yes, I realized, she was using the same drill, but it was not the same drill. At all. The purpose of a drill defines the drill just as much as the action of a drill. 

With the athlete I’m coaching this year (off and on, due to injuries and the pandemic), Brandon Johnson, l am always looking to create problems in practice. If an improvement in technique leads to more speed between the hurdles which leads to new issues with crowding, we consider that a good problem to have. We’ll create drills and workouts that will help us to deal with the newfound speed, we’ll have discussions between reps as we look at the video of the previous rep, and we’ll keep at it. The aim is to never grow comfortable, to never get locked into a rhythm. 

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