Hurdle Speed Workout

by Steve McGill

This month’s workout is one that is designed for helping an athlete to get race-sharp, and making the transition from the fall training that is more volume-based to the winter training that includes an element of meet preparation. This workout is good to do once a week as a speed workout, two days prior to a meet, or on a Saturday in place of a meet. 

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Here’s what the workout consists of, all from a block start:

2x20m sprints.
2 reps over the first hurdle.
2 reps over the first two hurdles.
2 reps over the first three hurdles. 

I don’t time the 20m sprints. I put those in there as a way of getting the fast-twitch muscles firing prior to going over any hurdles. Prior to these two sprints, I’ll have the athlete do 3x40m sprints from a three-point start at the end of the warmup. When doing any kind of speed work, it’s always important to do as much preparatory work in the warmup to avoid injury. 

For recovery, I give a walk-back recovery between the two sprint reps. For all the hurdle reps, I’ll give 2-3 minutes rest between reps. The rest will increase as I add more hurdles. I don’t want to go over three minutes, though, as I want to make sure the athlete stays in rhythm and doesn’t get too stagnant between reps. Of course, if we were to be doing a similar type of workout in the late spring or summer, there would be a longer rest between reps, and we’d be going over more hurdles. 

After the sprint reps, before the first reps over the first hurdle, I’ll have the athlete do some hurdle drilling, just to get the legs over hurdles prior to going full speed out the blocks over the hurdles. In the video above, you’ll see that my athlete Brandon does a couple reps of quicksteps prior to his hurdle block starts. We’d want to do something similar in a race warmup. Get the speed up first, get in the hurdling frame of mind, then put the two together. 

By the way, the above video includes all the reps from the workout, in the same order as I listed earlier. So you can follow the progression quite easily. 

Variations:

I keep the hurdles at race height for all the hurdle reps for an athlete like Brandon, who is experienced and knows what he’s doing. But if you have an athlete who hasn’t been training throughout the fall, or whose technique still has a lot that needs to be improved, then lowering the hurdles one click below race height would be appropriate. But that’s as low as you should go. If you need to go lower than that, then the athlete isn’t ready for this workout yet. 

If the athlete has a bad hurdle rep for whatever reason, you can always decide to add another one. 

If the athlete is feeling any twinges that could potentially become strains or tears, shut the workout down. Ask the athlete after every rep how he or she is feeling. 

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