We Cycle the Arms Like We Cycle the Legs
by Steve McGill
In last month’s issue, I was talking about my desire to move forward with the cycle-arms style that I created over a decade ago, but have yet to be able to implement with any of my hurdlers due to a variety of factors. If you’re new to the discussion, let me briefly explain. The issue I was trying to address at the time was how to prevent the trail leg from pausing, after having figured out how to keep all the other limbs (lead leg, trail leg, lead arm) from pausing. What I discovered was that the only way to prevent the trail arm from pausing, and to have it cycle like the lead arm can cycle, is for it to be cycling already before it even gets to the hurdle. Which means changing the way the athlete runs — instead of the usual up-and-down motion with the arms, we’d need to switch to a cycling action with the arms — an action that mimics the cycling action of the legs.
[am4show not_have=’g5;’]
[/am4show][am4guest]
[/am4guest][am4show have=’g5;’]
Well, if there is one thing for me that has proven to be a positive outcome of the worldwide pandemic that continues to ravage the world, it’s that it has given me time to implement the style with an athlete who really gets it and embraces it. His name is Brandon Johnson, a rising senior. I was teaching him the style back in March, shortly before everything was shut down. He was picking it up, but Indoor Nationals were on the horizon, and, after that, outdoor season would begin immediately. So, we wouldn’t have time to go step-by-step in making the transition because we’d always be prepping for races. I resigned myself to the idea that we would temporarily abandon the change in the buildup to Indoor Nationals, and that we’d have to train through some early-season outdoor meets in order to have the new style in place by the big outdoor meets in late May through June and July. But then along came Covid-19, and that squashed everything.
I started up with Brandon again in late May, and we’ve had a total of three sessions as of this writing. The track at a nearby high school where I usually hold my sessions is still closed, so we’ve been going to a nearby park instead, where there are a couple of lacrosse fields with well-cut grass and no potholes that can cause an ankle to turn or a knee to buckle. So, I’ve been toting my measuring wheel, my practice hurdles, and my cones, and we’ve been putting in work. Because of the virus, which has led to a meet-less summer, I have time to take Brandon through the process of transitioning from the traditional arm style to the cycle-arm style. We don’t have to rush anything, and we know that once meets do start up again — assumedly in December or January — all the components of the style will be in place, and he will be able to race aggressively and instinctively, without thinking about what he’s doing, because all the new muscle memory will be firmly in place.
The video above features reps from our most recent workout, on June 13th. At the beginning of the video, he is doing a drill I created called the “jump-into-position drill.” The idea is to push off the back leg and to execute the whole hurdling action in the air, with no hurdle there, being sure to cycle the arms with the legs. I have him do four reps of that, 25 meters each. This is a drill that can be useful for any hurdlers, not just someone who does the cycle-arm action. For our purposes, however, it’s a way to remind oneself to not allow the hands to pause.
The second drill he does in the video is one I call the “lane-line drill.” On a track, he’d be taking three super-quick steps going across the track, from lane eight to lane one, with the goal being to fit in three steps between the lines the whole way while also focusing on cycling the arms super-quickly as a way to help the feet to stay quick. In the park, with no lane lines, I set up the mini-cones 42 inches apart, which is the width of a lane on the track. With the cycle-arms style, negotiating the space between the hurdles becomes an issue because the arms will tend to want to revert back to the up-and-down motion, which can ruin the whole thing. So the lane-line drill helps to break that habit. Also, the athlete learns to control the range of motion in the cycling of the arms. Learning to cycle the arms super-quickly like that gives the athlete confidence that he can do the same thing when moving at full speed to maintain the feeling of being in control. When feeling like he’s moving too fast and getting too crowded, he learns to lower the hands and quicken the cycling of the arms. Again, this is another drill that can be useful for any hurdler who is fast enough that crowding becomes an issue.
After the lane-line drill, the rest of the video consists of reps of the quickstep drill, which I use to ingrain the cycling action and to build some hurdling endurance. When watching those reps, take note especially of what the trail arm is doing. As I’ve said in previous articles, we don’t call it the trail arm; we call it the second arm, because we want it to do what the first arm (lead arm) is doing. We don’t want it to trail; we want it to continue cycling. So, a traditional trail arm will lock into position with the elbow bent and the hand right next to the back pocket. Then, during descent off the hurdle, the hand will punch back up. With the cycling action, you don’t see the hand locking in at the back pocket. It cycles back up so that it is cycling down as the second leg (trail leg) is descending. So, to put it in layman’s terms, you essentially have two lead arms. Just like the lead arm cycles down with the lead leg, the trail arm cycles down with the trail leg. To put it in the language that I currently use, the first arm cycles with the first leg, and then, right behind them, the second arm cycles down with the second leg. You have a continuous flow. Notice that I didn’t say that the arms “punch” down, like I would in traditional hurdling. Here, we say the arms “cycle” down, as that word implies the continuous flow, as well as an effortlessness.
In the quicksteps in the video, we have four hurdles set up, as you can see. Even with only four hurdles, though, you can see that the timing tightens up with each hurdle. With this style, timing is not merely a rhythm thing, but a key aspect of technique. When the timing is off, everything is off. That’s why we do the lane-line drill. The arms have to cycle in a tighter range of motion as you get faster down the lane, and they have to cycle more quickly. If you look closely, you’ll see a few instances where Brandon’s timing gets thrown off a little bit over the last hurdle. That’s because he’s speeding up between the hurdles but he’s still cycling the arms over the hurdles at the same speed that he was cycling them over the first couple hurdles. That’s why we do reps, and that’s why having time to progress gradually is so important. Such issues will be resolved before he has any races. Then races will reveal new issues, I’m sure, and we’ll deal with them as they come.
[/am4show]
