Elbow Room
by Steve McGill
Inefficient arm action in hurdling can cause a lot of unwanted issues, including too much lateral movement, a flat trail leg, too much air time, a stumble upon landing, and a drop of the hips upon landing. In races, wild arms can also lead to contact with opponents that can absolutely derail an athlete in the way to a good race. This article will focus specifically on the elbows—pointing out what the elbows do when the arm action is efficient as opposed to when the arm action is inefficient.
[am4show not_have=’g5;’]
[/am4show][am4guest]
[/am4guest][am4show have=’g5;’]
The reason for focusing on the elbows is that it’s easy for athletes to feel, and see, their elbow action, and to thereby make adjustments even when moving at full speed. Obviously, however, if bad habits have been ingrained over a period of time, then a lot of drilling will be required to break these habits and to ingrain new ones.
Simply put, the elbows should always be lower than the hand. With the way I teach the arm action, the arms should move in an up-and-down motion that is as close to normal sprinting action as possible. The action should be tight and should take up a minimal amount of space. When the elbows raise too high—to where they are on the same level as the hand—that’s when the domino effect of issues that I listed in the first paragraph occurs. I’m talking about the lead arm here, primarily. When the elbow of the lead arm is too high, it’s going to move across the body. As a consequence, it will swing in the opposite direction as the athlete comes down off the hurdle. Even if the hand doesn’t cross the nose, the fact that is moving in the direction will cause a side-to-side action as opposed to an up-and-down action. Yes, with the presence of the hurdle there, the elbow will raise, especially for male hurdlers, but if it stays below the hand, even slightly, that will allow for an up-and-down action that enables the athlete to accelerate off the hurdle with no balance issues. The trail leg will come through high and tight and the getaway stride will be forceful.
With the trail arm, the most common mistake is not raising the elbow too high (although I have seen that happen), but locking the elbow. Usually, if the elbow of the lead arm raises too high, causing the arm to swing across the body, the trail arm will swing wide in the same direction, and the elbow will lock, creating a significant opening of the hips and shoulders. When this happens, there is a huge risk of making contact with hurdlers in adjacent lanes. Even without contact, the loss of balance will be severe, and the athlete will have to work very hard between the hurdles to keep from losing velocity. The faster collegiate and professional athletes can compensate with pure speed and power, but your average high school hurdler might as well forget it. For such an athlete, wild arms can sabotage a race. So, if the athlete is having trouble resolving this issue, my short-term instruction is to simply keep the elbows bent; don’t let the elbows lock. Once they do, they’ll swing wherever they swing and you’ll have no control over them. An arm with a bent elbow can at least be pulled down (lead arm) or punched up (trail arm).
Now of course, arm issues can be caused by other issues. Often, the arms swing because they automatically try to re-balance the body when the lead leg foot swings from the hip, and when the athlete takes off into the hurdle with a stomping action instead of pushing off the ball of the foot. So, if you’re seeing mistakes in the arm action of one of your hurdlers, make sure that the arms are the root of the problem, and not a symptom of another problem, prior to addressing the arm issues specifically.
Another thing to look out for is what I call the full-body tilt. This tilt occurs in some hurdlers when they take off—they tilt toward the lead leg side. Now, all hurdlers want to lean forward over the lead leg, but to tilt the whole body in that direction is a flaw that needs to be corrected. In regards to the arms, the tilt makes it appear that the arms are moving side-to-side, when in fact they’re not. Get rid of the tilt, and the arm action will be up-and-down. That’s something to look out for.
Another thing to look out for is what the arms are doing when the athlete is sprinting without hurdles. As is the case with all hurdling-related technical issues, inefficient arm action is often rooted in sprinting mechanics. If the arms are moving side to side over the hurdles, they probably are doing so, to a lesser degree, when there aren’t any hurdles in the way. If the elbows are rising over the hurdles, same thing—it’s probably already happening beforehand. Often, when I work with a new athlete on day one, I can tell from the A-skips that we’re going to need to address the arm action. Athletes often do such drills just as a warmup, not realizing that doing them carelessly is causing them to ingrain bad habits.
In such cases, the coach needs to tear down the athlete’s sprinting form and rebuild it. Obviously, that’s gonna take a while. So a lot of diligence and persistence are required. A lot of sprinting drills must be done, and mastered, before hurdle drills can be introduced. The most important sprint drills are A-marches, A-skips, and high-knee cycles. Then the athlete can graduate to slow sprints, and then increasing the speed gradually.
However, it’s also true that some hurdlers will still raise the elbow of the lead arm and/or lock the elbow of the trail arm when going over hurdles, even after having corrected the arm action in their sprinting. That’s because they have grown so accustomed to doing so when hurdling that it still feels right, even though they know it’s wrong. In such cases, that’s when we go to our go-to hurdle drills to get the arms right: side walk-overs, marching popovers, cycle drilling, and quickstep drilling, in that order.
As coaches, we can’t allow ourselves to assume, or even hope, that correcting arm problems can be a quick fix. If the issues are deeply enough ingrained, then correcting them can be a work in progress for an entire season.
[/am4show]
