Another Perspective on 7-Stepping
by Steve McGill
I know the debate about whether or not a hurdler should seven-step to the first hurdle has been going back and forth for years now, a recent experience with one of my athletes has led me to feel that it’s worth addressing the topic again, as my perspective has been broadened. Generally, I’ve never been pro or con when it comes to seven-stepping. I’ve always said that it shouldn’t be forced, but that it shouldn’t be shunned. I’ve seen plenty of cases where coaches have forced it upon athletes, and the athletes struggle throughout the entire race because their seven-step approach doesn’t get them close enough to the first hurdle to allow them to run through the hurdle and to continue to accelerate through the hurdle. Meanwhile, I’ve also seen hurdlers whose eight-step approach is so crowded that they’re putting on the brakes heading into hurdle one, causing the same problem–an inability to accelerate through the hurdle.
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My basic go-to is the eight-step approach, obviously. Coaching at the youth and high school levels, I rarely have encountered situations where seven-stepping has even been a viable option. Several years ago I coached a kid named Kobi Johnson, who is now in his senior year at Brown University, where he still competes in the hurdles. Kobi was seven-stepping as a middle schooler, before he even knew what he was doing. So we stuck with it throughout his career and there were never any issues. I played virtually no role at all in making the decision to seven-step in his case; it was what he always did, so I stayed with it because when I did have him try to eight-step once, just to see what it would look like, he got ridiculously close to the first hurdle, and that was the end of that experiment.
So, the recent experiment I mentioned in the first paragraph involved a current high school junior, Brandon Johnson, whom I began coaching in his freshman year–his first year over 39’s. Last year, as a sophomore, Brandon began to have issues with getting too close to hurdle one with his eight-step approach. By the time Junior Olympic Nationals rolled around, it had become a major problem. So much so, that we considered switching to a seven-step approach. But that would’ve been way too risky heading into a major championship meet, so we made adjustments to his eight-step approach. We moved the blocks back, and then a little further back, and then a little bit more further back, trying to get that first step closer to the start line. The reason we kept having to move it back was because he was still getting crowded, even with the blocks farther behind the line. Then I instructed him to be quick for all of his eight steps, whereas I usually instructed him to be quick for only the last three, as a means of setting up the race rhythm. We found that he needed to be quick for all eight just to be able to fit all eight without running up on top of the hurdle. That worked well enough that we went with it. At nationals, he ran a good prelim race, but aggravated a groin injury, so that was that.
This fall, we didn’t do any block work until last week, as we were building a hurdle-endurance base first. I assumed that on our first day out of the blocks, the problem of getting crowded at hurdle one wouldn’t be as bad, because there was no way he was going to be as fast now as he had been in July. But lo and behold, it was even more of a problem. So I said, all right, let’s try this seven-step thing now, since we have time to get it right before we have any big meets. I was assuming that there’d be a lot of awkwardness with the hands being confused regarding which direction to swing, and I assumed there’d be a loss of power with the other foot now in front. He proved me to be absolutely wrong. He blasted out of the blocks and his seventh step landed slightly beyond the cone that I had placed seven feet away from where the hurdle would be. We did another rep with no hurdle, and the same thing happened, so I put up the first hurdle. Again, he easily reached the take-off distance we wanted, and powered through the hurdle. I was like, Whoa! After a couple more reps of that, I added a second hurdle, and was again amazed at the speed he was able to develop and the power he was able to develop as he attacked the first hurdle and seamlessly continued sprinting through the second hurdle, accelerating the whole time.
Brandon later explained–after I asked him why the transition to seven-stepping had come so easily to him–that he switches his block setting when running the 100 meter dash and when running the 300 hurdles, so he was already used to pushing off the pedals with the lead leg in front. He also explained, as I had suspected, this his background as a long jumper and triple jumper helped a lot.
The latter observation leads to a very important point when it comes to seven-stepping: Plyometric strength and explosiveness is arguably, more significant a factor when it comes to seven-stepping that speed is. When you think about it, the start isn’t about speed; it’s about power, it’s about explosiveness. It’s about being able to push forward from an angle that doesn’t allow you to raise your knees and heels. Brandon’s 100m time is probably in the 10.90 range, I would assume, so speed alone can’t explain why seven-stepping comes so easily to him.
Neither Kobi nor Brandon have blinding speed. Kobi is very tall ( and always has been), while Brandon is very explosive. In the case of Brandon, I feel very confident that switching to seven-stepping will result in a major breakthrough, and that his times in the 55/60m hurdles, as well as in the longer race outdoors, will drop significantly. As I jokingly said to him after the workout, “I’ve been holding you back all this time! We should’ve been seven-stepping. And it was true; allowing him to seven-step was like unleashing a beast. I’d never seen him so fast between hurdles one and two before. So I’m very excited to see where this change will take him. He said himself that he finally felt like he could sprint to the first hurdle without holding back.
Brandon serves as an example as to why I never say never when it comes to trying something that goes against conventional wisdom. I strongly feel, especially now, that following what’s most logical and natural is the best policy. Simply put, if the athlete is getting too crowded eight-stepping, then switch to seven-stepping. It’s no different than a long hurdler getting crowded 15-stepping the backstretch, and deciding to switch to 14-stepping. You have to go with what allows you to be a beast, with what allows you to establish and maintain an optimal rhythm. Again, I still wouldn’t make a major change when there are big meets on the horizon, but in the off-season, definitely. And even in the early competitive season, I would. I don’t mind taking a step or two backward in order to leapfrog ten steps forward.
Below is a video of Brandon seven-stepping from the blocks (after doing some quickstep drilling in the first part of the video).
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