How Low Should the Hurdles Go?
by Steve McGill
A few issues back, Melinda Burris Willms wrote an article about using mini hurdles in training, and I just wanted to follow up here by explaining the ways in which I use them in my coaching with my hurdlers. For the purposes of this particular article, when using the term “mini hurdles,” I’m talking about any and all hurdles that go lower than the lowest height of 30 inches on standard hurdles. There are the fold-up hurdles that can be adjusted from as low as 18 inches all the way up to 42 inches. There are the yellow plastic hurdles that generally start at 18 inches but go no higher than 36 inches. Then there are the orange ones that are locked in at 24 inches, as well as the same kind that are locked in at 18 inches. Finally, there are the “banana hurdles” that are 12 inches, that generally aren’t used for hurdling at all, but are most often used by sprint coaches to help teach proper sprinting mechanics.
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Let me start off in oldhead mode: back in my day, when I was first learning how to hurdle, there was no such thing as “mini hurdles.” Coach set them up at race height and said “go!” In those days, you found out quick if hurdling was for you. There wasn’t any easing into it.
Banana hurdles, meanwhile, have been around for a while, as I remember using them as long ago as the late 90’s with some of my sprinters and hurdlers, especially in the off-season–the time of year when I did a lot of teaching of sprint mechanics. The fold-up hurdles that break so easily and so often that they constantly need to be replaced have been around for a good while too, although the 24-inch hurdles and the 18-inch hurdles are relatively new. I don’t remember seeing those until maybe five years ago.
Regardless of how long they’ve been around, the various versions of mini hurdles are much more popular now than they were as recently as five years ago–not just when it comes to sprint training and plyometric exercises, etc., but also, and especially, when it comes to teaching hurdling mechanics.
Where do I stand in regard to this trend? Somewhere in the middle, I would say. I use them, but I don’t believe in them religiously. I find that they can be very effective for specific hurdlers in specific situations who are in a specific stage of their development, but I do feel that using mini hurdles after the athlete has outgrown their usefulness is something I want to be careful to avoid. Also, however, I’m fully aware that there may be circumstances when they can be useful for my advanced athletes as well.
When do I use mini hurdles most often? At my hurdle camps. At each camp, anywhere from 30-50 athletes will show up, and a decent number of them will be ten to twelve years old. And occasionally we’ll get a masters athlete or two who are over forty years old. For these younger athletes in particular, I find that having a good amount of fold-up hurdles that go down to the lowest heights is very useful, and even essential. When I’m teaching some of my go-to drills, like the marching popovers in particular, starting at low hurdles is very important. Sometimes, I’ll even instruct older kids to slide over to the kiddie lane, as I call it, so that they can get the basic mechanics right before moving up to the higher hurdles.
And that’s the basic reason for using severely discounted hurdles when teaching hurdling mechanics–to give the athletes an opportunity to learn proper mechanics so that, once the hurdes are raised, the ingrained mechanics will carry over to the higher height.
Similarly, when teaching athletes to stay fast and aggressive between the hurdles, starting them off with low hurdles is a great way to establish that aggressive sprinter’s mentality. With a high school girl whom I’ve been working with this fall, I had the hurdles at 30 inches–one click below race height–the first time I had her do three-point starts over the first three hurdles (with the hurdles moved in two feet from race distance). This girl is a senior who didn’t start hurdling at all until last spring, so we’re kind of in a rush to get her race-ready, as she only has one year to show what she can do before heading off to college.
But she was backing off with the hurdles at that height, and I was getting frustrated. And out of frustration, really, I lowered the hurdles all the way down to 24 inches. With the hurdles at that height, we started to get in some good reps with consistency. Later that workout I was able to raise them to 27 inches with similar success, and we’ve since worked our way back up to 30, with the hope being that we’ll get to 33 in the near future.
Meanwhile, with another girl I’m coaching–Falon Spearman, who is featured in a lot of the YouTube videos I’ve posted on my channel over the past two years–is only a sophomore this year, but is already at the point where she will train at race height the high majority of the time.
When it comes to advanced hurdlers–particularly those who are having issues with getting too crowded between the hurdles (which is an issue with all advanced hurdlers, really)–using mini hurdles spaced closely together is a good method by which to help the athlete increase his or her cadence between the hurdles. You don’t want to use minis in this manner unless the athlete is getting crowded in races. So, if you see an elite athlete doing it, don’t think you should do it too if you’re getting crowded at all. Hurdlers, unlike sprinters, are never going to be able to reduce the amount of strides they take in a race once they’re three-stepping the whole way. So, the only way to run faster, other than improving technique, is to quicken up the cadence. Drills over mini hurdles of heights 24 inches or lower are effective in helping to ingrain a quicker cadence.
Other than that, I don’t use mini hurdles very often. The biggest problem I have with overusing minis is that they mask flaws. That’s why, even when I do use them, I’ll use them almost exclusively in the off-season. Hurdling over minis too often can mask flaws that need to be exposed. Only by exposing the flaw can the flaw be corrected. Back-kick, for example, that causes the trail leg knee to point downward, is a flaw that can go undetected over the minis. Then, when the hurdles are at race height, or close to race height, the flaw has to be addressed because now it’s causing balance issues and possibly contact with the hurdles. If the coach is able to detect and address the flaws even when the athlete is going over the minis, then fine. But still, there are certain things that certain body parts have to do over higher hurdles that they don’t have to do over lower hurdles. The hips will need to be taller, the chest will need to push down further, the knee of the lead leg will need to raise higher, etc. If the hurdler goes too long without practicing over race-height hurdles, then the adjustment to this height will be much more difficult to make. So, there has to be a balance between not rushing the athlete to race height before he or she is ready, and waiting too long and thereby retarding the athlete’s progress.
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