Surrendering to the Rhythm
by Steve McGill
The world is a collection of rhythms. Rhythmic patterns. Rhythmic consistencies. Every living thing has a natural rhythm that functions as its identity, as its means of understanding the world. Things get out of rhythm when they become impatient, anxious – when they try to force the rhythm or fight the rhythm.
We are defined by rhythms. The heartbeat, the pulse, the breath. The seasons, the orbit of the moon around the earth, the orbit of the earth around the sun. The orbit of the sun….
Everything is a rhythm.
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In a book that I read a while ago, the author observes that “it is important to have a musical relationship with the world.” That comment intrigued me so much that I had to put the book down for a minute and think about it. A musical relationship with the world…
In high school and college I ran the hurdles. I started coaching in 1995. As someone who still coaches hurdlers on a regular basis, I can tell you that success is based on a variety of factors, but rhythm is at or near the top of the list. There are certain things that all hurdlers need to do well. Lead with the knee instead of the foot, bend at the waist instead of from the upper back, stay aggressive between the hurdles. But the one thing that can’t be taught, that can only be felt by the athlete through repetitive drilling and sprinting over hurdles, is a sense of rhythm. Even two hurdlers whose styles are virtually the same will have different rhythms. Rhythm in hurdling is what personalizes the event, it’s what makes what you do unique from what everyone else does. Even teammates, with the same coach, doing the same workouts, have their own individual rhythm.
All skilled, experienced hurdlers can adapt to any rhythm. In workouts, no matter how far apart or how close together the hurdles are, a hurdler who has been trained to adapt can adapt. A hurdler who has been exposed to a multitude of rhythmic possibilities can adapt to any rhythm. They are masters of rhythm. Over the years, I’ve had the good fortune to coach some of the best youth and high school hurdlers in the country. Four of them – Johnny Dutch, Booker Nunley, Wayne Davis, and Keni Harrison – were all national champions at one point in their high school careers, and all competed internationally before going off to college. Johnny and Wayne both were NCAA champions—Johnny in the 400 hurdles and Wayne in the 110 hurdles. Keni was an NCAA champion in the 100 hurdles, and has since gone on to win a World Indoor Championship in the 60m hurdles and to break the world record in the 100 hurdles in a time of 12.20. When I coached Johnny, what impressed me the most about him was his uncanny sense of rhythm. In a drill, if I put the hurdles five yards apart and told him to take three steps in between each one, he’d take three steps. If I told him to be quicker and take five steps, he’d take five. If I told him to be super-quick and take seven, he’d take seven. Wayne had that same ability.
But I’m not just talking about 3-stepping vs. 1-stepping vs. 5-stepping, etc. I’m talking about, within the 3-step, being able to speed it up, quicken it up, open it up—whatever is required. And to do so in races, when moving at hyper speeds. I’ve seen plenty of hurdlers with noticeable technical flaws who are so proficient rhythmically that the technique issues barely seem to affect them. On the other hand, with many hurdlers, even some very good ones, if they aren’t told to run full speed at hurdles that are set at the regular race distance, they don’t know what to do. That’s because their coaches never had them drill in their training. So, when they get crowded in races, they aren’t equipped to adapt on the fly. When they are asked to do a simple drill, they struggle.
Last week I was working with a collegiate athlete who runs the 100h in the low 14’s. Prior to beginning the workout, I put the hurdles at race distance and instructed her to five-step them at “drill speed” just to get her legs over some hurdles before we sped things up. Well, she couldn’t five-step. She kept going too fast to the first hurdle. When I finally got her to slow down to the first one, she kept speeding up as she went and would get too crowded to five-step after the second or third hurdle. I’m thinking, Why is this so difficult for her? This girl is in college and is sniffing the 13’s. Then it hit me that she had no idea what “drill speed” meant. So I explained it to her. Pulled out my phone and showed her clips of my regular athletes drilling, and she understood, and was able to do it herself. The reason I was adamant that she learn to quicken her tempo in the warmup drill was because that ability to quicken the tempo is something she will absolutely need to have if she is to successfully dip under 14 and into the mid-13’s.
Another rhythm-related issue that can plague hurdlers is that of getting locked into a rhythm. For me, once it’s established that a particular athlete can three-step with no problem, I have that athlete do alldrills (except for that five-step warmup drill) to a three-step rhythm, with the purpose being to ingrain the race rhythm in everythingwe do, so that every drill mimics a race, mimics how a race feels. I took about a month off from coaching after my mother passed away in early June, and when I came back, I found several of my athletes had regressed in different ways. Dang, can’t a brother get his grieve on without coming back to a mess? One of the athletes didn’t really regress, but got stuck running times in the same range over and over again, regardless of the level of competition. And when I finally got back with her last week, I realized what was happening. She had gotten locked into a rhythm. The underlying issue I was seeing was that she wasn’t looking crowded enough when approaching each hurdle. She looked comfortable between the hurdles. And like I always tell my hurdlers, comfortable equals slow.
So, when I had her do block starts, instead of moving the hurdles in the usual one foot that I always use, I moved them in two feet in order to make her feel more crowded, in order to force her to get her feet down quicker. The logic is, we had to break the rhythm—the rhythm that she had locked into. We had to establish a quicker tempo, a quicker cadence. What I trust is that she is fast enough that she’ll make up the two feet with no problem when it’s time to race and the adrenaline is pumping. But her body will remember the new tempo, and will run to that tempo instead of the old one. In essence, her quicker rhythm will lead to faster races.
I remember reading a book by former Boston Celtic great Bill Russell called Russell Rules: 11 Lessons on Leadership from the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Winner. In one section of the book, Russell talks about a game the Celtics were playing against arch-rival Wilt Chamberlain’s Philadelphia 76ers. He described how the game had been going on for several minutes with no timeouts and no whistles from the referees. The game had developed a seamless flow of bodies running up and down the court, jumping up and down for rebounds, cutting and passing and setting screens. Then a foul was called. Russell looked at the referee and yelled, “What you call that foul for?” The ref looked back at him, stunned, because he had called the foul against the 76ers. But for Russell, gaining an advantage on the scoreboard didn’t matter as much as the fact that the rhythm of the game had been derailed.
Reading that passage, I understood what made Russell a great player. It wasn’t just his competitiveness, his instincts, his knowledge of the game, nor even his awareness of how to complement the skills of his teammates. No, Russell’s greatness lie in his willingness to immerse himself so deeply in the rhythm of the game that winning was little more than an afterthought. To put it in the phrasing that I used at the beginning of this article, Russell had a musical relationship with the game. He tuned into its ebb and flow, and allowed himself to become a part of that. He understood that, when immersed in the rhythm, he didn’t have to remind himself to be a good teammate, or to trust his instincts, or to fight to the finish. When one is immersed in the rhythm, totally attentive to what one is doing in that very moment, every moment, the final result takes care of itself.
The video below features one of my athletes going through a series of rhythm-development drills, ending with block starts with the hurdles moved in one foot, and then block starts with the hurdles moved in two feet (the last two reps). Again, moving them in two feet helped us to quicken the cadence and thereby break free of the old rhythm.
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