Sprint over the Hurdles

by Steve McGill

My good friend of many years Hector Cotto and I are looking forward to doing our forth speed and hurdle camp this coming November, and the slogan that will appear on the back of the T-shirt is as follows: “We don’t hurdle. We sprint over hurdles.” On the surface, that may sound redundant, or like mere wordplay, but the difference between hurdling and sprinting over hurdles is a very distinct one that I want to address in this article.

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The English teacher in me, or perhaps the writer in me, understands how the words we use to identify movements has a direct effect on how we execute those movements. In this case, whether we’re talking about a hurdle workout or a hurdle race, when we conceptualize that we are going to “hurdle,” and we use the word “hurdle” as a verb, we subconsciously assume that we must do something different when we get to the hurdle compared to what we are doing in our steps between the hurdles. So, when it’s time to “hurdle,” hurdlers often will resort to strange movements that are very inefficient (such as kicking out the foot of the lead leg, or swinging the arms across the body, etc.). That’s because, in their minds, sprinting and hurdling are two separate actions requiring two different sets of movements. They don’t see how sprinting and hurdling are related; they don’t see how sprinting and hurdling are the same thing.

One thing I always tell my beginners is, if you already know how to sprint, you already know how to hurdle. You just don’t know yet that you know how to hurdle. And if you don’t know how to sprint, then I have to teach you how to sprint before I can teach you how to hurdle. The logic is, all hurdling mechanics are rooted in sprint mechanics. Everything you want to do over the hurdle, you should already be doing between the hurdles. Yes, you exaggerate movements over the hurdles, but the movements themselves are the same. For example, you want to push off with force when you attack the hurdle, but you should already be forcefully pushing off the back leg with every stride you take. When you attack the hurdle, you push off more. Yes you want to lead with the knee of the lead leg when you attack the hurdle, but you should already be leading with the knee every stride.

So, when I say we want to “sprint over the hurdles,” I mean that we want to take what we’re already doing and continue it over the hurdle. All questions about hurdling technique can be answered by asking the same question in regard to sprinting form. With the arms, this point becomes very important. When you look at American hurdlers in particular, there are as many lead-arm styles as there are hurdlers. And there shouldn’t be. If you look at a lot of hurdlers from other countries, you’ll notice that, with very few exceptions, they pump their arms up and down over the hurdles, the same as they do when they sprint. Look at Andrew Pozzi, Sergei Shubenkov, Orlando Ortega. These guys don’t do anything extra with their arms.

The whole point is to make the motion as effortless as possible, to take away all extraneous motions that can create fatigue late in a race and that can cause mistakes at various points in a race. You see a lot of hurdlers who are almost twisted sideways as they go down the track because their trail leg lags behind so much. In some cases, their speed and power can compensate, along with a fast lead leg. A lot of coaches will see this lazy trail leg and spend hours of practice time trying to fix the trail leg, but to no avail. The reason trail leg drills won’t solve the problem a lot of the times is because the trail leg problem is caused by a flaw in sprint mechanics. If the athletes has back-kick in his or her stride, then there’s nowhere for the trail leg to go but low and wide upon take-off into each hurdle. So, if you don’t address the problem at its root – in the sprint mechanics – the hurdling flaw will never go away.

With my athletes, I start with the slower-paced drills, and then work my way up. I always start with A-skips. You will not go over a hurdle for me until you have mastered the A-skip. Upper body tilted slightly forward, foot strikes on the ball of the foot and under the hips, hips pushing forward, arms up and down, shoulders and neck relaxed.

With the marching pop-overs, I teach my athletes to march, march, march, march over the hurdle.

With the cycle drill, I teach my athletes to cycle, cycle, cycle, cyle over the hurdle.

With the quick-step drill, I teach my athletes to quick-step, quick-step, quick-step, quick-step over the hurdle.

Then, from the start line with a three-point start and then a block-start, I teach my athletes to drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive through the hurdle. Between the hurdles I instruct them to sprint, sprint, sprint, sprint over the hurdle. Don’t hurdle. Sprint over the hurdle.

With every drill, all the way up to full speed out of the blocks, I tell them it should feel easy. “It should feel so easy that it feels like you’re cheating” is what I tell them. The philosophy behind it is, the hurdling part must feel easy so that you put all your energy into getting your ass down that track. If you’re expending all your energy getting over the hurdles, that’s going to negatively affect your rhythm and your speed.

In the above video (which incidentally features some experimenting with cycling the arms), my athlete is doing marching pop-overs followed by quick-steps. We’re trying to take what we do between and continue it over the hurdles. Fluid transitions so that it all becomes one seamless motion.

In the above video, my athlete is doing three-point starts, focusing on generating enough speed to the first hurdle so that she can just take her speed to the next hurdle. When she fatigued, her strides between became more of a reach, but she was still able to maintain her arm and leg angles, as well as her upper body posture, making sure that all effort is functional effort. If her strides had become a reach to the point where she was pointing her toes down and landing with her foot in front of her hips, that’s when it would’ve been time to stop.

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