Coaching Technique in the Peak Competitive Season
by Steve McGill
In another article in this issue, entitled “Season of Falon,” I discuss, among other things, the joy of being able to focus on speed in the championship season, as all the technique and rhythm work has already been done. But such is not always the case. Sometimes, unpredictable circumstances get in the way, and you have to adjust. My philosophy has always been that, once championship season comes around, thinking about technique at all can only get in the way; it’s too late to think about technique, so it’ll have to be what it is, and you’ll have to go with what you got and make it work.
[am4show not_have=’g5;’]
[/am4show][am4guest]
[/am4guest][am4show have=’g5;’]
But one of the beautiful things about coaching is that sometimes I am forced to re-evaluate long-held beliefs. One of my athletes this year, Brandon Johnson, is fifteen years old, in his first year running the 39’s. Brandon qualified for Junior Olympic Nationals in the 110’s, finishing fifth at the regional meet after only about a month of training after missing a big chunk of the season due to injury. Another of my athletes, Sofia Rooney, is a multi-eventer who has six other events to train for in addition to the hurdles, compromising the amount of time we’ve been able to spend together. She also is fifteen years old, and she also will be competing at Nationals at the end of this month, having finished first at regionals.
In Brandon’s case, the lost time due to injury has meant that a lot of the technical mastery that would be in place is not in place. In Sofia’s case, the inconsistency of our meetings has meant that she hasn’t been able to ingrain many of the lessons that her mind understands but that her still remain foreign to her body. Also, because she’s putting in other muscle memory when training for her other events that runs counter to the muscle memory we want to put in for her hurdling , I often find that I have to re-introduce lessons that would’ve otherwise already been fully grasped.
With both Brandon and Sofia, I had moments of epiphany earlier this month that made me realize that technique work can be mixed into the training plan even when preparing for championship meets. To take it one step further, when dealing with an athlete who still needs it, I have to provide it. The trick lies in making subtle decisions – sometimes during a workout – in regards to how much technical instruction to provide, especially in regards to how much can actually be ingrained in time for the next race.
Let me start with Sofia first, since that epiphany came first. In a recent workout, while she was warming up over the hurdles, I noticed that an old habit had returned – her lead arm was swinging across her body and then swinging back in a wide, swooping motion that kept her in the air forever. I was annoyed; I thought we had fixed that months ago. But before I had a chance to say anything about it to her, she mentioned that she had lifted weights earlier that day, including power cleans. I looked at her. Power cleans? What in the world? There was no way we could go full speed out of the blocks only hours after she had done power cleans. Based on that information, coupled with the regression in her hurdling form that I had just witnessed, I decided the best route would be to take things back a few months and do some quick-step drilling at a pace a couple notches below race speed.
It ended up being an outstanding decision. We had a great workout that day. Not only did we re-correct the arm swing, but we also discovered that by doing so, we were also able to eliminate the problem of her lead leg knee locking out. In our next session a few days later, when we went back to full-speed reps out of the blocks, the improvement carried over. I realized then that if I hadn’t taken a full session to go back to boot camp, so to speak, her technical issues would have undoubtedly infiltrated her next race.
In the above video of Sofia from this past October, you can see the issues with arm action and jumping up too high that we were still addressing as recently as earlier this month, although to a lesser degree.
In the case of Brandon, I learned from what had happened with Sofia. I had been planning to have him do some block work, but decided to put him through some quick-steps as well. In his case, in looking at film of his race at regionals, I noticed that his arms were killing his momentum throughout the race, forcing him to really fight to maintain his speed between the hurdles. His arm issues were similar to Sofia’s, but even more pronounced. In his case, both arms rose well above his head, with the elbows up, basically serving as parachutes. However, his arms weren’t crossing his body, so they weren’t causing any twisting in the hips and shoulders; they were just sending him up, increasing his air time. I realized that part of the reason he was raising his arms like that was because he was taking off far away from each hurdle, which meant his arms couldn’t punch up and punch down the way we wanted them to. So we’d definitely have to work on the start, because all take-off issues begin at hurdle one. But first we’d need to ingrain some muscle memory that emphasized a tight arm action and that facilitated a quality cut step and ideal take-off distance. To do so, we’d have to go to the quick-step drill.
In the above photo from the first Team Steve Speed & Hurdle Camp back in November, you can see how Brandon, on the left, raises his elbows too high and too wide.
The quick-step drill did indeed work its magic. Brandon is an intelligent student of sprinting and hurdling, so it wasn’t hard for him to understand what he was doing wrong and how to correct it. The importance of the drill was that it put in the muscle memory that we needed to ingrain. As I’ve touched on before, it’s one thing to know what to do, but it’s another to be able to actually do it without needing to consciously think about it. Quality reps done right ingrain the muscle memory while simultaneously weeding out the old muscle memory.
In the above video of Brandon from earlier this month, we’re trying to establish a consistent rhythm and aggressive mindset over the first three hurdles while also trying to keep the elbows close to the body.
In the next workout, we did starts over just the first three hurdles. As I learned reading about 1972 Olympic champion Rodney Milburn and doing research for a biography that I wrote on him (which will be published this September), Milburn’s coaches placed a heavy emphasis on the first three hurdles, also known as the first “zone” in a hurdle race, or what would be known as the acceleration phase in the language of sprint coaches. In Brandon’s case, I felt like if we could get the take-off distance we want to the first hurdle, and if we could continue to stay forward off of the first hurdle, we could continue to maintain a take-off distance close enough to prevent the elbows from parachuting. If we were to take off too far away from hurdle one, then the old habit would come back, regardless of how well the quick-step workout had gone.
So we spent a lot of time being very meticulous about every stride of the approach to the first hurdle, then we added the second hurdle, and then the third. As I explained to him, in a race, if you establish the rhythm and speed that you want for the first three hurdles, then you can go on auto-pilot and just compete from there.
And the methodology has been working. In his most recent meet, Brandon dropped his personal best from the 15.85 he ran at regionals down to 15.64 and then 15.45. With nationals two weeks away, I’m hoping we can drop another couple tenths.
What I have learned from all of this is, if done correctly and precisely, technique work, even in the championship season, can be very effective, especially for athletes who weren’t able, for whatever reason, to put in enough technique work earlier in the season.
[/am4show]
