Sprint off the Hurdle Workout

by Steve McGill

This time of year, when the weather is warm and stays warm, and when the emphasis is on racing in big meets against very stiff competition, I place the emphasis on speed in training my hurdlers. Right now I have four hurdlers who have qualified for Junior Olympic Nationals, which will take place at the end of this month. A favorite workout of mine to use in preparation for races is this one – the Sprint off the Last Hurdle Workout. While there are variations on it which I will explain at the end of this article, this is the version I’ve been using this summer:

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The Setup:

Athlete will wear spikes. All reps will be done from a block start. Coach stands at finish line to time each rep. Watch will start on first movement, watch will stop when athlete’s torso crosses the finish line.

The Workout

3 sets of 3×100 (or 110 for male hurdlers).

• First set: Athlete will clear first hurdle, then continue sprinting through the finish line.
• Second set: Athlete will clear first two hurdles, then continue sprinting through the finish line. Second hurdle will be moved in one foot from race distance.
• Third set: Athlete will clear first three hurdles, then continue sprinting through the finish line. Second and third hurdles will be moved in one foot from race distance.
• Hurdles will be at race height for all reps. If the athlete wants to do some work at a lower height while warming up, that’s fine, but the hurdles need to be at race height for the workout.

Rest

A walk-back recovery, no longer than 2 minutes, between reps.

Preferably 5 minutes rest between sets, but that can increase to 6 or even 7 minutes if necessary to retain quality.

The Challenge/Purpose

The purpose of the workout is to focus on speed. As I’ve stated plenty of times before, hurdlers often fixate on the hurdles so much that they forget to run fast. With this workout being timed, the athlete has a sense of urgency coming off the last hurdle to really sprint to that finish line. Subconsciously, this gets the athlete in the habit of sprinting of the last hurdle with the sense of urgency he or she will need in a race.

A challenge of the workout is to stay consistent with the times as much as possible, and to avoid too much fall-off as fatigue sets in and the number of hurdles increases. When my youth 100m hurdler did this workout last week, her times in her first set were all in the 13.1 range, and her personal best in the 100h is 14.34. Her second set times, over two hurdles, were in the 13.3-13.5 range. In the last set, they were in the 13.8-14.0 range. So, the times got slower as more hurdles were added and fatigue set in, but even by the last rep she was still under her personal best for a full flight of ten. My thinking is, if she can do 9 reps that well, then when it comes time to do one rep over a full flight of ten, she should be able to improve upon her personal best. She proved in the workout an ability to hold her speed, which makes me confident that her last three hurdles in a race will be very strong.

Variations

There are tons of variations to this workout. Nine reps (3 sets of 3) is pretty high volume. We did that many reps because we were in a rare summer week where we had no meet on the weekend. On the week of a meet I would, at the very least, reduce the amount of reps per set to 2, so she’d do a total of six reps.

Reps of this workout can be done with as many as five hurdles. First half of each rep is over hurdles and last half of each rep is hurdle-free. I prefer a maximum of three hurdles because I like the longer sprint off the last hurdle.

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