Coaching the Multi-Event Athlete in the Hurdles
by Steve McGill
One of the trickier things I’ve found in the realm of coaching hurdlers is coaching the multi-event athlete. Since my focus has shifted to private coaching over the past couple years, I’ve had two multi-event athletes that I work with in the hurdles. One, Maryline, is a masters athlete in the 50-59 age group, and the other, Sofia, is a high school freshman who, in the summer, competes as a heptathlete in the 15-16 age group. Both are female.
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Before I get to the difficulties that coaching a multi-athlete presents, let me go ahead and point out the positives of such athletes. The first obvious positive is their work ethic. My experience has been that multi-event athletes are willing to do whatever is asked of them, and more. They’ll train to the point of exhaustion, and they’ll fight through injury, to the point where it is my job to tell them when enough is enough and to call it a day. It’s normal for them to practice for more than one event each day. Often, after spending an hour or more with me in the hurdles, Sofia will head over to the high jump pit to work on that event, or she’ll go grab her javelin and work on that event. Then she’ll top it all off with an 800 meter run just to see what kind of time she can run. So, when it comes to work ethic, the multi-event athlete is a coach’s dream.
Another positive when it comes to the multi-event athletes is that they are able to pick up on the long hurdles very quickly and to do very well in that event. Sofia, for example, never competed in the 300m hurdles until this past April, about four meets into her outdoor season. Prior to her first 300h race, we did one session in which we established how many strides to take to the first hurdle and then through the first three on the backstretch. “After hurdle three,” I told her, “just compete.” We didn’t have time for much else. She ended up running a very respectable time in the 51.0 range. By the state meet, with some more training and more strategizing, she got down to 47.81. And that was only the fourth meet in which she ran the 300h, off of maybe a total of five training sessions for that event.
The reasons that she was able to do so well so quickly in the 300h are obvious. As a heptathlete, she has had to include 800m training as part of her training. So the 300m distance doesn’t daunt her. Because she knows how to hurdle from her 100h training, the hurdling part doesn’t daunt her. And there is a greater margin for error when it comes to technique in the long hurdles. So, some of the issues that would cause significant loss in velocity in the 100h would only cause a minor blip in the long hurdles.
As I recall, Ashton Eaton, back in 2016, decided to give the 400m hurdles a try, as a way of taking a break from decathlon training and competition. Lo and behold, despite not specializing in the event, and despite having far less than perfect technique, he ran some very fast times in the 400h – fast enough to allow all of us to assume that if he were to actually focus exclusively on the long hurdles, he could’ve been an Olympic champion in that event as well.
Maryline, who had never hurdled at all until taking up the pentathlon as a masters athlete last year, expressed an interest in trying the 300h a few weeks ago, believing that her open 200 time and open 400 time indicate that she might be able to among the best in the nation in her age group in the 300h. Of course, at her age, we can’t get in as many reps as we can with Sofia. But even in a relatively short session, Maryline was able to establish a stride pattern for the first three hurdles, and she looked good enough to convince me that she does, in fact, have great potential to succeed in this event. As with Sofia, Maryline’s technical flaws in the short hurdles aren’t nearly as glaring (or costly) in the 300h.
Okay, so now let’s get to why coaching these multi-eventers is challenging. The challenge lies, ironically, in the positives mentioned above. Because they have to train for so many events, they never put the time into the hurdles that an athlete who specializes in the hurdles would. The biggest issue I have noticed lies in the contrasting muscle memory cues required by the long jump, the high jump, and the hurdles. With the multi-eventer, technical flaws are so difficult to correct because certain movements that are no-no’s in the hurdles are the exact movements they want to execute in the jumping events.
For example, Maryline’s lead arm, as she descends off each hurdle, has a tendency to swing back too far, causing the shoulder and hip on that side to twist. Because she learned to long jump before she learned to hurdle, this extra swing on the backside feels natural to her, as long jumpers want to add that extra swing with both arms as they dive into the pit. It took me quite a while to realize what was happening with her and that dang arm. I actually got a bit frustrated with her at one point, believing that she was just being stubborn. But on one rep, for whatever reason, it hit me: “You’ve got long jumper arms.”
Similarly, Sofia has a habit of kicking out her lead leg, locking it at the knee, causing her to clear hurdles much higher than she needs to. Also, although she has a great push off the back leg at take-off, her push is too vertical. Her hips don’t push forward. This too causes her to clear hurdles too high and to lose time in the air. Again, this leg kick comes from the long jump, while thrusting the hips upward (instead of forward) comes from the high jump.
In the above video, with Sofia, it is evident that she elevates her hips when she takes off, and that she kicks out the foot of the lead leg instead of driving the knee. This video is from October of 2017, and those these issues have been improved upon since then, they still have not been eradicated.
I have found that, because I don’t meet with Maryline or Sofia more than once a week, I can’t do what I need to do to add enough hurdle muscle memory to allow them to toggle between the events automatically. So, instead of trying to eliminate the technical flaws, I’m finding that the best choice is to cut my losses and try to minimize the damage that they do. With Maryline, for example, I tell her to keep the elbow slightly bent, to not let the elbow lock. That way, even if the arm swings back, it won’t swing back so far that it causes her to lose balance. With Sofia, if she can keep pushing the hips forward, then she will be able to continue to gain momentum throughout the race even if the knee of the lead leg does lock. To get rid of the locking knee would require a lot of drill work that we simply don’t have time for when considering she has to train for seven other events.
In watching decathletes and heptathletes at the collegiate level and professional level, I have always noticed that their hurdling technique is glaringly less efficient than the technique of the hurdlers who specialize in the hurdles. Now I know why.
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