Mid-Spring Decisions

For many high school and collegiate coaches at this time of year, decisions must be made in regards to how to approach coaching their hurdlers heading into the latter part of the outdoor season. Decisions are difficult because they will affect the team, and they will also have an impact on the hurdler’s development. Here are the big questions, as I see it, that will come up.

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Technical Development or Speed Development?

Perhaps the most difficult balancing act to juggle is the question as to whether the training emphasis should be on developing technique or developing speed. Which will produce the greatest benefit, the biggest drop in time? To me, the emphasis on technique should occur  more in the fall and winter. The fall, especially, is a time when technical flaws from the previous season can be directly addressed through heavy drilling. The winter is a time when the lessons learned and the improvements made in the fall can be applied to actual races indoors. The indoor season, in that sense, is a time to take all the fall drilling and speed things up, seeing if the new improvements have been ingrained, and then designing workouts specifically to ingrain them. The spring, then, is the time to focus almost exclusively on speed, with technical adjustments being minor.

But things don’t always work out that way. At the high school level, you don’t always get kids who train year round. Some play other sports in the fall, and in the winter, and some schools don’t have an indoor track program. At the collegiate level, the indoor season can be so competitive, and the stakes can be so high, that training through the indoor season is not a viable option. Therefore, there will be little time to address technical flaws in such a way that the improvements can be ingrained. The races keep getting in the way.

For the high school coach who has to develop hurdlers in the short window of, let’s say, March to early June, the three aspects of hurdling – technique, rhythm, and speed – have to be developed together. Too much emphasis on technique means that hurdlers will not develop a rhythm, and they won’t trust their speed to carry them through their technical mistakes. Too much emphasis on speed means that hurdlers will constantly have their speed disrupted by technical flaws that cause them to lose too much speed over the hurdles, thereby constantly disrupting their rhythm. So, within a single workout session, there needs to be drills that emphasize technique, drills done a little faster that emphasize technique and rhythm, and then some full speed reps from the start line that emphasize speed. That way, these hurdlers who are either new to hurdling or who only do track in the spring gain an intellectual understanding as well as a muscle memory understanding of how technique, rhythm, and speed all function together.

For the collegiate coach who is looking to maximize team points in indoor competitions, I definitely feel that an emphasis on competition in the winter can have a negative effect on a hurdler’s long-term development. Ultimately, the outdoor distances are the ones the athletes are training for. It is possible to develop technique, to improve a hurdler’s technique, while still preparing for intense competitions. For me, the indoor season is a time when I actually do want my hurdlers thinking about something specific during a race. At that time of year, you’re still putting the pieces of the race together. And doing so requires thought.

But getting back to the specific point, this time of year – mid-March into mid-April – is a time to shift the emphasis away from technique and toward speed. I have found that speed can often compensate for technical flaws (at least to a degree), whereas technique can never compensate for a lack of speed. With my own team this year, I have nothing but new hurdlers, and none of them ran indoors, so I’m doing a whole lot of teaching. Every hurdle day consists of slow drills to address technical flaws, followed by faster reps to develop the race rhythm. Thus far, the ratio has been 70% drills, 30% full-speed reps. That ratio has moved to about 50/50 within the past week, and will increasingly move toward a total emphasis on speed by the end of the year.

When talking about “full-speed,” the types of workouts would include the following:

• Reps out of the blocks over the first 3-6 hurdles, with all hurdles after the first one moved in one foot. Toward the very end of the season, if crowding becomes an issue, the hurdles will be moved in two feet or even three feet.
• Same as above, with the hurdles lowered one click (or even two clicks) below race height.
• Flying 30-60m meter sprints.

Should Hurdlers Do Multiple Non-hurdling Events?

I’m not big on my hurdlers doing other events outside of the hurdles, although I know it is impractical to think that it can be avoided altogether. There aren’t many teams that can afford to have good athletes compete in only two events. I like for my hurdlers to be available as 4×400 relay legs, and that’s for two reasons. One, because I know they’ll be in shape to run a strong leg, and two, because it comes at the end of the meet, which means it won’t interfere with the hurdles. When it comes to jumping events, I understand that jumpers and hurdlers largely share the same skill set, but because the high hurdles usually come very early in the meet, the warm-up time for that event can often be interrupted by long jump, triple jump, or high jump competition. Not to mention those events could take away the freshness of the legs. From a team-points perspective, sometimes this problem cannot be avoided, but, all else being equal, I know that as a hurdle coach I want my hurdlers to be able to focus exclusively on the hurdles until the hurdle events are over. To me, a line-up of 100/110 hurdles, 300/400 hurdles, and a 4×4 leg is a full day by anyone’s standards.

For Hurdlers Who Do Both Hurdle Races, How Should Training Time Be Divided?

My opinion regarding this question is that it’s okay to let the athlete dictate which event should garner more attention. Not in the sense that the athlete tells the coach what to do, but in the sense that the athlete’s natural inclination toward one event or the other should be acknowledged and honored. The basic fact of the matter is, the athlete is going to do better in the event that he or she likes the most, regardless of what we as coaches think is his or her better event.

For athletes who are equally proficient in both, and who have similar potential in both, I generally try to balance the workouts so that the 100/100 race is given full attention one day, and the 300/400 race is given full attention the next day. As the week goes on, heading toward a meet on Saturday, I’ll continue to mix things up, with parts of workouts devoted to each.

Sometimes team needs will dictate the answer to this question. If I have two strong 110 hurdlers who I know can score points, and you’re the third best on the team, and I only have one strong 300 hurdler, and you’re the second best on the team, I might need to put more energy into your 300h race because that’s where you have the most potential to help us score. I hate doing that though. I hate making decisions based on what the team needs versus what best suits the individual athlete. That’s a big reason why my hurdlers love me, but it’s also a big reason why I would never be a good fit as a head coach.

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