Into the Outdoor Season
by Steve McGill
With the indoor season having come to a close, the focus now turns to the outdoor season. For hurdlers, this means that the shorter 55/60m race with only five hurdles extends to the longer 100/110m race with ten hurdles. For the long hurdlers, they can finally begin competing in their specialty event, whether it be the 300m hurdles or the 400m hurdles. For those who competed indoors, the dawn of the outdoor season means some changes in training, and those changes are what I want to focus on in this article.
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For the sprint hurdler, the biggest adjustment in training is an obvious: it’s time to clear more hurdles in practice. Speaking for myself, in the indoor season, I placed a heavy emphasis on the first three hurdles, since the first three hurdles constitute more than half of the indoor race. A bad start equals disaster, so a lot of reps are needed just getting the approach to the first hurdle right. Then a lot of reps are needed making the transition from hurdle one to hurdle two – the space where the rhythm of the rest of the race begins. Then reps over three are needed to establish confidence in the first “zone” of the race – what sprint coaches would refer to as the drive phase. Indoors, if you’re good for the first three in practice, you’re good for all five in a race.
Of course, the problem lies with the fact that, once the outdoor season arrives, there are five more hurdles to clear. With my kids, I do a lot of hurdling conditioning work in the fall and winter in order to build up their hurdle endurance so that they are not overwhelmed when the outdoor season comes. But what I do when outdoor season does begin is simply add more hurdles to the block-start workouts.
Last weekend, when working with one of my regulars, Matt Garrett, we worked our way up to six hurdles. In his first outdoor race, he had run well, breaking 16.00 as a freshman, which leads me to believe he should be able to break 15.00 by the end of the spring, since he is so new to this height and distance and therefore has so much room to improve.
During the indoor, in our block-start workouts, we would start with no hurdles, and gradually work our way up to three, or four at the most, adding one hurdle at a time, getting in at least two reps at each distance.
Last week, in our first outdoor-season workout, after Matt acknowledged that he did experience some late-race fatigue in his first race, we started with three hurdles in the first couple reps before adding a fourth hurdle, then a fifth, and then finally a sixth. We got in two quality reps over six. To me, two reps over six, after doing a total of 8-10 reps prior to that, means that the second half of his race is already going to be stronger than it was in his first outdoor race.
What I don’t want to do is add too many hurdles too soon. Because we had gotten up to four hurdles in our winter workouts, the jump to six was a natural one. As the weather warms and his confidence grows, we’ll add a seventh hurdle, and an eighth. Eight is as many as I’ll put up in a block-work session. If you can do two quality reps over eight in practice, you can do one quality rep over ten in a race.
For the coach, it’s important to monitor the quality of the workout as you add hurdles. If the athlete is visibly losing speed and stretching to reach the later hurdles, that might be an indication that his or her overall conditioning needs work. That athlete might need to get in more flat 200’s and 300’s before coming back to the hurdle workouts. In the hurdle workouts, you never want to compromise quality for the sake of quantity. Clearing more hurdles is not a good thing in and of itself if it is creating bad habits or re-enforcing them.
For the 300m and 400m hurdlers, the onset of spring is the time to begin honing in on a stride pattern, a race strategy. While stride pattern is often a work in progress throughout the entire outdoor season for some – as more speed and endurance means constantly making adjustments, particularly for less experienced hurdlers – it is important to develop a race plan that will carry you through at least the first half of the race.
So, on non-hurdle days, I’ll have the long hurdlers train with the quarter-milers. On hurdle days, we’ll work on mastering our start to the first hurdle, and our rhythm between the hurdles for the first four hurdles (300m hurdlers) or the first five hurdles (400m hurdlers). Establishing how many strides to take to the first hurdle is paramount, so I’ll spend as much time on that as is needed. If there is any stuttering or reaching at the first hurdle, that’s going to throw everything off to the second hurdle. Even for hurdlers who are ambidextrous, I like to have a plan. Weather conditions on race day may cause us to deviate from that plan, but I feel that it is important to have a plan to deviate from.
So, in those practice sessions, we’ll start with one hurdle, and build up to four or five – whichever completes the first half of the race. Last weekend, with one of my athletes, we did our first block-start workout for the 300m hurdles. She was able to clear the first hurdle in rhythm taking 25 strides, then 18 to the second and third, and 19 to the fourth. At the end of last year, when she was in peak condition, she took 24 to the first hurdle, then 17 through hurdle four. So, we’re nowhere near where we were at the end of last year, but I’m not alarmed by that. It was 45 degrees and drizzling during that workout, so we were just trying to get her through her first race with that workout. Warmer weather equals faster hurdlers just for the simple fact that their muscles are naturally more elastic. I’m sure that we’ll get back to the stride pattern she used last year, and that we’ll eventually be able to put more speed behind it, and add more hurdles. For the long hurdlers, the most hurdles I’ll have them clear in a block-start workout is 6 for the 300m hurdler, and 8 for the 400m hurdler. And that would be toward the very end of the spring season.
For those hurdlers who didn’t train or compete during the indoor season, and are just starting out in the spring, you don’t want them doing much full-speed hurdling at all in the first couple weeks of the season, just because there is too much risk of injury. It’s best to have them build a conditioning base first, and to mix in some hurdle drills to acclimate their bodies to the technical aspects of the event and to build some hurdle endurance. In some cases, I wouldn’t even have them compete in the hurdles in the first meet, or even in the second or third meet. Hurdlers shouldn’t race in the hurdles until they are ready to clear all hurdles and cross the finish line with a decent level of competency. Don’t be one of those coaches who just throws a hurdler in a race unprepared, just hoping for the best.
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