Putting the Pieces Together

by Steve McGill

In hurdling there are so many things to think about that it can be a bit overwhelming, especially for hurdlers who are making adjustments to their technique, or who are just learning their technique. Sometimes I have found that it helps to conceptualize the hurdling action as one continuous movement as opposed to mentally dividing it into parts. A hurdler needs to be very in tune with his or her body to feel the difference between right vs. wrong, efficient vs. inefficient, effective vs. ineffective. Even with modern technology that allows us to film reps and critique them immediately afterward, there is no more direct and instant means of evaluation than what the athlete is feeling in the moment.

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So, when it comes to hurdling technique, what are the pieces? Not in any order of importance, I would list them as such:

• Lead leg
• Trail leg
• Lead arm
• Trail arm
• Chin
• Eyes
• Forward lean
• Hip thrust

The reason I don’t list them in any order of importance is because, ultimately, they’re all equally important, at least in the sense that a mistake in any area will cause a ripple effect of mistakes in other areas. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. You have to fit all the pieces together, and you have to fit them where they belong. Misplace one piece and you mess up the entire puzzle. If one piece is missing, then that is the only piece that is noticed.

Now let’s go down the list and discuss what we want each piece to do at take-off:

• The lead leg knee should drive upward, with the heel tucked under the hamstring. The knee should be higher than the crossbar before the foot extends toward the hurdle.
• The trail leg’s job is to push off the ground with force, off the ball of the foot. This push creates a thrust that elevates the hips without causing the hips to float.
• The lead arm should drive upward, bent at the elbow, with the hand coming to the height of the cheek or the forehead (depending on the height of the hurdle). The elbow can open outward, but the hand should not cross the body.
• The trail arm should stay bent at the elbow as well, with the hand resting on the hip.
• The chin and the eyes should stay up, facing forward. No ducking down.
• The lean should come from the lower abdominal muscles and lower back. It should be a forward lean that sends you in the direction that you are moving.
• The hips should also thrust forward, minimizing the change in the center of gravity. If the hips rise, you rise, and you float.

So when you put it all together, everything that happens above happens at once. When you think of it as being seven different things that you have to remember, that’s when you overthink and subconsciously slow down, not realizing that thinking so much about technique is taking away from your aggression and speed.

To emphasize the timing aspect of the take-off, I’ll sometimes have my hurdlers do marching drills for 20-25 meters in which they mimic the take-off without clearing any actual hurdles. It’s a way to create muscle memory and it’s also a way to help the hurdlers conceptualize how everything is connected. In a lot of hurdle drills we focus on specific pieces of technique that need to be strengthened, but even then I’ll always remind my hurdlers about how this specific piece is related to the other pieces so that they never lose sight of the bigger picture. From a timing perspective, the take-off is one action. It’s not seven separate actions at once. If you try to do anything “first,” it’ll throw off everything else. For example, if you try to drive the knee up without leaning forward from the waist, you won’t be able to drive the knee up; the foot will kick out. If your lead arm crosses your body, your trail arm will pull away from your body. And vice versa. If you don’t push off the back leg with force, your hips will have to rise, causing you to float.

Coming off the hurdle, all four limbs transition, or switch positions:

• The lead leg attacks the track at a downward angle, remaining slightly bent at the knee, reaching full extension at touchdown, landing on the ball of the foot.
• The trail leg knee drives upward as the groin opens enough to avoid contact with the hurdle. The knee should be facing the front when the lead leg lands, with the thigh parallel to the track.
• The hand of the lead arm punches straight down, transitioning seamlessly into running position.
• The hand of the trail arm punches back up, also transitioning seamlessly into running position.

All of these things, too, happen at the same time.

Meanwhile, the hips continue to push forward, the eyes remain looking forward while the chin remains up, and the forward lean from the waist is maintained in order to prevent standing up too tall off the hurdle.

What I tell my hurdlers is that we want to explode – twice. We want to explode up, then explode down. We want to explode into position on top of the hurdle, then we want to explode back to the track. Boom boom! If we explode up but don’t explode down, we float, we sail, we spend too much time in the air. If we don’t explode up to begin with, we make the hurdle taller, and we have to do a lot of “wrong” things just to negotiate the barriers, forcing ourselves to compromise our speed.

A final point to be made in regards to putting all the pieces together is that sprint mechanics must be mastered before hurdling mechanics can be mastered. In some cases, for beginning hurdlers, they can be learned simultaneously. The point is, proper sprint mechanics inform proper hurdling mechanics. The cues that apply to clearing a hurdle first apply to sprinting in general. A hurdler who doesn’t sprint on the balls of the feet, for example, will not be able to lead with the knee of the lead leg, no matter how hard he or she tries. A hurdlers whose arms cross the body when sprinting will have arms that cross the body even more when hurdling. In that sense, hurdlers are at their best when they don’t see themselves as hurdlers, but as sprinters who sprint over hurdles.

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