More Thoughts on Four-stepping
by Steve McGill
While I’ve talked about this topic in past issues of The Hurdle Magazine, recent developments with two athletes I coach privately have led me to come back to this topic and add some new thoughts based on new insights. I’m aware that some coaches argue that four-stepping is not an option. Either three-step or don’t bother racing until you’re able to three-step. I used to be one of those coaches in my first year or two in the sport, but quickly changed course when a 5-2 8th grader whom I coached had the natural ability to alternate lead legs. And when she did so, she was beating older girls on the team who weren’t fast enough to three-step but were getting too crowded when trying to fit in five steps. After that, I taught the older girls to four-step too, and it made them instantly competitive.
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The argument against four-stepping, which I do agree has a good deal of validity, is that once an athlete learns to alternate lead legs and take four steps between the hurdles, it is hard to get her (I’ll use the female pronoun in this article because it’s usually female athletes for whom this decision must be made) to graduate to three-stepping later on. While I have encountered this problem, I don’t think it’s the norm. To make my point, let me discuss a girl that I started coaching last year, as an eighth grader, named Sofia Rooney, who is now a high school freshman.
When I first started with Sofia, her hurdling experience was minimal. She was five-stepping between the hurdles. It only took one session to teach her to trust the other lead leg enough to use it in a race. It didn’t look pretty, but it was effective. Her time dropped significantly and she adopted the new race rhythm with little problem. The middle school race here in North Carolina is only five hurdles. By the last meet of the middle school season, she was able to three-step all of the hurdles, although her strides between the hurdles were a bit of a gallop.
In the summer, because she was in the 15-16 age group (even though she was still only 14), she had to run 10 hurdles, and the hurdles were now 33 inches instead of 30. Intimidated by the height, she reverted back to four-stepping at first. But after some drilling and some block work, she was three-stepping part of the way – maybe the first four hurdles or so. By the end of the summer, she was able to three-step the whole way, and finished the year with a personal best of 17.22.
This year, as she has become more acclimated to the higher height, her confidence in her three-stepping abilities has continued to grow. Long story short, she most recently ran 16.07 at her conference meet, three-stepping the whole way, looking fast and aggressive the whole way, and I’m very confident that as she grows older her speed between will increase and her time will continue to drop. I also feel that we never would have gotten to this point if she hadn’t first learned how to four-step on her way to three-stepping.
Meanwhile, another girl that I coach, Scout – a senior who plans on running the 400 hurdles at a Division III school in Pennsylvania next year – came to me as a four-stepper early in her junior year. She lives about two hours from me, so I haven’t been able to work with her on a weekly basis. As a result, she is still four-stepping, as my attempts to help her transition to three-stepping have been unsuccessful. She’s been able to three-step the first two hurdles, but that’s it. Scout is a typical example of someone who has ingrained the four-step rhythm into her body so much that she cannot break free of it. Still, I do think that the fact that she runs cross country in the fall and that her school doesn’t have a track to train on has contributed significantly to her lack of progress.
Honestly though, if you want to get down to the bare bones of the matter, I think it comes down to a simple question: are you fast enough? It’s not a matter of will. Some coaches say that if you want to badly enough, and if you just stop being afraid, you’ll be able to three-step. I don’t agree. I feel that if you are not sprinting fast enough, you won’t be able to three-step, no matter how hard you try, no matter how strong your will is. To me “three-stepping” doesn’t just mean reaching the hurdle in three steps. It means having a last step into each hurdle that is short enough to call it a cut step. It means being able to accelerate through the hurdle, to the next one.
In comparing Sofia to Scout, it seems pretty simple to me that Sofia is just faster than Scout. Sofia’s 400 time is in the 61 range, her 200 time is in the 26-mid range. She’s only run the 300h three times and she’s already run 47.55. That’s why I feel that speed is the key factor. Even a hurdler who has four-stepped and has ingrained that rhythm will eventually grow out of four-stepping if their sprinting speed increases.
For those athletes who aren’t fast enough to three-step, and who will never be fast enough to three-step because they simply don’t have the athletic ability, four-stepping is a viable option that can carry them through their high school career. I’ve coached a girl who has run 16.0 four-stepping a whole race, and I’ve heard of others who have run as fast as 15.5 four-stepping a whole race. So, no, four-steppers will never qualify for nationals, but they can run fast enough to be competitive in many local meets, low-key meets, etc.
What we have to remember is that, for many athletes who occupy a high school track team, high school will be the peak of their athletic career. Not everybody who runs in high school is chasing after a scholarship. The athlete who lacks significant athletic ability but can four-step her way to a 16.5 while gaining the valuable experience of being a part of a team and challenging herself to improve needs to be valued and given as much attention as the athletes who are scoring all the big points at the state meet. And as for the athletes who are fast enough to three-step, they eventually will once they run out of room to fit in their four steps. That’s why I feel that teaching hurdlers to four-step can only do good, both in the short-term and in the long-term.
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