The Last-Step Stomp

With hurdlers, whether you’re talking about world-class athletes who’ve been competing for years or you’re talking about a beginner on day one, it’s vitally important to run on the balls of the feet, with the ankles dorsi-flexed. A common problem among many hurdlers – and it’s not just limited to beginners – is what I call the last-step stomp. In the last step before the hurdle – the take-off step – the hurdler will stomp the track, landing on his or her whole foot instead of staying on the ball. This article will address potential causes of this problem, as well as consequences and ideas for solutions.

[am4show not_have=”g5;”]

[/am4show][am4guest]

[/am4guest][am4show have=”g5;”]

Causes:

One cause of the last-step stomp can be an athlete’s background in another sport or athletic activity. Particularly, sports that require explosive moments like basketball, cheerleading, dance, or gymnastics. When a basketball player takes off for a lay-up or dunk, for example, he’s not going to be pushing off the ball of his foot. Many dancers are taught to perform various movements with their toes pointing down. Cheerleading and gymnastics require explosive motions in which the objective is to elevate. So, while these types of activities work many of the same muscles required for effective hurdling, a hurdler’s objective is to go forward, not upward. So if you have a hurdler who generally sprints with efficient mechanics and only stomps on that last step, you might want to inquire about his or her background in other sports. In my personal experiences, I have found that those hurdlers with a gymnastics background are the worst culprits. They’re very powerful, very explosive, very muscular, and have grown used to catapulting themselves on a regular basis. So when you tell them the objective is to get back on the ground running, that’s a concept that’s foreign to their body and therefore must be ingrained through drills. More on that later.

Another cause of the last-step stomp has to do with taking off too close to the hurdle. If you’re taking off too close, stomping that last stride is a way to put on the brakes to avoid crashing into the hurdle. With experienced hurdlers who are very fast, this problem occurs due to difficulty with controlling their speed and adapting it to the height of the barriers and the spacing between them. In such a case, the stomp isn’t really the source problem; it’s a symptom of another problem. Such a hurdler will have to work on lowering his hands and knee lift between the hurdles so that he can retain an optimal take-off distance. Beginners or intermediate level hurdlers who take off too close do so because there’s still a fear factor that they’ve yet to overcome. Beginners are often afraid of taking off too far away and not reaching the hurdle, so they overcompensate and take off too close, maybe even adding in an unnecessary stride or two in order to do so, forcing themselves to have to stomp.

Arguably the most common cause of the last-step stomp is the tendency to “prep” for the hurdle. As a coach, this habit drives me insane. It’s like you’re doing everything right – you’re up on the balls of your feet, your ankles are flexed, you have good upper body posture with your chest pushed forward, your hips are over your feet – but in the last stride before the hurdle you ruin it all by stomping. Why? Why?

The answer is simple. Hurdlers tend to assume that when it’s time to clear the hurdle, they have to do something different, something dramatic, something with a growl and a roar. But no, all you have to is what you’re already doing. Stay on the balls of your feet, maintain that forward angle, get your knee up and attack the crossbar. Yes, you will push off with more force than in the previous strides, but you will still push off the ball of the foot so that your momentum will take you forward and you can get over the hurdle and back on the ground with minimal air time.

The other cause that could be argued as being the most common one is poor sprint mechanics. If you are already running flat-footed or on your heels, or kicking back, you’re guaranteed to stomp that last stride before the hurdle. Even if you’re trying not to, you won’t be able to help it.

Consequences:

The last-step stomp sets into motion a domino-like series of flaws:

• You will jump up, elevate, instead of pushing forward.
• Your upper body will rock back or become too erect, costing you forward momentum.
• Your lead leg will have to kick out and swing up from the hip instead of driving forward from the knee.
• Your hips will rise during take-off and then fall during descent, as opposed to driving forward throughout hurdle clearance.
• As a result of the above factors, you will spend too much time in the air over the hurdle, your trail leg will hang behind you, you’ll lose velocity, and will therefore need to reaccelerate after you land.

Fixes:

The last-step stomp is a very hard habit to break, and will require much drilling at slower speeds if it is to be eradicated. For hurdlers who run heel-toe or flat-footed, or with a lot of back-kick, you have to go back to square one before you can even put a hurdle up. First you must address the basics of sprint mechanics. That means A-marches, A-skips, B-skips, high knees. These drills must be done with an awareness of how they connect to hurdling technique. Too often athletes do these drills in a lazy fashion with all kinds of mechanical flaws that go unaddressed. I would go so far as to say that it would be worth dedicating an entire practice session to these drills alone.

Also, there are many hurdlers whose sprint mechanics are excellent as long as there are no hurdles in their way. But once the hurdles are up, they revert to running flat-footed or on their heels. What I have found to be effective in coaching such hurdlers is to have them do runs over banana hurdles. I find that some athletes are so in the habit of running flat-footed, toes pointing down, scooting along the track with weak force application, and using foreleg extension to create stride length, that they end up knocking over the little 12-inch banana hurdles. Say what? I’ll set up anywhere from 5 to 10 of the banana hurdles, spaced very close together at first. Maybe 15-18 feet apart, with a quick tap-tap-tap 3-step rhythm in between. The focus is on keeping the ankle flexed, running through the hips, landing on the ball of the foot and minimalizing ground-contact time. The focus is also on cycling, and on keeping a cycle motion going over the hurdle. At first, some athletes will do the last-step stomp even over the banana hurdles. But once they get tired of kicking hurdles around and feeling their shins moan in agony, they start to change their mechanics for the better, because kicking banana hurdles around is embarrassing and shin splints are very unpleasant.

Once they get the hang of it with the banana hurdles close together, I’ll increase the spacing so that the hurdlers have to increase their speed. Once they’re able to run over the banana hurdles at full speed at regular race spacing (or one foot in) without stomping, then I know they’re ready to try doing it over an actual hurdle.

I’ll start with the hurdles at a low height and have the hurdlers five-step between them at regular spacing. That’s a basic warm-up drill that I have all my hurdlers do prior to hurdle workouts and races. But in this case the drill is extended into a full-blown workout. The slower pace and the extra strides between give the hurdlers time to think and run at the same time. If it goes well, I’ll increase the spacing so they have more room to run and the option to speed it up.

As I said earlier, the last-step stomp is not an overnight fix. As a coach, you can’t tell the athlete to “stay on the balls of your feet” and expect the problem to instantly disappear. But if you can stay patient and the athlete can stay persistent through the frustration, progress will become evident, and the day will come when everything “clicks.” The hurdler consistently stays on the balls of the feet, powers through the hurdles, and comes off the hurdles with exquisite balance and body positioning. You really can’t predict when that day will come, as it is not the same for every athlete. But if you start slow, avoid the temptation to rush development, and remain meticulous, the athlete will get to a point where the last-step stomp is a thing of the past.

[/am4show]