Teaching Aggression
When coaching beginning hurdlers, one of the difficult things to get them to do is attack the hurdles aggressively. Through trial and error over the years, I have found methods to decrease the beginner’s fear and to increase the beginner’s confidence. In this article I will identify four key strategies I have employed to help my beginners get over the fear.
[am4show not_have=’g5;’]
[/am4show][am4guest]
[/am4guest][am4show have=’g5;’]
1: Have them go at it with no instruction
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that it’s important not to over-teach beginners. They are eager to please, and they generally hungry for instruction. So everything you mention, they’ll try to do. The problem is, information-overload can occur quite easily for the beginner. Thinking about lead leg mechanics, trail leg mechanics, the forward lean, the positioning of the arms, etc., can be too much too soon. They’ll try to do all of that properly, and end up thinking so much that they forget to run fast.
So one of the strategies I’ve adopted is to have the beginner run as fast as he or she can over the first hurdle, at either the first or second practice session. I’ll explain that an 8-step approach is standard, so I’ll say, “stand behind the line, with the leg you want to lead with in the back, then go as fast as you can over the hurdle.” Once they have a sense of the timing to the first hurdle, I’ll add a second hurdle, and maybe a third, with those last two hurdles being discounted by at least two feet. This way, they develop a rhythm for the race. And continually I’ll explain that even though they are doing a lot of things wrong, they are developing a feel for the rhythm of the race. I’ve become convinced that nothing is more important than that. Once an athlete develops a rhythm for the race, then it’s a lot easier for me to teach him or her the details of technique, because now the athlete is curious and eager to learn these things that can make the rhythm feel even smoother.
Start with training hurdles
Back in the day, prior to the advent of training hurdles, coaches had to be very creative when it came to finding way to lower the hurdles for beginners, but training hurdles make it very easy. Training hurdles are to beginning hurdlers what training wheels are to beginning bicycle riders. They provide a low-risk way to try this new thing, minimizing the fear of crashing and burning. With training hurdles, I can lower the height to 27 inches, 24, or even 21 if necessary. And they’re so light that even if the athlete hits one, he or she will suffer no physical harm (although the crossbar may break in half).
Back in the day, I pretty much felt like if a beginner was too afraid to clear the regular hurdles, then he or she should try another event. But I know more clearly understand that some people do need some coaxing, and will respond to some success over the little kiddie hurdles. Girls, especially, can be very self-conscious, afraid of looking foolish in front of more experienced hurdlers, afraid of letting down the coach, not just afraid of the hurdles themselves.
For girls, start with sub-30” heights
As I said above, this is something I wouldn’t have considered doing back in the day, but now it has become my normal. Starting with the hurdles below 30 inches can also make sense when coaching youth hurdlers in their early stages – 11-12 year-olds specifically. It comes down to finding a balance between allowing for gradual development while also encouraging aggression. Some beginners have no fear, and they’re the ones who make our jobs as coaches easier. But we have to accommodate the needs of the fearful ones who have potential. What I have found with recent experiments is that beginners who are fearful become aggressive much more quickly when starting with the hurdles at lower heights. Then, when I do raise them up to 30, and then 33, the adjustment period to the higher height is very short. But when I start with 30’s or 33’s, I spend a lot of time watching them run up to the hurdle and stop. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, more frustrating than that.
Just you and the athlete
Talk about accommodating an athlete. This strategy involves spending one-on-one time with the beginner. For most coaches, finding such time is nearly impossible, and it does require another level of generosity of spirit, to be honest. What I did this past weekend with one of my beginners was, I had her arrive to practice at 12, and I told the rest of the hurdlers to come at one. This girl is very self-conscious, yet very athletic. In front of everybody else last week, she was being super-tentative, always looking over at me. So this past weekend, when we met alone for the first hour, I was able to give her one-on-one instruction. But even more important than that was the fact that she felt freer to make mistakes without fear of being judged. The truth is, no one was going to judge her anyway, but there was no convincing her of that, so that wasn’t a battle worth fighting.
I explained to her that, eventually, she’s going to have to run over ten hurdles with opponents on either side of her and hundreds of people watching. It can’t just be me and her every day. But again, it’s another form of training wheels. Give her the one-on-one time until she grows to a point where she no longer needs it in order to run at the hurdles in an uninhibited manner.
Use older athletes as coaches
This one is an old stand-by strategy of mine. More experienced hurdlers can serve as very effective mentors to beginning hurdlers. They provide the beginning hurdler with someone to relate to, someone who has been where they are now, and someone who still remembers what it was like to be a beginner. For the experienced hurdler, serving as an assistant coach to the beginner improves his or her own hurdling, not just that of the beginner. As they say, if you really want to learn how to do something, teach it to someone else.
For the beginner, having such a mentor as a teammate takes off much of the pressure that beginners put on themselves to get everything right the first time. Sometimes if one of my more experienced hurdler is doing a running workout on a particular day, I’ll have him or her work with a beginner on the hurdles after completing the running workout. I’ll stay out of the way and let the athlete coach the athlete. Yes, that takes a high level of trust on my part, but I feel confident that anyone I’ve coached is not going to steer a beginner in the wrong direction.
Conclusion
With the strategies described above, any coach should be able to develop aggressive hurdlers who are willing to attack the hurdles on a regular basis. Of course, there will always be those newbies who are simply too afraid – which is fine, because hurdling isn’t for everybody. To me, telling that athlete who stops at the hurdle over and over again that he or she might want to try a different event is quite valid. It doesn’t make me or the athlete a failure. If I’ve tried all the methods above and the fear is still evident, it’s time to move on.
[/am4show]
