Letter from the Editor, January 2015

Happy New Year to all The Hurdle Magazine subscribers out there. I hope the new year finds you in good health and ready to enjoy the upcoming track season. For those of you who have already started with indoor meets, hope you’re off to a good start, and keep working hard.

Our January issue features the conclusion of the “Seven Steps to Hurdle Heaven” series, with the focus here being on Step Seven. At this stage, hurdling becomes a religious experience, and the hurdler becomes a dancer.

Watching a lot of NFL football over the past few weeks inspired me to write “Battle of Wills,” in which I discuss how competing at a high level is a matter of asserting one’s will. I compare how what that means varies from sport to sport, and how in hurdling willpower has much less to do with staring down your opponent and much more to do with facing the lane of hurdles with calm confidence.

In “Racing Your Way into Shape” I talk about how I’ve learned to use indoor meets as a means to get my hurdlers race sharp prior to the onset of the outdoor season. While I’m not a fan of a heavy competition schedule indoors, I do find that it allows athletes to race their way into shape.

This month’s technically-specific article, “Timing Aspect of Take-off,” focuses on the take-off into the hurdle and the various technical things that occur in that moment. I emphasis not just the technique, but how the limbs must be in sync with each other if take-off is to be as forceful and fluid as possible.

This month’s workout is another running workout designed as an over-distance workout for sprint hurdlers and a speed workout for long hurdlers, similar to last month’s workout. This one – the 110/150/200 workout – challenges hurdlers to maintain a body clock and hit target times consistently as the distances increase and fatigue becomes more and more of a factor.

Finally, in this month’s research-based article, I take a look at the running mechanics of the cheetah – the fastest of all land animals – and see how its mechanics can be applied to sprinting mechanics for humans. The results will astound you! Not really, but they are quite interesting.

Keare Smith’s continuation of his juice cleansing series that was supposed to appear in this issue will have to wait till next month, as he is super-busy with starting a new job and moving into a new apartment in New York City. So those of you looking to get your health on, don’t despair, he’ll be back!

This month’s instructional video focuses on the one-step drill that is a staple in the warm-up of many hurdlers. I discuss the details of what I look for in the drill and then show clips of one of my athletes demonstrating the drill.

Thanks to partner in crime aka web designer Chris Brajer for putting the articles into the magazine format and being a steady resource when technical glitches arise. And as always, extra special thanks to all of you subscribers who are hurdle nuts just like me. If you have any questions, thoughts, or comments you’d like to share, feel free to email me at smcgill@hurdlesfirst.com, or leave a comment on our Facebook or Twitter page.

Take care,

Steve McGill