Racing Your Way into Shape
At the high school and collegiate levels of track and field there are enough meets in the indoor season and early indoor season that racing can be (must be?) incorporated into the training schedule. Back in my high school days there were maybe three or four indoor meets total, and there were no state or national championships to speak of. Indoors was basically a time to prepare for outdoors. Now, indoor meets begin well before Christmas, as early as the first weekend in November, and it’s not difficult to find a meet every weekend if you live on the east coast or other cold weather areas.
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The plethora of meets available to compete in this time of year poses a unique dilemma for hurdlers. As a coach of hurdlers, I like to use this time of year to teach, teach, teach. Especially when it comes to new hurdlers just learning the event and getting over the fear of the barriers. But also for experienced hurdlers who need to make alterations to their technique and perhaps add much-needed strength and/or speed. In the past I have resisted the onslaught of competitions, seeing as how many kids also compete in youth track in the summer, meaning the only time they aren’t competing is basically September through November.
But if this is the direction things are moving, then resistance is futile. Change with the times or get left behind, as the saying goes. So that’s what I’m trying to do. What I find difficult with my 100/110 meter hurdlers is training them to be ready for the outdoor distance while also preparing them for the shorter 55/60m race indoors. Kids these days really take indoors seriously. They want to qualify for states, they want to qualify for nationals. So the tricky thing for the coach lies in trying to honor their desire to succeed in the short term without compromising the long term goals. As David Oliver once said, nobody gives out Olympic medals for the 60 meter hurdles. But with milesplit and runnerspace and so much exposure, kids don’t want to wait anymore to be recognized. They’re comparing themselves to their opponents and checking out local and national ranking before the Christmas sleigh bells are ringing.
The good thing about all these indoor meets is that they allow athletes to race themselves into shape. What I’ve learned to do is make sure my 100/110 hurdlers complement their hurdling by racing in other events, such as the 55 dash, the 300, and maybe a 4×400 leg. Meets thereby serve the purpose of speed workouts. I don’t get wrapped up in whether or not they’re qualifying for this meet or that meet, as long as they’re making the type of progress I’m looking for. I also make it a point to talk them through the indoor season, making sure they understand why we’re training through certain meets, why I’m putting them in certain events, and I continually preach that the outdoor season is what it’s really all about.
For 400 hurdlers, the obvious events are the 300 and 500 and 4×400. For collegians it would be the 400 and 800 and relays. The key for 400 hurdlers is to stay in touch with hurdling in their training during the indoor season. If 400 hurdlers don’t hurdle enough in practice during the indoor season, they’ll get bored easily and become unmotivated. Intermediate hurdlers know that they’re out of their element when competing against quarter-milers in indoor races, and they’ll quickly lose confidence if they’re losing races to people they know they won’t be competing against outdoors anyway. The 400 hurdler is the only track and field athlete who absolutely has no place to call home during the indoor season.
One of my 110 guys tweaked his hamstring more than a month ago, and it’s been lingering. He keeps saying “It’s not that bad, it’ll be okay in about a week,” but he keeps re-tweaking it. Five weeks later, it’s still not okay. One day he was saying that he needs to make some adjustments to his technique. He explained that he’d been watching videos of old school hurdlers like Colin Jackson and Allen Johnson and he sees what they do that he doesn’t do. “Once I fix that,” he said, “my hamstring problems will go away.”
That’s when I had to directly tell him, “Listen, the problems aren’t with your technique. The reason you’re reverting back to bad habits is because you’re favoring that hamstring, trying to avoid reinjuring it. You might be doing it subconsciously, but you’re still doing it. You don’t trust the hammy to do the things you know you need to do. That’s why you’re tilting to the side. That’s why your trail leg is so wide. So if you feel yourself reverting back to those habits, that’s an indication you’re not ready to start hurdling again, at least not at that speed or at that height.”
This kid is a senior, so he’s eager to prove he belongs with the big boys, and he’s eager to run fast enough indoors so he can get some looks from colleges. But the point I made in speaking with him is that he could end up jeopardizing his entire senior year – indoors and outdoors – if he keeps trying to rush back.
To me, this is the danger of putting too much emphasis on competing indoors. It gets in the way of base-building, of gradually increasing the workout speeds. It makes athletes do dumb stuff.
But if approached properly, indoor meets can be a very useful tool for getting athletes into race shape. To me, race shape is as much mental as it is physical. Being in race shape means being able to react to the gun. It means learning to compete. It means being able to focus during warm-ups. When athletes train and train and train without racing, they’re surprised by the gun when it goes off, they think too much instead of just competing, and their minds are all over the place during warm-ups. So it’s nice to get past all that during the indoor season so that the athletes are in race shape by the time the outdoor season arrives.
Another danger in coaching the 100/100 hurdler lies in getting caught up in preparing for the shorter 55 or 60 meter distance. Yes, the indoor season helps hurdlers to improve their start, just because the start is so important in a 5-hurdle race. But the second half of the race cannot be neglected. The irony here lies in the fact that the winter is supposed to be a time for base-building – for running longer distance in training, for getting in more volume over the hurdles – but the 55/60m hurdle race requires much more emphasis on explosiveness, power, and drive-phase acceleration ability. So it’s important for the coach to make sure the hurdlers get in some volume hurdling at least once a week, and over-distance training at least once a week, preferably two. Last year I had a girl who qualified for indoor nationals, and we really went for it since she was a senior. We trained specifically for that 60 meter distance, and though she did well and made the finals at nationals, we paid the price when it came time to start training for outdoors a couple days later. She had to get back in shape – the kind of shape she already would’ve been in had we not put all our eggs in the nationals basket.
To me, track is, was, and always will be an outdoor sport. When it’s time to go over a full flight of ten hurdles (or eight for the 300 hurdles), it’s time to go to work. I think that competing for eight months out of the year (December through July for those who run for their school team and compete in youth track in the summer) is a bit much. That’s too much competing, not enough training. But if that’s how it’s going to be, I say use the indoor meets as speed workouts, as part of the preparation for outdoors. It’s the coach’s job to make sure the athletes don’t lose sight of the big picture.
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