Kobi Quick-Steps
As most of you who follow my YouTube Channel and who have been long-time subscribers know, one of my favorite drills for hurdlers in the quick-step drill, which has a seemingly infinite number of possible variations.
The reason I like the drill so much is because it allows hurdlers to get in a high volume of work, enabling them to address mechanical flaws and to ingrain rhythm so that their hurdling instincts are razor sharp. With enough volume in the off-season and pre-season, the quick-step drill allows for a smooth transition into faster hurdling out of the blocks with the hurdles spaced at or near race distance. Even during the competitive season, including the late-competitive season with championship meets on the horizons, low-volume variations of the quick-step workout can be employed to address specific issues that may need to be addressed. It’s a drill for all seasons, basically.
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And it is a drill that serves as a very good re-introduction to hurdling for a hurdling who is just starting up a new season. A couple weeks ago I got together with one of my former athletes, Kobi Johnson, a senior at Ravenscroft School in Raleigh, NC. I coached Kobi through his sophomore year, and also worked with him fairly regularly for the early part of his junior year, until I moved to a new job about three hours away. So, for the first time in quite a while, Kobi and I got together for a workout, and since he was a bit out of shape, and was expressing concern about his hamstring that he had injured last spring, I decided to start slow. I had him do quick-steps, with more rest than usual between reps, so that we could retain high quality and so that I could focus on teaching.
The video above shows clips of a few reps that Kobi did in his return to the track. We started at 30 inches with the hurdles 12 feet apart, and worked our way up gradually to 36 inches, with the hurdles 16 feet apart. Because the school where we were training didn’t leave any hurdles out, we used three training hurdles that I always keep in my trunk in case of emergency. While I prefer to do this quick-step drill with at least five hurdles, sometimes you gotta work with what ya got.
In this session, we sought to re-establish three basics that this drill is designed to emphasize, and you can see the emphasis in the video:
1) We want to keep an up-down, A-skip-style action with the lead leg. I used to conceive of the hurdling motion as simulating the B-skip, but in the past few years I’ve come to feel that we don’t really want to extend the lead leg so horizontally as it is done in the B-skip. Therefore, I’ve come to present the hurdle motion as simulating the A-skip. In an A-skip, there is an extension of the leg, but it’s more vertical, prior to pulling the heel back under the hip at the bottom. Obviously, the actual hurdling action will look more like a B-skip, but the idea is that you want it feel more like an A-skip. And I have always argued that how things feel is what really matters. So, in this drill, the aim with the lead leg is to raise the knee above the bar and to drive the foot down at a downward angle before cycling the foot under the hip.
2) We want the trail leg to look as much like a lead leg as possible. In other words, we want to open the groin of the trail leg as minimally as possible. So just like we want to lead with the knee of the lead leg, we also want to lead with the knee of the trail leg, so that both legs cycle, one behind the other, just like when riding a bicycle.
3) We want a deep forward lean from the waist. Like I’ve always said, the purpose of the lean is not just for hurdle clearance, but for creating speed off the hurdle. So in this drill, Kobi, who is 6-2, clearing 30-inch hurdles, still wants to maintain a deep lean from the waist over each hurdle. As you can see in the vid, the deep lean helps to push the lead leg back to the ground, and it makes it easier for the trail leg to drive to the front with minimal opening of the groin. Without the deep lean, the lead leg would extend more horizontally, and the groin of the trail leg would open wider, inhibiting the cycling motion that we are aiming for.
4) As mentioned above, we want to accelerate off the hurdle. We want the positioning of our legs and the angle of our lean to create momentum coming off the hurdle. That way, we don’t have to work to speed up; we naturally speed up. On this particular day, we didn’t have as much success with that as we would have liked, but that was more a matter of Kobi still working his way into shape than it was an issue with him doing things wrong technically.
5) As we raise the hurdles and increase the spacing, we want the feeling of going over the hurdle to be the same. If we’re doing things right and making the necessary subtle adjustments (taking off a little faster to the first hurdle, pushing off the back leg with a little more forces), then the height of the hurdle doesn’t matter. Because Kobi is experienced and because he’s done this drill plenty of times before, he was able to make the necessary adaptations to height and spacing without needing me to instruct him about that specifically.
We were able to get about 10 reps at each height (30, 33, and 36), and I decided to leave 39’s for another day. So we got in close to 100 hurdles. Plus, I had him do 3×100 before the first rep, and another 3×100 after the last rep so he could get some straight conditioning-style running in as well.
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