Using Cones for Beginning Hurdlers

In the September 2013 issue of The Hurdle Magazine, the workout involved running 110/100 meter sprints, placing cones at the hurdle marks, and having the hurdler maintain the race rhythm between the cones while still trying to hit the target times. That workout was designed for faster hurdlers who don’t have room to open up their stride between hurdles in races.

But recently I’ve discovered that cones can be useful in helping beginning hurdlers as well. I used to be very averse to being easy on beginners, for the simple fact that the race won’t be easy on them once it’s time to line up and face a full flight, with all the other lanes filled with opponents determined to win. But I guess in the past couple years I’ve grown so frustrated with watching beginners run up to hurdles and stop that I had to relent and change my stance. I’ve also grown frustrated with how beginners fixate on the hurdles and run on their heels whenever running with hurdles in their way. In the past month or so I have found that using cones instead of hurdles eliminates the fear element, allowing the beginner to focus on driving from the start line, and on maintaining proper sprinting mechanics and forward momentum through the first hurdle and between the rest. In short, cones function as training wheels for the beginner – a good way to get started before it’s time to transition into riding on two wheels.

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My experiments were born out of frustration about a month ago. I was working with an athlete named EJ whom I had coached last year in youth track. EJ ran the 100m hurdles as a 14-year-old this past summer in Junior Olympic meets, so this fall we’ve been working on the transition he’ll need to make to the 110m hurdles he’ll be running this year. This transition marks the biggest leap that any hurdler at any level has to make. The hurdles go up two clicks, from 33″ to 39″, the distance from the start line to the first hurdle increases, and the distance between the hurdles increases. EJ is strong and athletic, but he has a lot of flaws in his technique that I had to let slide last summer because we were racing every weekend.

His flaws included:

• Kicking out the foot of his lead leg before driving up the knee.
• Locking the elbow of both arms and swinging his arms wildly.
• Twisting in mid-air (due to the locking of the elbows) and landing off-balance.
• Hunching his shoulders instead of leaning from the waist.

Over the 33’s, he could just power through with his natural speed and his upper body strength. But over the 39’s, he’d have to learn how to hurdle. We got to work in early September, with limited success. In most hurdle workouts he was showing signs of moving past his old habits, but too often there’d be reps that looked like he was a day-one hurdle.

One day I decided to have him do a quick-step drill with the hurdles at 30 inches over four hurdles, with the intention of raising the hurdles up to 33, 36, and maybe even 39. But I would’ve been content with 36.

But over the 30’s he was looking horrible. Arms flailing, lead leg swinging, taking off on his heel, landing on his heels. Ugh. Finally I took the tops off and laid them against the base part, so that the crossbar was maybe 24 inches high. He could just step over these for a rep or two, get a feel for the rhythm, then I’d put the tops back on and do the 30’s again.

But no. He looked just as bad. Still kicking out that lead leg, still flailing the arms. I was like, “EJ! What are you doing?” It was like he’d never hurdled before. This kid’s about 5-10. Why was he working so hard to get over a 24-inch hurdle? Were his habits that deeply ingrained? It’s like someone who’s yelling because the room is noisy with loud music and people talking. Then when the music stops and everyone else quiets down, he’s still yelling. It’s like, Bruh, stop yelling, I can hear you.

I had three orange cones in my bag. I always bring them to practice with me, just in case. I grabbed the cones and put them on the track in the next lane over, spaced the same as the hurdles for the quick-steps. “Now,” I said, “you can literally run over these. So just do that. Don’t hurdle. Just run over the cones.”

Sho nuff, even over the cones, he was kicking and flailing. I was almost in tears. “EJ, why are you doing this to me?” In a flourish, I took my wallet, keys, and phone out of the pockets of my warm-up pants, threw them to the ground, and walked to the start line. “Like this, EJ,” I said. “Like this.”

Then my 48-year-old ass went and ran over the cones to a 3-step rhythm with ease. I turned around and said, “That’s all I want you to do, EJ. Stop hurdling. Just run over the cones.”

Finally, he did. No kicking, no flailing, so swinging. He ran over the cones. From there, progress came rapidly. We were able to return to the hurdles, and by the end of the workout he got over the 36’s looking very efficient. What I learned is that the cones can get the beginning hurdler out of the mindset of “hurdling.” For EJ the word “hurdle” as a verb meant “kick,” “flail,” swing,” “plant,” “stomp.” So even though he was looking good in his A-skips, his B-skips, his high-knees, and his warm-up sprints, once it came time to hurdle, everything changed. For the worse. But once he realized, through my weak but effective demonstration, that he could just run over the hurdles, that’s what he started doing. It started with the cones, and carried over to the hurdles. Over the 36’s I could see the old habits creeping back, but that was more from a lack of repetition at that height, which is something easy to address.

I also have two girls who are new to hurdling this year. Both juniors. One with a gymnastics background and the other with no athletic background at all, but she’s 5-7 and well-coordinated. I spent a lot of time early on just teaching them the basics of sprint mechanics. I had them doing A-marches, focusing on knee lift, dorsi-flexion, arm angles, etc. Then I had them do some walk-overs in order to apply the A-marches to the hurdling motion. They progressed steadily through this process.

But when it came time to put the rubber to the road and go over some hurdles, both of them kept stopping at the first hurdle. I don’t know what it is, but a lot of beginning female hurdlers stop at hurdles, run around hurdles. Sometimes I want to throw my hands in the air and shout, “STOP STOPPING AT THE HURDLE!” But with the cones available, I had a better option.

One day I grabbed my three cones and five banana hurdles (which were basically the same height as the cones) and spaced them seven yards apart on the football field. The yard-line markers were very clear and distinct, which made it easy to space the cones and mini-hurdles evenly. I had the girls run over the cones the same as I had had EJ do, and it resulted in similar success.

It was so nice to see the girls running. When I had put hurdles up, they would fixate so much on the hurdle that all the things I had taught them about sprint mechanics went out the window. It was like they were trying to run away from the hurdles even as they were running toward them. No matter how much I taught them about drive phase, about maintaining forward angles and forward momentum, they forgot it all when the hurdles were up. But with the cones, the fear factor was gone. Their confidence grew with each rep. They were developing a rhythm.

When returning to 30″ hurdles, the success carried over. Things didn’t go perfectly, but they went a lot better than they had been going before. The girls stopped at the hurdles far less frequently, and their body posture was much less tentative.

I’m assuming that with EJ, and with the girls, they’ll get to a point where they outgrow the need for the cones, just like a little kid learning to ride a bike outgrows the need for training wheels.

Here’s a clip I took of EJ sprinting over the cones recently. This is not from the day when he drove me crazy, but from a workout the following week. We were working on getting him accustomed to the spacing of the hurdles in the 110 race:

So my advice to coaches who are working with beginning hurdlers is to always keep some cones nearby. They might come in handy.

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