Block Starts Alone & Together Workout
by Steve McGill
Throughout my coaching career I’ve tried to take advantage of opportunities to create competitive situations in practice. It’s not always possible, because it requires having at least two hurdlers of the same gender training together who are of equivalent ability levels. During my own competitive days, I relied on block starts against my teammates to gauge where I stood and what kind of times I could expect to run in the upcoming race. It also helped me to identify where weaknesses in my race might have been. As a coach, I always film competitive reps so the athletes can see how they look. Even back in my early coaching days, when filming wasn’t an option, competitive work against teammates proved to be the best way to get athletes race-ready and to put them in the race mindset.
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But competitive starts can have an adverse effect, or at least not lead to the desired results, if all athletes involved are not of equivalent ability levels. Iron sharpens iron, but it doesn’t sharpen aluminum. A highly talented athlete doesn’t gain anything by competing against a mediocre athlete, and a mediocre athlete will be discouraged by getting their ass beaten for multiple reps by a significantly better athlete.
In the early part of the outdoor season, doing a workout that consists exclusively of competitive starts, even if the athletes involved are similarly talented, isn’t always the best idea, as everybody’s start and everybody’s technique still needs some work. And we want to be able to work on things, make adjustments, and add new wrinkles while also race-prepping. With that thought in mind, I introduce to you this month’s workout, which involves a combination of individual block starts and competitive block starts.
In this case, we won’t go back and forth between starts alone and starts together. Instead we’ll do a series of starts alone, followed by a series of starts together, with the former part of the workout building up to the latter part of the workout. That way, I as coach can critique and give advice and we can do a little experimenting with different ideas and with addressing flaws. Then, once we’ve made some decisions about what works best, we can try out our theories in the competitive starts.
Last weekend, three of my hurdlers in my private coaching came to practice — Raelle Brown, Sadie Buchanan, and Milleah (can’t remember her last name). Personal bests in the 55 hurdles ranged from 8.26 (Sadie) to 8.47 (Raelle) to 8.57 (Milleah). So, at those paces, Sadie would be in the mid-14’s outdoors, Raelle would be right around 14.9-15.0, and Milleah would be around 15.2.
Sadie was preparing to compete at indoor nationals, Raelle had also qualified for nationals but had decided not to go in favor of focusing on her outdoor season, while Milleah (who lives in West Virginia and has only been to about four sessions with me) was also looking forward to outdoors. After about four individual starts for Raelle and Sadie (over 1, then 2, then 3, then 4 hurdles, I had them do three block starts together, with commands, over four hurdles.
Milleah, meanwhile, only did individual starts, because her start needs a lot of work, and going against the other girls probably would’ve done more harm than good. She’s probably the fastest and most athletic of the three, but she tends to run tentatively, starting with her approach to the first hurdle. So I had her work on that, and on her speed and aggressiveness between the hurdles. She looked great, so she should be ready to join in on the competitive starts soon.
The video below consists of reps from the workout with Raelle, Sadie, and Milleah:
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So, to put numbers on it, if you plan to implement this workout, it would look something like this.
- 1x block start over one hurdle
- 1x block start over two hurdles
- 1x block start over three hurdles
- 1x block start over four hurdles
- 3x competitive block starts over four hurdles
All starts are with commands from the coach. All starts should be done in spikes.
Numbers can vary. If, for instance, all three of my girls were focusing on outdoors, we’d have worked our way up to six hurdles. But with Sadie about to compete at nationals a week later, her needs took priority.
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