Transition to Outdoors Workout
by Steve McGill

With the transition to the outdoor season coming up in the coming weeks for most track athletes in the nation, I thought it would be a good ideal to provide some insight on what I like to do to help my hurdlers make that transition. Generally, for sprint hurdlers who run the 55/60m hurdles indoors, the focus is on the start during the winter months, since the race is so short that the start is of paramount importance. For that reason, the hurdlers’ speed-endurance call fall off a bit, so once the outdoor season starts, the first thing we need to do is make sure we’re getting ready for the full 100/110m distance. For hurdlers who run both hurdle events (sprint hurdles and long hurdles), this issue isn’t as concerning because they’ll be getting plenty of speed-endurance work in during the course of a week in the indoor season. But for those who only run the sprint hurdles, getting in speed-endurance work is key. 

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Also, getting over more hurdles is key. In the indoor season, I’ll generally have the athletes go over a maximum of three hurdles in a typical workout, which is more than half the indoor race. In some training sessions, we might get to four hurdles for a rep or two. And maybe once in the winter we’ll do a time trial over all five hurdles. 

So the first thing we want to do hurdle wise is get over five hurdles for multiple reps, and then, in the ensuing weeks, build up to six hurdles, seven hurdles, eight hurdles. 

With the above thoughts in mind, here’s a workout to help the sprint hurdlers make the transition to the outdoor season:

• 3×150
• 3×120
• 3 reps over the first five hurdles, from a block start, with all hurdles after the first hurdle moved in one foot from race spacing.

–The sprints should be timed.
–Walk-back recovery after each sprint.
–5-minute rest after the last 150. 

After the last 120, the athlete should get another 5-minute rest before doing a few easy hurdle drills, and then doing two or three practice starts over the first hurdle and/or the first two hurdles.

Quick note to add: for hurdlers who don’t run indoors and start their season with the first outdoor practice, we wouldn’t want them to do a workout like this. You’d have to do the sprint repeats on one day and the hurdle repeats on another day. Combining the two would be too much. Even straight hurdling over multiple hurdles out the blocks would be too much. They’d need to do a good amount of hurdle drilling first and then, when they do block starts, they’d need to begin with 1-3 hurdles. In other words, they’ll need to get caught up on much that they missed by not running indoors.

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