Adapting to 42’s
by Steve McGill
The weekend before Thanksgiving, Mason Reed came down for some hurdle training. Currently a junior multi-eventer at Frostburg State University in Maryland, Mason attended two of my hurdling academies back in the day – one at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania and one at Mountain Ridge High School in Frostburg, MD. He also came down here to NC for a weekend for private training about three years ago. I rarely get to work with athletes who compete over 42’s, so I always feel excited to sink my teeth into such opportunities. On Saturday we did a lot of drilling to work on his arm action, as his arms tend to swing pretty widely. His trail arm in particular tends to get away from him — locking at the elbow and swinging away from his body. The lead arm tends to do the Aries Merritt swooping action, which I’m fine with, but we worked to tighten it up some.
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Mason mentioned that at his school practices, he only works on hurdles once a week as a multi-eventer, and that he mostly does one-step drills and five-step drills. Anyone who knows me knows that I rarely do any drilling at any rhythm other than a 3-step rhythm, so I was a bit surprised when he told me he never three-steps in practice, and that he never goes over 42’s in practice. While I don’t think it’s smart to go over 42’s often (due to susceptibility to lower leg injuries caused by overuse), I do think it’s essential to go over 42’s for at least part of a workout once a week just so the athlete gets used to the hip height and body positioning that 42’s require.
I had him do a lot of three-stepping drilling (marching popovers and quicksteps) so that he could acclimate himself to the race rhythm and the need to react to the spacing. We mostly worked with the hurdles at 36 inches and 39 inches, and then I raised them up to 42 for the last few quickstep reps. The next day, we worked on his start, and that’s where I noticed that his arms really swing widely before he even gets to the first hurdle. So we worked on tightening that up some first; I don’t mind exaggerated arm swing for the first couple strides, but we don’t want to continue that action to the hurdle, because then we’ll continue it over the hurdle, which is the issue we’re trying to correct.
With the block starts, we again started at 36 inches and worked our way up. I really liked his arm action over the 36’s and 39’s, as his lead arm was doing a tight version of the Aries style at the first hurdle, and then transitioning into a cycling action (which I love, and which I teach to my regulars) at the second and third hurdles. For the trail arm, I instructed him to just keep the elbow bent, and that seemed to work when it came to preventing the arm from swinging away from him.
But over 42’s the arms were wide again, and they were winding up again before he even got to the first hurdle. Sometimes the lead arm would go too far back when he was trying to prevent it from going too far away from him. So, the compensation worked, but it didn’t work. After a while, his hamstrings started getting sore from the two sessions on back-to-back days, so we shut it down. Even though we didn’t finish on a high note, we did finish with Mason knowing what he needed to work on and how to work on it. One-steps and five-steps over 33’s weren’t going to help him adjust to these 42’s, I told him. If you’re gonna hurdle only once a week (as a multi-eventer), there has to be some 42 work included in every hurdling session. It’s all about body angles, I told him. It’s all about putting your body into position, over and over. It’s all about developing some muscle memory regarding the angles and positioning. Or else you’ll be twisting and turning and smacking hurdles all the way down the track. Mason is 6-1, which is tall enough to master the 42’s if he were training for that race full-time. But with the high hurdles being only one of ten events that he trains for, he can’t waste time doing beginner drills.
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The following weekend, on the backside of Thanksgiving, I made time for my man Malik Mixon, who came with his dad, Ronnie, and we got in some good hurdle work. My daughter was visiting from Chicago with her boyfriend, so I had to get the Malik sessions done early in the mornings. For those of you who don’t know, Malik started training with me during his sophomore year of high school, when he’d drive up from Georgia about once a month to train with my regulars. By the end of his senior year, he was a national champion in the U20’s, and finished second at the U20 Worlds. He then went to USC in California for college, where he never had a chance to compete because he ruptured his achilles. He has since transferred to Ohio State University, where he is looking to get his career back on track. He came up for a visit this past May in order to test the achilles and reacclimate himself to the hurdles. Then when we met a few weeks ago, he was in much better shape, had full trust of the achilles, and we were able to get in some high quality work despite the temperatures being in the 40’s.
On both days, we used the quickstep drill to focus on improving his forward lean, as he tends to duck his head down when he leans, which leads to a more upright posture, as you’re not really leaning when you duck the head down. I had actually intended on focusing on the trail leg, as his heel sometimes gets away from him, creating a flatter, wider arc, instead of the high-and-tight action that we’re looking for. So I intended on focusing on the heel of the trail leg — keeping it close to the hamstring. But when I saw his lean angle in the marching popover drill we did as a warmup, I noticed that the lean was causing the trail leg to flatten out. He wasn’t leaning forward from the waist; he wasn’t pushing the chest down over the knee. Instead, he was ducking his head down, as I said above, which isn’t really a lean at all.
We started with 36’s for Friday’s session and it went very well. On Saturday we stuck with the same drill and raised the hurdles to 39 at the beginning of the workout. For the last half of that session, we raised them up to 42, and were able to get in about five reps over five 42’s. He looked really good the whole time. Only issue was that his trail leg, although seemingly high and tight, was hooking the hurdles sometimes. My usual remedy for that is to put hurdles in the lane beside the one we’re repping in, so that if the foot hooks and it’s lower than the bar, we’ll find out quite easily. But I was on a track that didn’t have any hurdles out and the only hurdles I had were the five practice hurdles I had brought in my car.
I decided it was too cold to risk practicing his start in this weather. Ohio State has a great indoor facility, so I told him he can work on his start when he gets back to school. No point in practicing the start in 45-degree weather when you’ll have access to an indoor facility when you head back to school in a few days.
I’m really excited to see how Malik does this year. The longer you’ve had a relationship with an athlete, the more emotionally invested you are in their success. I’ve known Malik for six years now, and have seen him at his peak and at his nadir. I love it when people pick themselves up from the mat, when they keep fighting through adversity, when they rise about self-doubt and external struggles. Malik deserves success because he puts in the work and he’s stayed true to the path. I’m definitely rooting for him.
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Working with Mason and Malik proved to be a lot of fun because the 42’s require me to rethink everything I teach. When it comes to the 42’s, technique must be customized to the individual athlete. That’s true in general, but it’s especially true over the 42’s. At any other height, you can stick to the basics and make adaptations to the basics. But over 42’s you have to go beyond the basics. I’ve always argued that hurdling is an art form; at no other level is that as true as it is over the 42-inch barriers.
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