More Speed, More Problems
by Steve McGill
When I was coaching Brandon Johnson, who is currently competing for the University of Cincinnati, we had a mantra that we repeated over and over again throughout his last two years of high school: create the problem so we can fix the problem. And the problem we were trying to create was that of getting too close to the hurdles, of feeling too crowded between the hurdles. The logic is simple: if you’re not feeling crowded, you’re probably stagnating, and you won’t be able to drop time. So, while we’re looking to establish a rhythm in each race and each hurdling session, we’re also looking to push beyond the rhythm we have established.
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Obviously, getting crowded is a problem. Every time we correct a technical flaw, that makes us faster over the hurdles, faster between the hurdles, and therefore makes us more crowded. As we get stronger through weight training, that increases our speed, which makes us more crowded between the hurdles. As we improve our speed through speed work and/or refining our sprint mechanics, that increases our speed and puts us on top of hurdles. That is the quintessential hurdler dilemma: every improvement you make heightens the danger you face. In every other running event, getting stronger, getting faster, and improving mechanics helps you to drop time. In the hurdles, it can put you on the ground. So hurdlers, as they are improving, have to constantly recalibrate their cadence between the hurdles; they must increasingly get quicker as they get faster. In the stride length vs. stride frequency give and take, stride frequency increasingly becomes a hurdler’s bread and butter as they continue to progress.
Back when I first started using the quickstep drill as more than just an off-season hurdle endurance drill, I used it as a means to help my hurdlers deal with crowding issues. Typically, I use a 6-step approach to the first hurdle, with the distance to the first hurdle being somewhere in the range of 30-33 feet. Then it’s somewhere in the range of 21-25 feet between the rest of the hurdles. I usually use at least five hurdles for this drill, and as many as ten. The idea is to really sprint aggressively to the first hurdle so that you feel crowded at hurdle two and are forced to quicken your hand movements and foot strikes. You want to feel like you’re standing still and that the hurdles are coming at you so that you have to constantly react, react, react.
Last weekend I worked with Micah Cooney, who came down from Maryland for two days of training. Micah had come down back in June for two days as well. And, before that, he had attended two of my hurdling academies. When I saw Micah in June, he mentioned that he had dropped his personal best from the mid-17’s all the way down to 16.17 after the second hurdling academy. His goal now, he said, was to get into the 15’s and maybe even the high 14’s by the end of this upcoming year. As we chatted prior to our first session last weekend, Micah mentioned that he was just now coming back from a heel injury. With that info in mind, I started him with some easy popover drills before moving into some quickstepping. Things were moving along pretty slowly, as he was fatiguing a lot. He explained to me that he had left his inhaler at home in Maryland. Fortunately, his dad drove off to find one at a local pharmacy and came back pretty quickly with one in hand. So, the end of the workout ended up being the best part, as he could actually breathe. His lead arm was swinging way above his head, which, I guess, is an improvement from how it used to swing across his body. But both mistakes create the issue of the legs hanging in the air instead of cycling. Also, he’s been in the weight room since I saw him in June, so he’s gotten a lot stronger and a lot faster in terms of his flat speed. But he was showing zero ability to adapt to his new speed and power, as he was clobbering hurdles right and left.
The next day, Sunday, we worked on his block start. His start was trash, to put it mildly. He was standing straight up out of the blocks, and he was veering to the left. So we had to change his settings, I had to get him to relax his neck, and we created a more forward angle in set position. And because he’s gotten so powerful, he was really driving with great acceleration to the first hurdle once he started implementing the things we were working on. The lead arm was still going up way too high, so we ended the session, and the weekend, with some five-stepping drills to reign in the arm. That helped, and I suggested he keep doing those five-step drills when he returns home until the problem goes away. Funny thing is, when he was here in June, we had gotten the lead arm exactly to where we wanted it. But because he had been getting stronger in the weight room while not hurdling in the ensuing months, he had to learn to reign in the lead arm all over again because he was a much faster athlete than he’d been in June.
My aim whenever an athlete comes to train with me for a weekend is the same as it is when I do one of my hurdling academies. I don’t expect to fix every problem or to have them return home new and improved; instead, the goal is for the athletes to return home equipped with the knowledge of what they need to work on and how to work on it. I want their bodies to be able to feel the difference between right vs. wrong so that when they do wrong they can correct it. So with Micah this past weekend, I was pleasantly shocked to see how much faster and stronger he was. He was gobbling up ground. But he was wild and out of control. Because of his heel injury, he wasn’t hurdling at all since we last met, but he was lifting four times a week. So he wasn’t able to work on his cadence as his strength increased. He was caught off guard by his own speed when he came here.
What that tells me is that he simply needs to keep drilling. For beginner hurdlers, drills serve the purpose of helping the athlete to learn technique. For experienced hurdlers like Micah, drills serve the purpose of enabling the hurdler to continually adapt, which is how we did it when I was working with Brandon Johnson a few years ago.
Here are a few reps from Micah’s Sunday session last weekend:
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