Workout: Five-stepping followed by Block Starts
by Steve McGill
There was a time about seven years ago when I decided that there was no point in doing any drills that didn’t involve three-stepping. I basically eliminated all one-stepping and five-stepping from my drill repertoire, with the logic being that I wanted my athletes to ingrain the race rhythm into everything they do. That mindset hasn’t changed, but I always try to avoid being rigid in my approach. If I see a situation where breaking my own rule can help an athlete, then I’ll do so.
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Recently, in working with Janie Coble and Raelle Brown, I’ve been incorporating five-stepping into our regular routine prior to block starts. My purpose in adding this element into our hurdle workouts was twofold: 1) It made it easier for them to address technical flaws. The five-step rhythm allowed for more time to think between hurdle clearances. 2) I wanted them to get their legs over race-height hurdles before going over the hurdles at full speed. So, after the dynamic stretching, and then the three 50m sprints that I always have them do, I have been adding in about three to five reps of five-stepping over four hurdles before we put the blocks down and begin the full-speed part of the workout.
As was the case when I used to use the five-stepping back-and-forth workout made famous by Jean Poquette, the five-step rhythm kind of becomes a three-step rhythm when done properly, as the first two strides off the hurdle function as recovery strides, and then the last three strides mimic race-rhythm strides.
For spacing, I’ll put the first hurdle on the first yellow girls mark, and then I’ll put the rest of the hurdles on the blue boys’ marks. Sometimes, I’ll put them a foot beyond the blue marks so the girls have more room to get their knees up between the hurdles. Were I doing this five-stepping work with a male hurdler, I’d probably have the hurdles three feet beyond the blue marks, which is how I used to do it back in the day.
This five-step work is not fast; it’s at warmup pace. The approach to the first hurdle is a high-knee approach, with a bit of a speed-up in the last two strides before the hurdle. I don’t have a specific distance to the first hurdle; athletes don’t have to start at the start line. And I don’t have a specific number of strides for them to take. It’s kind of like, trust your instincts and figure it out yourself so that you have enough speed to easily five-step to the second hurdle, but not so much speed that you can’t fit in five steps to the second hurdle. Were I doing this with a beginner, I might go ahead and give them a specific amount of steps to the first hurdle, like I do with all my drills at my hurdle camps.
After the five-stepping drilling, we’ll put the blocks down and work on starts. We’ll start with no hurdles just to get the start right first. Then we’ll put up one hurdle, and work our way up to however many hurdles I want them clearing. This time of year, we’ll work up to three hurdles, maybe four. Obviously, in the spring, we’ll work our way up to more hurdles – probably six or seven.
So, the total workout would consist of something like this:
- Four five-stepping warmup reps over four hurdles.
- Two block starts with no hurdles, running past the first hurdle mark.
- Two block starts over one hurdle.
- Two block starts over two hurdles.
- Two block starts over three hurdles.
- One block start over four hurdles.
If I’m seeing mistakes or there are bad reps, the number of reps might increase. We might, for example, stick with just two hurdles for an extra rep or two before moving up to three hurdles. In some cases, the athlete might want to add a rep here or there if they felt something was off. I try to ensure that the workout remains a quality over quantity workout, so we’ll only add reps as necessary.
Below is a clip from my Instagram page of Janie doing this workout:
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