Further Progression of Raelle Brown
by Steve McGill
As my private coaching has picked up recently, I’ve decided to focus this issue on the progression of three of my regulars: Raelle Brown, Sakeenah Odom, and Janie Coble. Raelle is a high school junior, Janie is a senior, and Sakeenah is an eighth-grader who runs middle school and age group track. Her hurdles this year will be 30 inches. This article will focus on Raelle’s progress, which has been significant over the past month. On the weekend of September 21, I met with Raelle twice – Saturday morning and Sunday morning. On Saturday we focused on drills, and Sunday we went faster, out of the blocks. My logic for setting it up this way was that her old bad technical habits are so ingrained that if we drill early in the workout and go full speed later in the workout, we don’t get enough drilling in, and the full-speed work isn’t of as high a quality. Two years worth of bad habits are proving to be hard to break. So, with drilling one day and then speeding it up the second day, that gave us the ability to get a full hour-plus worth in of just drilling. On Saturday, we started with marching popovers, transitioned into cycle drilling, and ended with quick stepping. With the quicksteps, I had the hurdles 24 feet apart – the spacing I usually use for boys, because I don’t want her to be quick yet. She’s not at the point where she gets crowded in races, so she needs to stay in the habit of opening up her stride between the hurdles, hands high knees high.
[am4show not_have=’g5;’]
[/am4show][am4guest]
[/am4guest][am4show have=’g5;’]
That Saturday session went very well. The only real flaw she has left to address is the back-kick in her trail leg, which is an extension of the back-kick in her sprint strides. Even though she’s dorsiflexed for the majority of each stride, she tends to point the toe down right at the last instant before touchdown, which ruins everything because it creates the back-kick. As a result, the knee of the trail leg points down before it corrects itself and drives upward/forward to the front. So she always lands just a smidge off balance. But other aspects of technique are looking good consistently. She’s driving the knee of the lead leg up higher than the bar before she leaves the ground. Her arms are driving up and down – no swinging across the body. And I am seeing a cycle action with the legs, which informs me that the back-kick issue is minimal.
On Sunday, we put the blocks down and went over the first three hurdles, with the hurdles at 30 inches, and hurdles 2 and 3 moved in two feet from race distance. It went great. Her start looked good, and her technique over the hurdles looked just as good out of the blocks as it had looked in the drills on Saturday. Toward the end of the session, I moved the hurdles out a foot, so that they were only one foot in from race distance, and I kept them at 30 inches. Again, it went well and she looked good. She’s starting to unleash the beast; I’m starting to see the athletic monster come out of her. On a couple reps I had that feeling of whoa, she’s rolling! So we’re finally getting there – to where I thought we’d be a month or so ago. When we first started together back in June, I totally underestimated how ingrained her old habits were, and how long it would take to move past them. I mean, she’s finally not locking the knee of the lead leg at any point in hurdle clearance. When we first started together, she was locking it as soon as the foot left the ground. Then she learned to drive the knee first, but then she’d kick out the foot and lock the knee while on top of the hurdle. Then she learned to just extend the foot without locking the knee, but she was still locking the knee during descent off the hurdle. Geez! Who in the world locks their knee during descent? But she was doing it, and we had to address it. Now, the lead leg is cycling the whole time. No kicking, no locking at the knee, and that’s helping a lot with the overall motion, and with her overall speed.
The next weekend, September 29, we met only on Sunday, as she had another obligation on Saturday. I had her do block starts again, over 30’s, as her trail leg knee still points down at takeoff, which will be a killer for her balance and momentum over 33’s. We’ve gotta address her trail leg issues in her sprinting. The knee won’t point down like that unless the toe is plantar flexed. In looking at the film, it appears that she plantar-flexes as her foot is attacking downward, which causes her to land on the toe instead of on the ball of the foot, which causes the back-kick and the downward angle of the knee that I’m seeing at takeoff. So, it’s a simple problem, but it’s not an easy problem to fix. It’s ingrained from two years of hurdling that way. So it doesn’t feel wrong. And as long as wrong doesn’t feel wrong, wrong doesn’t go away.
What I loved about Raelle’s session is that we got a lot of reps in – an indication that she’s getting in really good shape. For most of our time together, she has been fatiguing fairly early during our sessions, so by the time she gets into a good rhythm and puts a series of two or three quality reps together, it’s just about time to pack it up and go home because she’s got no gas left in the tank. But she’s been doing the workouts that I sent her to do during the week (basic stuff – 400’s, 150’s, 60’s), and it’s noticeable. The thing is, once you’re in shape, fixing mistakes becomes a whole lot easier. You’re able to dial into a rhythm and lock into that rhythm rep after rep. Once you’re able to do that, it’s just a matter of smoothing out the technique and reducing the air time. Raelle’s other flaws are gone. Her lead leg doesn’t lock at the knee, her arms don’t cross her body, she’s got great forward upper body posture between the hurdles. Just gotta get this trail leg right. Then the transition to 33’s should be seamless.
View this post on Instagram
The next weekend, October 6, we were able to graduate to race-height hurdles (33’s) out of the blocks. We were able to work our way up to four hurdles, full speed ahead, with all hurdles after the first hurdle moved one foot in from race distance – which, for me, is the equivalent to race distance for training sessions. Unlike in past sessions, she’s getting in good reps consistently; even when she fatigued towards the end, she was still able to maintain the rhythm despite some sloppiness over the hurdles. That’s a very good sign.
One reason yesterday went so well is because she’s getting out of the blocks so well. She’s really pushing off the pedals, staying forward, driving, not standing up too soon. She’s getting on top of that first hurdle and pushing through it, which is enabling her to sprint between the hurdles and thereby accelerate. Technique-wise, we still focused on the trail leg and trying to eliminate the back-kick there. We also worked on her trail arm, which tends to lock at the elbow tends and swing away from the body.
View this post on Instagram
One new thing I did with Raelle was have her do reps at warmup speed between the full-speed block-start reps. The warmup-speed reps allowed her to think longer and to gain a feel for the difference between what she had been doing vs. what she was trying to do. Inserting those reps in there gave her legs a break and helped to ingrain new muscle memory.
The following weekend, October 13, Raelle did full-speed block competitive block starts against Janie and another girl, Sadie Buchanan, a senior who has the fastest personal best of the group. Raelle looked great in that session – fast and confident and aggressive over the barriers. More details on that session can be found in the “Workout” article in this month’s issue.
[/am4show]
