I’m a normal sprinter but I’m giving in my shot to hurdles this year. I have two questions. How do I go about getting better at hurdling itself, and do you think a 10.7/22.4 runner can get into the 37-39 range in this event? I’m looking for a major breakthrough and I hope this is the event.
I was considering giving the 300 hurdles a shot my senior year of high school, never got to though cuz of injury. But I will say that you should easily be able to get under 40 seconds with ease if you are a 22.4/10.7 runner… I’d say you could get down to 37 with good form and technique combined with your speed.
How do I go about starting to hurdle?
The intermediate hurdles are lower than the highs (obviously) so probably less intimidating to learn on. Ive found that really the only way to learn is through lots of repetition- hurdle drills and mobility (walk overs etc) is helpful, and power hurdles that you can set to very low heights help you get used to the rhythm.
really hurdling is just like an altered running step- the “jumping” action is NOT what you want. knee up, toe up… and you’re on your way.
I transitioned from sprinting to hurdling last year and it was kind of a mixed bag for me. I showed pretty decent improvement in the beginning, but then I got injured due partly to faulty hurdle form. My advice to you is make sure you work with your coach on the technique, and practice on maintaining your form throughout the race. It gets incredibly hard and takes a lot of discipline to keep your form over the last couple of hurdles in the race. You have the pure speed to hurdle (a great sprinter makes a great hurdler) but if I was in your position I would work on speed endurance (or special endurance I guess is the proper term) to keep your speed up throughout the entire race. With all that being said, I would say that you defintely can make it through in the 39sec range, and, with some practice, you could probably know that down to the 37ish territory by the end of the outdoor season.
How different is doing 300 hurdles in state and doing 400 hurdles in nationals? I’m going to go for 37s for the 300, but I realize that 400h are ran at national competitions.
I’d love to tell you, but I cant say that I’ve ever been to nationals to run the 400m hurdles:)
However, I imagine that if you know you’re gonna be able to qualify for nationals then you start to put in some overdistance work at the end of the season maybe.