i am coaching the hurdles this year and am hoping for some help with training and technique. i’ve never had any experience with the hurdles so i’m clueless.
my athlete is a junior in hs and runs the 300 and 110’s
times: 300’s - 41-42 110 - 15.5
6’2" 170lbs.
hurdling for three years with no coaching help whatsoever
(his track coaches were morons)
he has a chance to do very well in state this year as the hurdles are not a strong event.
i train him using charlie’s methods but need to know how to incorporate hurdle technique work, into the overall plan?
For the 300 hurdles where the tehnique is not so critical i think you can get away with going through hurdle drills as part of your warm-up for all track sessions and doing special endurance sessions over hurdles. As far as i see it you can only work on stride patterns and full speed technique for the longer hurdle races by running at race pace i.e. special endurance sessions. This format doesn’t allow for much in depth work on technique but is more a little and often approach so i don’t know how well it would be suited to the 110m.
Maybe you can try organising something like:
session 1 - warm up and hurdle drills - accl’s and max speed work
session 2 - warm up and hurdle drills - special end. over hurdles (150-250m on 300m spacings)
Session 3 - 110m hurdle focus session - maybe some additional max v or accl’ work depending on hurdle volume.
First off are you coaching at a high school or just out of your personal gym? Secondly, you might want to check with some of the local high school coaches in the area…Deino Scott being one of them. He coached a HS young lady to 42.91 in the 300’s and a 20’ long jump as a freshman. There are plenty of good HS coaches in your area, don’t assume they are all ignorant.
First off are you coaching at a high school or just out of your personal gym? Secondly, you might want to check with some of the local high school coaches in the area…Deino Scott being one of them. He coached a HS young lady to 42.91 in the 300’s and a 20’ long jump as a freshman. There are plenty of good HS coaches in your area, don’t assume they are all ignorant.
i’m coaching high school track at a very small school in the midwest. there virtually track coaches around the area. most are school teachers that have to coach because they have no one else.
session 1 - warm up and hurdle drills - accl’s and max speed work
session 2 - warm up and hurdle drills - special end. over hurdles (150-250m on 300m spacings)
Session 3 - 110m hurdle focus session - maybe some additional max v or accl’ work depending on hurdle volume.
when you say hurdle drills, what type are you referring to?
The hurdle drills i go through 5 hurdles on the 110m spacings and i jog through (5 strides between hurdles) and do; right trail leg only, left trail leg only, left lead only, right lead only, left lead full hurdle, right lead full hurdle. The main purpose of this series is to maintain flexability and hip flexor strength over the hurdles.
I suggest following Charlie’s precepts, but to incorporate hurdles in place of most of the speed work. For example, on the acceleration work, do starts over 1 to 3 hurdles; standing starts over 3 to 5 hurdles. Use full recovery and pull the hurdles in closer to replicate racing rhythm. This reduction could be as much as two to three feet. Only rarely would it be a reduction of less than a foot (remember it’s a multiplier – one foot for the second hurdle, two for the third, four for the fourth and so on. Keep hurdle one regular spacing.) Sometimes, run the hurdles a notch lower. What you are trying to achieve is a quicker tempo and carrying more speed through the hurdles.
When doing speed endurance, run 5 to 7 hurdles, but pull them in closer again – two to three feet. If you do special endurance, you could run as many as 12 hurdles but you will want to pull the later ones in even more than the early ones. The reason is that you want to maintain the quick rhythm, and when doing a longer flight of hurdles, fatigue makes that difficult – especially in practice.
Two days of hurdles should be enough. If you work 300s, that would be a third day – more special endurance. Work the first 4 to 6 hurdles, again pulling them in by three feet to replicate racing rhythm. When working starts, just work the first and second hurdle at regular spacing (or close to it) and keep the recovery full.
I’d still do some max velocity – flying 20s and 30s – to develop top-end speed. The big thing to look out for is excessive volume on this stuff. Because hurdling is like a plyometric activity, it’s a heavier load than sprinting, but there’s a tendency to want to more because of the need to work on the technical aspects.
You can work technical aspects on tempo days, though, when the pace is slow. Here you can do 5 to 10 hurdles, 5-stepping the highs. Some of the half-hurdle drills can be helpful but don’t forget to pull it altogether again with some 5-stepping work over the top.
One last word on technique is to try to identify weak points and then work on drills to correct or improve that aspect.
thanks for the great info speedz and everyone else.
has anyone ever used lowered hurdles during practice to emphasize running over the hurdles and not jumping?
i’ve heard that this is a good tool. thoughts???
You can work technical aspects on tempo days, though, when the pace is slow. Here you can do 5 to 10 hurdles, 5-stepping the highs. Some of the half-hurdle drills can be helpful but don’t forget to pull it altogether again with some 5-stepping work over the top.
i guess my weak point would be hurdling technique. can you explain what is meant by the above drills? i’m not greatly familiar with hurdling terminology yet either. thanks.
you are correct, this is a good tool. depending on the ability of the hurdler and other factors like wind, moving the hurdles in SLIGHTLY (a footlength) can also help with this.
[QUOTE]Quote:
You can work technical aspects on tempo days, though, when the pace is slow. Here you can do 5 to 10 hurdles, 5-stepping the highs. Some of the half-hurdle drills can be helpful but don’t forget to pull it altogether again with some 5-stepping work over the top.
i guess my weak point would be hurdling technique. can you explain what is meant by the above drills? i’m not greatly familiar with hurdling terminology yet either. thanks.[/QUOTE]
It’s just the same thing i mentioned; 5 strides between hurdles, the highs being 110m height, half hurdle drills are things like trail leg or lead leg only and like speedz points out always out the two together and do some full hurdling afterwards to utilise the correctionc in techinque you have made in the half hurdle drills.
I’ve also heard some people say it’s sometimes good to move the hurdles further apart when training for speed. Is this true? And what are the benefits for this?
I think it all depends on what you stride length is, so if you have a long stride then you’ll probably feel the hurdles are too close together to get up into your full running between the hurdles, by spacing them further apart you can run between them with a more natural stride.
I disagree- “Also, I would never recommend practicing over hurdles that are higher than competition height or spaced further apart than in a competition for the very reason that you will have lower arousal and be running at lower speeds in practice which would make the above adjustments a recipe for mistakes.”
I can understand that heightening the hurdles would slow you down, no doubt and i too can see no reason for doing this, but about the spacings how do you feel a larger spacing would slow you down, if your normal sprint stride is longer than race spacings facilitate would you not increase your speed with a larger (more natural) spacing?
I could be wrong, but it would seem to me that if you lengthened the hurdles spacings, that would force the athlete to in turn lengthen their stride. Just a thought.
I think the effect you want to get out of doing all of this is proper stride “frequency” or stride “tempo”. So if it in fact does shorten your stride during the workout(s) then maybe it’s ok.
I think most of the posts lately on this topic are reasonably accurate, concerning the drills. As far as spacing goes, you work them in closer and/or lower than normal to try increase your (choose your term: tempo, rhythm, frequency). Think of it this way, everyone from the 12.9 elite hurdler to the 18.9 beginner runs the same number of strides in a hurdle race. The key to improvement (besides technique) is to take those strides at a faster rate. By lowering the height and/or decreasing the spacing, you are forced to increase your rate as long as you are still attempting to run full speed or near full speed. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we all know you can’t quite run as fast in practice as in races, so the hurdle adjustments in height and spacing compensate and allow you to get the same feel – or even better – than you do in a race, if you get what I mean by feel (it’s the rhythm thing again).
As for extended spacing, you hear that tossed around at times but the context is in pulling a hurdle out (usually the third or fourth hurdle) and then running 5 steps for one segment (sometimes you have to pull the next hurdle in a bit closer) or similarly extending the approach to the first hurdle. The point of this type of training is to carry more speed into a hurdle, again to create a faster response.
With high-end athletes, the spacing reductions are not as great as used with beginners.