Hurdles

Visualize the hurdles by the second step.

Visualize through the whole flight, not just one hurdle at a time. The body with adjust the stride pattern if all are visualized.

• 8 steps to the first hurdle.
• Lead with the knee to the chest, not the leg over the hurdle
• Sprinting arm action
• Trail leg arm does not pass the hip
• Don’t let the lead leg collapse (Bending upon landing lowers the hips or you must re-raise the hips to sprint again
• Bring hurdles in 1 meter to facilitate learning 3 steps between
• Once or twice a week use elastic cord stretching for lead leg and trail leg strength

Contact John with questions at: jsraff@avalon.net

WARM UP / FUNDAMENTALS

When doing drills think of the following:

• Knee up (High Knee Lift; Hips tall; Tight Stomach and back)
• Heel up
• Toe up (Dorsiflex or cocked ankle)
• Think of rotary running (like a wheel)
• Active landing (pull-push clawing action)
• Arm alignment forward/Quick Hands
• Acceleration mechanics involve a falling and recovery action with every movement being affected by the previous movement.
• Keep movement quick and relaxed, not tense

2 Times each for approximately 20 – 30 meters

Think of putting a piece of tape on a bicycle wheel and watch that tape go around as the wheel spins. This should be your foot. It should come back, under your rear, up slightly in front of you and always land directly underneath you for the greatest and most efficient force.

• Rotary March
• Rotary Skip
• A-Skip RT. Leg
• A-Skip LT. Leg
• A-Skip both Legs
• Rotary running
• Walk overs
• Hip flexor drills – Full circles / Half circles

Do the short sprinters workouts most of the time, with 2 good workouts a week over hurdles. Be creative with your own workouts and incorporate the hurdles into a long sprint workout.
Short sprint means 100 and sometimes 200 meters.

110 hurdles workouts need to focus on a fast rhythm.
It’s easy to get caught up in just your hurdling and staying in a comfortable rhythm. Your athletes need to learn to break through that comfort zone and be a sprinter.

Hurdle Workouts:

• Starts over 3 hurdles,
• starts over 4 hurdles,
• starts over 5 hurdles,
• starts over 4 hurdles,
• starts over 3 hurdles.
• 3 to 4 minutes rest between each start.
  • 5 sets x starts over 5 hurdles.
  • 3 to 4 minutes rest between sets.
• Up – Back – Ups with lead leg x 1 set;
• trail leg x 1 set;
• over the top x 3-4 sets.
• Only take 1 1/2 min. rest.
• Good conditioning work.

(early season)

• 4 sets x starts over first 5 hurdles,
• rest 30 sec.,
• run 100 without hurdles.
• Take 5 to 7 minutes rest between sets.
• Starts over 3 hurdles,
• starts over 5 hurdles,
• starts over 7 hurdles,
• starts over 4 hurdles.
• Take 5 to 8 minutes rest between each start.
• Over the top x 5 hurdles (take 5 steps)
• rest 30 seconds,
• sprint a 60.
• Do 5 sets with 3-4 min. rest.
• 3 x 150 meters (90%),
• 3 x 40 meters.
• Full recovery (4-6 min. rest)
• 6 x 100 m. sprints.
• 4 x 60 m. sprints.
• Take 3 minutes rest between each repetition.
• No Hurdles.

GENERAL PHILOSOPHY

Train 100 m hurdlers like sprinters.
Train 400 hurdlers like you do 400-800 runners.
If you have somebody that is equally good at both, train like a 200-400 runner and hope they have enough guts to go that little extra.
We usually hurdle 4 days a week, regardless of what time of year it is.
(3 days a week for people who only do 400 hurdle.)

HURDLE WORKOUTS
(In addition to running workouts.)

1st week-
We are almost completely in the gym. We do lead leg wall drill, a variety of lead leg and trail leg drills, flexibility drills, and actually go over some hurdles. Later in the week also do some hurdling at the correct distance apart.
One day each week we time them out of blocks over 4 hurdles. ( Go diagonally in the gym.)
For 400 hurdlers we put 3 hurdles around the outside of gym and they run laps around the gym and jump the hurdles as they go.
4th week (late March)-
Hopefully we are outside at least most of the time.
We still do some of the same things we did early season, but are doing more actual hurdling. We would do some 7 flight urdles with spikes, usually out of blocks. 400 hurdlers would be doing the first 4 hurdles of the 400m hurdle race. We are oving the hurdles in a little closer for some people to encourage 3 stepping.

6th Week or 2 before Drake-
If you have 2 meets a week here, we will be lucky to get one day of fast hurdling in. When we do, we run 7 flight shuttle hurdle relays and sometimes sprint 100 m hurdles with every other hurdle removed.
400 hurdles will do hurdles as a part of their interval workouts,
i.e. 4 X 300 hurdles or 5 X 200 but they have to UMP a hurdle with 20m to go.

Mid May-
Quality, not quantity is the key here. We start really watching whether they take off too soon or late on their huttle start.
We are still doing lots of drills and some all out 7 flight hurdles. (We never do 10 hurdles in practice.)
400 hurdles would do the first 4 or 5 hurdles out of blocks. (Maybe twice the week of state.)
If they have leg problems get them away from the hurdles.

1st week of practice –
Coach lead guided Warm up 30 minutes.

• Be very specific and demonstrate exactly what positions you expect them to be in.
• Walk through Hurdles drills Use 12″ Mini Hurdles, 18″ Breakdown Hurdles
• (set at many different heights, then use 30″ Foam Hurdles).

Choose from:

• 20 x 1 Hurdles one every 2 minutes
• 16 x 2 Hurdles one every 2 minutes
• 10 x 2 Hurdles with blocks one every 3 minutes

Weight Lifting:

• Lift light weight and fast reps in 30 sec.
• Pick weights that benefit the hurdlers.
• Stretch once again coach lead and specific

1 week before you 1st outdoor meet –

We always keep the warm up and cool down the same;
Ladders up and down with hurdles anywhere from 4 steps short to 1 step short

• 1 Hurdle with a start; sprint to the second hurdle mark,
• 2 hurdles with a start; sprint to the third hurdle mark,
• 3 hurdles with a start; sprint to the fourth hurdle mark,
• 4 hurdles with a start; sprint to the fifth hurdle mark,
• 5 hurdles with a start; sprint to the sixth hurdle mark,
• 4 hurdles with a start; sprint to the fifth hurdle mark,
• 3 hurdles with a start; sprint to the fourth hurdle mark,
• 2 hurdles with a start; sprint to the third hurdle mark,
• 1 hurdles with a start; sprint to the second hurdle mark,

1 week at Mid-season – (Before Drake)
400 Hurdles

• 8 x 100 meters with hurdles 5 minutes rest between. Full out

1 week late season – (sometime after Drake)

• Ladders again but we start down 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1

What you do to get ready for the state meet?

• Fine tune and do short stuff like the beginning of the season

* Please note that all 100/200/400/110H/400H/ & jumpers go through these workouts. Each athlete is given a workout card to follow. Warm-ups are done in pairs or groups of 3, followed by the workout done together with coaches supervision. Hurdle Drills and Hurdle Runs are subbed for some of the Sprint Work-out.

MARCH – 1ST OUTDOOR PRACTICE

• STRETCH 20 MIN.
• WARM-UP:
  • FORM RUN – STRAIGHT AWAYS & CURVES; 2X 400M
  • FORM WALK – 20M
  • KNEE LIFT – 10M
  • DRAKE WALK (Lunge) – 10M
  • DRAKE SKIP (High Knee) – 15M
  • STRIDE – 20M
  • REVERSE FORM RUN – 15M
• WORKOUT:
  • 3X FORM RUN 60% – 25M
  • 2X STRIDE 60% – 35M
  • 3X FORM RUN 75% – 30M
  • 2X STRIDE 75% – 20M
  • 3X KNEE LIFT 90% – 10M
  • 2X KNEE EXTEND 90% – 15M
  • BATON EXCHANGES INTRODUCTION! (INSIDE)
    (Cover Blind & Visual Exchanges with all runners)
• WARM DOWN: 1X 400M

WEEK OF 1st OUTDOOR MEET

• STRETCH 20 MIN.
• WARM-UP:
  • FORM RUN CURVES STRAIGHT AWAY; 2X 400M
  • FORM WALK – 10M
  • STRIDE – 25M
  • DRAKE WALK – 15M
  • KNEE LIFT – 10M
  • DRAKE SKIP – 15M
  • FORM WALK – 10M
  • KNEE EXTEND – 15M
• WORKOUT:
  • BUILD UPS! (With Dip & Knee Lift)
  • 3X (15M-15M-15M) 45M – (60%-75%-90%)
    From Blocks with Finish Dip!
  • 3X (10M-10M-10M) 30M – (75%-90%-95%)
  • FINISH DRIVE DRILL!
  • 3X (40M-40M-40M) 120M
    (keep Head Down, Exaggerate Arm Drive!)
  • 5 min. Recovery Stretch!
    BATON EXCHANGES! – 10 MIN.
  • (Must Do 3 Blind Exchanges with 2 Other Runners)
• WARM DOWN: 1X – 400M

Drake Relays Week

• STRETCH 20 MIN.
• WARM-UP:
  • FORM RUN CURVES STRAIGHT AWAY; 1X 400M
  • FORM WALK – 15M
  • STRIDE – 25M
  • DRAKE WALK – 10M
  • KNEE LIFT – 15M
  • DRAKE SKIP – 35M
  • FORM WALK – 10M
  • KNEE EXTEND – 15M
• WORKOUT:
  • 2X FORM RUN 60% – 30M
  • 1X STRIDE 60% – 25M
  • 2X FORM RUN 75% – 45M
  • 1X STRIDE 75% – 35M
  • 2X KNEE LIFT 90% – 10M
  • 2X KNEE EXTEND 90% – 15M
  • RECOVER STRETCH!
  • BUILD UPS! 1 X 1/3
  • 3X (50M-50M-50M) – 150M (75%-90%-75%)
  • 2X (50M-50M) – 100M (60%75%)
• WARM DOWN: 1X EASY JOG 400M

Before the STATE TRACK MEET

Spend most practices running down hill.
These Practices are Called “White Fibre”(fiber), distinguishing between the Red And White Fiber Muscle Twitch reactions. The actual workout is made up of 5 sprints down a slope where we accelerate from 90% effort to 95% to 98%!
Points of emphasis are to keep the Head Down & Reach with the Arms!

These are done in a city park (grass) for 50 Meters!

• STRETCH – 15 MIN.
• WARM-UP:
  • FORM RUN CURVES – 2X 400M
  • FORM WALK – 15M
  • STRIDE – 30M
  • KNEE LIFT – 10M
  • DRAKE SKIP – 15M
  • REVERSE FORM – 20M
  • DRAKE WALK – 10M
• WORKOUT:
  • FARTLEK WARM-UP JOG! – 3 MIN.
  • “WHITE FIBRE’S”
• WARM DOWN: (Back at Track) – 1X 400M