[Music] we will basically go through a practice of a typical day for me doing uh general hurdle work this is what we do a lot at the beginning of the season when we first start doing event specific work and it's also not very different than what we do mid to late season as well i can show you a few different variations that we might do based off the goal for the day or problem fixing things like that so i told my hurdlers will be a lot of talking i might stop them a lot i might over correct them i don't like to over correct and i don't like to say hey you're doing this wrong you're doing that wrong you're doing this wrong and just keep nagging them throughout a practice but i'm going to nag you guys don't take it personally all right so the first thing we do is we find a wall uh for a lead leg cut step drill it's kind of a twofer and a lot of these drills you'll see are not that different but i think it's how you do them and how you coach it what your cues are so that's i think the most important part for today with the lead leg drill it's not just about putting your foot up against the wall the common mistake is you just lift your leg up and put it against the wall step back lift it up put it against the wall okay it is a drill where we're trying to get proper lead leg technique which is leading with a completely bent knee and not extending until we get past the hurdle so we want to lead up with a knee and then extend and we're going to try to keep it somewhat bent and kind of press into the wall which will press our knee into our chest kind of exaggerating that knee drive um we got to have perfect arm action with this all right because it's a pretty simple drill where we can kind of get a lot out of it and i keep arm action stuff very simple i just say you know get in a normal running arm action form and then kick the elbow out okay try not to cross the midline with either arm and your arms are just trying to stabilize the crazy movements your lower body is doing so a lot of people you see are different with arm action as long as they're coming off the hurdle square it's doing its job so don't over cut over coach the arm action i know a lot of coaches think oh he's a pretty hurdler because he's right here and he's ugly because he's right here and but it doesn't matter as long as they come off square the last thing is the cut step which is the most important part of high speed hurdling it is transferring your vertical force of max velocity this right here to horizontal force we've got to get horizontal leading into the hurdle so to do that it's kind of a shortened stride so instead of getting all the way up here we are going to bring it through stop it a little early and pull it underneath our hips staying on our front half of our foot not our heel so we're going to do that as we walk into the wall into the hurdle so we're going to pull it and lean in all right we do three sets of eight of these you guys can go ahead three sets of eight of them take a little break after eight reps what you're looking for is you don't want this with the plant step heel toe you don't want it out in front and you should see the violent pull back pull it back good that's right there lily good danny that's it okay maybe get a little closer kyle so it's not as awkward for you keep your elbows bent that's one of my biggest cues for arm action just bend your elbows if your arms extend they are long levers that will tug you back and that's what makes you not square if your arms are bent it's not as violent okay your arm action can be whatever it needs to be as long as your elbows are bent whenever you're ready you can start your second set very nice lily good make sure it is underneath your hips as possible try to keep it from being out in front sometimes if you see like a soft landing that's not a cut step soft landings are out in front toe down hard landings are out in front heel toe both are bad gotta pull it under again this is kind of an exaggeration of the cut step but just so they feel where it's supposed to land and how it's supposed to feel when it lands all right so kyle what i see from you right now is a straight arm on the way back keep that thing bent because when that arm is straight here it's going to come through really big that's how you're going to land so keep them big lily you too and danny a bunch of straight arms on the back keep them big keep them bent elbows bent good lily could you pause on the wall on the next rep stop okay good you see this kind of forward lean but straight body is kind of you're good it's kind of like acceleration where we want a forward lean as long as there's no bend at the waist that is good that's what we want and they should be able to feel that on this drill is that everybody done with three sets okay so now we're going to kick it off the wall the amount of space between is going to be kind of different for everybody you want to be far enough away this is a trail leg drill now where your whole lead leg foot is in front of the hurdle this is bad you are if your foot is anywhere your heel behind the hurdle at all you are not working a lead a trail leg you're working a stupid lead leg like if you're not trailing so to get in the trail position the whole foot has to be in front of the hurdle all right hands against the wall it's a lot easier with the fence um but when we're indoors we got to do what we got to do okay the keys for our trail leg drill this is the drill that i see everybody doing and about 99 percent of people do it wrong here's the number one thing people do wrong they just get over it and get it over with their knee is driving downward this is not good trail egg action they're just doing the movement with no purpose okay we got to perfect the movement with these drills so my three cues are the one most the most important the knee must stay higher than the foot at all times too many people try to skim over the hurdle horizontal trying to stay low which is also not good you want to get your knee and foot into a vertical force position coming off the hurdle to do that the knee must stay higher than the foot also that will help if you were just to do something like clip a hurdle you are going to be uh less affected okay because the next uh cue is we want the toe up and out so if my knee is higher than my foot and my toe is up and out if i hit the hurdle i'm just going to graze past it okay i'm not going to hook anything if my toes up and out and my knees up lastly heel to the butt okay what a lot of people do especially if you have poor glute mead strength poor hip flexor flexibility they start to extend early coming off the hurdle and now vertical force is gone not to mention you're probably going to hit the hurdle as you extend early so we want to finish knee to the armpit knee to the chest and i make my people hold for at least a second right here show me you finish with a vertical force and you will see that kids that don't do the three hues right they can't finish in that position or they'll do it real awkward like like that so those are the three cues guys another three sets of eight make sure you're far enough away from the wall so you're not kneeing the wall so you want to probably get to the side is the best angle to see it okay i'm going to use danny here as uh coaching cue his first movement watch where it comes from go ahead danny what joint moves first it's his knee from his heel coming up this needs to be a hip driven movement the hip has to come first this is bad if our heel coming up is the first thing that happens the next thing that happens is the knee staying down the knee can't go very high with the foot being higher than the knee so you have to think about it like you're kneeing someone in the chest so come here danny i'm going to knee you in the chest me and danny are fighting so i'm going to boom if i'm kneeing him in the chest does my knee go like this first no it is driven from the hip and i am driving my knee into him same thing with trail leg you have got to drive from the hip in this action the foot trails the knee it does not come up first so keep the heel down by driving the knee up with the hip joint all right go ahead and try knee down or hip or i'm going to block you go ahead there you go there you go all right now do it by yourself oh see he went back old habits are hard to break good kyle good i'm gonna block you go ahead good good if your foot hits my hand when i'm doing that that means you're picking the heel up first obviously things aren't always corrected immediately just because you tell them the right thing it's got to be practiced and worked on and seen if it continues to be something a mistake they make they need to see it on video i'm sure all of you see have video yep how would you uh early how would you correct that oh so the early extension i would just remind them heel to the butt so the heel should stay to the butt even on the finish here my heel is as close to the butt as my body will let me at this point so then on the way down it becomes more underneath the knee and now we're vertical force good question thank you let's see if kyle's doing it right i'll try to block him go not bad there you go i'm gonna stop you guys right there so again easier with the fence because you can get grab for leverage but i like to rock with this so instead of standing there and just making circles with my hip okay i like to rock back and reach with my heel or with my back foot so i can move my hips forward past the hurdle as my leg does simulating crossing the hurdle so again it's hard with the wall but if you can kind of reach back and then rock forward as you come up that's good there you go danny's getting it i think we're all better with our heel right now good good one thing also that i hear a lot with trail leg coaching people say to pull it through don't do that don't try to pull it through it is a byproduct of your forearm and your trail leg technique that it will come through like a rubber band because if you get a good lead leg drive good split between your knees it will come through on its own so don't over coach the trail leg pulling through just coach the points that it needs to hit all right and this is actually i mean i demoed like 10 of these my hips on fire right now so like beginning of the year just these drills and then the easy ones i'm about to do after this guys will walk around like oh god but it'll that hip flexor strength and flexibility comes quick so but what i like about these drills is we can really isolate the movement we can slow things down a little bit and really hit the points we need to hit without adding pounding any time you're adding a jump and a land whether it's triple jump long jump hurdles you are adding pounding so you know i was talking to i can't remember who i was talking to but when you look at it you know somebody's doing triple jump drills whatever going over a hurdle even if it's half speed it doesn't look very hard they're not winded but you are adding pounding every time they land always got to be conscious of it so these drills are kind of made with that in mind if you follow me on youtube or ever looked me up these drills are on youtube we use four hurdles six baby steps apart so i'm going to heel toe it one two three four five six lowest notch go ahead and walk it down for me one two three four five six so there you go the i like more space between my hurdles then the typical hurdle coach i see doing these drills most hurdle coaches do drills where you walk over with your trail egg and things like that but too many people i think stack them side by side i want my steps to mean something one of the biggest issues i see in hurdling is people come off the hurdle and their trail light didn't go anywhere they let it just land but if there's a little space between them and i say you have to take one step in between so land step doesn't count bring it over you got to get going land one step past land again so we're moving and we're covering more ground it's especially good for somebody struggling to three step that has the speed to three step and you're wondering why they aren't it's because they're wasting steps and this teaches them not to so walk overs first thing we're doing is lead leg we are not extending the knee at all straight up straight down so we are just really trying to exaggerate the knee drive and it should be very elementary feeling to your guys or your girls so i always am a stickler on the arm action with this okay if people are going through the motions they'll start dangling their arms and they'll just kind of do whatever so you got to stay on them about the arms and the legs will take care of themselves if you don't drive your knee up you're barely going to go over the hurdle or you're not going to get over the hurt and i do this same height same distance for middle school high school girls and boys all right go ahead walk into it and then land and one step in between uh lead leg first good good good arm action arm action elbows bent good good and then something you see a lot with this is i saw a lot of mistakes this year with my brand new hurdlers that i tried to convert but people would crowd the hurdle and they'll kick the knee out or they will kick the foot out to try to get over some little cheats they develop you want to have them swing the foot all the way up the side post so i think that helps them keep the foot square or and straight up and down which all three of you did great so uh three reps apiece good good arm action good yep and if the height of the hurdle is an issue i won't even turn away a five foot four hurdler i don't care i've seen too many good short hurdlers to say you can't hurdle because you're short if they have an issue getting up and over the hurdle without extending i would rather you go to the side and just get over an imaginary hurdle as high as you possibly can if you can't get over the actual thing last rep good good good focus on the arm action so everyone did three right okay so now we are moving to the trail leg portion this is a little bit more complicated because again we have to get into a trail position to work the trail leg so we have to step all the way past the hurdle without opening up to the hurdle so staying square and stepping past here's what the big mistakes i see are people don't step all the way past and they'll turn to the side what am i doing right now a bad tr a bad lead leg that's all i'm doing i'm not trailing anything so step past so you can pull through from behind go ahead yeah so uh good height lead knee is always good good drive with the knee first movement comes from the hip driving the knee so you probably see similar strength and weaknesses as the wall trail leg so saw a little bit of this kyle you did pretty good at driving straight through without picking up the heel but when you get a hurdle you're supposed to get over it that's kind of a defense mechanism for the body like i better make sure i get over this so i better pick my foot up so it's kind of sounds counter-intuitive but you pick your foot up you're more likely to hit the hurdle so go ahead two more reps [Music] good good keep the knee higher than the foot good nice danny nice arm action good good so this is the first time we're working the pulling through arm action okay the biggest issue with that is people swing too wide they extend and it's horizontal movement you got to keep it north and south as possible so people talk about tracing around the outside of your trail leg knee i just that works i just say be as north and south as possible without slapping your leg just be this way instead of this way good rep good good high finish i like it good everyone's staying square our hips are staying square even as we're going past that's why they're good hurdlers good hip flexibility good so that's three lead three trail put it together walking over the middle three reps of that yep putting them all together a little harder for shorter hurdles so they might make a mistake or two from just the fact that we're making them walk over a hurdle that's a little high for them but that's okay it at least is working hip strength hip flexibility stability glute mead strength all that stuff go ahead two more reps good drive that knee drive that trail knee knee someone in the chest good nice good i like how danny's leg action almost looks like the hurdles aren't there and he's just marching marching real good high knee drive danny good that's better yeah good good if you notice kyle's arm action is not much different than his i mean he's just right here right because the hurdles are low and he's tall he's not really having to work to pull around his knee that's how it should be as north and south as possible without hitting your own leg all right so now we're adding another thing to this skipping adds to the rhythm adds a little bit of difficulty to each one so lead leg then trail we will not skip over the middle though so here very rhythmic it's important to have enough distance in between you and the hurdle on takeoff so we're here really vertical force push down like that give yourself space good good this is another one that it will expose you if you crowd the hurdle you'll hit it or you will kick it out a little too close give yourself space so standing from behind here i can really see toes are straight knees are straight none of this none of this anybody have any questions at this point comments yep oh yes same day so yeah we do all these every day we hurdle thank you good question yeah so these are our dailies our daily drills they are good to do every day of the week if you want because there's no pounding it's okay as long as you're not like pulling a bothered hip flexor or something but we just do them on hurdle days so our hurdle days are typically we have two built in a week and then let's say we have a meet on saturday so we will go event specific tuesday thursday and then pre-meet on friday so usually my hurdlers will come with me on friday as well so we'll do these drills all three of those days and we might do a 300 day another day and then uh one ten day the other yep yeah so i was hoping actually the one of you guys four stepped uh so i could show how that goes but the explanation is pretty simple we did we would do instead of three per we would do two and two so two lead leg skips over here two leg skips these skips over there so same with the wall drills do two and two for each so yeah you'll do one less rep on one leg but you're getting two more on the other so definitely these drills we train both legs equally thank you um so now skipping with the trail leg it's pretty difficult okay it's hard to skip without opening up at this point and step past the hurdle so gotta try to stay square as best as you can very nice be bouncy reach past it get past it there you go good good it's kind of a rhythm that you learn it's really awkward feeling at first but once you kind of go through it and get used to it you kind of learn the rhythm of basically as the front foot lands your trail leg comes off good get past it good good be bouncy good you'll see especially hurdlers that don't have any problem getting there they're shuffle skipping like their foot never gets off the ground i try to at least get them be bouncy get off the ground and be a little bit more of a plyo good there you go good good learners all three best rep on the last one all right so that's three right okay so now at this point this is the start of our practice so we haven't done any running any speed drills yet i this is slow enough to start with colt okay so um from this point we're pretty limber we just got to wake up cinch the nervous system a little bit wake up the muscles a little bit so the drills i pick don't matter uh but i try to go fast right away there's no point in me doing a skips we basically just did those right so i want to go fast first or explosive first so first thing i'm gonna do i might mix it up in a day but i'll probably do about five uh speed drills and then just get right into hurtling so first one i'm gonna have you do a five box jump where you are jumping over imaginary boxes trying to land and jump over the next one at the same exact time so go ahead you can go one at a time or whatever good land and react good you can kind of jog it out to the green line good good nice next one i really like a kind of i think it's a forgotten drill the high skip skip for height because if you look at it or take a picture of someone in midair you're getting some really good triple extension off of that so i'm a huge believer that acceleration in your hurdle race sets everything up so this is i think a must before full speed hurdling so just skip as high as you can good get up focus on hang time good if you look at their toes their toes will typically be pointed down good nice good so those are power drill explosion drill movements that mimic what we're about to do now we're going to go five second high knees a lot of times you just go like in place and i just say jog it out after i'm done counting down so we'll jog to the green line when i'm done counting down let's all go together side by side all right ready go five four three two one jog it out good they cover ground than even they needed to good so we do another five second quick one mini prime times um if you guys don't know danny go ahead and demo five four three two one there's like medium so i would do it to where you aren't even covering ground it's right here as many steps as you can without bending your knee ready go five four three two one jog it out good all right now i want to do big ones all right so we're going to go probably past the green line just a little bit give yourself enough time to really get up to full speed and then de-sell as well three minutes all right ready go good ready go ready go from here i would get it right into uh acceleration drill that i think is kind of specific to hurdling um just working an eight step acceleration so uh in a hurdle acceleration typically it should be a push big push big and then we're going to go ahead and get our eyes up and gradually start getting taller so we can see the hurdle okay normal acceleration as long as your body can stay straight and with the lean you know you want to stay in it as long as your body allows until you gradually come up so i do an eight step acceleration and i kind of judge how their acceleration is by how far that eighth step goes so boys should be within a foot or two of the blue mark girls should be pretty close to the red mark all right so eight step acceleration as hard as you can push it as far as you can without reaching in front of your hips so don't land out here all push behind go ahead danny so his eighth step is right here he's not pushing enough he's fast enough he should be up there same thing we got to get a little bit more push all right so part of it is having flats obviously you're not going to be able to push us as well but it gives kind of a tangible thing of okay we're not getting as far as we need to my steps are a little too short and too quick so i want all three of you to just work on extending a little bit more on the back end try to cover more ground without reaching all right let's go another rep because if we can't get here on eight steps trying to push and trying to reach or not at reach out in front of us but we won't be able to get to the point where we can cut step because we aren't pushing enough at the front we're going to end up reaching for the hurdle stopping momentum all right really push danny really push all right little farther there you go good all right so kyle has kind of a high heel recovery on his push outs i think that's kind of limiting how far he's able to push so those are things that we expose with this kind of eight step acceleration drill that we can really try to focus on and learn from especially with video we don't have time to actually go full speed hurdle reps but when we get to this point they've already accelerated they're well warmed up did all their drills we will go full speed reps over one or two and we will discount height discount distance so how much you discount the distance is you know up to you but for example uh day that we would try to focus on would be if somebody's crowding the hurdle that means they're reaching out in front so they're not getting a cut step and they're popping straight up i'm sure we've all had that hurdler that pops straight up that's because they're getting out in front of their base and they're getting too close to the hurdle so now there's only one way to go to get over straight up so we would i would force them to cut down by moving the hurdles closer so the first hurdle maybe i would go one two baby steps closer to them second hurdle exponentially closer so one two three four so they all have kind of a equal amount of a discount if that makes sense and that's also a good kind of end of the season i want you to feel how fast it's going to feel to go 1359 when you're a 13-9 guy you know your goal is to go 13-5 i want you to feel that or the state meets always got 30 mile an hour winds behind your back i want you to feel that because a lot of people will crowd the hurdle because they're not used to it so discounting kind of helps get your body feeling those positions in the right places but yeah there's not much to that i video analyze and i use all the cues that we just went over in those drills say see your knees lower than your foot your heel came up first or see your arm went straight here so now you're pulling off here so it's all the same cues it's just going full speed now which you're probably going to need some slow-mo video to see better and for them to see themselves so thank you guys for helping me out uh any questions from you guys yeah so the height i always discount boys to the the intermediate height unless they are so uncomfortable with the race height i had two guys this year that didn't totally buy into my discount idea they felt like once they got to the race they freaked out at the height and jumped straight up so on premate day i would say if you want to go to the normal height to feel it by all means or there are certain times where i feel like you're going over perfect in practice and in the meat you are you aren't even the same guy so i would try to expose that and practice by seeing if it's the height difference but i always want them to feel faster than normal and i always want them to feel like their hurdles are easier than normal in practice you