I was talking to my friend and fellow coach Randy Gillon about improving the take-off to touch-down by a work the dirt method. I don’t know Tony Veney that well but his name is brought up by Randy many times, as Tony has some nice words of wisdom of what we are trying to achieve with our training. The Cubans are an interesting set of track coaches as they have some fantastic insights. Here is a question for hurdle coaches.
How much value do we place on take-off to touch-down mechanics vs the rhythm mechanics of touch-down to take-off? My purpose of showing the Tiger video in the Zoology post was to share that the general flight path of the tiger overwhelms the eye as the flight mechanics seem inconsequential as they are relatively symmetrical because of the four legs. The tiger locomotion video creates a gross understanding of projecting the center of mass.The overall goal is getting the Center of Mass through 110m with ten equally spaced barriers as fast as possible. That must be done first or you are starting with a jellyfish backbone model of hurdling. When that is taken care of we get into preserving that strategy by looking at what aspects in the race are the largest time and energy leaks first and get granule to the small details. At the same time the little things must be done daily since you are there you might as well do what you can do.
The above youtube of Allen Johnson includes the track rattle and burn by my favorite flamenco guitarist Jesse Cook. The beat and rhythm is not perfect but it was played during the American TV broadcast in 1999 during world championships. Thanks to Hector for the media clip.
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