Derrick,
Sorry for the verbose reply – it certainly seemed like you were taking a contrary position in regards to cheated hurdles in your first post: “[i]I believe in using regulation hurdles and do it often. I think it’s the best speed work method for those that can handle it. I think at a certain level you learn the rhythm and technique better when using regulation vs. non regulation. I view the issue the opposite way, why do you feel ‘cheating’ the hurdles is better? I don’t believe that it really is any more stressful…[/i]”
And to be truthful…I’m still trying to understand how you use regulation hurdles “often” & on a “fairly regular basis” yet still use non-regulation hurdles “daily” and “most often”… Sounds like a lot of hurdling 🙂
That said…my original post was not intended to created a debate of the merits of “cheated” hurdles in training (but I’m obviously willing…hah, hah). What I really want to know are the specific training benefits/qualities that you believe you can only achieve with regulation hurdles, and not with cheated hurdles, at practice?
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Why do you think training over regulation hurdles in a practice setting produces the “best speed work” vs. cheated hurdles? Basically, how and why do your hurdlers produce better speed work over regulation hurdles at practice than with cheated hurdles?As you use both regulation and cheated hurdles – your statement seems to imply that if you want their best speed work – you move the hurdles out and up to regulation settings. Are you basing this on touchdown times or ?
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What is it about raising the hurdles and increasing the spacing to regulation settings that help your athletes learn better rhythm and display better technique in a practice setting?P.S. If always running over regulation hurdles at practice will get me 4 guys at 15.0 or better – than I’m all for it. I’m not greedy…I’ll just take one guy running 14’s.
No worries, I suppose I was not clear about some things I was doing. So first of all, my athletes go over hurdles every day, whether that is speed work or drills. Obviously I don’t do speed work every day, so when I go over hurdles on non speed days they are not regulation. Distance is much shorter than regulation in fact, between 6 and 8 yards apart depending on session goals and gender. Height is usually regulation though, whether that is 300/400 regulation or 100/110 regulation.
So on speed days (2-3 days per week) I make a decision as to whether to use regulation or non regulation. So I will use regulation a maximum of 2 days per week (which is rare) and a minimum of 0 (which happens much more frequently). And the number of hurdles I go over at this setting is also quite low. In the off season I don’t feel the need to use regulation, nor when there is a lot of other stress on the athlete like multiple meets.
I’ll split the next section into two parts because I have different opinions on spacing (which I modify all the time) and height (which I believe shouldn’t be messed with as much).
There are two main benefits I see to regulation hurdles. First is learning to get a long stride with the trail leg. I often see athletes slack on a strong trail leg if it isn’t forced. Granted working on this is usually a 16 or 17 second athlete problem, so this does look ugly in practice. But not everything looks pretty right away. 😉
The second is because it is the most specific training possible. When an athlete already runs 14/15 seconds they have probably trained for a couple years already. That means they are strong and fast (I am a huge proponent of weight training in developing athletes so this fits in my training well) and don’t have as many technical problems from regulation spacing. Which to me means they don’t get the same benefits from non regulation. This means they can get much more familiar with the race than otherwise, especially if they have someone to run with in practice. I also feel that non regulation while practicing four steps is borderline useless.
A third reason is practicality with mid season recruits. This is an edit so I don’t have a lot of space, but I don’t have trouble converting four steppers with a hurdling future.
As for height I don’t believe in changing much at all. If I have a 14/15 second guy who can run in college (and thus go over 39s in practice because they are lower than 42s), why can’t he go over 39s now? That just makes no sense to me. Three inches can also make a huge difference in technique, so I just don’t use below 36 for guys or 30 for girls much. However, I obviously use lower heights for drills where you would better mimic hurdling technique with a lower height.
As for how I measure things, I mostly rely on my eyes. I’m constantly recruiting more hurdlers to the squad so unfortunately I can’t always compare times or video. I think the biggest trick to getting a solid squad is to just get good to great athletes who are willing to hurdle. It’s easy to get kids who haven’t done well in other events, but those great or borderline great guys in jumps and sprints are usually who you want. Frustrated sprinters and jumpers are to hurdles what frustrated jocks are to coaching I think. 😉
In the aforementioned high school program, that was the main success tool I believe. All of the great hurdlers in that four year block were football players and fast. We were recruited to hurdles as freshmen and worked on it for four years. That’s what made the program I believe, not hurdle spacing or height. I do think that if we had a better hurdle coach we would have been faster, but you could probably say that about a lot of high school programs and we had success regardless.