Phew! much to reply to.
Josh – thanks! I already kept a log of what I do for myself; I figured it’d be easy to translate it to the boards to get some advice
Have you worked on your lead arm some? Getting it to stab down more over the hurdle and then sweep away. Arm can have some bend, but your lead arm looks like it never even opens up far past 90 (not an effective counter to the rotational torque of the trail leg and also stabbing down helps the opposite side of the pelvis from the lead leg reach to control rotational torques imparted by the lead leg). Watching your faster hurdles the most glaring running/hurdling issue is controlling rotation off the hurdle. Shows up here as well as you can’t be super aggressive finishing and running off the trail as it would rotate you a ton. Your doing a lot of good things, but that is technical area I’d work first.
I’m currently working on my lead arm actually – the problem is that I used to swing out my lead arm really wide, so it would over-rotate my torso, so keeping it close is the mindset behind keeping it a bit closer and not allowing it to extend out too much. I absolutely agree that rotation is one of my biggest problems and getting my lead arm correct is key to fixing this, I just don’t quite have it down yet in the ideal position.
I’d say your lead leg shin is casting a little too much and a little too quickly.
Yeah one of the problems that I’m discovering is that when I’m working on other technical aspects, such as my arms, it’s difficult to retain lead leg snapping down at the same time. Hopefully it will come in time, but at the moment, it’s tough for me to think about both of them at the same time.
Tony – I could do that thing with the med ball, but since it’s only walk-overs, I feel like the speed of walking with my arms in correct positions won’t translate very well to sprinting speeds. That being said, I’ll try it anyway. I typically don’t do higher speed one-step stuff, but I could try it out to see how I like it.
Also 5 step work I like to see a little more of a charge at the hurdle as proper projection angles at takeoff set up the trail (it’s a takeoff leg before it’s a trail leg). You also seem to be a little bit of premature chest leaner which will cause you to get casty and also cutoff takeoff a bit (lose speed at takeoff and disrupts timing of takeoff to trail which causes rotational and speed issues off the hurdle. Lean comes from the ground and the penetrating takeoff and then you get good bend from the hips (stabbing out and down will help with that bend at the hip). Work on driving at hurdles with good posture with the lean coming from the takeoff then stabbing down and sweeping away. Manipulate spacings where you feel like you can attack the takeoffs and finish the trail aggressively to work on the interplay with lead arm and legs.
I agree that the spacings were probably not the best and that I could do with widening them out next time, because I was really cramped for space whilst 5-stepping at 11.50m, which is mostly why the TO angles were more vertical than they normally would be.
CV – I agree that my strength phase should be over by this point in the season; I’ve really neglected changing my lifting in a while, thanks for pointing that out. Do you know of any hurdle-specific lifting? I’ve benefited in the past using some Frans Bosch’s functional lifting. What would you recommend doing to keep my pelvis in correct alignment? Does this have to do with premature lean?