I’m a 2nd year assistant HS coach – focusing on hurdlers and high jumpers. We typically have “technique days” 2 to 3 times per week depending on meets.
Naturally – it’s hard to be in two places at one time – so I often struggle to find a balance in training these events at the same practice. And of course – some athletes do both events. I feel like I’m slighting one group or the other – and it’s difficult to have them training at the same time – as I’m running back and forth. But as both require the athletes to be relatively fresh before we work on technique – it’s hard to train one group and then the other – although this might help the athletes who double up.
Currently – we do a team warm-up (dynamic) and then split into event groups where each group does some form of event specific warm-up type drills (high jumpers will do 3 point line/circle runs, back arches, etc. – while hurdlers do hurdle mobility work, hurdle stretches, etc.) before moving on to more specific work.
I’m contemplating a combined warm-up with both groups – as there are some commonalities (leg swings, etc.) – and drills like hurdle mobility (walk overs, over-unders) would seem to benefit both groups. Beyond that I’m kinda at a loss for what else I can do.
With our training cycles – I don’t think I can split the training days – so that we work on hurdle technique one day and HJ the next.
I’d appreciate any thoughts or suggestions on how other coaches would (or do) approach this.