HOW TO COACH THE HURDLE TRIALS ACCORDING TO THE BASES OF THE “FEED THE CATS”

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Hugo Noya Enríquez

Finding your Hurdles

Let’s talk about the hurdles according to coach Tony Holler´s training methodology. One of the biggest things you can do is find your hurdles. A junior set of five hurdles costs $500. You don´t need 10 hurdles. That´s all you need for training. The great thing is they’re adjustable to 18, 20, 24, 27, and 30 inches. As a coach time a 40 yard dash with hurdles at 15 yd and 25 yd for boys, and with hurdles at 13 m and 21.5 m for girls. Do not run trials jumping at full hurdle height. Tony Holler would suggest when you’re trying to find your hurdlers, to put on soft surface, grass or turf because it´s fearless hurdling. Everyone runs three reps, and we record, rank, and publish best times.

Finding your hurdlers is just so important. You should have a pretty good hurdle program. You should always train over just two hurdles, never ten. Always train fast, never train tired.

Hurdling

We already said we need to find them. You should do anything you can to train with a three-step between hurdles. No matter how much you have to discount the distance. You need to get people as soon as you can into a three-step rhythm. We always discount height and distance. They never go over full height. The first hurdle is maybe one foot discounted. The second rule is two foot discounted. Low impact drills do really don’t make you a better hurdler necessarily, but you need to be able to do something with your hurdlers because you can’t hurdle every day. It’s just too brutal in terms of your shins and keeping hurdlers healthy is not an easy thing. So you need something to do where you’re not beating them up. We always think quality over quantity.

Quality Over Quantity

We never brag about how many hurdles we went over. We spike up because we got to be fast. If you’re not fast, you don’t go eight steps the first hurdle, you don’t go three steps to the second hurdle. 90% of your time it should be over hurdles 1 and 2. Joey woody showed somethings where they’re going over five, but Tony Holler thinks college kids are much more durable. They’re not going to have the shin, ankle and knee problems that high school and middle school athletes have. So he thinks you really need to microdose quality hurdle work. Never hurdle when tired. You come out of the blocks as soon as you can.

Alec Holler makes the case that if you are a youngster, maybe you should not be forced to get into the blocks. It might be a healthier thing to be in an upright position to start. It’s such an aggressive event. But if you’re thinking about going over the hurdle, you’re going to be really slow. You just gotta attack it. Let it rip reck less abandon and that’s how you get good.

Complexities

8 steps to the first hurdle is common 90% of all hurdlers. If you’re going 9 steps, you’re going to be slow. If you’re going 7 steps, you’re probably going to be reaching. So it’s 8 steps the first hurdle. To do that, if you’re going over right legged and your right leg is your lead leg going over the hurdles, your right leg needs to be back in the blocks. Your lead leg has to be back in the blocks or you’re going to be 7 stepping to the hurdles or 9. So that’s a really important thing. Your lead like does not necessarily have to be your most coordinated leg. You should really spend a little bit of time to figure out which leg seems to be the better choice for the lead leg and the trail leg. You always lead with the knee. You don’t ever lead with the foot, because it´s an aggressive hip position. The cut step is holy grail. You don’t want to get too close to the first hurdle. The boys hurdle typically go over it 7 feet. So it seems like a long way but remember you’re going really fast. If you’re a good hurdler, you have to go fast. The girls typically take off around 6 foot 6 inches. Tight arms. You don’t want to have your arms fly around. Young hurdlers will do this because they’re using their arms to counterbalance when they get off balance or they try to compensate with big arms. You want to be high hips. As you approach the hurdle you want to get as high in the hips as possible.

Travis Anderson

This is Travis Anderson, the Illinois State record holder, who ran the 110 highs in 13.59. In high school hurdling boys hurdles 39 is the normal height and here the best hurdler that’s ever run in Illinois is practicing on a 36. That’s what we mean about discounting. A cut step is is best defined as the opposite of a reach instead of reaching in that last step you kind of stick your foot into the ground which causes your hips to come forward into a very aggressive position. Notice he’s pretty far away from this hurdle but we can’t see how fast he’s going. So he is probably around 7 feet away from that hurdle and that’s normal for boys. At the far side you see a 27 inch hurdle and if you don’t buy those junior hurdles you can always tip over a hurdle (have it upside down) and use that as your lowest barrier. So this is a great slide. If you don’t have a good cut step, the foot is out in front of your body and because of that, you soar. You are in the air for a long time and you are way too high.

Don´t Do Drills

Don’t be a drill whore. If you do drills like the low impact drills every day, you’ll never be a good hurdler. You have to have those reps and spikes going over the first two hurdles, you time everything, you video everything, you cherish every rep, because you can’t do many. A typical hard workout for a hurdler is four times over two hurdles. Each one videoed, each one spiked up, each one timing the first touchdown and the second touchdown.

Never more than three hurdles. Two is typical.

Don’t teach skimming, which means clear the damn hurdle. You’re not trying to just barely get over it. You do two or three hurdles. Two is probably best that if you can be fast and aggressive in the first couple hurdles, that will carry on to the rest of your race. And you say: “How will they get in shape?” Your 300 hurdler is probably going to be on your 4×4. Your three iron hurdler is a sprinter, so he’s going to do lactate workouts, so it shouldn’t be a problem at all. The same guy, Travis Anderson, not only was the state champ in the highs. He’s also state champ in the intermediates. They never went over more than two in practice. He’s a pure cat.

No more than 3 sessions a week. And even this is high. If you have two meets you don´t know if you can do a hurdle session, or you could do a hurdle session and not run your guy in every hurdle race and every meet. There’s nothing that says that you have to win every meet. There’s nothing that says you have to run your best guys in their main races in every meet.

Don’t fill a hurdler’s head with minutia. This is how you coach any skill in basketball. You don’t tell a guy nine things to think about when he shoots the ball. You let him shoot the ball and then if you see something that might help him a little bit, you give him one thing. Let’s think about one thing this time.

When you will video every rep and then the guys hurry over to see the video and instead of you pointing out all the things they did wrong, you let them talk. When that happens they start building their own house and that’s really important.

Leading with the Knee

You want to lead with the knee.

NCAA champ in 2012. You see Andrew Riley here really having an aggressive hip position.

Zion Mason and Williams are very aggressive. Their mind is just attack.

Here’s Travis Anderson, the state record holder. You see the big split of his femurs. What happens here anytime you stretch a muscle, you get a stretch reflex, which means you get kind of a snap. That elasticity is really important and by getting this big split here, there is a snap of the trail leg. It’s not really a pull. Sure he’s pulling it too, but that snap requires no like muscle action. So it’s quick. If you overtrain athletes, they lose their elasticity first and they don’t jump as high, and their stretch reflex is not nearly as good.

You see toe out. This is important because you don’t ever clip the hurdle with a toe down.

Another good picture of aggressive hip position. Remember he’s leaving the ground about 7 feet from that hurdle.

Don’t practice hurtling when you’re tired. Discount height, discount distance. Find your hurdles and get a whole pack of them, and then go over short ones until they can go over higher ones. Never put a hurdler into a race that he’s not trained in. You will not put a freshman in the high hurdles until he can high hurdle. You will not put a thrower into a 300 hurdle event just to try it. These kids need to be trained before you stick them in a race.

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