How do you know if your hurdler's problem is speed or technique?
A hurdler who looks slow between the barriers might just be slow, or might be paying a technique tax at every hurdle that a flat sprint would never charge them.
A hurdler is losing races and the obvious diagnosis is that they need to get faster. Sometimes that is true. Just as often the raw speed is fine and something about clearing eight or ten barriers is costing time that a flat sprint over the same distance never would. Telling the two apart from the stands is hard, because the clearance can look clean and still be slow.
The simplest test is a flat comparison
Time the same distance without hurdles in the way. If that time is close to the hurdle time, the ceiling is speed, and no amount of hurdle drilling will close much of the gap. If the flat time is meaningfully faster, something between the barriers is where the race is actually being lost, and that is a technique problem wearing a speed costume.
Signs worth checking on the hurdle clip itself
- How many strides it takes to get back to full speed after each hurdle, since a clearance that costs three recovery strides is costing more than the hurdle itself.
- Whether the stride pattern between hurdles changes as the race goes on, which points at fatigue rather than a fixed technical fault.
- Whether the trouble hurdle is always the same one, which usually means an approach or rhythm problem rather than a speed problem.
What the Film Room's hurdles numbers add
The hurdles setting reports trunk dip over the barrier, lead-leg extension, how far the hips rise at the hurdle, and overstride between barriers. An athlete with good flat speed who still loses races often shows up here as a jumper rather than a runner: hip rise that is higher than it needs to be, which is time spent going up instead of forward, repeated at every single barrier.
A side-on camera sees the lead leg clearly and the trail leg only partly, and it cannot see sideways drift at all from that angle. It can tell you the hip rise and the dip are too big. It cannot, on its own, tell you whether the trail leg or a wandering approach is the reason why.
Time your next meet with the phones you already have
Timing, the Film Room and the speed gates are free forever, with no account. A Club plan, $71 a month, puts your meets on your own results page, and one plan covers every phone.
Related
Why your hurdler can't three-step
Three-stepping is a speed problem wearing a stride-length costume, and the fix is almost always the spacing rather than the athlete.
Read →Why does your hurdler take a different number of strides between each hurdle?
The step count between hurdles is a symptom, not the problem, and Film Room's overstride number usually moves before the pattern actually breaks.
Read →Why does my hurdler fade in the back half of the race?
Clean hurdles early and a chopped, slowing stride pattern late is usually fatigue finding the exact technical fault good conditioning was hiding.
Read →Try it: Hurdle technique analysis from video: trunk dip, lead leg, hip rise