Is a steeplechase barrier the same as a hurdle?
The clearance looks almost identical to a flat hurdle from the side. The barrier not falling, and the water jump at the end of it, are what actually make the event different.
A distance coach moves a hurdler, or a hurdler moves into distance, toward the steeplechase, and the first question is whether the technique even transfers. Mostly it does. A few things about the barrier do not.
What actually carries over
Clearing a steeplechase barrier asks for the same thing a flat hurdle does: run over it, do not jump it. A trunk that dips toward the lead knee, a lead leg that extends and comes back down quickly rather than hanging in the air, and hips that rise just enough to clear and no more, are correct technique in both events for the same reason. The body does not care that the barrier is further apart and the race is much longer.
What does not
- A flat hurdle built for competition is designed to fall if struck hard enough. A steeplechase barrier is fixed to the track and does not move, so a bad clearance costs a shin rather than a dropped hurdle.
- A standard 3000m steeplechase has 28 barrier clearances and 7 water jump clearances, spread across seven laps on a body that is also racing, not fresh the way a hurdler is at the start of a 110.
- The water jump is its own skill. The barrier there is cleared the same way, but the landing is into water on a downslope, not a flat track, and nothing about hurdling technique prepares an athlete for that landing on its own.
- Spacing between barriers is set by the lap, not by a fixed hurdle-to-hurdle count, so the stride pattern an athlete settles into is personal rather than standard.
Where the Film Room's hurdles setting does and does not help
The hurdles setting reports trunk dip, lead-leg extension, hip rise at the barrier and overstride between clearances, built against and tested on track hurdles. The clearance motion over a fixed barrier is close enough to the same thing that the same numbers are worth reading. Point it at the water jump and you are filming a different motion entirely, one these measures were never built to describe, so a reading from it would not mean anything.
A single 2D camera filming a barrier clearance from the side cannot reliably tell a clean clearance from one where the foot grazed the top of the barrier, since both can look nearly identical from that angle. Whether contact happened, and whether it cost the athlete anything over the rest of the race, is still something you have to ask them.
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 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 →Does hurdling make a sprinter faster in the open 100?
Hurdle work sharpens the pieces a flat sprinter also needs, and leaves the one piece, top-end speed, that it was never built to train.
Read →How many steps should a hurdler take to the first hurdle?
Seven and eight both show up at the highest level of the sport, so the number that matters is not tradition, it is whether the athlete arrives at the mark running over the barrier rather than jumping it.
Read →Try it: Hurdle technique analysis from video: trunk dip, lead leg, hip rise