Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #29: Gill1918 presents Evan Gerish Part 2 "3-Step Boot Camp"

Transcript

#29: Gill1918 presents Evan Gerish Part 2 "3-Step Boot Camp" · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
• 0:03
  coaches, for coaches powered by Gill Athletics.
• 0:06
  Think of this as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
• 0:09
  Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
• 0:12
  you grow as a coach. We'll bring in the once a year
• 0:15
  track clinic straight to your ears daily.
• 0:17
  Interested in creating your own episode?
• 0:19
  Everyone's welcome to participate.
• 0:21
  Check out the show notes below For more information.
• 0:23
  Now let's get into today's topic.
• 0:27
  Lead leg down too early. I talked about this briefly
• 0:31
  again. It's a battle of speed between
• 0:32
  your lead and your trail. Most hurdlers lead legs are
• 0:35
  going to be faster than their trail leg.
• 0:37
  They're over, they're down and their trail leg is late.
• 0:41
  OK, so we got to figure out how can we get that trail leg around
• 0:44
  to be as fast as our lead leg and cannonballs is the answer
• 0:47
  for that. You hear all the time.
• 0:52
  You got to send that. You got to get back down because
• 0:53
  then you can have a, oh, watch me disagree.
• 0:57
  Watch me sort of disagree with that.
• 0:59
  Yeah, correct. Correct.
• 1:03
  You have to be patient with the lead leg.
• 1:05
  Exactly. Not attacking is going to lead
• 1:08
  to an early foot strike. If I am not full, reckless,
• 1:11
  abandoned through the hurdle when I attack, when I go in, I'm
• 1:14
  going to strike down like this and I'm going to plant in front
• 1:17
  of my body. If I'm planting in front of my
• 1:20
  body, I'm going to go up, right, because I put something down and
• 1:26
  now I'm doing essentially high jump technique.
• 1:30
  OK. So I want to make sure that when
• 1:32
  I land or sorry, that when I take off, my trail leg is
• 1:36
  underneath my body so that I can continue to push forward.
• 1:39
  Any, any time that I'm striking in front, which is an athlete, A
• 1:42
  hurdler who is hesitant, they're just going to go up instead of
• 1:46
  going forward. And then obviously jumping is
• 1:48
  going to lead to collapsing onto that trail leg.
• 1:50
  They're going to have to fight to push back up and get back to
• 1:53
  running form. All these things are just just
• 1:56
  common hurdler things. So how do we fix that?
• 2:00
  Got a couple cues that I really enjoy.
• 2:03
  Shoulders over knees, knees over feet.
• 2:07
  Let's draw a real nice line here between my shoulder, my knee,
• 2:12
  and my foot going down like that, OK?
• 2:14
  If I can have a good lean where my shoulders are over my knees
• 2:17
  and I can have a vertical ish shin angle where my knees are
• 2:20
  over my feet, that's a great hurdle form right there.
• 2:25
  Great hurdle form, especially for drilling.
• 2:28
  Crunchy, scrunchy, high and tight.
• 2:30
  I want a small shadow. If I were to shine a light at a
• 2:35
  hurler running across. I don't want to see this, I
• 2:38
  don't want to see this, I want to see this.
• 2:41
  I want tight, crunchy, scrunchy, cannonball looking comet
• 2:46
  hurdlers. OK, low.
• 2:49
  Oh, knees up, toes up, same thing.
• 2:52
  Get down, get down is a cue that I use for lead leg.
• 2:56
  If they're floating, they need to get down and get down, get
• 2:58
  that lead leg down. We got to run OK.
• 3:02
  And then pull I use for the lead arm, got to pull back.
• 3:08
  And then if I am ever just I don't know what to say, I just
• 3:11
  say quick low elbow. A lot of times I'll see a freeze
• 3:20
  frame and the hurdler is like this.
• 3:25
  I've tried to figure out different ways for the elbow to
• 3:28
  bend, and I can't do it. The elbow only bends this way or
• 3:34
  it bends this way. And so if you're here, where's
• 3:37
  the elbow gone? OK, if you're here, where's the
• 3:42
  elbow going? Right.
• 3:45
  So if you're here, where's the elbow going?
• 3:49
  OK, a low elbow relative to the wrist is going to show more low
• 3:55
  variance in running form. And what I want to do is I want
• 3:58
  to go back to running form ASAP, as soon as I hurdle.
• 4:04
  I want to get right back to running form as soon as I can.
• 4:06
  OK? So I don't need all this
• 4:08
  dramatic arm movements, high elbows, things like that, right?
• 4:14
  Although I tell you what, the Ares merit move, where is he?
• 4:20
  Right. Oh, let's talk about the zero
• 4:23
  moment you talked about. Coach Holloway said you have to
• 4:27
  be patient with the lead leg. OK, very true.
• 4:30
  I call it the zero moment. There's a moment if you pause
• 4:34
  that lead leg where you're in the air, you're hanging almost
• 4:38
  like let's say you do like a clean and there's that moment,
• 4:42
  just that 0 moment where the bar weighs nothing and then you get
• 4:47
  underneath it, right? So with hurdling, it's the same
• 4:49
  thing and try and do it. Did you see the 0 moment there?
• 4:55
  There was just that pause just for one second.
• 4:58
  That's OK, especially with the developing hurdler that's going
• 5:01
  to teach their lead leg to wait for its buddy so that the
• 5:04
  trailer can come down and we can land just like that.
• 5:08
  OK. Which is exactly what we're
• 5:09
  going for, drills to build a three separate once we have done
• 5:17
  the first drill, once we have done cannon balls.
• 5:21
  So now they're positioning, their shins are in good angles,
• 5:24
  they've got good forward lean. Now we're going to do three-step
• 5:29
  a marches at 10 feet. OK, They are not running through
• 5:33
  this. They are slowly marching.
• 5:35
  They're going to pop over the hurdle and then go right to a
• 5:39
  marching pop, 1-2 pop. It's going to teach them to have
• 5:45
  good angles. Look at the little guy here,
• 5:47
  shoulders over knees, knees over feet.
• 5:50
  He's a happy hurdler. So this is Grayson.
• 5:57
  For the record, this is not Grayson's first day doing this.
• 6:04
  A lot of times I do have first day hurdlers.
• 6:06
  I don't like to fake you guys out.
• 6:09
  But yeah, Grayson has been doing this for a while.
• 6:10
  So, OK, 1-2 and then up. He's not running.
• 6:22
  OK, So three-step A marches at 10 feet.
• 6:27
  He's got great form here. He's got shoulders over knees,
• 6:30
  knees over feet, lots of right angles.
• 6:33
  Look at that lead arm, low variance.
• 6:40
  OK, that's three-step A marches at 10 feet.
• 6:50
  Once you do that, we've got the three-step progression drill.
• 6:53
  So you've got your hurdler, they are doing cannonballs.
• 6:56
  They've got crunchy, scrunchy form.
• 6:58
  They've got knees that are to the chest, they've got heels
• 7:00
  that are to the butt. Everything is shaped up to just
• 7:03
  go as they clear the hurdle. Well now we got to do the
• 7:09
  three-step progression. So here's what I do.
• 7:11
  I put hurdle one on the yellow mark on hurdle one.
• 7:15
  Then I go 11 feet, I go 11 feet, push it to 13, another
• 7:21
  131517191921. By 21 the athlete is fully
• 7:28
  running and three stepping. OK, you've set them up at 11
• 7:32
  feet. They can do 11 feet no problem.
• 7:35
  They're going to have to push and continue to push as they get
• 7:38
  through that drill so that they are at full speed by the time
• 7:41
  they're down at the end. OK, this is Abby.
• 7:44
  This is Abby's first day. This is a video of Abby's first
• 7:49
  day hurtling. And so we went through all this
• 7:55
  in one day. I mean, how long does the first
• 7:59
  drill take? 3-4 minutes to do.
• 8:02
  How long does the cannonball drill take?
• 8:04
  If they can get it down, may not take much time at all.
• 8:08
  Some of them may need to do it over and over, but if you've got
• 8:10
  it down, you can move on. You can progress them.
• 8:12
  So this is Abby doing the three-step progression drill
• 8:17
  again. The 1st 2 hurdles she's going to
• 8:18
  go over that distance is 11, but by the time she's at the end she
• 8:22
  is 3 stepping at 21 feet. OK, it wasn't pretty, wasn't
• 8:40
  super pretty, but she did it. But she did it.
• 8:44
  She 3 stepped at 21 feet in one day.
• 8:53
  About about I, I like to put it at a sort of an arbitrary
• 8:57
  distance and then have the athlete kind of calibrate
• 8:59
  themselves as they run into it. I don't want a big run in.
• 9:02
  Can't have a big run in. Has to be actually, I tell you
• 9:05
  what, if you put it on hurdle one, oh, I'm sorry, it's the
• 9:12
  algorithm. OK.
• 9:17
  Yeah, I like to, let's say you put it out in like lane 7,
• 9:20
  there's that exchange zone that ends right there and I kind of
• 9:23
  have them just like start with their one foot on the triangle,
• 9:26
  get through. It's like you said, it's about a
• 9:28
  four step run in. OK, questions about any of the
• 9:32
  drills so far, The cannonball drill, the A marches, the
• 9:37
  three-step progression drill. OK on these.
• 9:41
  So this is for your beginning beginners.
• 9:44
  Are these things that you tend to do with your kiddos still
• 9:47
  after they've got it figured out or do you start cutting, say
• 9:51
  cannonball? I leave the three-step
• 9:53
  progression drill in because that's good for everybody.
• 9:56
  It still forces you to push and continue to to get faster cannon
• 10:01
  balls. I don't have the the big kids
• 10:03
  that's it's really just an introductory drill just to get
• 10:06
  them doing proper form. The three-step a marches I will
• 10:09
  do as maybe a technique drill every once in a while.
• 10:13
  Yep. All right, moving on now we've
• 10:19
  got the five step drill. So what I like about the five
• 10:22
  step drill is it allows the athlete more a little bit more
• 10:25
  time to think and plan while they're still running at full
• 10:28
  speed like they would for a three-step.
• 10:30
  So what I want to do is I want to maintain the cadence, that
• 10:34
  stride length. I don't want to vary it too much
• 10:37
  because we want to get their muscle memory and their body
• 10:40
  used to running, you know, at 8 1/2 meters, 9.1 meters, right?
• 10:45
  So for boys I go 11 meters, for the girls I go 10 meters and
• 10:49
  they are sprinting just like they would a five step, except
• 10:52
  sorry for a three-step, except now it's five steps.
• 10:55
  OK, they've got a little bit more time to run fast, a little
• 10:59
  bit more space, and then a little bit more time to plan
• 11:03
  their moves here. This is Maya.
• 11:08
  This is not Maya's first day. Actually I'll do a full speed
• 11:13
  frame. 12345123451234512345 Alright, so you can manipulate
• 11:30
  the spacing. What I would advise that you do
• 11:34
  if you're going to manipulate the spacing is look up what the
• 11:37
  distance should actually be. Because what we don't want is,
• 11:41
  you know, let's say you put, if I were to have the girls at 11
• 11:45
  meters, the girls would probably over stride that and it wouldn't
• 11:48
  be an actual simulation of what we want them to do in the race.
• 11:52
  OK. So whenever possible, I want
• 11:54
  them to train so that their legs are moving to the either the
• 12:00
  split or the frequency that we're looking for for a
• 12:03
  successful race moving on here. When I coach in college, I do
• 12:14
  discount to 39 all the time. When I was doing this, when I
• 12:19
  was doing the hurdle tech club, I kept it at 39 for the boys.
• 12:23
  I just sort of said, you know, you're going to have to run
• 12:24
  through it, especially if you're looking to compete at the
• 12:27
  college level. But other coaches do put them
• 12:31
  one notch lower for training, but I choose not to.
• 12:34
  Yeah, I choose not to. So then you've got block starts
• 12:39
  to hurdle 7. So I love this drill because you
• 12:43
  can actually modify it a couple different ways.
• 12:45
  So the markings on the track, whoever wrote that knew what
• 12:49
  they were doing, because these things just work out.
• 12:52
  So the distance in the women's race between the hurdles is 8
• 12:56
  1/2 meters. If you multiply 8 1/2 by 2, you
• 13:00
  get 17. If you multiply 17 by 2, you get
• 13:04
  34. The distance of the 400 hurdles
• 13:08
  is 35 meters, which means that you could theoretically go 1357
• 13:15
  or even 159, and you have a great training distance for the
• 13:20
  400 hurdles. It's a 1m discount per flight,
• 13:24
  OK. And you don't even have to
• 13:25
  measure that off. Just use hurdles 15 and 9 on the
• 13:28
  women's straightaway. OK, So anyway, so when we're
• 13:32
  doing the seventh step, we are going to have, yeah, the boys
• 13:37
  are just on the girls Marks and the women, we're going to
• 13:39
  discount two more meters. So the women are going to do
• 13:41
  this at 15 and then they take 7 steps in between.
• 13:45
  It's just another way to expand, give them more time to run
• 13:48
  through, be thinking about what they're doing, plan.
• 13:52
  And then also you can do this for a 400 hurdle drill.
• 13:56
  Again, 17 meters times 2 is 34. That's 1m discount off of the 35
• 14:01
  distance, which is, which is what we run at.
• 14:04
  And so you can break that down like this.
• 14:07
  If you're doing 7 steps at 17 meters, that's a direct
• 14:11
  translation to a 15 step pattern around the hurdles, which is
• 14:14
  what a lot of successful high school boys are going to be
• 14:17
  doing 8 steps. Of course we have to switch legs
• 14:20
  now because even we switch, 8 steps at 17 meters is going to
• 14:24
  translate to 16. 9 steps in 17 minutes is going to translate to
• 14:28
  17. A lot of women are going to be
• 14:31
  running 17 steps, especially in the early part of the 400 hurdle
• 14:35
  race. OK, so looking at this video
• 14:38
  here, that's just that visualized.
• 15:01
  123-4567, 123-4567, 123-4567. OK, All right.
• 15:14
  And then at that point you are you're pretty much there, your
• 15:20
  athlete is pretty much ready to begin 3 stepping out of the
• 15:23
  blocks at at training distance. So here's the progression for
• 15:27
  that. The women, the distance is 28
• 15:30
  feet. That's the race distance that
• 15:32
  the women compete at. The men compete at 30 feet.
• 15:35
  So I would start them at 30 inch hurdles at 7 1/2 meters and just
• 15:39
  have them three-step that quickly, quickly, quickly.
• 15:43
  You may even have progressive lanes if you've got time and
• 15:47
  space to deal with that. You can say, all right, you're
• 15:48
  in lane five. Once you give me two good ones,
• 15:51
  you can graduate to lane six. Once you give me a couple good
• 15:53
  ones, we can graduate to lane seven.
• 15:55
  OK, the men I top out at or sorry, the men top out at 9
• 16:00
  meters again, 30 feet I often train at.
• 16:05
  Well, I'll talk about this on the next slide.
• 16:08
  Build your hurdlers confidence by telling them that we never
• 16:11
  ever train at the regular spacing.
• 16:14
  OK, this is a major mental block for a lot of hurdlers.
• 16:17
  They go well, if I'm not practicing at the regular
• 16:20
  distance, how am I going to know if I can actually make it in
• 16:22
  time for the race? It's like, because we are
• 16:24
  training your body to be able to run fast through the hurdles,
• 16:28
  OK, we never ever, ever ever train at actual race spacing.
• 16:34
  Also a thing to think about, once we get into more advanced
• 16:37
  hurdling, it just becomes math. It becomes a math problem.
• 16:41
  It's going to take about 2 1/2 seconds, maybe 3 seconds to get
• 16:45
  to the first hurdle from the blocks and it's going to take
• 16:48
  about 1 1/2, maybe 2 seconds to get from the last hurdle to the
• 16:52
  finish line. So then the question becomes if
• 16:55
  I've got, if I've got 2.7 and 1.5, that's what, 4.3.
• 17:02
  And if I want to run the rest of the, if I want to run 14 three,
• 17:06
  that means I got to do the rest of the hurdles in like 9/9,
• 17:10
  right? Which then you then you can
• 17:12
  split that. You can go all right, well, a 16
• 17:14
  flat kid has to be running splits of 1/2 in order to have a
• 17:18
  shot in order to not be late. And a kid who runs 14 flat, they
• 17:23
  better get to a hurdle one and two 6.
• 17:24
  Otherwise they're late. Of course, this isn't this isn't
• 17:27
  going to be universal for every athlete, but it's pretty close.
• 17:30
  It's pretty close. All right, so I think that's
• 17:34
  about it. I have a clinic that I run.
• 17:38
  I try to run 1A year. I've done it in Colorado.
• 17:41
  I've done it in Michigan before. If you would like me to come to
• 17:45
  your area and host a three-step boot camp, I would be happy to
• 17:48
  do that. I've got a short little video
• 17:52
  here highlighting the one a couple years ago.
• 18:20
  Depends on how you want to do it.
• 18:21
  It could be a weekend, it could be a week, just depending on,
• 18:25
  you know, if you want to make it a big event or it could be,
• 18:28
  again, like a weekend, like a weekend thing.
• 18:34
  So if we can do it on grass, we can do it on a track.
• 18:36
  Obviously this school didn't have a track, so we used it on
• 18:39
  their athletic complex. But really, it's about the
• 18:42
  distances. If anything, these athletes are
• 18:45
  at a bit more of a disadvantage because we're not on the track.
• 18:48
  But that's fine. We got it done.
• 18:50
  We got it done. OK, how nice.
• 18:59
  All right, folks, that is. That's all I've got.
• 19:01
  I really want to open it to the room if anybody has any
• 19:04
  questions or, oh, real quick, small plug.
• 19:07
  I work for the University of Dubuque.
• 19:09
  We are a powerhouse D3 program. My men's team beat the
• 19:13
  University of Michigan four by one team last year.
• 19:16
  We are about 2 1/2 hours from this hotel here.
• 19:20
  I probably am recruiting some of your athletes right now.
• 19:23
  In fact, if you know that you've got a former athlete that runs
• 19:26
  for me right now, I would love to talk to you afterwards just
• 19:28
  to connect on that athlete. But I am really, really trying
• 19:33
  to continue this program, the men's program.
• 19:36
  We finished 9th in the nation last year.
• 19:38
  I'm trying. This is my second year.
• 19:39
  I'm just trying not to break it. The women's team it got, I think
• 19:44
  we peaked at 14, but we're certainly not as high as the
• 19:47
  men. My number one priority is
• 19:49
  getting girls into the program so that our women's team can be
• 19:51
  as good as our men. So if you've got an athlete that
• 19:54
  you think might be, you know, University of Dubuque caliber, I
• 19:58
  would love to connect with you after that.
• 20:01
  Thank you very much. Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here.
• 20:07
  Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Guild 1918
• 20:11
  Project series. It's really my mission, my
• 20:14
  passion to bring you massive amounts of value and I hope this
• 20:18
  one hit the mark. The Guild 1918 Project is really
• 20:22
  dependent on you if for you to build your own episode, to hear
• 20:25
  your voice, to have your voice heard you have something to say
• 20:29
  and teach other coaches out there.
• 20:31
  So please get a hold of me, e-mail, text message, Twitter,
• 20:36
  smoke signals, get a hold of me and let's help create your
• 20:39
  episode of the Guild 1918 Project.
• 20:41
  Hope you enjoy today, they will see you tomorrow.