Okay so I have decided that I want to do hurdles for my high school's indoor track team. Only problem is that I'm scared to jump them! I know I can jump over them, but I always stutter step before I reach the hurdle and can never jump it. I also have no clue how to develop form or technique. I don't want to come to the first practice looking foolish, so can someone please give me some advice?|||The first problem is that you can not be hesitant about getting over the hurdles. One of the keys to running them is CONFIDENCE. I recommend that before you start running them, having no idea what to do you need to practice little bits of your form. When I first started running hurdles it came pretty naturally to me but my form wasn't perfect, so i'll give you some tips that my coach gave me on running them.
1. Your lead leg (the leg you go over with first) needs to be as straight as possible. You DO NOT want your knee bent at all. This doesn't sound very helpful but believe me it helped me tons! My coach compared it to "kicking the door open." What you need to do is stand up facing a wall. Now you draw your knee up like your about to perform high knees, and then straighten it out so the bottom of your foot hits the wall. Do this repeatedly with both legs. And make sure you do it fast it's not a slow motion.
2. Your drag leg is very important in hurdling. What I do is set up one hurdle and keep working on my drag leg with each leg. Your leg literally needs to be parallel with the ground. Instead of extending it out front you need to make sure it goes to the side of your body. Make sure your foot is turned so that your toe doesn't face the ground, but faces to the side. Do this repeatedly with each leg.
3. Another big thing to keep in mind while hurdling is your upper body form. Make sure that your leaning forward as you go over the hurdle. Also have the opposite arm of your lead leg (so if your left leg is your lead leg then your right arm should be extended forward) but don't have it straight out. My coach told me to pretend I'm looking at a watch on my wrist. In other words have your elbow bent so that your wrist is facing up and your hand is in a fist. The arm that's on the same side of your body as your lead leg should be extended straight back. Once you master the first tip I have you you can add pumping your arms and working that uperbody form. It may even help more to advance to an open space with no wall so that you can work on snapping your lead leg down. The faster you can snap that lead leg down to the ground the faster your time will be.
4. Ok, now one more thing before you hit the real hurdles. If your gym teacher or track coach has like those mini hurdle things(they're just like a foot tall and they're plastic) ask to borrow them. You may feel kind of weird doing this but set up 3 or 4 of those a good distance apart and have someone watch you run them. Act like your jumping a real hurdle. Use the form and everything and make sure your sprinting. Once you've mastered the form you may move on to some real hurdles.
5. For the real hurdles you need to be as close to them as you can get without hitting them. You have to be really low. The higher you are over them the slower the time you'll get. One thing our coaches did was he took a strip of foam that stuck up about 6 inches above the top of the hurdle. If you weren't hitting the foam then you were wayyyy to high above them. And i'm not saying just skim the foam you really have to feel it and it should be almost flat on the hurdle while your gliding over it. You shouldn't even be over it really you should be running right through it.
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