How to Alternate Steps Running Hurdles: Hurdle Agility Drills

Video Transcript

"We did some walking, we did some skipping. I want to take you into a running drill going over three hurdles. What's interesting about this drill is that normally when you're in competition in a 100-meter hurdle, you're going to do 3 steps in between each hurdle. For the women, 8 meters separate the hurdles, for the men it's about 10 meters in between. So, ideally you want to do 3 steps in between each hurdle. But, for this exercise I'm going to actually do 4 steps just to show you that alternating is also an option. Some coaches actually train their athletes to be alternate hurdlers. Especially in high school you'll notice that for the 100-meter hurdlers a lot of high school students can do 4 steps in between. When it gets to the collegiate level that tends to die down and you do 3 steps in between. But, when you get to the 400-meter hurdles it really, really comes in handy with the 400 meter hurdles to do alternating steps. If you land on...your dominate leg is your lead leg, your less dominate leg is your trail leg. So, if you land on your trail leg you can actually still go over the hurdle with some control. Also, when fatigue hits in you're not always able to get the same number of steps in between the hurdles as you go around the track. So, to be able to alternate helps you and it allows you cushion and saves you a lot of airtime when you're going over the hurdle if you know how to alternate. I'm going to go over the first hurdle with my lead leg, left leg lead. I'm going to do the second hurdle with my trail leg going over as my lead. The third hurdle I'll go back to my left leg lead and finish up that exercise. That's just going over 100 meter hurdles with alternating steps."