400M HURDLES THE MAN-KILLER EVENT A TECHNICAL GUIDE FOR COACHES & ATHLETES OUTS ORK WITH 111 SAMPLE W ROHINTON MEHTA FOREWORD BY P. T. USHA INDIA MASTERS ATHLETICS 400M HURDLES THE MAN-KILLER EVENT A TECHNICAL GUIDE FOR COACHES & ATHLETES ROHINTON MEHTA India Masters Athletics © Dr. Rohinton Mehta Publisher : India Masters Athletics Printed and Computer set by Union Press, Mumbai No part of this Publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Author, who can be contacted at 9820347787 or at [email protected] This book is dedicated to the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) and the Sports Authority of India (SAI) for nurturing and developing Track & Field talent in India. CONTENTS FOREWORD iv PREFACE vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viii LIST OF TABLES x GLOSSARY xi Chapter 1 : Introduction: The 400m Hurdles 1 Chapter 2 : Hurdling Ability 7 Chapter 3 : Overcoming Fear of the Hurdles 20 Chapter 4 : 400m Hurdles Racing Experience 32 Chapter 5 : Speed (Alactic Training) 35 Chapter 6 : Speed Endurance (Lactic Training) 39 Chapter 7 : Aerobic Endurance (Cardiovascular Training) 44 Chapter 8 : Rhythm and the 400m Hurdles 47 Chapter 9 : Training Psychology 55 Chapter 10 : Flexibility 67 Chapter 11 : Strength, Resistance & Core Training 72 Chapter 12 : Nutrition & Rest 83 Chapter 13 : Running Equivalent (RE) or Cross Training 91 Chapter 14 : Structured Warm-up & Cool-down 95 Chapter 15 : Correction of Common Faults in Hurdling 104 Chapter 16 : 111 Workouts for 400m Hurdles 114 BIBLIOGRAPHY 144 INDEX 166 P. T. USHA Usha School of Athletics Kinalur, Ballussery, Kozhikode 673 612, Kerala, India. Email : [email protected], Tel : +91 4962645811, +91 4962645812 FOREWORD Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world. - Jeanette Winterson - t is with great happiness that I write this Foreword for the book “400m Hurdles - The IMan-Killer Event : A Technical Guide for Coaches & Athletes” authored by Dr. Rohinton Mehta. The 400m Hurdles was an event very close to my heart and one in which I competed at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 missing out the podium by one hundredth of a second! The closest that any Indian athlete has ever come to garnering a medal in Track & Field at the Olympics. There is no Indian book written on the 400m Hurdles and this book is an original and authentic attempt by a Masters Athlete who has himself won the World Masters Games Gold in this event at Sydney in 2009. The 400m hurdles is as the name of the book suggests, a killer event! It requires all the components of fitness and technical proficiency including speed, stamina, speed-endurance, hurdling ability, flexibility and fantastic pace judgement. It is, as most coaches (and athletes) will readily agree, the most difficult event in Track & Field. This well researched book which is divided into 16 Chapters takes the 400m Hurdles Coach on a complete journey of the event and addresses each and every component of preparing for this extremely tough event. The book tackles with facility the training issues concerning alactic, lactic and cardiovascular training for the 400m hurdles. The book also covers technical aspects of hurdling, fear of iv the hurdles, rhythm and racing experience. More importantly, a very detailed and exhaustive discussion has been undertaken of Energy Systems, Warm Up and Cool Down, Flexibility, Strength, Resistance & Core Training and Running-Equivalent for the 400m Hurdler. The book contains an extremely well researched Glossary of almost 200 important terms and definitions. The Glossary is the knowledge bank of the book and explains and elucidates the technical concepts used in the book. But the crowning glory of the book are Chapters 9, 15 and 16 which deal with training psychology, correction of common faults in hurdling and 111 Workouts for 400m Hurdles. From the point of view of the coach, these three Chapters are a gold-mine of information and ideas, with readymade, tried and tested mental techniques and 111 actual training workouts. This is a fantastic book which every 400m Hurdles’ coach and athlete must read, refer and possess. It is a serious and deeply researched work, written in a simple and straight forward style with a lot of practical tips, quips and ideas. This is a ‘must read’ book and a tremendous contribution to the literature on athletics written by a Champion athlete . I will definitely recommend this book to all coaches and athletes interested in the 400m Hurdles event but also other athletic events. This book is a device to ignite the imagination. Republic Day, 2020 P. T. Usha v PREFACE The Preface is the most important part of a book. Even reviewers read a preface! - Philip Guedalla - he 400m Hurdles is a fascinating race to watch, despite it being a laned and Tstaggered - start race, as the viewer is continuously able to track the progression of the race. This is so, as each of the 10 hurdles for each of the competitors (though in different lanes) is placed at exactly the same distance vis-à-vis each other, so the viewer has to merely track which hurdler has jumped first to track the progression of the race. As a serious student of the 400m hurdles event, I soon realized that there was a dearth of major comprehensive work on the subject. This sparked in me the desire to address the issue and I started to make copious notes and penned ideas for over a decade which finally culminated in a full-blown research. I happily embarked on a journey to trace the history of the event, collect information on the empirical studies conducted in the past and studied the current theoretical concepts and approaches associated with this rather tough event. As an author and a competitive practitioner of the event I had to shed my biases and prejudices and be judicious in separating passing fads from time-tested long term trends. Coaches and athletes have both perennially struggled to come to terms with the rather complex, awkward, confusing and dangerous track event which the 400m Hurdles is. The reason why this event is tough to tackle is because it is an unknown and variable mix of about four different events viz. the 200m (as in its start), the 400m (as in its speed-endurance and pace judgement aspects), the high hurdles (in terms of the hurdling abilities) and the 800m (for its endurance and lactate requirements). The confusion becomes even more stark, when we factor in and bring into the training and competitive equations, the differently available innate ability of each individual athlete. How do you reconcile the fast twitched muscled athletes’ natural speed with the requirement of the event to also have aerobic endurance? Or how can the mid- foot strike and the middle distance shuffle of an 800m runner be converted to the explosive start required in the 400m hurdles and the acceleration that is needed before and after each of the ten hurdles? Similarly, the hurdling ability, fear of hurdles and the vi flexibility requirements inherent in the demands of this event have to be juxtaposed with the mere running ability required for the 200m, 400m and the 800m races. At the most fundamental level, the debate has often-times raged as to what genre of coach must lead the training for the 400m hurdles? Should it be the sprint-hurdling coach or the 400m sustained-sprint coach or the 800m endurance coach? We thus see that the 400m hurdles is a hydra-headed monster and in a sense is a multi-disciplinary event. All this has led to an aura of mysticism, controversy and inclarity in the best approach to this wonderful and magnificent event. There is a dearth of authorities and reliable literature in the Indian context. Even globally, there are not more than half a dozen good books written on the 400m hurdles. And whilst there are quite a few research articles on the event, they are scattered and tackle just one narrow aspect of the requirements of this event. More importantly, the literature on the event is conditioned by partisan, pre-judged and biased views of the authors who bracket themselves in one of the three or four schools of thought, be it ‘the sprint school’, ‘the aerobic school’ or ‘the hurdling school’! Therefore, a need was felt to have an additional contribution to the existing literature, which was not from any particular school of thought, but one which was an amalgamation of all the schools. This athletic event requires a wide, holistic and decathlon-like approach and that is what I embarked upon. The approach to my tackling of this event is in a sense maverick in nature and the only rule I have followed steadfastly is that there are no hard and fast rules! There is only one thing that I have emphasized, as I am unable to shed this bias.... which is that the coach and athlete preparing for this event , must essentially prepare for the last 80m of the race! If you can tackle the last 3 hurdles of the 400m hurdles race, then and only then can you have been said to have gained mastery over this event. To gain this mastery, the coach and the athlete have to attain a perfect sense of balance, calibration and athletic nirvana! This attainment of balance is easier said than done as our inherent biases, prejudices, body-type and schools of thought continue to severely impede us. My fervent endeavor over the length and breath of this work is to help the reader attain this elusive balance! I hope I succeed in doing so! If I don’t, please don’t blame me.