I'm helping some young people who are taking up steeplechase. It was my event 20-25 years back and I was OK, just sub 9:00.
When I was young, it was unheard of to hurdle the water jump. Everyone put one foot on top. I now see Kenyan ladies doing it all the time, and the odd man too. I also know one or two club athletes who did it by accident and found it worked pretty well for them.
Has anyone here tried it? If so, how did it work for you?
Thanks,
It was my event about 15 years ago, and we always did a foot on top as well. The two Kenyans on our team usually finished the race with dry feet.
It was my event 10 years ago, and I mostly pushed off the barrier. I was a 9:10 guy. I practiced doing it both ways, and hurdling the barrier seemed a little quicker but seemed to take a little more energy to land out or shallow in the pit. Also, your steps need to work out just right on the run up for it to feel relaxed and efficient to give the big push and hurdle the pit. There is a lot more leeway for steps not being right and getting on top of the barrier to push past the pit. When I was racing I only saw Kenyans consistently hurdling the water jump.
best advice is to do what's most comfortable. have your athletes push off from both legs, so they know how to react when they get to the water jump and something goes wrong. Also, try standing in front of them, or put cones in certain zones to force them to jump/ land in different areas. races are never like practice where it's just one person in the take-off and landing zone by themselves.
hurdling the water jump is quicker overall, and can save about a half second, but i noticed that the biggest boost came in adrenaline (both from me doing it), but also the crowd factor. they usually gave a big cheer. that's the best part of the steeple: it's the only distance race that non-distance people like to watch, so the crowd is in your favor. use them to your advantage.
when pushing off the barrier, many people mistakenly go up, and then drop, leaving their arms way up high. make sure to teach your athletes to really extend their push-off leg (it may seem counter intuitive to keep the foot on the barrier for that extra half second), but the goal is to the leg as a lever to push the body off the barrier. allow the body to catch up to the foot, to use that momentum and reduce the leg's work in pushing. if this is done properly, momentum will be naturally carried all the way through the water jump and will allow the athlete to resume natural running speed within 1-2 steps. this is the best place/ way to drop an opponent.
The arms are integral to pushing off correctly, and it's pretty simple to coach: teach your athletes to keep the hands under the arm-pits. Simple as that.
One of the greatest races I ever saw was a steeple which came down to the last lap in which the eventual winner took off down the backstretch and hurdled the last waterpit. I wish I could tell you what the final 400 was, but it was incredible to watch because it was a neck and neck battle until he blew the race open with the final lap. This was at Yale's track in the 90s...it was either IC4As or some kind of CT college meet. The guy was a stud Yale XC runner - can't remember his name.
You need to be moving very fast to make it worth hurdling the water pit. I wouldn't even consider it unless you're doing 70 second laps.
I also saw a great race like that. It was NCAA Division 3 nationals, I think 2003. There were 2 or 3 guys neck and neck at the water jump, one of them accelerated, hurdled the jump, and ran away with it. 8:5x race. Seemed like a great strategy for the last lap of a championship race.