High cadence and short legs as a hurdler? Should I try to increase stride length and decrease cadence?

What grade and are you male or female? Which hurdle race? 100, 300 400?

Do some critical thinking before you put your math pen to paper.

Optimum stride length is a function of distance between hurdles and changes with each hurdles event. You may need to lengthen of shorten your natural stride length over those distances to hit it.

Mile pace stride info is of no value in 60, 300 or 400m hurdle races.

Do some trial and error races to give you an idea of what you need to do stridewise.

Cadence issues come into play well after you get your steps down.

Learn to hurdle with both legs in the leading position.

Re 5'1" : Kendi Harrison & Brianna Rollins are both a shade over 5'4" and are two of the shorter 100m hurdlers yet they are ranked 1&2 in the world.

Have fun. Enjoy the process of exploring your potentials.

Female, 300H. Also slow— I was at 4:30 mile pace in the video but my actual mile is nowhere near 4:30 (obviously lol).

I'm working on getting comfortable hurdling with either leg (and just getting better in general). Of course I have to adjust my stride at least a little to hurdle correctly. It seems like it's commonly accepted that fewer steps is better, but I don't understand why if two runners run the same pace, the one with fewer steps is better? In the 300H, not the 100H.

One purpose of training is to figure out what works best for you. Increasing stride length usually is not the answer. Developing explosiveness and finding your ideal cadence will work better. At some point you may have to acknowledge that at your height the 400m hurdles may not be your best event. How much do you weigh and what kind of sprint speed do you have?

Oh, and if you develop more explosiveness your stride length will increase without any adjustment on your part. Many people confuse leg length and how far a runner extends the legs as the only contributors to "stride length". You can shorten your leg extension and increase stride length. Someone with shorter legs can have a longer stride length than someone with longer legs. (Middle/distance runners seem to understand this the least.)

As long as your goal isn't to be elite, I wouldn't worry about your stride length for the 300 or 400m hurdles.

The reason you may hear discussions of stride length is because at the top levels of the 400m hurdles, everybody takes the same number of strides for the first half of the race or longer.

Anybody doing a different number is likely to either take one more step (therefore using the "wrong" lead leg half the time) or be forced to take two extra steps, which would slow them down. Most likely, somebody would have to be extremely short for 2 extra steps between hurdles to match their natural stride length at elite 400m hurdle speeds, and 5'1" isn't quite that short.

However, even at "very good" high school levels, counting steps is unusual beyond one or two hurdles, the skill and strength just aren't developed to that point yet. So your very high natural cadence isn't a handicap in and of itself.

The question is why you have such high turnover at a modest speed? Stride length is as much a function of power output as it is a function of leg length. Since 5'1" isnt that small, and presumably your inseam is proportionate to your height, something is limiting your power output. It could be technique (this would make sense for a distance runner trying to sprint) or lack of natural sprinting ability.

It's hard to say anything else without seeing you run and hurdle.

Anyway, work on your sprint form in case that is the issue. Then learn to alternate smoothly over the hurdles and learn to sprint through the hurdles rather than jump them. If you can learn those two things, you'll beat all but the best high school 300m hurdle girls even if you never develop any sprint speed, since 90% of the competition will be hopping up over that 30 inch hurdle like it's made of poisonous snakes trying to jump up and get you.

Practice some 33 inch hurdles so you can appreciate how easy 30 inch hurdles really are and learn to attack them in practice and races with confidence.

This is good advice. For longer hurdle races at a less experienced level, you are better off just running hard and working on your form. If you count steps you'll just over think it and slow yourself down. Now for the 110/100m hurdles, three stepping is a necessity. I've seen athletes with short strides struggle to do this, particularly for guys attempting the high hurdles. No way you'll be even moderately competitive with 5 steps.

I weigh about 105, so I'm not insanely thin but definitely not overweight.

My sprint speed...eh, I'm definitely not a great sprinter, but I think my sprint times are better than my distance times. My high school's hurdle program is small and not super competitive. If I could get my last 300m time trial (in November/basically no sprint training/in trainers/not 100% effort) about 3 seconds faster and get good enough at hurdles to run the 300H ~4 seconds slower than my flat 300, I think I'd be varsity.

My hip flexors are very weak (so is pretty much everything else...I'm in PT working on it), so that may be contributing to the lack of power?

FR wrote:

My hip flexors are very weak (so is pretty much everything else...I'm in PT working on it), so that may be contributing to the lack of power?

Power is more from your butt/hamstrings and quads. Strong hip flexors does help with sprinting in general as all of the muscles around your hips/lower back/upper legs are all in use when getting out of the blocks and accelerating.

You also need to make sure your hips aren't tight. Are you doing hurdle walkovers yet? If not, you should - they will help with hip flexibility AND your hurdle form and core strength. Set them at 30", and I usually set up 10 hurdles and incorporated them as a part of my warmup. Check out this Youtube video for some drills to do. Start slow and make sure you get the form right (try keep hips and shoulders facing forward and not to lean over too far). Once you're comfortable with the slow speed, you can try skipping as you go over the top.

Can't watch the video right now but yes, I do some hurdle drills. I should do walkover more often probably, sometimes I only have one or two to work with though. I've been working on driving my lead leg (using my knee instead of my hip) a lot for the past couple days.

You should do hurdle walkovers as a part of your regular warmup routine. They are useful for all running events to help with your hip flexibility. You should be doing them over more than 2 hurdles (the video shows 5 hurdles, some people believe you should do up to 10 or the # of hurdles you have in your given race)

Do you have a lead leg that is more comfortable? Regardless, rather than try to improve stride length, I would focus on being able to consistently run the same amount of steps between each hurdle. The next time you practice them, run a couple hurdles (with the correct spacing for the 300m IH) and count your steps in between. That would be a good start.

I'm no expert, but I have run/coached hurdles and steeplechase for about 15 years now, so I do have some experience with the races. As a rule of thumb, I would never recommend that someone reduce their cadence.

I'll add more walkovers. With the two hurdles I would do it multiple times, so still not the same as 10 in a row but I got some practice in.

I prefer my right leg to be my lead leg but I'm trying to get more comfortable alternating.

The hurdlers mostly practice for the 100H so I've been training my own a little (when they actually hurdle it's usually 100H height/spacing). But yeah, I've practiced going over a couple hurdles with the correct height/spacing and feel like it's useful

The add to my advice above, plus the good advice some others have given, one other drill I would recommend is strides over random hurdle spacing.

Put two or three hurdles out about 20 to 30m apart, with one on the turn and two on the straight. Now you can do 80m strides at near race pace over these hurdles as the last part of your warmup before hurdle days. 4 or 5 strides at this pace shouldn't be very taxing and will quickly help you learn to attack hurdles regardless of if your steps feel "on" or not.

One other suggestion I haven't seen mentioned here, but is basic hurdle advice: don't look at the hurdle in your last few steps approaching it. Look beyond the hurdle down the track. In the 100h/110h, I tell kids to look 3 hurdles ahead as they attack each hurdle. In the 300m, just keep your focus straight ahead. If you stare down the hurdle, you will stutter step, then hop really high, then hit the hurdle, the triple whammy to kill a hurdle time.

Thanks! I'm trying to work on running over instead of jumping over, I'll try looking past it instead of at it, I think that'll help.

I've heard of doing random spacing, I'll implement those as well.

Another drill that I plan on doing is trying to run sets on my non-preferred leg— making me more comfortable with the leg and giving me practice controlling which leg I want to use.

About how many days per week should I be hurdling (actual hurdles, not just drills)? I'm planning on training distance then doing hurdle stuff afterward, maybe slightly modifying the distance workouts. I'm going to talk to my coach about getting a plan set up.