The Lab mailbag
Q: "How do I know when my hurdler is ready to move from 30-inch to 33-inch hurdles?"
Three checkpoints must pass before you raise the height. First, the athlete should be clearing 30-inch hurdles with consistent three-step rhythm at 80% speed - no stuttering, no reaching, no hesitation. Second, their lead knee should drive forward and down, not float at the top of clearance. Third - and this is the one coaches miss - the athlete should be asking to go higher. Confidence matters. An athlete who is nervous about the height increase will develop bad habits the moment the barrier goes up. When all three checkpoints pass, raise by one notch only. Never jump from 30 to 33 in a single session.
Q: "My sprinter is fast but has a terrible start. Should I fix the start or let them run?"
Let them run. A fast athlete with a bad start will beat a slow athlete with a perfect start every time. Speed is trainable but rare. Starts are technical and fixable. Work on both, but prioritize protecting the speed. Schedule dedicated block work 1-2 times per week during the early season. Use the standing two-point start for 200m and 400m if blocks are causing tension. Many state champions have had mediocre block starts and world-class top-end speed. The inverse is not true.
Q: "How often should long jumpers take full approaches in practice?"
Far less than most coaches think. Full approaches are high-impact - every one counts toward your weekly takeoff load. During technical development (mid-season), 6-8 full approaches per week is plenty. Most practice should be short approach work: 5-step and 7-step pop-ups that let you train takeoff mechanics without the accumulated stress. Save full approaches for meet simulation - usually twice per week. One day for approach verification, one day for competition-effort jumps. The athlete who does 15 full approaches every Tuesday is the athlete who shows up flat on Saturday.
Q: "My athlete wants to do 4 events at every meet. How do I manage that?"
Have the hard conversation. Four events is a point-chasing strategy, not a development strategy. The math is brutal: warm-ups, recovery windows, re-warm-ups - a four-event athlete spends the entire meet running from venue to venue with no time to compete at their best in any single event.
Pick two primary events and one complementary event. The primary events get full training volume and meet priority. The complementary event gets moderate training and serves as a scoring bonus when the schedule allows. If the athlete insists on four events, make them choose which event gets their worst performance - because one of them will.
Q: "When should we start using starting blocks with freshmen?"
After the standing start is solid. Most freshmen have never sprinted with any kind of formal start. Throwing them into blocks on day one creates confusion about basic acceleration mechanics - they are thinking about pedal positions when they should be thinking about driving out low and aggressive.
Teach the two-point and three-point standing starts first. Make sure the athlete understands shin angle, arm split, and forward drive. Once they can execute a clean standing start consistently - usually 3-4 weeks into the season - introduce blocks gradually. One session per week of block work is enough for first-year sprinters. The standing start remains their meet-day start until the blocks feel automatic, not just familiar.
Q: "How do I coach an event I never competed in myself?"
This is the whole reason Track and Field Lab exists.
You learn by studying what works, watching successful athletes, and building systematic progressions. You do not need to have thrown 180 feet to coach discus. You need to understand the power position, the common errors, and the drills that fix them.
Start with a quality reference - a coaching handbook that breaks down the event phase by phase. Watch video of elite athletes at 0.25x speed. Find the patterns. Then watch your own athletes and look for the differences.
Here is the secret most veteran coaches will not tell you: the best technical coaches are often athletes who struggled with the event themselves. They had to think their way through every movement. Natural talents just do it - they cannot always explain what they do. Coaches who learned the event analytically can teach it analytically.
Your job is not to demonstrate. Your job is to observe, diagnose, and provide the right drill or cue at the right moment. You can do that without ever having competed. Study the event. Watch your athletes. Ask good questions. The data will teach you.
Common myths busted
Myth: "Speed cannot be taught - you either have it or you do not."
Speed has genetic components, but sprint mechanics are highly trainable. Ground contact time, arm action, posture under fatigue - all of these can improve dramatically with focused coaching. A "slow" athlete who learns efficient mechanics often beats a "fast" athlete who wastes energy with poor form. Never give up on speed development because an athlete does not look fast in week one.
Myth: "Stretching before practice prevents injuries."
Static stretching before explosive work actually increases injury risk in some studies. Dynamic warm-up is protective. Static stretching is not. Save the long holds for after practice or as a separate flexibility session. The pre-practice routine should be movement-based.
Myth: "More reps are always better for learning technique."
Fatigue degrades technique. An athlete who does 50 hurdle clearances in a session is practicing perfect form for the first 15 reps and practicing tired, sloppy form for the next 35. Those 35 sloppy reps are actively harmful - they build incorrect motor patterns. Quality over quantity. Always.
Myth: "Advanced athletes need advanced drills."
Advanced athletes often need the basics more than beginners. The difference is they execute basics with more precision, at higher speeds, under greater pressure. A state champion still does A-skips in warm-up. They just do them better. Do not abandon foundational work in pursuit of flashy progressions.
Multi-event alert
Most of the questions above involve multi-event considerations. The athlete who does four events needs load management. The sprinter-hurdler needs coordinated training. The jumper who also runs relays needs protected recovery windows.
The common thread: communication. If multiple coaches work with the same athlete, they need to talk. What one coach assigns affects what the other coach can accomplish. A weekly five-minute conversation between event coaches can prevent an entire season of overtraining.
Go deeper
Every question in this mailbag is answered in full detail in the complete coaching handbooks.
- Hurdle height progressions: Hurdles Coaching Handbook
- Block start development: Sprints Coaching Handbook
- Approach run frequency: Long Jump Coaching Handbook
- Multi-event management: discussed in every event guide
All eleven Track and Field Lab Handbooks are coming to the store. The Complete Lab will bundle all eleven.
The handbooks exist because every coach - regardless of their competitive background - deserves access to the same knowledge that state champion programs use. Your event experience matters less than your willingness to study the craft.
Track and Field Lab - A STEMsaic Media Property
(c) STEMsaic Research Impacts LLC. All rights reserved.