Three.
Step.
Rhythm.
The space between hurdles is the heartbeat of the race. Boys 110m and Girls 100m share one truth: three strides between every barrier, repeated nine times. Lock the cadence, hold the contact times, and decay never gets a chance to start.
One gap, three strides.
Touchdown after the hurdle, three sprint strides, takeoff into the next. Repeated nine times, this loop is the heartbeat. The athlete who keeps it tight at H10 is the one who wins.
Boys 110m Hurdles
Girls 100m Hurdles
Land, three, attack.
Every gap divides into a landing zone, three sprint strides, and a takeoff zone. The numbers are tighter for girls, but the architecture is identical. Read the diagram from left (last hurdle cleared) to right (next hurdle attack).
◆ Reading the Diagram
Touchdown closes the hurdle. The trail leg leads with the knee and comes through; the ball of the trail foot, semi-relaxed but pulled tight, snaps down in good position to keep running off the hurdle. The arms parallel the legs: active, ripping arms set the cadence as much as the feet do. Stride lengths between are sprint strides under hurdle constraint, compressed by upright posture and the need to set the next attack.
The numbers on the lane diagrams are general guidelines, not exact targets. Beginning hurdlers land at the longer end; advanced hurdlers compress the touchdown toward 3 ft. Never think about jumping; think about slicing through the hurdle with an aggressive sprint stride. The hurdle clearance is a sprint stride that goes a little higher, not a leap.
Boys · 30 ft (9.14 m) gap
// Touchdown 3 ft 7 in (goal: ~3 ft) → Takeoff 7 ft 0 inGirls · 27 ft 11 in (8.50 m) gap
// Touchdown 3 ft 5 in (goal: ~3 ft) → Takeoff 6 ft 7 in◆ Three Mistakes To Avoid: Frankenstein, Leap, Duck
If you find yourself reaching between hurdles, your rhythm is broken. Reaching becomes Frankenstein walking (long, stiff strides), leap walking (jumping out of one stride to reach the next), or duck walking (compressed, rocking strides because you came down too far past the hurdle and now have to chop two quick steps to recover). Never think about jumping; think about slicing through the hurdle with an aggressive sprint stride.
Fix it in practice with discounted spacing: shorten the hurdle distances until the three-step rhythm returns, then walk them out toward race spacing. Attack tight, snap the lead leg heel down close, drive the trail leg knee through with a strong, active pull, and the normal sprint frequency holds. If you cleared the hurdle too high, you will land too far past it, and the run-off is gone.
◆ Tighter Touchdown = More Room To Run
This is the core insight: landing tighter physically gives you more room to run, not less. The total clearance shrinks; the three sprint strides between hurdles get longer; horizontal power and rhythm hold.
Boys 110m, 30 ft (9.14 m) gap. Floating to 3 ft 7 in leaves 19.42 ft for the three sprint strides, average stride 6.47 ft. Snapping down to 3 ft leaves 20.0 ft, average stride 6.67 ft. That is roughly a foot of running real estate per gap, repeated nine times.
Girls 100m, 27 ft 11 in (8.50 m) gap. Floating to 3 ft 5 in leaves 17.89 ft, average stride 5.96 ft. Tighter at 3 ft leaves 18.30 ft, average stride 6.10 ft.
Elite analyses show an optimal takeoff to touchdown clearance ratio near 65 to 35. The 7 ft / 3 ft goal hits 70 to 30, very close to the elite mark, and it preserves horizontal velocity through the gap.
Hold the middle, protect the gap.
Stride 2 is always the longest, the recovery breath of the rhythm. Land, push, speed, attack. You make the rhythm not just with your lower half and not just with your top half: you make it with both working together. Active arms drive the feet; quiet feet hold the splits. The benchmarks below are general guidelines, not exact targets: beginning and developing hurdlers land at the longer end (3 ft 5 in to 3 ft 7 in), while advanced hurdlers push the touchdown toward 3 ft, which expands the three sprint strides and protects the rhythm. Use the bars to measure where you are; set goals within that range.
Quiet feet, loud splits.
Elite hurdlers hold ground contact between 0.10 and 0.12 seconds across the run. The trick is up top: active, ripping arms keep contact times short. When the arms get heavy late in the race, contact creeps up, the foot stays down, and the gap is suddenly too long.
Read the race in three zones. Zone 1, hurdles 1 to 3, is acceleration: touchdowns are naturally tight here because top speed is not yet reached, and the focus is aggressive cadence. Zone 2, hurdles 4 to 7, is max velocity and the most dangerous: hurdles seem to rush at you, athletes panic, float their landings, and crowd the next barrier. Zone 3, hurdles 8 to 10, is fatigue management: muscle memory of the tight touchdown carries you through, with the trail leg recovery and visual steering doing the work.
One snaps, one folds.
Two limbs, two jobs, one rhythm. The lead leg drives the knee high, dorsiflexes the foot, and snaps the heel down parallel to the top of the hurdle, then past it. The trail leg pulls through with the knee leading, parallel to the top of the hurdle, foot semi-relaxed but pulled tight, getting ready for ground contact. The arms parallel the legs: the lead-side arm reaches and recovers, the trail-side elbow rips tight to the ribs. Active, ripping arms set the cadence as much as the feet do.
Cue it as explode twice: explode UP into the takeoff with violent knee drive and hip displacement, then explode DOWN out of the apex with a boom-boom heel snap to the track. The second explosion is the one most athletes skip, and it is the one that makes the touchdown tight. The lead foot pulls back under the hips, hamstring-dominant, in a cut-like step rather than a heel-first reach, so ground reaction force pushes you forward, not back.
| Athlete | Lead Knee Drive Height | Lead Foot | Lead Action | Trail Knee Path | Trail Foot | Trail Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boys 110m | ~38 in(0.97 m off track) | Dorsiflexed, toes up | Knee up, snap heel down parallel to top of hurdle, then past | Knee leads, parallel to top of hurdle | Semi-relaxed but pulled tight, ready for ground contact | Knee through, ball of foot snaps down to run off the hurdle |
| Girls 100m | ~33 in(0.84 m off track) | Dorsiflexed, toes up | Quick lead, snap heel parallel to top of hurdle, fast clear | Knee leads, parallel to top of hurdle | Semi-relaxed but pulled tight, ready for ground contact | Compact pull, ball of foot snaps down, sprint off the hurdle |
◆ Arms Set the Cadence
Arms parallel the legs. Active, ripping arms keep the feet quiet. The lead-side arm reaches forward and recovers; the trail-side elbow drives back tight to the ribs, then comes through with the knee. Quiet feet, loud splits, only when the arms are doing the work up top.
The race isn’t lost until H7.
Stride length per hurdle, hurdles 1 through 10. Most athletes hold the rhythm cleanly through H6. From H7 onward, fatigue shaves about 1 inch (2 cm) off each stride. That looks small on paper, but it stretches the takeoff zone and steals the attack.
The race, one tick at a time.
Touchdown times are the temporal pair to the spatial benchmarks. McFarlane and Hurdles First touchdown charts let you measure rhythm decay in seconds, not just feet. If your spatial touchdown is tight, your splits hit the chart; if it floats, the splits tell on you. Read along your target finish row to see where you should cross each hurdle.
Times are elapsed seconds at initial ground contact immediately past each hurdle. These are general guidelines: beginning hurdlers are commonly in the 15.5 to 16.0 range, developing hurdlers in 14.8 to 15.5, advanced varsity in 14.4 to 14.8, elite high school under 14.4.
| Target | H1 | H2 | H3 | H4 | H5 | H6 | H7 | H8 | H9 | H10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14.0 | 2.5 | 3.6 | 4.6 | 5.7 | 6.8 | 7.9 | 9.0 | 10.1 | 11.2 | 12.4 |
| 14.4 | 2.6 | 3.6 | 4.7 | 5.8 | 6.9 | 8.1 | 9.3 | 10.5 | 11.7 | 12.9 |
| 14.8 | 2.6 | 3.7 | 4.7 | 5.8 | 7.0 | 8.2 | 9.4 | 10.6 | 11.8 | 13.0 |
| 15.0 | 2.6 | 3.7 | 4.9 | 6.0 | 7.2 | 8.3 | 9.5 | 10.7 | 12.0 | 13.2 |
| 15.5 | 2.7 | 3.8 | 5.0 | 6.2 | 7.4 | 8.6 | 9.8 | 11.0 | 12.3 | 13.6 |
| 16.0 | 2.8 | 3.9 | 5.1 | 6.4 | 7.6 | 8.8 | 10.1 | 11.3 | 12.6 | 14.0 |
| Target | H1 | H2 | H3 | H4 | H5 | H6 | H7 | H8 | H9 | H10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14.0 | 2.5 | 3.5 | 4.6 | 5.7 | 6.9 | 8.1 | 9.3 | 10.4 | 11.6 | 12.8 |
| 14.3 | 2.5 | 3.6 | 4.7 | 5.9 | 7.1 | 8.3 | 9.5 | 10.7 | 11.9 | 13.1 |
| 14.8 | 2.6 | 3.6 | 4.9 | 6.0 | 7.2 | 8.4 | 9.6 | 10.9 | 12.2 | 13.5 |
| 15.0 | 2.6 | 3.8 | 4.9 | 6.1 | 7.3 | 8.5 | 9.7 | 11.0 | 12.3 | 13.6 |
| 15.5 | 2.7 | 3.9 | 5.1 | 6.3 | 7.5 | 8.7 | 9.9 | 11.3 | 12.4 | 13.6 |
| 16.0 | 2.7 | 4.0 | 5.3 | 6.5 | 7.8 | 8.9 | 10.1 | 11.6 | 12.8 | 14.0 |
◆ How To Use This Chart
Pick a target finish based on your current PR and the next realistic step (most athletes target the next 0.5 second drop). At practice, run the full ten with a coach taking touchdown splits at H3, H5, H7, and H10. Compare to the chart row. A 0.1-second deviation at H2 commonly balloons to 0.5 seconds by H6 if the athlete is floating their landings. The chart turns rhythm decay into a visible, measurable thing.
Practice tight, race fast.
You cannot fix a floating touchdown by yelling "land tighter" at race spacing. The nervous system has to feel the tight rhythm before it can produce one. Use discounted spacing to ingrain the cadence; use technical drills to isolate the trail leg snap and the cut-like step. These are general progressions, not strict prescriptions: scale the spacing and heights to the athlete in front of you.
Jammed Spacing
Move the hurdles aggressively closer than race marks. Boys: roughly 26 ft total spacing instead of 30 ft. Girls: roughly 24 ft instead of 27 ft 11 in. Use lowered hurdle heights (33 in or 30 in for boys, 30 in for girls).
Bunched Spacing
A subtler discount. Move H1 to the race mark, then bring each subsequent hurdle in by about 1 ft (H2 in 1 ft, H3 in 2 ft, etc.). Hurdles are still close to race spacing but progressively tighter, simulating the way the race feels at top speed.
Cycle Drill / Cycle Ladder
Hurdles set very low (24 to 30 in) and close together. Athlete cycles through at a controlled jog or stride, focused entirely on rhythm and arms. In the Ladder variation, hurdles are progressively spaced further apart to challenge the rhythm. The premium is the active downward drive of the trail leg.
One-Step Drill
The nuclear option for athletes who float their touchdowns. Hurdles spaced 6 to 10 ft apart at low heights; athlete clears, takes exactly one sprint step, clears the next. There is no room to float. The drill physically forces the cut-like step under the hips.
◆ Endurance Variation: Quick-Steps and Back & Forths
For Zone 3 fatigue tolerance, set up 5 to 10 hurdles at roughly 6-yard spacing for quick-steps (forces a high-frequency, low-amplitude rhythm under fatigue). Or set hurdles facing both directions for back & forths: athlete clears 5, turns without stopping, clears 5 more in the opposite direction. Both build the cardiovascular capacity to hold the tight 3 ft touchdown when the legs are heavy.