Your son needs to spend time on the following things:

- Overall Strength – this can be done in the weight room using basic lifts such as squatting and deadllifting. He can progress to Olympic lifts such as cleans and snatches, but needs good technical instruction.

- Jumps – Explosive jumps onto a box or up stairs can build starting power and make him quicker off the mark.

- Explosive med-ball throws – Using a 6 or 8lb medicine ball for explosive push throws or reverse overhead throws can be useful for improving starting strength and power as well.

- Sprinting technique and speed work – He needs to work over 10 and 20 yards for sprint work. If he can find a good track coach that can teach him the basic mechanics, it will be very critical. Good technique developed at this age will last him a lifetime. But if he picks up bad habits now, it could hurt him in the long run. This is probably the most important factor for him right now.

Keep me posted on your progress.

Derek

Reason I say “Adaptability”(first point) is because during a race anything can happen, unless your a hurdler or know about hurdling then you truly wouldn’t understand; Ill try to explain. Say in the high hurdles race you hit a hurdle, when a person hits one they have to make adjustments in a split second and position their body while running at full speed to have the awareness of knowing “ok what do I have to do to get back in the race.” A hurdler must “Position”(second point) themselves in a right way that fits them but also keeps them in a race while also having to have the composure of not mentally breaking down and losing it; Remember he is running at full speed and going over barriers that are 42″ high. For any other athlete who has not gone over a hurdle 42″ is very high to have to attempt to step over. And my last point is Reaction, once you get to a level of speed and competition it is no longer just running and jumping over the hurdlers. It is now a game of reaction. Imagine your running at full speed or close to full speed as possible; the hurdles are now feeling as if they are being thrown at you instead of you running towards them, which is why I feel like unlike other pure sprinters and 100m runners hurdlers have the best reaction. when ones reaction is not up to par thats when things go wrong. Hence people falling hurdling going into others lanes, people being hit and bumped while in a middle of a race.

Some of these points may not make sense to you but truly do. These are some of the aspects that I have used to transition into football. I have spoken to legendary hurdler Roger Kingdom countless of times. If you don’t know who he is I’ll give you a briefing of his accolades; He was a 2x Olympic Champion over the hurdles, and 2x NCAA Champion and still holds Univ. of Pitt indoor high jump record at I believe 7’1″. He won his first Gold medal while he was a junior in College; He has told me countless of times of how hurdling helped him with football. He has won the award of best athlete to come out of Pitt Univ. over Dorset, Marino, Fitzgerald, and the list goes on. So I feel like he knows alot about it, and was also offered to play for the Cleveland Browns after winning the 1984 Olympics(Junior year of College). And also was the strength and conditioning coach for the Cleveland Browns.

I truly feel if you ask any hurdler in general or at least a majority would say hurdling has helped them with football or other sports that they have played. Unless your a hurdler you wouldn’t truly know the benefits of it with football. Its always easy to judge from the outside unless you yourself have done it.

If you like your brain science/neuroscience material then I’ve found the following resource provides some really great info (albeit with more of emphasis on pain and its associated processes, much is still relevant to movement development in my opinion) :

http://bodyinmind.org/about-bim/

Really great collaboration of elite researchers currently active in the field, including David Butler and Lorimer Moseley who wrote “Explain Pain”, another great read.

Appreciate the responses, have a great holiday.

In some ways I wish I could impart these abilities to athletes. However, it becomes a numbers game and once in a while one of these athletes will cross your path and you will be amazed at their abilities – sometimes in spite of their physical limitations. I think it does make us think more about multi-lateral development as opposed to early specialization and isolation of athletes to one sport.