- [Darrell] Trail leg, oh, hurdler goes down.
(upbeat instrumental music)
- I haven't been athletic for like five years, so.
- I held the long jump record in my elementary school.
- When I was back in school I used to be in track and field.
But I was more of like a field player,
not so much of like a track player.
- I used to run a lot of sprints and win
by going into other people's lanes, so cheating.
- When I watch the Olympics, people are definitely
making a lot of crazy faces when they're jumping
through hurdles and they're practically doing the splits.
I cannot do the split, so that makes me a little scared.
- When I watch it on TV it looks so cool,
'cause they're so fast, you know,
and they're like (yelling).
So hopefully I'll look like that.
- My name is Darrell Smith, I've been coaching hurdles now
for the better part of 25 years.
Before that I ran them, so I'm pretty much
what you would call a hurdle expert.
I brought along some hurdles that I can
adjust the height to.
These are probably just hurdles you can teach kids
how to work on them.
The cool thing about these,
they just fall down and collapse.
The regular hurdle, sometimes they kick back.
- I ended up getting into the hurdles
because I became a decathlete at UCLA.
That was one of the toughest events that I had to tackle.
- So what we're going to do now, I'm going have Drew
go over a hurdle.
We have it set at 36 inches.
It is the height of the men's intermediate hurdle,
which is 36 inches, which is three feet.
So what we're going to do, we've lowered these hurdles
from what Drew did to about 27 inches.
No, it's fair.
- Lowest competitive.
- It's completely fair.
So that's his lead leg.
It comes over the hurdle first.
Your second leg we call your trail leg.
The lead leg, the knee comes to your chest
and the trail leg as you come over,
the knee comes actually to your armpit.
Lead leg, trail leg, walk off, next.
And left leg.
Now you're just throwing your leg around the hurdle.
You're disqualified, you're out of the race.
Good job, Kane.
Good job, this right here, spirit fingers.
Good job, trail leg.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Good.
We're going to go to 30 inches,
which is the women's low hurdles.
(hurdler groaning)
Keep going.
Trail leg.
Oh, first hurdle goes down.
I'm-a raise them up one more height to 33 inches.
33 inches, after youth sports for all young ladies,
girls, and women is the 100 meter hurdle height.
Go, good.
(exclamations)
You and that hurdle just got something going on.
Speed, don't slow down.
Good job.
You never knew you could do it, did you?
(laughing and clapping)
We'll raise these now for Kane's benefit to 36 inches,
which is three feet high, which are men's
intermediate height.
So 400 hurdlers and 300 hurdlers run this height.
(groaning)
Good.
- [Kane] Oh, my god.
- [Darrell] Good.
- This is really high.
(clapping and laughing)
Oh, you did fantastic for first-timers coming out
to get over the fear to have fun with it.
- The thing you're standing right in front of it,
it's like a giant wall.
It feels like, really tall.
And like, my crotch area's down here
and the hurdle's up here, so it could be dangerous.
- There's so many technical elements.
Hands here, legs here, blah, blah, blah.
And I got caught up in my head.
But once you forget that it's cool,
and I'm proud of myself that I jumped a 36,
even if badly, because they don't let women
in the Olympics do that, and I'm not going to the Olympics.
And I assume that they're a lot better than me,
so they should jump over this.
(upbeat instrumental music)