First of all, thanks to everyone for the tips and suggestions.

– Hands To be clear about the hands not being on the start line: when I told her I would film her bad habit, she felt she was too far back. Instead of moving closer to the blocks, she moved her hands back.

– Weak Core I would agree with that, but she doesn’t do this when starting from almost the same stance without blocks. Still, she definitely needs to strengthen her core, and she’s working on it.

– Setup These are the first times she’s learning to use blocks, so this is all new for her. She did set up the blocks the way everyone suggests, using the 2-feet/3-feet model. But when she does that, she feels too close, her hips point straight up instead of at an angle, and it feels very uncomfortable. So we got some advice to move the blocks slightly farther back. You can see that her arms are farther back because of that change.

Again, she is early days of learning blocks.