3 Common Coaching Cues That Kill Your Speed
Share
Quick answer: Three of the most popular coaching cues in sports are quietly making your athletes slower. "Lift your knees," "pump your arms," and "run faster" all point at the wrong thing. Cue the thigh, not the knee. Cue the backward arm swing, not the forward pump. Get the movement right before you add speed. Fix what the cue points at, and the results follow.
Coaches are doing their best with what they were taught
Let me be careful here. There are a lot of good coaches out there doing their best with the coaching cues they were handed. This is not a hit piece on coaches. It is a hit piece on three specific coaching cues that have been passed down so long that we do not even question them anymore. Until now.
The cues we lean on were built around what we see, not around what is actually happening in the body. So we coach what running looks like instead of coaching what running is. The athlete trusts the cue, gives it everything, and quietly gets slower.
These are the three I see kill progress the most.
1. "Lift your knees"
Sounds like a fix. What it does is aim the athlete at the wrong body part.
The knee is a joint. It bends. That is the job. When you tell an athlete to focus on the knee, every athlete reads it a little differently. One kicks the foot up. One leans back. One pulls the shin forward. Focus on the knee and you end up with varied results, less consistent, usually not the ones you want. It is the same reason I stopped coaching high knees.
Say instead: "Thigh drive." The thigh is the piston. It fires up and down to create speed. Focus on the thigh and you get more consistent results. The shin angle stays sharper. The foot strikes cleaner. The leg cycles closer to the way it was built to. It is a simple fix, not the end-all, but it points the athlete at the part that does the work.
2. "Pump your arms"
Sounds like drive harder. What it does is collapse the whole chain.
The forward pump pulls the hands up toward the face. The body crosses over itself. The hips drop. Three problems in one motion, before the athlete even hits top speed.
The arms are not built to pump forward. They are built to swing back, away from the body, like pendulums. The forward return happens on its own. Your anatomy handles it. This is the same backward swing I break down in the three things you are doing with your arms that make you slower.
Say instead: "Swing back." Or get specific: "Drum the thumb down and back." Point the focus behind the body, not in front of it. The backward swing is the engine. The forward swing is just the arm coming home.
3. "Run faster"
Sounds like motivation. What it does is reward effort over efficiency and lock the bad pattern in harder.
When an athlete is slow because the mechanics are off, "run faster" just means grind through the same broken pattern with more force. More tired. More frustrated. More locked in. And still not faster.
Effort matters. But effort without efficiency is a hamster wheel.
Say instead: "Let's get your hips up high. Let's slow it down and do it right first." Get the movement right, then add the force to it. Speed is what shows up after the pattern is right.
The pattern across all three
All three coaching cues share one flaw. They point at the wrong thing. The knee instead of the thigh. The forward pump instead of the backward swing. Effort instead of pattern.
Once you see that, you can audit every cue you use. Ask one question: is this cue pointing at the body part that does the work, or at the part that just looks like the work?
That question alone will change how you coach.
Quick aside before the good part. I do most of my writing after a piece of Neuro Gum. Caffeine and L-theanine, no jitters, just a clean window to think. Not sponsored, I just use it.
The bands that keep coaching when you are not there
Knowing the right coaching cue is one thing. Getting your athletes to keep it when you walk away is another. That is what Two8 Bands were built for.
Muscle memory is step one. The bands take it further, to neurological recall. Put the band on the thighs and the athlete feels the correct body part working. They learn to drive the thigh in the direction of the pattern. Same with the arms. The band reminds them to swing back and hold their form, rep after rep.
Here is the brilliance of it. When you coach an athlete while they are wearing the band, they feel the pattern in their body at the same moment they hear it from you. So when you are not around, they still hear the echo of your coaching. The band reminds them. Your coaching cues travel with the athlete when they take the band with them.
You coach them once. The band coaches them every time after. Your echo travels.
Built by Coaches. Athlete Approved.
Want every cue I use and cut?
This post gives you three. The book gives you all of them.
If We Knew Better, We'd Move Better: The Seeds of Movement lays out every coaching cue I have built or replaced over 20 years on the field. If you coach anyone, it changes the language you use.
Coaching a team or program?
If you want help building a system that teaches the right patterns from day one, book a call. We work with coaches and programs to set this up for your sport, your age group, and your goals.
Some links in this post are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.
#CoachStokesSaidSo