3 Common Coaching Cues That Kill Your Speed
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TLDR: Three of the most popular cues in all of sport are quietly making your athletes slower. "Lift your knees" aims them at a joint instead of the engine. "Pump your arms" collapses the whole chain by sending force the wrong way. "Run faster" rewards effort over pattern and locks bad mechanics in deeper. The fixes are simple: cue the thigh, swing the arms back, and coach clean before you coach fast. All three mistakes share one root. They point the athlete at what running looks like instead of what running actually does.
Coaches are doing their best with what they were handed
Let me be careful right out of the gate. There are a lot of good coaches out there pouring their hearts into kids and athletes with the cues they were given. This is not a hit piece on coaches. It is a hit piece on three specific cues that have been passed down so many times that nobody stops to question them anymore.
Here is the root of the problem. The cues most of us were taught were built around what running looks like from the sideline, not around what is actually happening inside the body. So we end up coaching the picture instead of the mechanics. The athlete trusts the cue, gives it everything they have, and quietly gets slower while working harder. That is the cruelest part. The effort is real. The cue just sends it to the wrong place.
These are the three I see kill speed the most, and the three swaps that fix them.
1. "Lift your knees"
What it sounds like: a fix. What it actually does: aims the athlete at the wrong body part.
The knee is a joint. It opens and it closes. That is its whole job. When you tell a group of athletes to lift their knees, every one of them translates it a little differently. One kicks the foot up. One leans back. One yanks the shin forward. The cue scatters, because the part it points at is not the part doing the work, and the body has to invent a way to obey it.
Say instead: "Drive the thigh." And here is the part most people get wrong, so I want to be precise. The thigh is not a piston. The shin is the piston, the part that snaps down and back to strike the ground. The thigh-drive cue works for a different reason. It is a focal-point switch. The thigh is the biggest, heaviest part of the leg, so when an athlete aims their attention there, they recruit more muscle, they think stronger, and they pour more power into every step. The lift itself comes from up top, where the hip flexor fires off the core. Point the athlete at the big thing, and the knee and the shin fall into place on their own. You fixed the whole leg without ever mentioning the joint.
2. "Pump your arms"
What it sounds like: drive harder. What it actually does: collapses the entire chain.
The forward pump pulls the hands up toward the face. The body starts to cross over itself. The chest rises and the hips drop. That is three problems in one motion, and the athlete has not even hit top speed yet. They are spending energy fighting their own body out of position.
Your arms are not built to pump forward. They are built to swing back, away from the body, like two pendulums. The forward part of the swing happens on its own. Your anatomy takes care of the return. The work, the part that actually drives you, is the swing going backward.
Say instead: "Swing back." Or get specific and say "drum the thumb down and back." Either way, you are pointing the focus behind the body instead of in front of it. Drive the elbow down and back and let it finish well behind you, past the hip, not stopping at it. The backward swing is the engine. The forward swing is just the return trip.
3. "Run faster"
What it sounds like: motivation. What it actually does: rewards effort over efficiency and locks bad patterns in harder.
When an athlete is slow because their mechanics are off, yelling "run faster" just means they grind through the same broken pattern with more force. They get more tired. They get more frustrated. The bad pattern gets more burned in. And they still do not get faster, because you cannot out-effort a flaw in the machine.
I want to be clear, because this gets twisted. Effort is not the enemy. I want every athlete going all out. The problem is effort with no pattern underneath it. That is a hamster wheel. Lots of energy, no ground covered.
Say instead: "Run cleaner." Or simpler still, fix one thing at a time. Tall hips. Drive the thigh. Swing back. Coach the mechanics first, then let the athlete pour on the effort. Speed is what happens after the pattern is right, not before. Get it clean, then get it fast. That order is everything.
The pattern hiding inside all three
Look at the three swaps together and you will see they are really the same fix wearing three different outfits. Knee instead of thigh. Forward pump instead of backward swing. Effort instead of pattern. Every one of the bad cues points at the part that looks like the work. Every one of the good cues points at the part that actually does the work.
Once you see that, you can audit every cue you have ever used. Hold each one up and ask a single question. Is this cue pointing at the body part that is actually doing the job, or the part that just looks busy from the sideline? That one question will change the way you coach more than any drill I could hand you.
It is the same reason a kid hears "knees up" and gives you ten different knee actions. The cue was aimed at the wrong target, so the body guessed. Aim it right and the guessing stops.
The bands that train the right pattern for you
Knowing the right cue is one thing. Getting your athletes to default to it without you barking it every single rep is another. That is exactly what Two8 Bands are built for.
The set lets an athlete feel the right pattern under light resistance, so the correct motion takes root in the body instead of living in their head. Worn in the right setup, thigh drive becomes the default. Worn wrist to foot, the backward swing becomes the default. The band quietly does the coaching for you, rep after rep, so the pattern is still there long after practice ends. The Movement Band teaches the path. The Super Band adds the load. Together they turn a good cue into a permanent habit.
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 cue I have built or replaced over twenty years of coaching, in plain language. If you coach anyone, it changes the language you use and the movers you build.
Coaching a team or program?
If you want help building a system that teaches the right cues to your athletes from day one, book a call. We work with coaches and programs to set this up the right way for your sport, your age group, and your goals.