Today’s episode features Lee Taft.  Lee is one of the most highly respected sport speed coaches in the world.  His methods come from wisdom accumulated not just in sports performance, but also in physical education, sport coaching, as well as observing changes in athletes between the 1990s, into the modern day.  Lee has been a three-time guest on the podcast, a mentor to many high-level coaches, and has incredible wisdom on the level of sport movement.

In a world of specialists, athlete’s processes of mastery can start to become “atomized” (my new favorite word).  Many modern athletes have a sport coach, a skill coach, a strength coach and a speed coach.  At the end of the day, an athlete only has so much time, and all training is only as effective as it can be integrated.  Training effectiveness is also magnified by the level of which the athlete’s learning process can be leveraged.  Hand holding athletes through skill acquisition, or playing games on early levels to win, rather than to learn skills, create early ceilings of performance.

What we need in the world of sport is an intuitive, interconnected model by which to better let flow the natural abilities of an athlete.  To do so, having coaches like Lee who have experience in so many facets of movement, across a wide age group, multiple sports, and multiple decades is crucial.  We need to understand movement and motor learning in sport if we are to truly understand speed in sport.

On the podcast today, Lee details his process in terms of sport skills, constraints, and then when to step in and “connect the dots” on the level of external speed and strength development.  Lee talks about his use of sport itself as “the screen” for athletes, developmental principles of sport skills, and assessing “hardware” vs. “software” limitations in athletic movement.  He also detailed his own process of sport development with his own children, and finishes with an important discussion on how we can change the developmental sport system for the better through travel-ball alternatives.  Lee is a sage in the world of sport, and we all can become better through his teaching.

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Timestamps and Main Points:

4:28 – What Lee currently does in his own sport and movement practice

12:43 – If Lee could design an optimal environment for an athlete to develop through what that development would look like

17:34 – How Lee worked natural, simple speed development into the flow of game play with his own children

24:58 – Lee’s thoughts on the training environment athletes are developing skills and speed in

36:21 – Lee’s triage of games, constraints and more focused speed drills, in athletic development

44:36 – Some key things Lee is looking for within a game that Lee uses to assess an athlete’s movement potential

52:24 – Lee’s thoughts on “hardware” vs. “software” in athletic movement, and how he integrates “roll and reaches” to help develop the ability to level change

1:02:07 – More specific instances and practical examples of the effectiveness of speeding up a skill

1:10:35 – Lee’s take on a new model of developmental sport, and how more of the pure form of community and competition can be implemented as an alternative to the travel-ball model

“I like doing a lot of stuff with reaction balls and d-balls (in my own training)”

“(visual/perceptive/reactive work)creates the stuff that goes beyond the athlete, the athletes who things really quickly and moves, and I don’t think we develop that now as much as we used to when kids had more free play”

“I can tell you to run from this cone to that, to that,