97: Lee Taft "Dynamic Speed Development" | Sponsored by SimpliFaster

Today’s episode features speed and athletic movement expert Lee Taft, making his second appearance on the podcast.  Lee has unique experience as an athlete, educator, sport coach and speed coach that puts him on another level in terms of dissecting movement that leads to success.  He has 3 decades of work under his belt in the speed development industry, and hearing him talk about the fine points of speed both reveals the fine tuned complexity of an athlete in motion, as well as helping us as coaches find the best way to steer athletes towards the optimal model. One of the things that I’ve always been interested in is not coaching speed out of athletes.  Until you have a thorough understanding of how athletes move properly, it can be tough to know when to actually instruct an athlete in movement, and how to do so.  That is where Lee’s deep dives into speed become so valuable. In terms of speed, I love track and field, but movement in team sport certainly has differences from top-end sprinting.  On today’s episode, Lee talks about some of the key differences, not just between a track and team sport athlete, but also a court sport and field sport athlete.   We go into the importance of well-rounded speed development, but how this changes as an athlete matures in their sport. He also digs into the development of reactive agility through his favorite games, as well as how he uses reactive versus closed components within each speed training session.  This episode is particularly valuable for coaches working with a range of athletes Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster.com, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more. View more show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-97-lee-taft/