428: Lee Taft on Breaking Barriers in Team and Individual Speed Development

Today’s episode features Lee Taft, a leading expert in sport speed development. Lee has accumulated wisdom, not just in sports performance, but also in physical education, and sport coaching. Lee has been a multi-time guest on the podcast and is a regular consultant and mentor to many professionals in the field. We regularly consider building speed and athletic movement on the individual level, but there is often a gap when it comes to determining how to use that speed in context of other players, decision-making capabilities, and in the game itself. Lee is not only a leader in building individual speed components, but he also zooms out to engage athletes on those levels of basketball skill through his sport coaching expertise. In today’s episode, Lee emphasizes the importance of speed and movement for team coordination, focusing on burst training, fast breaks, and press situations. He gets into partner competitions and multiplane movement drills while honing decision-making exercises to improve overall performance. He also discusses creating environments that encourage aggressive play and empowering athletes to take risks with the removal of external judgment. Finally, we cover practical tools like sprint workouts, partner drills, and resistance bands to help build athletic skills and confidence. Today’s episode is brought to you by TeamBuildr’s Gym Studio and Athletic Development Games. Use the code “justfly25” for 25% off any Lila Exogen wearable resistance training, including the popular Exogen Calf Sleeves. For this offer, head to: Lilateam.com TeamBuildr is an online software for coaches and trainers. Use the code “JUSTFLY” for a free 30-day trial of the TeamBuildr software. For a Gym Studio 14-day free trial, head to gymstudio.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Main Points 1:45- "Enhancing Basketball Team Coordination through Speed" 15:27- Game Simulation Speed Conditioning for Basketball Players 21:35- Conceptual Training Method for Effective Coaching 23:58- Dynamic Speed Training Through Competitive Drills 26:10- Competitive Backpedaling and Shuffling Drills Strategy 32:59- Dynamic Sports Training: Speed and Decision Skills 39:03- Embracing Risk-Taking Mindset in Sports 43:36- Fostering Athlete Development Through Judgment-Free Practice 48:15- Enhancing Sports Performance Through Resistance Bands 50:03- Enhancing Agility Skills with Band Variation 1:00:28- Band-based Skill Development for Athletes Quotes (00:04:17) "We got to play as, kind of one brain, and it's the idea of, can we see something together? Do we see what's going on together? And now, once we start moving, can we move on a string, and we all move together?" - Taft" (24:30) “The partner closest to the basket does a hip turn and sprints past the person at the foul line. The person at the foul line immediately starts backpedaling as fast as they can, as far as they can, until they get past. So we compete players against players, and the goal is to see who can get the furthest backpedal. And I try to partner them up with even speeds or as close as I can, and then we'll do the same thing with a shuffle” -Lee Taft (00:29:58) "You get two minutes to figure it out in a game. You'll know who you're guarding. Can you dominate them physically or is it even, or are they going to physically dominate you? Either way, you got to make a decision to make your adjustment." -Lee Taft" (34:34) “We have all these words for speed, right? In track and field, we eliminate a lot of those words because the goal is to reach your maximal speed for that event and try to finish first or the best time you can get. But in basketball, soccer, these other sports, now, the words like change of pace, directional speed, or angular speed starts to enter into the conversation” -Lee Taft (00:40:15) “when you're holding back and just getting rid of the ball because you don't want to make a mistake, now, we can't coach you very well. I can't teach you anything because you didn't even. You didn't even, like, make an attempt to be aggressive in our offensive” -Lee Taft (00:41:00) “ I will probably get on you more for being passive than I will for being overly aggressive. I can control your over aggressiveness, but when you're really passive, there's not much I can do” -Lee Taft (00:43:50) “Play doesn't have a governor as where sport does. So what I mean by that is, you know, like on the old mopeds, if you took the governor off, you could go over the speed limit like those the young kids used to do. They get a moped that could only go 25, they take the governor off and they're flying on this thing. Well, play is just play. There's no governor” (01:00:33) "Don't be teachers of drills, be teachers of skills." -Lee Taft About Lee Taft Lee Taft, known to most simply as “The Speed Guy”, is highly respected as one of the top athletic movement specialists in the world. He has taught his multi-directional speed methods to top performance coaches and fitness professionals worldwide. Since 1989, Lee has taught foundation movement to beginning youngsters and helped young amateur athletes to professional athletes become quicker, faster, and stronger. With the release of Ground Breaking Athletic Movement in 2003, Lee revolutionized the fitness industry with his movement techniques for multi-directional speed. His innovative approach to training has impacted how athletic movement speed is taught. Lee brought to light the importance and fine points of the “Plyo Step”, “Hip Turn”, “Directional Crossover Step” and athletic stance. According to Lee, “Speed and agility done right are about making sure we marry the natural movements athletes have with effective and efficient body control to maximize speed and quickness”.