Dan Pfaff is the Head Jumps and Multi-Events Coach at ALTIS. He is the former Coaching Education Curriculum Chair for both the United States Track & Field Coaches Education Schools and the NACAC Caribbean Basin Project. During his coaching career, he has worked at the University of Texas at Austin, LSU, UTEP, and Wichita State. Coach Pfaff has coached 29 NCAA individual national champions and 150 All-Americans, and he has been a lead staff member on teams that have won 17 NCAA National Team Championships—15 women and two men.

Dan has served on five Olympic Games coaching staffs in five different countries and nine World Championships staffs for six different countries. He earned a bachelor’s degree in science education from Wright State University and an M.Ed. from the University of Houston.

In this episode, Coach Pfaff delves into the role of the weight room in speed development, special strength, and addressing strengths and weaknesses. He covers a variety of topics including cueing, team sport relationship to track and field, planning and organization, and static stretching.

In this podcast, Coach Dan Pfaff discusses with Joel:

• The role of higher intensity barbell and Olympic lifts in building speed and power.
• Comparing traditional lifts to special weight room movements in speed development.
• Internal and external cues.
• His most recent thoughts on planning and organizing training sessions.
• The role of static stretching in a program.
• His thoughts on the transfer of weight room strength to speed.
• Using analogies and storytelling to increase coaching efficiency.

Podcast total run time is 43:21.

Dan can be found online at ALTIS. He also wrote about cultivating champion performers for SimpliFaster.

Keywords: speed development, strength and power, cue, program planning