Verbal Cues: Matt Gifford on Coaching Speed

Based on Episode 2 of the Just Fly Performance Podcast, a conversation between host Joel Smith and sports performance coach Matt Gifford.

Verbal cues are where Matt Gifford does most of his coaching, and his standard is blunt: if you can tell an athlete the same thing until you are blue in the face and nothing changes, the problem is your words, not the athlete. Gifford, a sports performance coach at NX Level in Wisconsin and an ALTIS apprentice known online for his coaching craft, treats cueing as the bridge between a good exercise and an athlete who can actually feel it. The exercises, he argues, are the easy part. Getting a story to land is the skill.

Key Takeaways

• A cue only works if it fits the athlete. Some athletes are auditory, some visual, some kinesthetic; when words fail, put your hands on them so they can feel the position.
• Build cues from what the athlete already knows. An airplane leaving the runway, a plank they already own, a pilot flying smoothly, all give the athlete a picture to move into.
• Cue away from the bias, not toward it. An athlete who already over-pushes never needs to hear “push.”
• Sometimes the best cue is “relax.” Tension is the enemy of technique; backing off five to ten percent often raises power output.
• Control speed beats all-out speed. The best route runners and change-of-direction athletes are controlled going in and fast coming out.

A cue only works if it fits the athlete

Gifford’s starting point is that there is no universal cue, because there is no universal athlete. The same instruction reaches three athletes three different ways, and a good coach carries more than one channel.

Even with cueing alone, sometimes words won’t even do it, because the kids and the athletes you’re working with might be auditory, they might be visual, they might be kinesthetic. Sometimes you just have to put your hands on their bodies so they can feel certain positions.

That is also why he leans on the wider body of work on cueing, naming Nick Winkelman as the reference who has helped the field get more deliberate about how it talks to athletes. The point is not a clever phrase; it is finding the phrase that gives a particular athlete an aha moment.

Build cues from stories the athlete already owns

Gifford’s most reliable cues are borrowed from things the athlete already understands. His favorite for acceleration came from watching Maurice Greene’s block work with John Smith in the 1990s, and it survives because everyone can picture it.

The analogy he always used, which is classic in our industry, is like an airplane off the runway. I always tell my kids to be a great pilot. If you’re a bad pilot, what happens? You pop straight up, you cause turbulence, and then a grown man like me is crying in his seat.

The same logic runs the other direction into the weight room. Rather than invent new language for sprinting tension, he points athletes back to an exercise they have already felt.

The easiest thing to cue a kid, how to create tension out of the start or keep tension while he’s sprinting, is to refer back to the plank. It’s such a simple exercise. You have to pull from what they already know and what they feel. Use what you already have.

Cue away from the bias, not toward it

A cue is not neutral. If an athlete already leans hard in one direction, repeating a cue that reinforces it makes the movement worse. Gifford’s example is a pro-day athlete who was already an over-dominant pusher, coming out too low, over-striding, spending too long on the ground.

With his development, with his pro day, never once did I tell him to push, because I knew he was already biased to that. So he was always a pop guy or a bounce guy.

The coaching move is to read what the athlete does by default, then cue toward the quality they are missing. For the natural pusher, that meant language about popping and bouncing off the ground, never about driving harder.

Sometimes the best cue is “relax”

The most counterintuitive thread in the conversation is that the right verbal cue often lowers effort rather than raising it. Gifford frames it through an idea he got from a swim coach.

We always use the line, tension’s the enemy of technique. So when you’re backing off a little bit, you’re less tense, you’re more relaxed.

In practice he prescribes it as a number, which keeps “relax” from turning into “go slow.” He tells his pro-day sprinters to run a rep at full effort, then repeat it with a small, deliberate reduction.

Let’s just back off five to ten percent. Let yourself get full extension. Feel yourself hitting certain patterns. Stay relaxed. When you see guys relax a little bit, power output goes up and you see a lot better result.

He extends the same idea to change of direction and team-sport movement, where trying too hard is usually what breaks the pattern. His model is a pair of NFL receivers who ran their routes under control.

Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce said, we run all the routes about eighty-five or ninety percent. It’s all about control speed. You want to be aggressive, you want to be fluid, but it’s about being controlled in and fast out.

Frequently asked questions

What are verbal cues in coaching?
Verbal cues are the words, analogies, and stories a coach uses to get an athlete to feel and produce a movement. Gifford treats them as the bridge between a well-chosen exercise and an athlete who can actually perform it, and he considers the cue at least as important as the drill.

How do you choose a cue that works?
Match it to how the athlete learns. Some athletes respond to a verbal image, some need to see it, and some have to feel it with a coach’s hands on them. Gifford also builds cues from things the athlete already knows, like a plank for trunk tension or an airplane leaving the runway for acceleration.

Should a cue tell the athlete what to do more of?
Not always. If an athlete already over-does one quality, cueing toward it makes the movement worse. Gifford cues away from the bias instead: an athlete who already over-pushes gets language about popping and bouncing, never about pushing harder.

Why would you cue an athlete to relax?
Because tension degrades technique. Gifford asks athletes to back off five to ten percent, which often raises power output because they stop fighting themselves and let the pattern happen. He uses the phrase “tension is the enemy of technique” as the cue itself.

What is control speed?
It is being controlled and relaxed on the way into a movement and fast on the way out, rather than maximally aggressive the whole time. Gifford borrows it from NFL receivers Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce, who ran routes at around eighty-five to ninety percent, and applies it to sprinting and change of direction.

About the authors

Matt Gifford is a sports performance coach at NX Level Performance in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He holds an exercise science degree from Wisconsin-Whitewater, is a CSCS and USA Track and Field certified, and completed an apprenticeship at ALTIS. He is known for his coaching craft, particularly cueing and connecting a technical intention with the athlete in front of him.

Joel Smith is the host of the Just Fly Performance Podcast and the founder of Just Fly Sports, a former collegiate strength and track and field coach focused on speed, power, and athletic development. Listen to the full episode with Matt Gifford on Just Fly Sports.