After a great play on television how many times have you heard an announcer or color commentator say, "You just can't teach that move?" 

I hear it year after year.  When I was a kid I believed it was true.  Why not?  The commentators are former pros and they know more than a 12-year-old, right?

When I was older there were some good change-of-direction moves I could make and some I couldn't.  I believed whatever I or other great athletes did was natural. 

When I started working with kids over 20 years ago I didn't think I could teach it due to my sport’s cultural past.  But then I started to do some thinking.

I started to think about science and common sense together.  Every healthy person can learn to do or copy any physical human motion.  We just don't know how long it will take to learn it or how great the new movement pattern will become. 

Seemingly everyone (in our country) knows how to tie a shoe or open a car door.  Why?  Someone taught them.  If you can't teach human motions then why teach a kid how to brush his teeth or shoot a free-throw in basketball.  Are toddlers taught how to drink out of a cup?  Of course. 

This became so obvious to me that I started to laugh.  And I laugh every time I teach an athlete a great move they thought they couldn't do. 

These are the moves they saw the pros do on TV.  Psychologically, this helps them understand that it is possible to make improvements in speed and overall athleticism because they relax and realize they are human, too.

When we teach an infant to walk do we expect them to walk like an Olympic athlete or do we go slow?  Next time you see an infant learning to walk go over to him and pretend you are a youth or high school coach. 

Yell and scream at the baby to "work harder, stop being so lazy. If you don't start walking right now I'm going to run you until you vomit!"  Then just give up on him ever being able to walk if he can't figure it out in two hours.  Better yet, “cut” him off the "Human Walking Team!"

Can you pick up the correlation here?  We put our babies within a constructive learning environment but we place our athletes within the opposite state.  It's the "stupid state" Anthony Robbins talks about. 

It is an environment of pain, negativity, fear of ridicule, fear of embarrassment and shame, and an environment of unrealistic expectations.  We give up on the kid because she or he can't figure out what we’re not explaining clearly.  That same kid might be fast but just not know what to do or how to do it.  That child needs us to teach him or her. 

Mikey:  A Lesson In What the Pros Can Do - I Can Do!

I was working with a 12-year-old running back named years ago named Mikey.  We worked on speed and acceleration around curves, but our focus was the side step.  When we started training, the football season was in full swing, and it would be something he could use right away.

He picked up on the technique, the timing and the simple rhythm so quickly that we replaced our warm up jog with the side step. It was so fun he developed his own special style or swag.

This was never a full speed drill. We would only do this drill at 10-20 percent speed and effort. This way we could do many reps for 50 to 100 yards. It became so natural for him that the others were saying he was juking guys even in practice. 

I attended one of his youth football playoff games late in the year.  During that game Mikey got the ball, broke around the right side and side stepped two times in a row on two would-be tacklers. He was gone for a 50-yard touchdown.  The two defenders fell right on their faces.

I was on the side line when he did this and it was so cool.  His dad was standing on the sideline as well.  He sprinted over to me and said, "I saw you guys doing this move during your speed training and now I really get it." 

Well, Mikey got it and was gone. Just like the pros.

What Mikey learned was a simple side step. This is the exact same human move given different names depending on the sport. In football it’s called a jump cut juke; in lacrosse, a doge. In basketball it’s known as a defensive side-slide.

I called it a “side-step” because I teach it at slow speeds with a step first, and then a very small jump. It is one of the most common moves we do as active kids and adults. We just don’t know we are doing it.

If you can teach anything to one human then we can teach that same thing to most others, especially physical movements.   

People still say “you just can’t teach that.” Of course you can teach it. We just start slow and take 50 reps or 5,000 reps. Eventually the human body will begin to develop neuromuscular memory and become more efficient in that motion. 

The truth is some humans don’t need to be taught. However, the vast majority of the population has to be taught what to do and how to do it.

That included me back in my athletic days. If someone did not teach me something then I did not learn it.

For some reason we look at the extreme athlete and label his moves as unteachable.  What is unteachable is the extremely high level which those great athletes can perform those great moves.  But everyone can do it. 

Visit www.howtobefaster.com for speed training books for athletes, parents, and coaches. Subscribe to "TheSpeedDr1" on YouTube for free speed training videos Kenneth D. Taylor is a SAQ pioneer and Sport Speed Expert who lives in Southern California and has trained well over 5,000 athletes over 20 years.  He holds a degree in Exercise Physiology and Sports Science.  He was a world class track athlete and played in the NFL for the 1985 Chicago Bears Super Bowl XX team and the San Diego Chargers.