Exercise Cues: How Words Can Be Your Superpower

When I’m out for a long run in the woods, I’ll often choose an audiobook over music. This helps me focus on my breathing and cadence. If I can follow the story, my breathing and pacing are under control. But even more, I love the stories. And it’s fun when I can draw inferences about movement and healthcare from these different worlds.

And that’s exactly what happened to me last weekend.

In Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, individuals derive their “powers” from different types of metal (i.e., iron, tin, copper, etc.). Some metals enhance the senses or rapidly heal bodily afflictions; these are called internal metals. External metals allow people to interact with their environment, such as pulling themselves between metal buildings like Spider-Man or pushing coins away like Magneto.

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In health & fitness, our communication and coaching cues are like our superpowers. It’s how we influence our clients and patients to affect certain outcomes. This is evident when using verbal cues to improve exercise performance. Verbal cues draw a person's attention and focus to a particular aspect of movement. Internal cues emphasize our own bodily movements (i.e., knees over toes or squeeze your glutes), while external cues emphasize the effects the movement has on the environment (i.e., punch the ceiling or push the floor away).

The crazy thing is that these cues don’t just affect exercise performance; they can also impact learning and movement quality. Despite internal metals enhancing physical attributes in the world of Mistborn, research in our world suggests internal cues may reduce performance by slowing down the reflexive processes that create automatic, efficient movement. Internal cues aren’t all bad, though! When working with gym athletes prioritizing muscle hypertrophy, cues to focus on the working muscles have been shown to increase workloads. Everyone loves a good muscle pump!

However, when we focus on how someone interacts with their environment, we enhance those same automatic processes. We create imagery that simplifies movement outcomes, which is why these cues are beneficial for motor and skill development. Telling someone to kick like they would a soccer ball creates a much clearer picture compared to, “squeeze your quad and extend your knee!”

This is why our words and cues matter.

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So, what are more examples of external cues?

An easy place to start is the deadlift exercise when pulling a barbell, trap bar, kettlebell, or any other resistance modality up from the floor.  

Common external cues you might hear are “drive through the ground” or “pull the bar.” I’ve often used “break the ground with your feet” or “your arms are just hooks.”

Another example would be performing a box jump.

Two common faults I see are not landing fully on the box or picking up the legs quickly instead of jumping. So, I might provide cues like “hop over the edge of the box like a bunny” or “drive your feet through the ground – try to break the ground with your feet”

Ultimately, we want to avoid discrete, rigid movement patterns by providing a familiar image or applicable interaction with the environment to create a smooth, coordinated effort. When teaching movement skills or patterns, we are always striving for movement that is accurate, consistent, and efficient, given the capabilities of the person in front of us.

External cues can extend to endurance sports, too! Punching or pushing the ground away, gently falling forward, and keeping your feet off the ground are all cues you may hear for sprinting or running. As I mentioned, I love listening to an audiobook because it helps me regulate my breathing, but this is neither an internal nor an external cue. But listening to a metronome or music with a specific BPM is an external cue used to maintain a specific pace or modify running loads in rehab.

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Verbal cues can have a huge effect on the exercises we prescribe as health & fitness professionals. While external cues have been shown to support efficient movement, a mixture of verbal cues and communication styles is needed when prescribing effective exercise. If you are a patient or client, consider the types of words and images that you respond to best. Find your superpower and enhance your performance!

References

Brick, N. E., Campbell, M. J., Metcalfe, R., Mair, J. L., & Macintyre, T. E. (2016). Altering pace control and pace regulation: attentional focus effects during running. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 48(5), 879.

Hill, A., Schücker, L., Hagemann, N., & Strauß, B. (2017). Further Evidence for an External Focus of Attention in Running: Looking at Specific Focus Instructions and Individual Differences. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 39(5), 352-365. Retrieved Sep 13, 2026, from https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.2016-0272

Porter, J. M., Anton, P. M., & Wu, W. F. (2012). Increasing the distance of an external focus of attention enhances standing long jump performance. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 26(9), 2389-2393.

Reiner, S. L. (2021). Attentional Focus Cueing: How and When to Use Internal and External Focus Cues to Optimize Exercise Performance. ACSM'S Health & Fitness Journal, 25(6), 33–41. https://doi.org/10.1249/FIT.0000000000000720

Wulf, G., & Lewthwaite, R. (2010). Effortless motor learning? An external focus of attention enhances movement effectiveness and efficiency. Effortless attention: A new perspective in the cognitive science of attention and action, 75-101.

Wulf , G. , M. H ö ß , and W. Prinz . (1998). Instructions for motor learning: Differential effects of internal versus external focus of attention. J. Mot. Behav. 30 : 169 – 179 .