Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Mon, 17 Mar 2025
My guest is Stuart McMillan, a renowned track and field coach who has trained dozens of Olympic medalists, professional athletes, and team coaches across a diverse range of sports. We discuss how to use plyometric work to improve mobility, strength, posture, and overall health. We emphasize the enormous benefits of skipping—a form of plyometrics—for joint health, aerobic conditioning, and coordination, as well as its advantages for people of all ages and fitness levels. We also explore the expressive nature of human movement, highlighting how certain movements reveal and can evolve one’s unique personality and abilities. Stu explains how resistance training, skipping, and striding can improve movement efficiency in all aspects of life. Anyone who exercises, as well as serious athletes, will benefit immensely from Stu McMillan’s knowledge of human mechanics and the practical tools he generously shares in this discussion. Read the full episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Our Place: https://fromourplace.com/huberman Wealthfront**: https://wealthfront.com/huberan Helix Sleep: https://helixsleep.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman **This experience may not be representative of the experience of other clients of Wealthfront, and there is no guarantee that all clients will have similar experiences. Cash Account is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC. The Annual Percentage Yield (“APY”) on cash deposits as of December 27, 2024, is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum. Funds in the Cash Account are swept to partner banks where they earn the variable APY. Promo terms and FDIC coverage conditions apply. Same-day withdrawal or instant payment transfers may be limited by destination institutions, daily transaction caps, and by participating entities such as Wells Fargo, the RTP® Network, and FedNow® Service. New Cash Account deposits are subject to a 2-4 day holding period before becoming available for transfer. Timestamps 00:00:00 Stuart McMillan 00:02:27 Running, Sprinting, Event Distances 00:09:01 Sponsors: Our Place & Wealthfront 00:12:13 Natural Sprinters, Kids, Sports Specialization 00:17:00 Athletes, Identity, Race Selection 00:23:38 Walking to Sprinting, Gait Patterns, Tool: Flat-Foot Contact 00:30:35 Visual Focus, Body Position, Running, Lifting Weights 00:36:00 Tool: Skipping & Benefits 00:42:18 Sponsors: AG1 & Helix Sleep 00:45:01 Tools: Skipping, Beginners, Jogging Incorporation 00:49:50 Transition Points, Tool: Skipping, Maximum Amplitude 00:53:03 Concentric & Eccentric Phases, Running 00:55:32 Transitioning to Striding, Posture, Center of Mass 01:03:11 Older Adults, Eccentric Control, Tool: Skipping 01:08:00 Naming Importance & Public Health; Skipping, Plyometrics 01:12:18 Sponsor: Function 01:14:06 Cross-Body Coordination, Rotation, Gaits; Phones & Posture 01:22:27 Expression Through Movement, Playfulness, Confidence 01:28:53 Being Yourself, Expression, Essence & Movement 01:36:39 Connecting with Movement, Building Cues, Mood Words 01:45:05 Pressure & Peace; Exercise, Movement & Age 01:51:39 Music, Art, Rhythm, Coaching; Soccer, Greatest Players & Countries 02:00:25 White & Black Athletes, Genetics, Environment 02:08:27 Running Form, Tools: High Knees, Stiff Springs, Hip Extension 02:17:21 Skipping Rope, Aging; Protocols & Rigidity, Principles Alignment 02:22:12 Resistance Training to Improve Movement, Sprinting Kinetics, Individualization 02:32:29 Transferring Weight Room to Track, Staggered Stance, Stretching 02:36:52 Performance-Enhancement, Elite Athletes, Androgen, Reputation 02:46:45 Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT), Age; Pharmacology vs. Training 02:52:14 Single Physical Metric & Sprinting; Pressure & Peace 02:58:34 Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow & Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter
Chapter 1: What are the benefits of skipping and striding in fitness?
As you'll soon learn, skipping, what most of us think of as a kid's activity, is actually one of the best plyometric activities that we can all do at any age to build more power, speed, coordination, and to improve our muscle, fascial, and nervous system function.
Stu McMillan has coached over 70 Olympians across nine Olympic games, and he has coached the players and coaches of every major professional sport. He explains how skipping and something called striding are zero cost activities that we all can and should include in our weekly fitness routine.
They not only will have you moving better and having better posture in all your activities, but they also take minimal time and they can help protect you against injuries and improve your longevity. We also talk about the best strides for running at any speed. So if you're into jogging or sprinting, we talk about all the best ways to do that.
We talk about the sport of track, which both Stu and I happen to love, and why certain groups of people excel in different sports due to genetic and environmental reasons. We also have a very direct and open conversation about the use of performance enhancing tools in the athletic and wellness worlds. This is a really special episode.
because if you like or if you don't like things like running, swimming, cycling, or other activities such as weight training or yoga, there's going to be a lot to take away from it that you can apply. Stu McMillan is a true savant of coaching how best to move and how to improve your health. It was an honor and privilege to host him and to learn from him. I'm sure you'll agree.
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Stu McMillan. Stu McMillan, welcome.
Thank you. Great to be here. We go back a little ways. And you're the guy that they call in to make athletes or pretty much anybody faster, stronger, healthier, and more powerful. And who wouldn't want that? Athletes or otherwise. Let's start by talking about running. You know, I think for a lot of people, they hear running and they're like, oh no, running hurts, running's painful.
But I think most people, when they think about running, they think about jogging. They think about running a distance longer than a mile. But even for some people, running a mile is a painful thought, let alone a practice. How should we think about running and sprinting in particular? Because when we grow up,
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Chapter 2: How do running and sprinting differ in terms of technique?
We learned to crawl, walk, run, and kids naturally want to run fast at some point, fast for them. What is it about running that for you is such an enchanting thing? Why do you think that every four years or so, depending on when they're scheduling the Olympics, Everyone in this country gets fascinated with who's fastest, who's fastest in the world.
And then they tend to put track and field aside for a bit, but people can jump, they can swim, they can do all these things. But running is so fundamental to being human. What are your thoughts on running generally? And let's break it up into distances. Why do you love seeing people run fast? Why have you devoted yourself in part to helping people run faster and faster?
Yeah, there's a lot in that. First, running fast for me is the ultimate human activity. Like the fastest human on the planet is the fastest human on the planet where potentially maybe like the best football player is probably not the best football player. The best soccer player is probably not the best soccer player.
Chapter 3: Why is sprinting considered the pinnacle of human performance?
There might be someone down in Argentina who could be a better NFL linebacker than choose your all-pro linebacker right now. We're sprinting. Everybody sprints, as you said. We all run when we're kids. And we figure out, or our teachers figure out, or our coaches figure out, well, Andrew, you're a sprinter, so you're going to sprint. Stu, you're a middle distance, so you go and do that.
And over the course of time, we kind of figure out whether we're good or not. And the sprinters, like the truly elite sprinters... end up being the truly elite sprinters when they are 20, 25, 30 years old. Like that's what you do. You don't move into something else if you are a super elite sprinter. So I think that's part of it is that for me.
Like it is really truly the tip of the spear in human performance. The fastest person on the planet is the fastest person on the planet. Usain Bolt is the world record holder. And he is the fastest person who's ever ran. It's probably not somebody else who, you know, in the Congo somewhere in Jamaica that could have been faster than Usain because they would have displayed themselves at some point.
So for me, that is it. You know, and I, you know, I started coaching kind of 1984. Like I've been coaching for a long, long time. And I started coaching professionally in 1992. And I've coached many sports, many activities, many tasks. And I enjoy most of them. But for me, it is that pinnacle, that true tip of the spear that interests me the most. And that you only get from sprinting.
If you're an NFL football player, most likely you're playing every game at about 80% of your best. If you are 80% of your best and you got onto the 100-meter start line, forget about it. Forget about it. If you're less than 99.9% of your best, forget about it. That's why I truly, I love the sprinting events so much. And zoomed out from that a little bit.
Like I started off as a strength and conditioning coach. So for me, it was more about the power, the strength, and the speed. It was all of that. And I coached bobsled for a long time. And I really, really enjoyed bobsled because, you know, these guys are massive. They're really strong and they're really fast. So that for me was really appealing.
And that fed my obsession about this peak human performance for a long time until I had the opportunity to actually go and work with super elite sprinters. And now I can't do anything other than that. I really can't. It's fascinating to me.
How do we compare the fastest person in the 100... meters versus the 200 versus the 400. So for you, is it coaching the 100 that's the most exciting or the 200 or the 400? Yeah, that's a good question.
I actually prefer coaching the 200 for a couple of reasons. There's a little bit of tactics in the 200 or there's more tactics than there are in the 100. In the 100, the fastest person is going to win. In the 200, depending on how you tactically set up your race, because it's not an all-out sprint. You can't run as fast as you can for 20 seconds.
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Chapter 4: How can skipping improve your mobility and joint health?
But this one kid, he was just far more efficient on the ground than everyone else. It was just pop, pop. and you could hear it. And I hear it. Generally, I hear it before I see it. And that's, I think, is actually what I heard first. And I looked around and said, oh, that's the kid. Like, he's a sprinter. And then you just kind of look at his form and it just looks better.
There's just a quality to that that you don't see with these other kids. And even though limbs are going all over the place and head is going from side to side and, you know, feet are going all over the place and hands are flapping, you know, like wings, there's just a fluidity.
Even with him looking like that, he's just doing it much more coordinated and fluid than everyone else who would look like they were trying hard. And with him, it didn't look like he was trying hard. All elite and sub-elite athletes, regardless of the sport, the best athletes are always the ones that make it look the easiest. And that kid just made it look easier than everyone else.
Could you send a kid like that out for a 400-meter run and then meet him at the line and say, you know what, you're meant to run the 200 or you're meant to run the 100? Is it possible to tell whether or not somebody is meant for a particular distance based on how they do in a slightly different distance?
Yeah, I don't, especially not at that age. You know, at that age, you want him to be doing or her to be doing as many different events as possible. And let's just trial them all. I don't think they should even at that age at 12, 13, 14, say you're a sprinter. you're a sprinter and you're a jumper. And maybe we'll do some middle distance and we'll do some relays.
And then we can do a couple of throws as well and see which one that you're kind of enjoying the most, number one. And then number two, what are you actually showing some expertise towards? And hopefully those two things match. And then you can start looking at specializing for the kind of event group a little bit later.
And that comes a lot later than what many people outside of track and field think. even with, you know, most NCAA Division I college programs are pretty elite. I mean, that's some high-performing athletes. And many of those sprinters do the one, the two, the four, all the relays. And often your best sprinters are also your best jumpers.
So you might have your 100-meter specialist also do the long jump and the triple jump. And it won't be until maybe the second or the third or fourth year of college or maybe even their first year as a pro where they start actually doing just the one or two events.
I ran cross country as a senior in high school. I've been running consistently since I was 16, three times a week. I don't consider myself even a runner. I just run for the pleasure of it. A long run, a medium run, and a short run. Perhaps it was the movies about Steve Prefontaine, of which there were two.
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Chapter 5: What role does eccentric control play in longevity?
And then the 2019 World Championships in Doha, she made the British team in the 200. Didn't do very well, but ran the relay, ran the 4x4, and ran the fastest split of all the countries. She ran 49.4 in a 4x4 split. and said, okay, we're a 400-meter runner now. So sometimes it's just that. Sometimes it takes a long time for the athlete to come to the realization that this is what they connect with.
This is who I am. You know what I mean? It's not as easy as just saying, oh, we've got a bunch of tests, and you're a 100-meter, you're a 200, you're a 400. For her, it took her over a decade to come to terms with the fact that, you know, I can't do the 100 and 200 anymore, but I could be really good at the 400.
And then two years later, at the 2020 Olympic Games, which ended up being obviously in 21, she was sixth in the 400 meters in the Olympics. Ran 49.9 twice. So it's, you know, it's in hindsight, we wonder if we moved into the 400 five years earlier, three or four years earlier, maybe she could have had a medal, but. Yeah, it's an interesting one.
We're always using all of the different pieces of information that we have at hand. Some of it's quantitative, some of it's qualitative, some of it is just a feeling. And with Jody specifically, it was, you know, what did I better connect with? Because, you know, that's, as I said, that's why we get into sport in the first place. If we can't connect with that as an individual...
with why we're doing it than why we're even doing it.
I feel like this is a great metaphor for life in general, for career. I mean, I've enjoyed different careers and I'm glad I started in the one I did, but that I've ended up in the one I'm in now, even though I still teach and I'm involved in research in some ways.
um there's such a immense pleasure to uh finding the the thing yeah for oneself yeah but you can't get there first this is what i think is frustrating to young people now because of the internet they think like what's my calling what's what's my event what's my sport what am i built for and then you have all these examples right you've got your um shaquille o'neal's clearly built for basketball and then you have your
Growing up when I grew up, you're Spud Webb, right? Much, much shorter than most of the professional players in the NBA, but wins the slam dunk competition. And so he's always used it as an example that you can bridge these gaps. But I do think that dedicated application to one area is the best lane from which to exit to another freeway. You can't just get onto the Autobahn, so to speak, for you.
You have to sometimes get on Highway 101 for a while and speed a little bit or crash. I'm not being literal here. You said something that I think is immensely powerful. I'd like to use as a segue, which is that we find ourselves through movement. I think this is so true, and not just for people who are trying to figure out what athletic or exercise endeavors are best for them, but certainly there.
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Chapter 6: How does cross-body coordination enhance running efficiency?
And if you think about being flat foot contact and all of the different things that you do, all the different gait patterns you do, the velocity is what determines where in the foot you actually will contact. So if you're walking and you're thinking flat foot, you'll actually go heel strike, you'll roll over and your toe off.
And if you're sprinting as fast as you can, you're thinking flat foot contact. You will actually plantar flex slightly just prior to ground contact, and you'll contact the ground more towards your toes than you will if you're just walking or running or jogging.
We should clarify for people, dorsiflexion is when your toes come close up towards your shin. Correct. You're narrowing that angle between your foot and your front lower part of your lower limb. And plantar flexion is the opposite, pointing the toe. I think... attempting to go ballerina in point, but hopefully, unless you're a ballerina, you're not getting all the way there.
Which is, you know, to get to your initial point as well, it's like how many of us were taught to sprint up high on our toes when we were kids? Like we all were, right? Get up on your toes. Keep your arms at 90 degrees and get up really, really tall. And that's totally opposite to what we should be doing.
Yeah, sometimes kids when they run, when they're real little, you know, like three or four, like when they're just running around the house barefoot, they'll like run on their toes. So what you're basically saying, if I understand correctly, is the speed should dictate the foot strike. Correct. Okay, I think that's a very important point for people who are interested in running or already running.
The speed should dictate the foot strike. That unless there's a problem to resolve that a coach has told you –
need to resolve and how to do it you shouldn't be thinking about heel striking or toe striking you should be thinking about the speed that you're trying to cover the distance in yeah and if you're thinking about anything just think about being flat just think about being flat and the foot will take care of itself due to the velocity let's talk a little bit more about body position and running mechanics
There may be no hard and fast rules to this, but where should my eyes be? I've heard, oh, you want to be looking. Assuming I'm not in a race against anyone, I'm heading out for a run, doesn't matter which duration, does it matter where I place my vision?
In sprinting, 100%. I feel like the longer the distance is, the less it probably matters because the velocity is so much slower. I feel like if you're going out for a jog and it's 10-minute miles, you're probably looking pretty much straight ahead of you.
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Chapter 7: What makes Usain Bolt unique as a sprinter?
Yeah, I'm fascinated by activities, both physical and mental, that facilitate the transition into a more difficult activity, physical or mental. I started to think about this when I started working on my book, In Earnest. It's very hard to just jump into writing, but I noticed that if I did some drawing, listened to a lecture while I was drawing, and I do anatomical drawings,
very easy to transition into writing. I enjoy drawing. I'm not trying to accomplish much with it, but it's a very natural activity for me and just very easy to drop into a deep groove for writing for hours. And then I started talking to a musician friend of mine who, he's a songwriter, very accomplished songwriter, and he does the same.
And then I saw a post from Joni Mitchell that she would paint before she would sing. And I think these transition activities that are natural for us that don't feel as constricted by distance over time or, you know, sometimes I put my drawings on social media, but they're really for me. They're a way of kind of thinking about the biology from a circuit standpoint.
It is very personal and kind of abstract. As you talk about skipping, it seems a little bit the same, where skipping, we're not necessarily trying to become the fastest skipper in the world or beat our yesterday's skipping time. We're just trying to skip with more, as you said, more expression, more enjoyment. But perhaps, it sounds like indeed, it can help transition into a faster gait with what
we're doing for jogging or for running or transition us right into sprinting. And I think that these transition points for physical and mental activities are very important because these days there's so many tools and protocols, you know, dare I say. And people start to feel like, oh, I have to do all of these things. How would I do this, right?
How am I supposed to meditate and get sunlight and do it? You know, I'm already exercising a ton. Now you want me to skip? The way you describe it is completely different. It's saying, no, you're still doing your cardio, quote unquote, but maybe you do your zone two cardio and you incorporate some skipping, which will make your zone two faster for you.
Or your high intensity interval training, you'll feel more pliable, more explosive.
Yeah, I think that's part of it. I think step one is incorporating in so you can actually be comfortable skipping. And step two is now can we add a little bit more speed, force, velocity to that skip where it becomes in and of itself a workout. where you're skipping as hard as you can for 50 meters and walking back and doing that 10 to 15 times.
100%.
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