Huberman LabHow to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Plyometrics, Skipping, And Sprinting: The New Blueprint For Longevity
- Andrew Huberman and elite sprint coach Stuart McMillan explore how fundamental movements—especially skipping, striding, and sprinting—can dramatically improve speed, coordination, posture, tissue health, and longevity. McMillan explains gait patterns from walking to maximal sprinting, emphasizing that most adults have lost the ability to run fast safely and need structured on-ramps back to higher-speed movement. They detail why skipping is the most accessible, zero-cost plyometric tool for almost everyone, including older adults, and how it builds the eccentric strength and cross-body coordination critical for performance and fall prevention.
- The conversation broadens into how authentic movement expression reflects personality and culture, using examples from sprinting, soccer, music, and art. They also tackle controversial topics such as genetics and sprint performance, drug use in sport, and why the ability to safely sprint maximally may be one of the best single proxies for overall vitality.
- Throughout, McMillan offers highly practical frameworks: how to think about form (e.g., foot strike, hip extension, posture), how to structure skipping and striding workouts, and how to prioritize specific strength work in the gym to support better running rather than just bigger lifts.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasSkipping Is The Safest, Most Accessible Plyometric For Nearly Everyone
McMillan argues that most adults can’t safely sprint anymore because their tissues and joints can’t tolerate the forces, but they can skip. Skipping replicates many of the mechanical and neural demands of sprinting—hip extension, stiffness on ground contact, rhythmic coordination—at a far lower injury risk. He recommends starting with 30 seconds of skipping alternated with 30 seconds of walking or jogging, then progressing to sessions of 50 m maximal-effort skips with full walk-back recovery, 10–15 reps, after a 10–15 minute warm-up. This builds plyometric capacity, posture, and confidence without leaving you exhausted or beat up.
Let Speed Dictate Foot Strike, Don’t Force Heel Or Toe Running
Instead of obsessing over heel vs. midfoot vs. forefoot striking, McMillan emphasizes that velocity should determine how the foot contacts the ground. At walking speeds, most people naturally heel-to-toe roll; as speed increases into jogging, running, striding, and sprinting, the contact point progressively shifts forward. His single cue: think ‘flat’ foot contact. At slow speeds that still produces a heel roll; at fast speeds it yields a more forefoot-dominant contact without consciously “running on your toes,” which often makes mechanics worse.
True Speed Depends On Eccentric Strength, Not Just Concentric Power
McMillan’s testing across many sports showed concentric strength (the “lifting” part of a movement) barely differentiates elites from sub-elites, whereas eccentric capacity (controlling and braking forces) consistently does. Striding and sprinting are dominated by eccentric braking forces—up to ~5x bodyweight in about 0.03 seconds—so the ability to tolerate and rebound from those impacts is what separates fast from merely strong. This is why plyometrics, skipping, and specific isometrics in sprint-like positions are more valuable for speed than endlessly chasing bigger squats or cleans once you’re past a basic strength threshold.
Hip Extension And ‘Knee Behind Butt’ Are Central To Healthy Movement
Modern sitting-heavy lives rob people of hip extension: the ability to get the knee behind the hip. McMillan (echoing Kelly Starrett) insists that repeatedly accessing this position—knee behind butt, pelvis extended—is critical for good sprinting, skipping, posture, and even healthy aging. He looks for this in drills, strength work (split and staggered stances, rear-foot-elevated positions on the toe), and everyday movement. For listeners, that means deliberately including movements where the back leg is extended (e.g., lunges with rear heel up, skipping, hill sprints) to restore and maintain this capacity.
Striding Is The Bridge Between Jogging And True Sprinting
McMillan distinguishes five gait patterns: walking, jogging, running, striding (roughly 75–90% of max speed), and sprinting (>90–95%). Most adults, he says, literally cannot access striding and sprinting gaits anymore; their nervous systems and tissues self-limit somewhere around fast running. Striding involves bigger shapes (higher knees, more front-side mechanics) and a spring-mass behavior where ground contacts are short, forceful, and mostly in front of the center of mass. A sensible progression is: restore skipping, then introduce relaxed striding at sub-max speeds, using quality of movement—not exhaustion—as the governor.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesSkipping is probably the best plyometric activity that almost everyone can do at any age.
— Stuart McMillan
Most people on the planet can walk, jog, maybe run. Very few can actually stride, and almost nobody past a certain age can really sprint.
— Stuart McMillan
If you don’t have the genetic capacity to run fast, you won’t run fast. Nature gets you in the room; nurture determines what you do once you’re there.
— Stuart McMillan
For me, there may not be a better single metric of health or vitality than the ability to safely express maximal speed.
— Stuart McMillan
Every 100-meter race is fifty meters of pressure and fifty meters of peace.
— Stuart McMillan
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