How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.