Huberman LabHow to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 19:20
Why Sprinting Is The ‘Tip Of The Spear’ In Human Performance
Huberman introduces Stuart McMillan, outlining his background coaching Olympians and elite athletes. McMillan explains why he considers sprinting the purest expression of human performance and why the fastest person on Earth is uniquely, unambiguously identifiable in a way other sports can’t match.
- •McMillan has coached over 70 Olympians across nine Games, in sports ranging from bobsled to track.
- •He views sprinting as the pinnacle of human performance: the fastest person on the planet is simply the fastest person.
- •In 100m sprinting, athletes must be at ~99.9% of their best to compete; anything less is non-competitive, unlike team sports where players often perform at ~80% of their best.
- •McMillan prefers coaching the 200m because of its tactical nuance compared to the all-out 100m.
- •Discussion of Usain Bolt’s 9.58 world record and stride counts (around 40 steps for Bolt).
- 19:20 – 40:00
Spotting Talent And Letting Athletes Find Their Event
At a high school track, McMillan spots a young sprinter by ear and eye alone. He describes the ‘pop’ of efficient ground contacts, why kids should try many events before specializing, and how athletes sometimes discover their true distance unexpectedly, even late in their careers.
- •McMillan identifies talent first by the sound of ground contact—light, rhythmic pops versus heavy thuds.
- •Elite athletes tend to look like they’re not trying, even when moving quickly; fluidity and ease differentiate them from straining peers.
- •He discourages early specialization; young athletes should sprint, jump, throw, and run multiple distances.
- •Example of Jodie Williams: a youth sprint phenom in 100/200 who later discovered she was truly world-class at 400m after a relay performance.
- •Identity often lags physical reality; athletes may cling to old event identities even when their body and performances point elsewhere.
- 40:00 – 1:00:00
Gait Mechanics: Walking, Jogging, Running, Striding, Sprinting
McMillan classifies five distinct gait patterns and explains how speed, not conscious form cues, should govern foot strike. He emphasizes natural self-organization, the hazards of over-coaching mechanics, and introduces simple cues like ‘flat foot’ and eye position to improve running.
- •Five gait patterns: walking, jogging, running, striding (~75–90% of max), sprinting (>90–95% of max).
- •In walking, people naturally heel-strike then roll forward; at higher velocities the contact point shifts anteriorly.
- •Humans self-organize towards the most efficient gait at a given speed if not over-cued.
- •Primary running cue: think ‘flat-foot contact’; speed will determine whether that manifests as heel, midfoot, or forefoot strike.
- •Vision and head position matter much more at sprinting speed; lifting the eyes too early drives excessive spinal extension and disrupts mechanics.
- •Over-coaching cues like ‘run on your toes’ usually make form worse and less efficient.
- 1:00:00 – 1:30:00
Skipping And Striding: The Missing Link For Adult Movement
The discussion shifts to skipping as a deeply natural yet culturally neglected movement. McMillan positions skipping as a core plyometric drill used by every sprint group in the world and explains how it can safely restore tissues, coordination, and hip extension and serve as an on-ramp to striding and eventually sprinting.
- •Most adults have the ‘engine’ to go fast but lack the tissue and joint capacity; sudden sprints often result in strains.
- •Skipping taxes joints, fascia, and nervous system similarly to sprinting but at lower risk and intensity.
- •Benefits include improved posture, hip extension (knee behind butt), cross-body coordination, and a pleasant psychological uplift.
- •Suggested progression: integrate 30s skipping with 30s walking/jogging into existing runs; later, perform 50m maximal skips with full walk-back rest, 10–15 reps, after a thorough warm-up.
- •Skipping is a pure plyometric—think of it as repetitive ‘punches’ into the ground, emphasizing stiffness and rebound rather than fatigue.
- •McMillan skips daily himself and has even done a 10-mile skip; he advocates “normalizing” skipping (or simply calling it plyometrics) for adults.
- 1:30:00 – 1:50:00
Eccentric Strength, Aging, And Fall Prevention
Huberman brings in data about falls and mortality in older adults, and McMillan connects that to eccentric control—the ability to absorb and manage forces during landing and deceleration. They argue that skipping and related plyometrics may be one of the best practical tools to preserve independence and reduce fall risk over the lifespan.
- •Many older adults die indirectly from falls that lead to immobility, surgery, and infections.
- •Eccentric strength (controlling load as you descend or land) is what degrades most with age and is seldom trained.
- •Skipping offers frequent, low-risk practice at landing, rebounding, and coordinating ankle–knee–hip under load.
- •McMillan’s 78-year-old father runs and includes sessions of walking, skipping, and striding intervals to maintain capacity.
- •They posit that the ability to safely express maximal or near-maximal speed may be a top-level marker of vitality—possibly more integrative than VO2 max or grip strength alone.
- 1:50:00 – 2:10:00
Rotation, Cross-Body Coordination, And The Cost Of Phone Posture
McMillan explains humans as inherently rotational, cross-pattern movers: hips and shoulders counter-rotate, and the spine flexes, extends, and side-bends. They lament how tech habits (walking while looking at phones) and certain coaching cues (e.g., anti-rotation training) suppress natural rotation and degrade movement quality.
- •Efficient locomotion involves pelvis and shoulders oscillating in opposite directions, with the spine mediating rotation and side-bending.
- •Elite movers in any sport visibly harness this torsional system; ‘robotic’ movers do not.
- •Coaching trends emphasizing ‘anti-rotation’ can be misinterpreted as anti-movement, undermining natural rotational capacity.
- •Huberman and McMillan criticize walking while looking at phones; it reinforces a flexed, constrained, internally rotated posture.
- •They encourage awareness during walking: feel hips and shoulders swinging, notice whether you’re getting the knee behind the butt, and allow natural counter-movement.
- 2:10:00 – 2:40:00
Expression, Authenticity, And Flow: From Bolt To Basquiat
The conversation widens into aesthetics and psychology of movement. They examine how Usain Bolt’s playful demeanor, Andre De Grasse’s calm, Messi’s creativity, and even Basquiat’s painting style embody authentic expression. Attempts to copy others’ personas or gait often backfire, while great coaching and producing help people move more like themselves, not like someone else.
- •Bolt broke the mold of hyper-serious sprinters by being playful and relaxed, which matched his personality and amplified his performance.
- •Andre De Grasse is quiet and inward; his best races happen when he leans into that nature, not when he tries to imitate others’ hype.
- •Asafa Powell is cited as a cautionary example; he tried on multiple external personas and underperformed at major championships.
- •Rick Rubin’s work with musicians is used as an analogy: the best artists succeed when they sound like themselves, not like a constructed image.
- •Flow races feel like ‘I just ran’; athletes often can’t recall technical cues during true peak performances.
- •McMillan reframes 100m sprinting as ‘50 meters of pressure and 50 meters of peace’—a balance of aggression and relaxation that parallels creative work.
- 2:40:00 – 3:06:00
Genetics, Culture, And Why Sprinting Dominance Clusters
They confront the sensitive topic of why most sub-10-second sprinters are Black and why certain regions (e.g., Jamaica for sprinting, a Kenyan district for marathons) produce outsized numbers of champions. McMillan emphasizes both nature and nurture: genetic predispositions for limb structure and fiber type, plus dense, sport-specific cultures and competitive ecosystems.
- •Roughly 200 athletes have run sub-10 seconds; the vast majority are Black with West African ancestry, with a small number of white and Asian sprinters.
- •Determinants include limb length ratios, joint size and stiffness, tendon length versus muscle belly size, and proportion of type IIx fibers.
- •Environmental factors—like Jamaica’s Champs high school meet with 50,000+ spectators—create intense competition and social capital around sprinting.
- •Kenyan marathon success is heavily concentrated in one district where running 100+ miles per week is normalized and modeled.
- •McMillan frames genetics as the ‘entry ticket’ and environment as what you do once you’re in the room.
- 3:06:00 – 3:30:00
Drugs In Sport: Past Abuse And A Cleaner Present
Huberman and McMillan tackle performance-enhancing drugs candidly, from the Ben Johnson era to modern anti-doping. McMillan believes elite sprinting today is largely clean, with doping mostly confined to specific pockets (e.g., past Eastern Bloc systems, some distance programs) and notes how reputational damage from cheaters harms the majority who compete clean.
- •In the 1960s–1990s, anabolic steroid use in sprinting and other sports was widespread; testing was limited.
- •Modern anti-doping is far more stringent in track than in many professional leagues; McMillan says he doesn’t know of any current top sprinters who are doping.
- •He distinguishes between systemic programs (e.g., historical state-sponsored doping in Russia) and isolated cases in other countries.
- •A tragic personal example: bobsledder Pavle Jovanović tested positive for nandrolone likely from a contaminated supplement, lost his career, and later died by suicide.
- •They criticize both dishonest denials and opaque biometric claims in the fitness world, and praise openness about legitimate TRT in older non-competing adults.
- •McMillan stresses that drugs, even when used, don’t replace thousands of hours of training; they marginally enhance those who are already genetically and technically elite.
- 3:30:00 – 3:55:00
Strength Training That Actually Helps You Run Faster
Returning to practical programming, McMillan describes how he thinks about gym work for speed. He differentiates between athletes who need more basic force capacity versus those at diminishing returns, and explains why he now favors unilateral and run-specific isometric work over traditional heavy bilateral lifts for elite sprinters.
- •Sprinting performance is governed by: amount of force, rate of force application, direction of force, and body mass.
- •Examples of extremes: Ben Johnson (massive squatter, very force-dominant) vs. Andre De Grasse (barely could squat bodyweight but extremely fast). Both reached elite speed via different profiles.
- •For high-level sprinters, max strength is rarely the main limiter; further increases often produce little speed gain.
- •Key tools: single-leg run-specific isometrics in a top-speed contact position; staggered and split-stance strength work emphasizing hip extension and big-toe extension; explosive ‘force transmission’ exercises like jump squats and hurdle hops.
- •McMillan does almost no heavy bilateral squatting; trap-bar deadlift is the main exception, used more for neural drive than for raw strength gains.
- 3:55:00 – 4:11:00
Mobility, Stretching, And Full-Chain Strength
They briefly cover how to think about stretching and mobility for running. McMillan emphasizes interactive, exploratory stretching—linking big-toe extension, hip extension, spinal positioning, and shoulder reach—over static, generic poses, and encourages people to search for positions that best unlock their unique fascial chains.
- •McMillan favors stretches that mirror sprint shapes: back leg extended, rear heel up on the toe, knee behind butt, opposite arm overhead.
- •Adding nuances—pelvic tilt, rotation, side-bending, wrist position—can intensify or refine the stretch along the fascial line.
- •He adopts Kelly Starrett’s philosophy that people should learn to control and explore their own positions, not just reproduce prescribed shapes.
- •Emphasis again on cross-body chains (left foot to right hand, right foot to left hand) and seeking opportunities in training to reinforce those lines.
- 4:11:00
Closing: Sprinting As A Proxy For Vitality And A Call To Move
Huberman and McMillan close by revisiting the idea that the ability to safely express maximal speed might be one of the most integrative markers of health. They encourage listeners to use skipping and striding as gateways toward restoring that capacity, and to think of movement as a way of finding and expressing who they are, not just as exercise.
- •McMillan reiterates that, as a single metric, safe maximal sprinting may best capture overall vitality and integrated nervous system function.
- •Huberman connects this to his own framework of ‘pressure and peace’ across domains: deliberate effort followed by authentic relaxation.
- •They urge people to question whether their current “exercise” truly serves their goal of being able to move well throughout life.
- •Examples like skate parks versus weight rooms highlight where real movement quality tends to live.
- •They encourage attending track meets in person to appreciate elite movement and support a foundational yet under-followed sport.
