Olympic Coach Stuart McMillan On The Science Of Speed, Unlocking Your Body's True Potential & Why Sprinting Is The Ultimate Human Activity | The Rich Roll Podcast

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So, we need to figure out why you are really good.

A good coach understands that you have to know a little bit about this, a little bit about that.

What's my joint structure like?

What's my fiber type like?

What's the stiffness like?

What's my coordination like?

We are going to move in ways that are determined and governed by the things that we are moving.

If you're thinking your way through a 100 -meter race or a 200 -meter race… You're finished.

There's no time for it.

Can you just let it go and be peaceful and then just run free or bounce the rest of the way?

It's very few and far between where these truly elite athletes are also the truly elite coaches.

Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Stuart McMillan, an elite track and field sprinting coach who has guided the careers and mentor the lives of more than 70 Olympians over nine Olympic games to a metal hall that totals over 30, which is more hardware than most countries.

But Stu's expertise isn't restricted to the track, he's coached and consulted athletes and coaching staffs in Premier League Football, the NFL, National League Baseball, and much more including Olympic bobsledders and skeleton athletes.

So suffice it to say that Stu is an expert in high performance and coaching is something he approaches as an art form when he pursues is to bring out the best of the athletes he works with from really holistic point of view that encompasses mindset, balance and the yin -yang of execution at the most elite level.

We talk about sprinting of course, what distinguishes it from running or even running fast for that matter and more importantly, why you should care with actionable insights relevant to all of you out there who run and even those who don't.

But the real meat and potatoes here are the many lessons that Stu has gleaned from his 30 plus year career, mentoring athletes at the upper echelon of sport.

Lessons informed by sport, but extend well beyond it and are applicable to all of us in all of our lives.

Stu's a legend, it was an honor to learn from him.

And my hope is that you find this conversation both fascinating for its peek behind the curtain into this very interesting world in which he inhabits, but also valuable and actionable.

You can find him online at altis .world, which is his coaching education platform, as well as on Instagram at fingermash and on Twitter at Stuart McMillan one.

So let's do this. This is me and Stu McMillan.

Sprinters are a different breed.

They are. Why are they so different?

I'm just reflecting on like my experience in swimming and knowing, you know, there's this joke, like well the sprinters, you know, like that's just a different kind of human animal over there.

they always have a unique relationship with the conditioning part of training and tend to be free spirits.

And also people who also seem to always have a better sense of what's right for them that often conflicts with traditional modalities of training.

And I'm talking about like my experience way back, in the late 80s and 90s.

And it would appear that this translates into, this isn't just a swimming thing, like this is a sprinter thing.

Is that your experience or?

The sprinters say the same thing about the distance athletes.

Like what is it with those weirdos?

But they're more, but I think of distance athletes as more robotic and I think they're more open to following direction than sprinters are.

Is that your experience or no?

I think that's probably changed a little bit over the course of time.

I feel like now we're so influenced by the NCAA where you're doing exactly what your leader tells you to do, whether you like it or not, that now is embedded within the entirety of the system.

And sprinters and jumpers and throwers and distance athletes are much more automatic, much more I'm just gonna do what you tell me coach, is a little bit less pushback.

It sounds like you're saying that from a negative perspective, like that's not necessarily a good thing.

Oh, yeah, 100%, yeah, for sure.

Sprinters are also performance artists.

Like, there's a showmanship to sprinting that doesn't translate to the longer distances or to necessarily different disciplines.

I mean, when you see Noah Wiles make his entrance into the stadium with the wardrobe and the suitcase and Snoop Dogg and the pearls in the hair and then, the whole routine before he gets behind the starting blocks, the Pokemon card like the whole, it's theater.

It's incredible, right?

You don't see this with athletes lining up to run a 50 kilometer trail you know, but it gets the audience so engaged and so enthusiastic about this event that is perhaps the most indelible in sport, like who is the fastest man?

Who is the fastest woman?

I don't agree. You don't?

No, I don't. I think it used to be that way.

I think that's a bit of a myth now.

I think a vast majority of the elite sprinters, male and female, are really boring, really boring.

But we see Noah Lyles and Sha 'Carri Richardson - And we translate that.

And we translate that to everybody else.

Is everybody. If you look at the a 100 meter final in Paris last year, you've got one guy who's jumping around like a crazy man.

And seven people are standing like this.

That is true. And that's the history.

And then saying going back every Olympia.

You got Usain who's doing this and just playing around and being really playful and seven others who are standing like this.

And they don't have, honestly, most sprinters are pretty laid back, like really chill people whether it be male or female.

and then you've got the odd person like a Usain or now like a Noah.

I don't think Noah's being exactly inauthentic.

No, no, no, not at all.

But I think he sees that one of his responsibilities of being the fastest man in the world is how can I raise up this sport?

How can I bring more eyes onto this sport?

So maybe he goes a little bit overboard in some of the things he does, like the Snoop Dogg and the case and the Pokemon and all that sort of thing.

It's still authentically him.

But I think he's got a little bit of a different objective where everybody else is just, I'm here just to race, I don't care about the sport, that's not my responsibility.

And they're just being them.

And in my experience, most people are just really calm, and there's two exceptions, just Sha 'Carri and Noah.

Who capture all of the attention.

100%, yeah. To be Sha 'Carri or Noah, you have to have a certain level of self -confidence and self -belief like there is an ego to like the audacity to put yourself out there in that way.

And yet there's no way that you can compete at that level, the highest level without a healthy dose of humility.

Like you have to be humble and present and all of these things like there is a yin yang to sport and sprinting in particular like being entirely present while also being aware of how you're representing the sport and what this kind of celebration around speed means to the world.

I think it's a difficult one for many of the athletes.

So it's a difficult sort of line to navigate.

This where they have to, it's for me, and I say this to the athletes I coach all the time, this is the hardest thing about this sport and why I love this sport so much. Because you cannot show up in the sport and just be at 99 % and just push as hard as hard as you possibly can minus 1 % but relaxed and fluid and rhythmical.

You have to have maximum ferocity and maximum fluidity and if you don't, you've got no shot.

Yeah. No shot. Yeah.

And I mean, that's the case with every event, every sport almost. Except that, the margin of error is zero, right?

Zero margin of error.

So everything is heightened.

100%, 100%. So it's only those that are so confident in their capacity to do this at the highest level, with maximum level of arousal, with a billion people watching them.

Those are the people that win.

That tension, that yin -yang, like you have to output to the best of your ability, put the push part, right?

But your best performances are gonna be in that state of easy, you know, easiness, like ease and flow and fluidity, you know?

And how do you balance those two things?

It's like it's an alchemy.

100%, I mean across the board they say after the best performances, how did that feel?

I don't know, 100 % of the time.

I don't know how that felt.

Were you asked them about how they felt or what they were thinking about in their best performances?

I don't really know.

Because you have to coach presence, right?

They don't know because they were so present in the experience.

a little bit easier said than done.

Which also, I mean, that's also why some of the best athletes make for the worst interviews and podcast guests because they don't necessarily know how to explain what they do or how they do it, they're doers.

And they often make for the worst coaches.

Tell me more. Because they know the know how, not the know what, they know how they did that thing, they just went out and express themselves maximally and did the thing that they've done a thousand million times.

They don't know what it was.

They can't explain that to somebody else.

Well, just do this.

What do you mean just do this?

I can't do that. And it's very few and far between where these truly elite athletes are also the truly elite coaches.

What is the key or the multiple key differentiators between the absolute peak of excellence in your world and the person who's unbelievably good, but is never gonna take that final step.

It's what we've been talking about the last five or 10 minutes, it's that piece of it.

Most elite athletes have very similar capacities, very similar ability to produce force fast in the right direction.

Most of them are really technically superior.

It's the ones that can do that at incredibly intense levels of arousal.

those are the one, that's the separator.

We've seen that all the time, all the time in all sports.

And it's such a difficult thing to train cause the only opportunity they get to actually express themselves at that level of arousal is in those races that in our sport, come about maybe once a year at world championships or even more than that once every four years.

So how do you train for that?

Let's say, go back to that question.

It's really, really hard. It's one thing saying, I want you to be present And just focus on this and your breath and whatever it is that we talk about, you know, working their way through the race.

But it's another thing to actually do that and be able to still express yourself maximally while you're doing it.

But your job is to deconstruct that and figure out a way to train that.

So how do you do that?

Yeah, it's... It's been about 40 years trying to figure that out.

If you've got an answer, please let me know.

Yeah, it's great. I mean, that's the one thing about this job that I really enjoy is that balance, that yin and yang.

I'm known as a bit of a technician as a coach. I think mechanics matter.

I think the way that you move really matters.

I think effective movement and the quality of movement is really, really important.

But that's all trumped by the efficiency and the fluidity and just running and just moving and being present.

So it's marrying those two things.

So when we're on the track and we're in training, We're trying to get the athlete to move in as an effective way as he possibly can for them as an individual.

And then what we try to do, and there might be some cuing involved in that.

Drive the knees forward, dorsiflex your feet, be active on the ground, something with the arms or the carriage of the head or the breath or what have you, right?

We've got this long list of different internal and external cues that we use.

But what we try to do is we try to attach those cues with an emotion.

And over the course of time, Yeah, because if you're thinking your way through a 100 -meter race, or 200 -meter race - Oh, you're done?

You're finished, yeah.

You're finished, there's just no time for it.

But if you can just connect with the emotion, and if we've, in training, connected that emotion with all this long list of cues, then those cues just sort of come along for the ride when you're thinking about that emotion.

So in a 100 meters, for example, the first 30 meters of it, one of the emotions we talk about is pressure.

So just try to apply as much pressure as you possibly can.

And that doesn't work for everybody, and sometimes it's force, sometimes it's power, sometimes it's whatever.

But pressure is one that I really like.

And then once you can no longer apply any more pressure, can you just let it go and be peaceful or find freedom and then just run free or bounce the rest of the way.

So you've got these emotions, these mood words that you can connect to.

And then this laundry list of technical instructions just come along for the ride.

the technique has to be so internalized and so remote that it doesn't involve thought processes, but can be triggered by that cue, that emotional cue.

That's interesting, it's sort of like an actor going off book, an actor who has trained for many years with technique and then reads the script and rehearses it a million times so they don't have to think about what the words are.

And then on stage or on camera, it's like, the cue is pressure or whatever and the body just sort of adapts that stance?

The human system's a self -organizing system, and, you know, when I reach over here to pick up this, I'm not thinking about what I'm doing with my arm and my fingers and grasping it, I just do that.

It's the same thing with sprinting or any movement, you're just thinking about the outcome of that movement and you find your body just self -organizes into the most efficient way to do it.

So that's what I mean, like efficiency is the key, but that doesn't mean that there's no rules.

you still have to do it with an effective technique.

So it's always marrying those two things.

Your background is super interesting because you were an athlete, you played soccer and you were a sprinter.

But you like went to art school and you're a DJ, you had a radio show.

And when I think of that, I think, well, this guy, you know, is stepping into this world as an artist. Like your medium are these young people, right?

That you're shaping and you're canvas.

like you're taking this very artistic approach to like how do I take this person, this talented athlete and dial it up and tune it in so that they can do their performance art?

100%. It's pretty cool.

You know what? It took me quite a long time to start thinking of it that way.

Think when I started coaching.

And by the way, you said I was a sprinter.

I was not a sprinter.

I was a really really bad sprinter.

So if anybody's listening - You ran sprint?

That knew me back then - They are probably faster than most people, but go.

I was terrible. I was a pretty good soccer player.

I was really when I started, my dad's a civil engineer and I'm very structured.

My brain sort of works that way as well.

So I was very much about this needs to make sense.

It's all linear, it's this and it's that and it's this and it's that and this and that.

So you've got this periodized program over the course of, you know, like it's a math problem.

And it took me probably a couple of decades to figure out, you know, human beings are not math problems, They're human beings, you know?

And here's an opportunity now to flex those creative muscles that I do have, you know, like I was an artist. I did go to art school, I DJed for 25, 30 years.

Like, this is, and I feel like whatever success that I've had, it's been because of the marrying of those two things, you know.

The scientific part of me, the structured part of me, the linear thought processes, but also my capacity to understand, this is a non -linear thing.

these are nonlinear complex systems that we're dealing with and we've gotta respect that.

There is engineering involved, but it's not an engineering problem.

Otherwise you could just give people a program and you would get the, you could predict the result and the result would track every time.

And how boring would that be?

I know. But also probably frustrating at times too.

Oh for sure, like a lot of coaches saying, hey man, wouldn't it be so great if that's what it was?

I would say no. Yeah.

Why would that be great?

Well, AI would replace you quickly.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly, so I love the creative aspect of this.

It's a puzzle, every athletes a puzzle, the interactions a puzzle, everything that we're working on is a puzzle.

And it's our job, what's the most important puzzle for us today to try to solve?

Beyond the technique side of things and the conditioning side of things, what is the most challenging and interesting puzzle when it comes to deconstructing the athlete and trying to figure out what makes them tick so that you can guide them in a way, in a language that they can hear and adhere to.

So I own this company called Altus, and our head coach, his name's Dan Paff, you may know Dan, I've heard of Dan, like he's a very legendary track and field coach, he's in his 70s, He's your mentor.

He's my mentor, I met him in the mid 90's.

And I met him in 1995, he was coaching one of my best friends at the time, Donovan Bailey, still is one of my best friends.

I asked Dan, what is the key to being a great coach, Like what is it that makes you really good at what you're doing?

And he says, well, it's understanding that coaching is more about just this biomechanics or the physiology or the psychology or the nutrition, it's all of that.

And more than all of that is it's understanding how all of these things interact in space and time.

So a good coach understands that you have to know a little bit about this, a little bit about that, a little bit of this, a little bit about that, a little bit of this, and a little bit about that.

So for me, I've taken that throughout my entirety of my career now.

At the start of every year, we sit down with the athletes and we explain what the health and performance system looks like.

And we asked them and we try to get the athletes to lead this.

And I said, rich, first, we talk about what the objective is, like what are you trying to get done this year?

And then, how are you gonna do that?

And typically they're going to say, well, we're gonna train a certain way.

We'll train hard and we do whatever and we'll talk about training.

So yeah, great, perfect.

What else do you have to do?

well, we're probably gonna have to recover from the training.

And what does that mean?

Well, it only means we have to sleep and we have to do get, maybe we'll get some massage and so on and so forth.

Great, what else do you have to do?

And then after some thought, maybe they'll come up with, well, we probably have to fuel well.

What does that mean?

Oh, we have to eat good food and good timing and blah, blah, blah.

I say, yeah, perfect.

And what else is there?

Like what else is maybe gonna constrain your ability to reach this objective?

Well, maybe and most of them can get this one as well.

Well, maybe it's something to do with my psychology, my mental resilience, great.

Now, what else? Is there anything else in this big health and performance system that we have to try to navigate over the course of this year?

And many of them say, well, you know, it's good that maybe I've got some social support, my friends and my family, and I'm doing some things outside of the tracks.

Great, perfect. So that gives us five things to work on.

So we have these five things in the health and performance system that we start and we rank, and the athletes actually rank out of 10, where they feel they sit on each of these component parts of the system.

And if they say right now, I'm about a seven out of 10 on physical, I'm about six out of 10 on the nutrition and the food, I'm a nine out of 10 on my recovery and regeneration.

My mental resiliency is great, I'm a 10 out of 10 on that, and I've got a great familial support and I've got great friends and so on and so forth.

And that gives us a ranking, like a hierarchical ranking of all the things that we feel are important.

And then we break those pieces down and where can, within this then, can we improve?

What is it about your food or your fueling or your recovery, regeneration, what have you, that we can make the most changes right now that's going to help you.

So this becomes the puzzle.

And this is one of the rules of complex systems. Any attempt to optimize a single part of a complex system comes at the expense of the entirety of the system as a whole.

We see that all the time where athletes over -focus on one piece of the system, and because of that, it pulls the entire system kind of out of whack a little bit they forget about these other pieces that are also really important.

So our objective is always, can you be an eight out of 10 on all things?

And once you're that, can we be an eight and a half?

Can we be a nine? Can we be a nine and a half?

Understanding that we're never gonna optimize any one single thing.

But that gives us not only an outline and a structure to the entire year, but also an outline and a structure to every conversation that we have there.

Right, and a built -in accountability system.

A hundred percent. But implicit in all of that is buy in and involvement with the athlete.

Like this is very different from my generation as an athlete.

Like you show up, the coach tells you what to do and you do it.

And what you're sharing is very much a collaborative relationship in which you're saying to the athlete, like you tell me and let's work with you towards this goal that we have. Like it's almost an inception.

Like maybe you are calling all the shots, but you're giving them.

Oh, I'm not calling the shots at all.

Okay, you said this is what you want and you're sharing with me these are the ways in which you wanna move forward and so I'm here to support that but the idea is being led by the athlete.

There's three big things that we talk about at the start of the year.

One is we need to figure out why you are really good and we train you towards that thing.

So let's have a conversation about that.

Number two is this is a partnership.

This is me and you working together.

This isn't me directing this, I'm helping, I'm guiding you, I'm facilitating this, but this is always going to be an ongoing conversation.

Number three is what you alluded to, which is the most important thing is you need to believe 100 % in yourself, everything you do, your support team, all the things that are around this and me as your coach in the program that you're buying into.

without those three things you're not going to reach these objectives.

So it's 100 % like that, that for me is everything.

Now that's a little bit different if I'm coaching 14 year olds.

14 year olds is not a 50 -50 partnership.

It's probably a 90 -82.

It's still, they're gonna have some autonomy into some of the things that we do, I think that's still important, but it's not 50 -50.

But the more experience that we have with athletes, so maybe I'm starting with a 20 year old.

You know, I coached a bobsledder named Steve Messler a three time Olympian, ended up winning a gold medal in 2010 at the start of the program in 2002, 2001.

I was a different coach, I mean, it's a long time ago.

I'm a director. I'm telling him exactly what to do.

10 years later, he's telling me exactly what he's gonna do.

And he won an Olympic gold medal.

That's really, truly, that should be the nature of a coach athlete relationship over the course of time.

So under this rubric, what are the characteristics of the athlete that thrives in that type of environment and the ones that struggle?

That's a great question.

I've actually struggled with this as well because I don't like coaching automatons that just wanna be told what to do.

I don't find that I can see what they can't see, but they can feel what I can't feel.

So that back and forth is really important for me.

So when I'm coaching athletes that just wanna be told what to do, but typically that doesn't work for me.

I coached a really, really elite sprinter who's now got seven Olympic gold medals, or sorry, seven Olympic medals.

And he was that way.

He just wanted to be told what to do.

He wasn't interested in the system or what he needed to know or do to have a longterm, sustainable career.

And I only coached him for three years because of that.

Now he's had a longterm, sustainable career because he's found out over the course of time, yeah, this is important and I need to ask these questions is be a better actor or partner in this relationship.

But I find it out really, really, really hard. You know, when I'm talking to athletes that I may be entering into a new relationship with, I make sure that they're on that same boat.

Is this something that you're also interested in?

Or are you just interested in being told what to do?

Because you can succeed both ways.

If you are only interested in being told what to do.

That doesn't necessarily mean you're not gonna succeed.

There's plenty of people that succeed that way.

It's just not gonna succeed with me.

Yeah, in your experience, what are some of the common mistakes that coaches make?

I asked that intentionally in the broadest of ways.

I mean, I feel, I would say as a preface to that, like, coaching philosophy has come a long way.

And it seems to me, you don't see like the bad behavior coaches in the way that you used to, but that doesn't mean that everybody understands how to coach at the level that you're coaching.

Yeah. Yeah, I'd agree with that.

I think it has come a long way.

And I think it has come a long way, especially in collegiate ranks and maybe Europe and other places.

I mean, there's some really good coaching going on for sure.

in all sports. I feel like there's probably two or three really significant things that I think coaching as a whole, and coaches as a whole can do significantly better.

One of it is this, stop being a director and start thinking of your role as being a guide or facilitator.

And coaching, especially in this country, has always been, the coach is an authority figure.

And there's no autonomy for the athlete.

And that can work. And it does work, especially in the NCAA.

You've got quite a lot of directors in the NCAA that just tell you what to do.

And for short term that can definitely work.

But longterm, I don't feel that it works well.

Meaning you may succeed that way.

But I don't think that's really setting you up to being having a healthy relationship with the sport, enjoying your experience in the sport, maybe even enjoying your life.

I feel like that is really, really important.

And I think a lot of coaches don't understand that.

A coach often sees their role as, and I'm coaching you, Rich, I want you to win.

And that's it. And forgetting and maybe even ignoring that, maybe that's not what you exactly want from your experience in sport.

Winning might be important to you, but maybe spending time with friends might be just as important.

Or finding out more about yourself through this expression of sprinting and jumping or throwing or whatever might be more important or traveling might be more important.

All of these different things.

So I feel like coaches can do a better job of having these conversations with athletes and trying to understand what it is that they are trying to get out of this thing that they're doing so we can support that, that's our role, rather than telling you what's important to me and just assuming that's important to you as well.

So number one is that.

Number two I think is from a technical perspective and we see this across the board on all sports at all levels especially at the professional level, is coaching athletes, as if they are the average of all the athletes that they coach. So not coaching individuals, coaching the average of all the individuals.

So whether that being from a technical perspective, a programming perspective, a mental resilience and emotional psychological perspective, not treating the person as an individual, I think is the biggest error that I see in all coaching, across the board. So those are probably the two biggest things for me.

That's a scalability problem though, because not everybody can have their own coach and program tailored specifically for them.

For sure, I agree with that.

If you're coaching, say a soccer team, and you've got 25 players, you can't have 25 separate programs for 25 players.

But you can still talk to them about what is important to them and treat them a little bit differently, especially at professional levels.

And we don't do that well at all.

You know, like there's some of the best coaches in the world, you know, they do a really bad job of that.

You either fit into the system or you go find another system to fit into.

And I find, at least in my experience, my opinion, that that's not what coaching is.

Coaching is now, like if I've got 25 players, 20 of them might work pretty well with this system and five of them I'm gonna have to figure out a way to get the best out of those five.

So, that's the objective.

It's not about getting rid of those five, bring in another five.

That's the biggest issue I have with so many people who've, whether it be Instagram experts or whatever, saying this is how you get better at this thing.

Well, how do you know?

I was gonna ask you about how you navigate the landscape of online, not necessarily misinformation, but maybe not the best information when it comes to stuff that you actually know about.

I try my best to ignore it.

I really do. Like, if I see something, oh, man, I don't like how you're doing this.

I blocked that person to mute that person, so I'd never see anyone.

You have to deal with it.

I've had this conversation with a number of colleagues about whether it's the responsibility for coaches and coach educators to not only point people towards good things but also point them away from bad things.

And that's tricky, because that's a slippery slope when you start doing that.

What is a bad thing even?

And who am I to even say that that's a bad thing?

So I tend to just focus on the positive side.

This is what I feel is important.

If you don't, that's okay.

Yeah, I'm just thinking of Steve Magnus, he's goes face -first into a lot of things.

And God bless him that, that frontline is not for everyone.

No, it's not, I'm not interested.

it. Great, Steve, I love it you're doing it.

In many cases, you or someone like you, who is in a role similar to the role that you play, you're the most important adult figure in these young people's lives, maybe in certain cases more important than their parents.

And so there is a role that you're playing and a responsibility, perhaps that you're shouldering to mold these athletes as human beings and as people, like do you think about that?

Do you have a philosophy around that?

Because off the track, like your influence is carrying into the rest of their lives.

Yeah, it is, it's interesting.

I used to be really clear on this, that my responsibility begun and ended with the physical piece or the health and performance piece, and that was it.

But you're right, I mean, it's probably more than that.

I mean, it's convenient to tell yourself that.

It is convenient, 100%, and it's a much easier job.

It's still a really, really difficult job, by the way.

I'm educated as a coach, I'm not educated as a life coach or a mentor for young people.

So they're dealing with things that, it's not my scope of practice here.

I can be a good role model, I can have conversations with you and I can be supportive and try to create an environment in which you're a part of and training within that is positive and you can feel supportive and great within.

but I think, you know, it's really challenging for a coach also to have a significant amount of responsibility on the other 120, 130 hours a week that we're not seeing.

It's hard. But mindset is such a big piece of this.

And however you're carrying that message or trying to, you know, instill the best mindset possible for them to perform at that level, that's something that is crucial throughout the rest of their life and that those people will turn to and rely upon in their decision -making throughout the course of the rest of their life.

I mean, maybe it's too, we used to think about it that way and it's like too much. But it's true.

But it is the job, right?

It's true. For sure.

It's obviously, you're teaching them important life skills in addition to track and field skills or sprinting skills.

I think it's even difficult to disentangle their identity as an athlete and them as a human being.

You know, anybody who's a master what they do, that there's a lot of crossover there, you know, I don't know how recent this was.

There was an interview with the coach of the Boston Celtics and I'm blanking on his name.

And the interviewer said, you're a basketball coach. And then went to ask his question.

And I think his name's Joe.

I don't remember his last name, but he interrupted the interview and said, I'm not a basketball coach. And he said, I'm a human being who coaches basketball.

And he talked about this separation.

It's actually a really intelligent, well -thought through answer.

But I feel like, you know what?

You're a basketball coach, like your identity is so entangled within being a basketball coach that it's really hard for you to disentangle that, like that is it, I'm a coach. I'm a track and field coach and a coach educator.

And these athletes at this level are track and field athletes and their identity as an athlete is so tied in with their identity as a human that that can become problematic.

And sometimes it's a coach's role to better understand when that is becoming problematic and help the athlete disentangle that.

That they go out and lose a race, and they've just, that ruins their next week.

It's just a race, man, it's okay.

Sure, these are attachments, right?

You're attachment to your identity as an athlete.

You're attachment to achieving a certain goal.

and on some level, these are helpful to anchor yourself in who you are and what you're striving towards but they become unhealthy when you don't reach that goal and it's a threat to that identity, like who you are as a human being as opposed to something you just did or didn't do.

It's back to the push and the pull, right?

As hard as you have to push, you have to in equal parts release.

Yeah, and it's also accepting that there's something inherently unhealthy about being the best in the world at almost anything.

Yeah, you said that, like, you had some tweet or something like, yeah, this shouldn't be a controversial statement that like being an athlete at this level might not be the healthiest thing for people to do.

Yeah, it's not. So tell me more about that.

It's an obsession. You have to be obsessed by it.

It's easy to say that you've got to disconnect and be balanced.

But how do you do that when it is your obsession?

And part of you being really good at this is because you are obsessed by it.

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Yeah, you're not winning an Olympic gold medal because you're living a balanced life.

No, you're not, you're not.

You've got another 80 years to live a balanced life after that.

Now, I'm not saying that balance isn't important.

We talk about, as I said before, this five component part health and performance system and that there needs to be some sort of dynamic balance between all of these component parts.

And within that is included the community that you're a part of and your friends and family, you feel supported.

It's really important, but it's also really important not only to be healthy human, but understanding that that being healthy human, if you're not, it's constraining your ability to actually perform.

Yeah, also that the tension between what serves the short -term goal and what serves the long -term goal.

Oh yeah, 100%. yeah.

Yeah but it goes back to what the athlete's objective is you know are you in this too is it short -term for you are you trying to win olympic medal or are there other objectives and what is the hierarchical list look like for you like not everybody's doing the sport to win the olympics as you know you know so what is it and we have to understand that and then we support that and for those that may you know i just wanna have some friends i wanna some compete i wanna I wanna find out more about myself, I wanna travel, I wanna do this.

Great, we can support that too.

When you're an athlete at that high level, does anybody say that?

Oh yeah. Really? Yeah.

Because I just assume they all are like, I'm going to the Olympics.

Oh no. You're the guy who's gonna take me there.

That's the story that they've been told since they were five, right?

And then they see it, and they start living and say, okay, is this really what I want?

When they start doing the work to try to figure out their motivation, like why are they still doing this thing, rather than just doing this thing because they were the best in school at it.

They start asking themselves these more existential questions, and they say, ah, it isn't that.

It's this, this, this, and this instead.

And many of them are forced to ask those questions because they're just miserable.

They're not enjoying it anymore.

You know, they got into this sport because they enjoyed it.

Now they're doing it because they want to go to the Olympics.

Not everybody wants to go to the Olympics.

You have said that sprinting is the ultimate human activity.

Oh, okay. So justify that statement.

Okay, so I'll ask you.

Do you know of any single metric that is a better measure for overall health and vitality than the ability to go out and maximally run, to be able to run maximally, like go out in the street right now and after a 10 minute warmup, you can run as fast as you can?

I mean, probably not.

I don't think there is.

It's a proxy for so many other different things.

If you can do that, you can move your body in so many different ways, and you can explore the world in so many different ways.

So for me, that's why I feel like it's the ultimate activity.

You don't have to sprint.

It's not like, okay, you've got to start a sprinting program now and sprint five days a week.

It's not that. It's can you do it?

Do you still have the capacity to do it?

Most of us lose that capacity at 15, 20, 25 maybe.

Yeah, so this is the answer to the next question, I guess, on some level, which is like you're a sprint coach, like my audience is full of average people, many of whom are probably not interested in sprinting at all.

Like, why should we care about this?

Like, why should we care about understanding sprinting?

I think you should care about being free to move your body in as many different ways as you want to, and not being constrained by a body that cannot do those things.

And I feel like that's really important.

You have that freedom when you're young, and then we start losing that freedom and we start being dictated to by a commodified fitness industry about what health and wellness and movement is about.

And then 10 years later, we can no longer move in freeways and express ourselves with freedom.

And that's a very slippery slope to not being able to move well at all.

So, I feel like, again, it's not about sprinting.

It's just about exploring, moving your body in as many different ways as you possibly can.

It's the key to long -term health and wellness, variability and adaptability.

What is the difference between sprinting and running, and even more than that, the difference between sprinting and running fast?

Let's zoom out and let's say the difference between sprinting and running from a health perspective, most people who are listening do some sort of running or jogging.

And short term, that's a pretty safe activity.

It's one of the reasons why we do it.

And long -term, maybe not really safe.

We know the statistics around health of running and jogging.

You know, between 40 and 60 % of all runners hurt every single year.

That's pretty high.

Sprinting's the opposite.

Short -term acutely, there's some danger there.

There's some significant risk, but long -term, there's some really, really big upsides.

So from that perspective, I feel okay, that's one way to describe the differences.

Why is that? Because sprinting, you're applying far more forces through greater ranges of motion, much faster, it requires much more coordination through the entirety of the system.

Where jogging is nowhere near as much force, nowhere near as much velocity, nowhere near as much range of motion.

And instead of having to coordinate through the entire system, we just have to basically coordinate through the foot and ankle and the calf complex, and that's it.

And the rest of the body just goes along for the ride.

By the way, I'm not down on jogging, I jog.

I run every day. I feel like it's really, And if you enjoy it, it's good for you, it feeds your soul and you can remain healthy, go and run, but I feel like you also need to sprint.

From a biomechanical perspective though, there is more difference than I think people would realize between running fast and what would technically be called sprinting.

Yeah, some of it's semantics, like I get annoyed and that's just me being annoyed for no reason really by the pop scientists espousing a certain protocol as a sprint for 60 seconds and then take 60 seconds on it.

The derivative ultimate workout, right?

This is all you need to do.

Nobody on the planet sprints for 60 seconds.

Shocking that would bother you.

Right, yeah. Or even 20 seconds, you're not sprinting.

You're jumping or you're running fast or you're running as fast as you can.

So the biggest difference is like the basic one, you know, away from being just semantics is the amount of space that you're taking up in the world.

Like sprinting you've got, you're taking up much more space.

Like it's just bigger range of motion.

As I said, it's much more force and much more velocity.

For me, the biggest thing or the most important thing is sprinting is a coordinate of activity, a full body coordination where running is a little less coordination because you're spending much more time on the ground.

So it's not as important how you coordinate what's going on at the foot and ankle, what's going on in the knee and what's going on at the hip.

But for sprinting, that's really important.

So that's the main sort of non semantical sort of less scientific reason.

If you wanna call it sprinting, go ahead and call it sprinting.

Running as fast as you can.

If you wanna call that sprinting, you can call it sprinting.

I'm not gonna get annoyed anymore at that.

But the one thing that the elite sprinters do that no one else can do is they create this negative foot speed.

So meaning the foot is coming back underneath the center mass, almost faster than the horizontal velocity of the center mass.

So center mass is moving horizontally and you're moving the foot back at that same velocity and you're creating the secondary mass, it's called the two mass models.

It's developed by a friend of my named Dr. Ken Clark.

And, the elite sprinters are able to create the secondary mass of up to about 10 % of the total ground reaction of forces.

that's sprinting. That is one model, the two -mass model that's available to less than a thousandth of a percentage of the population.

Everyone else, including me and you, have a what's called a spring mass model where we just hit the ground like a spring and we just spring off.

We hit the ground like a spring and we just spring off.

There's no secondary mass.

So the most that we can get out of our system is about 90 % of it, that's it.

And is that rare version something that can be taught?

I wish it was. This is a gift. You're like, this is a gift. It's one of those things where if you don't have the capacity to do that, good luck.

Yeah. It's really, really hard. The ability to time the impact on, and it's not a capacity thing.

It's not, you just gotta get a little bit stronger or work on the velocity of your foot as it comes back.

It's a coordination thing.

It involves the timing of the impact into the ground that happens in a thousandths of a second.

It's so hard. It's something that Noah Lyles does better than everybody else on the planet, and that's why he's the fastest man.

And it's something that a guy that can run nine nine doesn't do as well as he does.

It is the differentiating factor in elite sprinting.

The difference between really good and the best. Correct.

And that gap will never be bridged through conditioning.

It's really, really hard, really hard. But we try.

Just like a drummer with timing or a singer with a certain pitch. these things are just things that certain people come into the world with.

You can get better at them, I mean, you can drum better.

Your rhythm can get better.

If you can't dance.

But fundamentally, it's one of those things like that woman or that guy has it.

Absolutely, you can either dance or you can't.

And if you can't dance, you can become a better dancer.

But you're not ever gonna have the coordination of the rhythm that a great dancer has.

Sure. Or a singer or a drummer.

When you were on Huberman the other week, he opened it up by talking a little bit about you guys being out at the Malibu High School track and you being able to identify a kid across the track who kinda stood out, like, oh that guy has something these other kids don't.

I'm not saying he had that very special thing but just an innate kind of predisposition for this type of activity.

Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty obvious pretty immediately.

We had a kid from high school actually join us last year So an athlete we used to coach. His friend had a kid that wanted to know whether he had a future as a sprinter or a football player.

So they asked us to have a look at him for a week and basically give them some advice on whether he should be a sprinter in the NCAA or should he go down the football route.

And he came out and his name's Jeb Moon and he's like, he's so coordinated.

Like he's just his rhythm, his timing is beautiful.

He just bounces off the track and he's small and skinny.

So it was a pretty easy answer for me.

I said, all right, this guy can definitely be a runner.

I don't know if he can be a sprinter, but he has the coordination, the rhythm and the timing to be able to do that.

And then less than a year later now, like he's getting 30, 40 looks from NCAA programs because he's gone all in on the running part.

He's gonna be an elite 800 meter guy and it was clear immediately.

You just watch him run down the track and you'll see you.

You go to any track meet, you go to a marathon. You'll see the guys and the girls at the start of the marathon and just bounce for 26 miles.

And the ones at the end just looks like a slog.

I mean, there's a massive difference.

And it's not only capacity, capacity is important.

But most of the difference that we see, the aesthetic differences we see as just people watching is that coordinate effect or that coordination, the rhythm and the timing.

They've just got something that is so hard to coach, so hard to improve.

And then within that, there's a whole universe in which you can counsel, teach, coach and hone and improve technique.

And there's no sport in which technique is coming into play in such a material way as sprinting.

100%. However, you look at eight finalists in the Olympic Final, all of them, the eight different techniques, Best in the world, move in eight different ways.

And there's a wider variation in body type than you would expect.

Massive. Like you look at Noah Lyles and you look at Usain Bolt, they don't look like they're in the same sport.

Well, I look at Christian Coleman and Usain Bolt.

Christian Coleman's five foot seven, Usain Bolt's six foot five.

There are pretty similar performers, there were.

Yeah, I mean, Zarnel Hughes, six foot three, Trayvon Brummell, five foot seven.

I mean, they're all over the shop.

Now, we are going to move in ways that are determined and governed by the things that we are moving.

You know, I'm gonna move differently than you.

I'm a little bit skinnier than you and a little bit taller than you.

Those are the obvious things that we can see, but all these other things as well.

You know, what's my joint structure like?

What's my fiber type like?

Well, you know, what's my force capacity like?

What's the stiffness like?

What's my coordination like?

All of these things govern how we move.

And our job as coaches is to try to understand what is it unique about you that I can really understand so I can get you moving how you need to be moving, not what I feel like you should be moving.

And that's the hardest thing for me.

So, in the context of a typical training cycle with one of your athletes, how would it break down, percentage wise, between time invested in drills and technique versus conditioning?

Everything is everything.

Yeah, everything that we do we're trying to do is technically proficient as we possibly can.

So whether that's a walk around the track.

Whether that's a skip, whether that's a stride, whether it's a sprint, an acceleration, any sort of drill.

So we don't separate, okay, we're gonna warm up and now we're gonna do some technical work and then we're gonna do the main part of the session where we don't think about it.

We think about how you move from step one to the time we get in the car.

There's no separation there.

And like back to the actor thing, it's method acting.

You're taking it home with you.

100%. Yeah. And again, different athletes are at different levels of their journey here.

Some of them are technically extremely good.

Like, if you look at a model of what you would think is the most effective way to make a jump shot or throw a football or sprint.

Yeah, that person is that.

And then at that point, what are we doing?

We're just encouraging and reminding and maybe putting in things that ensures that they don't get too far away from that.

But the rest of it is just trying to impact efficiency and coordination in ways where we're gonna challenge that model in a different way.

You know what's really ironic about that?

Obviously, there's a heightened attunement to technique and sprinting because the smallest differences are all the differences.

But if you look at endurance sports, like a marathon or imagine a 50 miler or a 100 miler, if you paid more attention to technique, you attuned yourself to that, that would translate into just unbelievable gains, right?

Just life -changing amount of improvement and yet these sports are far less attuned to technique.

It took decades for even the best coaches of middle distance athletes to figure that out.

Oh, technique matters.

And these are the best coaches or the best athletes in the world, they know that now.

And not all of the best middle distance coaches in the world are all in on mechanics but most of them are at this point.

In a 100 meters, the fastest men take about 40 to 45 steps.

And the fastest women take about 45 to 50 steps or about 50 to 55.

I don't know how many steps there are in a marathon or a 100 miler, but it's a lot.

But whatever tiny marginal gain that you're getting in sprinting, if you made a technique shift and it becomes rote and intuitive and it allows you to run more efficiently or more swiftly, yeah, that translates into massive performance gains.

And health. And yet it really is sort of an afterthought I think still.

Which is exciting because once that enters that world you could expect to see some real leaps.

It goes back to kind of what we were saying before, Or, what's the solution for that?

There's social media coaches that say, do these drills and that's your technical work, right?

And that's gonna magically make your technique better.

You'll just do five minutes of drills before you go do your run, or 10 minutes of drills, it doesn't work that way.

You get better by moving in a better way.

That's the only way to do it.

You actually have to make changes.

Now the tricky thing is, what does that look like?

because we self -organize towards our most efficient strategy.

So if we just went out and ran, ran down the street right now, we're not thinking about it, we will run in our most efficient way.

It may not be the most effective, but it is right now our most natural way to do that.

So the coach's job is to look at that and say, can we improve that effectiveness without necessarily negatively impacting the efficiency of that strategy?

And that's really hard. but there's always going to be a gap.

Improvement of effectiveness comes at the cost of efficiency always.

It's just a matter of what that cost is.

Is that cost a year, a year and a half where you're gonna be moving in a less efficient way?

Or is it if you're working with a 15 year old kid, like a week.

Because it's so plastic.

Right, the plasticity, yeah.

Like when Tiger Woods decided he was gonna change his swing, it was like this huge commitment that didn't pay off for quite some time.

My greatest example in sports.

He ruined his career by messing what was already an incredibly effective and efficient swing, trying to make it more effective and ignoring, not understanding how this is gonna impact his efficiency.

And it just, it ruined his health and his career hasn't been the same, honestly.

Also, when you make that technique shift, it doesn't feel right.

it feels wrong and even if you have a coach saying, trust me, this is gonna make you better, everything in your body is like, no, like I wanna move this way and now when I move this way, it just feels like the wrong way.

Like I'm obviously thinking back on my swimming experience, like very technical oriented sport and subtleties matter and you can really only focus on changing one thing at a time and when you begin to make that change, whether it's you're making your elbow a little bit higher or the hip rotation or whatever it is, it feels unnatural.

And your brain is convincing you that it's wrong, and it's only through like continually like repeating it and reaffirming it until it becomes rote that you start to like click into a new mode and see gains.

But when I look at masters athletes, triathletes or masters swimmers, their technique's terrible.

Because they didn't learn how to swim as a kid, right?

and so it's really hard to learn it later in life, and they're time crunched, and when they go to the pool, they need to get in there 3000 meters or whatever it is, and there's no time for the technique, but they're so inefficient, and they're in a hydrodynamic environment, right?

Like, everything is exponentially more significant, every poor technique problem.

But the resistance to focusing on that ultimately becomes the Achilles heel.

And it's like, forget about the conditioning.

Like you need to take a year and focus on your technique.

The water is not working for you, you're fighting it.

And so you're exerting all this energy to go incredibly slow.

Yeah, I agree. And so it's not any different in track and field, it's just that you're moving through air instead of water.

It's the same in any task that you're trying to improve, any motor task.

There's essentially we've got three buttons that we can press.

We can press the structural button, which is your structures, which includes your body weight, your limb length, your height, your muscle fiber type, all of these different things, your joint structure, some of those things we can impact like your weight, we can impact your height, but some of the things we can impact and some of them we can't.

There's your function, so those are all the different capacities.

Your endurance capacity, your force capacity, your range of motion capacity, all of these different things, we can affect that, that's a button to press, and we can improve your swimming ability or your running ability by improving one of those capacities or a few of those capacities.

And finally, there's the technical part, the co -ordinative button.

And that's your degrees of freedom and how you free them and freeze them and your self -organizing or organizing capacities or your understanding of how to move.

So it's coaching. And even when you're coaching yourself and many of us that's what we're doing, right?

We're just exercising and moving and doing things and trying to improve and really coaching ourselves.

We don't have coaches.

But think about it, those are the three buttons.

Am I gonna get better just by losing 20 pounds?

Do I need to lose that?

Is that a bigger thing for me than maybe getting stronger or becoming more technical?

Yeah, that's probably a good start for me.

Or is it, I'm pretty happy with my structure, but I'm really weak or I've got no endurance capacity but I'm pretty coordinated.

All right, so that's the button I'm gonna press.

Or the structure's pretty good.

I'm lean, there's not a lot more I can do there.

I can apply good forces through good ranges of motion, I've got an endurance capacity but my coordination really sucks.

So that's the button I'm gonna press.

What you're saying is most of these athletes, they've got this one, they've got the structure, they've got the function, but they're lacking the technique.

And I feel like that's where people really get it wrong.

What is the solution for that?

I'm gonna do some technical drills prior to doing this thing.

That's not how we get better at anything.

We actually have to think about getting better at the thing while we're doing the thing.

And that's the hard bit and understanding as we said, the gap and how long of a commitment that you're signing up for.

And you may even be signing up for a mistake like Tiger Woods did.

Yeah. He wasn't trying to get worse.

He wasn't trying to hurt himself.

He was trying to get better.

So we've gotta be really careful first and foremost before we say you know I'm gonna try and improve my technique by doing X, Y, and Z.

We have to be really careful first and foremost before doing that.

Mm, what is the average volume of the average elite sprinter in terms of the amount that they're running every week?

I think that differs from system to system.

When you talk about volume, you can be talking about anything from, say, 65 to 70 % of their maximum sprint speed all the way up to 100 % of it.

The amount of time that we spend doing 100 % maximum sprint speed per week, probably less than 300 meters.

It's not much. And some programs might be maximal about 1000 meters.

It's very, very little.

Most elite sprint programs are pretty polarized.

Like most middle distance programs are at this point pretty polarized.

There's a little bit of high -intensity work and quite a lot of low -intensity work.

It's the same as sprinting.

We do a lot of work at 65 to 70%, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 ,000 to 5 ,000 meters a week of that.

We do a little bit of work.

Anywhere, somewhere 200 to 500, that's probably about the range of maximal work.

And the rest of the work, a little bit of work happens in the middle, but not much. But in terms of the amount of, let's just put it in mileage terms, like how many miles a week?

Like a lot of, you know, including like warmup, just running really slow around the track.

I'm saying this because I think there is a misconception out there that these athletes aren't doing that much running when in fact they actually are probably doing more running than the average amateur 10K runner.

There's a lot of movement, there may not be a lot of just linear running, jogging.

But there is, we will go out on the track and we start training at 9 .45, the athletes who get there at 9 .15, they do about half an hour of prep work on themselves and stretching and doing whatever, maybe getting some therapy.

We start the warm up at nine 45, and typically we finish about one o 'clock.

And there's a lot of moving between that nine 45 and that one o 'clock.

I'd need to check the GPS, but I would think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of six to eight miles of movement.

That's every day. And then we go to the weight room and we do a bunch of stuff.

Yeah, so six to eight miles, so you sure you're looking at like 80 miles a week of running or of movement, I would say.

Yeah, six to eight a day multiplied by five or six.

So 50. 50. Yeah, 40 50.

It's a lot. Interesting.

Yeah. We don't do any jogging.

We do zero jogging.

Zero jogging. Zero jogging.

We do striding and sprinting and that's it.

Speaking of jogging, what do you think the, again, back to the average kind of endurance athlete or running enthusiast, what can that individual learn from the world of sprinting?

You know, I think endurance athletes, we love our zone too, and we like building our base.

And quite frankly, for most people, a lot of speed work, is that gonna make them faster in a 50K when their average pace is a 30 or nine minutes a mile or something like that?

But I think there's more and more interesting science is coming out around the importance of doing threshold and speed work in terms of improving your capacity as an endurance athlete.

So I'm just curious around your thoughts.

Speed reserve matters for sure.

It matters at every event from a 100 meters up to a marathon. I don't know anything about any of the ultras, I'm sorry, but typically the fastest marathoners are the people that win the marathon races are also really, they're the fastest people as well.

You put them in a 400 meter and they would win the 400 meters.

Sure, at the elite level, yes.

At the elite level.

They're doing a lot of intense speed work, of course.

100%, 100%. So the question then is what is the transference down to the average Joe or Jane?

And for me, it's like, are you really that interested in maximizing your 10K, your marathon and your 100 mile?

If that's really important to you, then try to figure out what you need to do.

So capacity is first and foremost, the most important thing.

If this is really important for you, the performance of this and not just the experience of it or just being excellent or doing things that you really enjoy, then find a way to do some speed work within that because that will, that increased speed, any speed that's below that speed will be at a lower percentage of your maximum sprint speed.

So you can be a little bit more economical at these various speeds.

That's basic, you know?

It's just then, like, what does that look like?

You know, for speed work for us, and this is a speed session, might be two by 60 meters.

Right. That's it. That's the session.

Yeah, this is the focus of the entire day.

Right. We're doing all the other stuff but it's really just about this.

We are warming up for an hour and a half Plus getting maybe an hour of treatment for two 60 -meter runs, that's it.

That's fucking hilarious.

That's probably different from most people, right?

Speed work for them might be, all right, we're gonna do some one minute repeats or 30 -second repeats or whatever and take a long recovery.

That's the big thing is when we were saying before about the differences between running and sprinting, if you're actually trying to get faster, Think about the recovery that you have or the density of your programming, doing 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off for three miles isn't speed work.

That's maximum aerobic speed.

It's not improving your speed.

Improve your speed you need to look at rest to work ratios of upwards of 10.

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But from a biometric perspective, you're not gonna be able to run fast unless your body knows how to run fast also.

Yeah. right? 100%. So aside from the conditioning part, there's just a kind of neurological piece there of connecting like, just your body knowing that it can do that and what it feels like when it's doing that.

Are you familiar with this guy, David Roche, I had him on the podcast?

No. He's a long time endurance athlete, a marathon runner, was a track and field athlete, and has been a coach in Boulder for a long time, and had never done anything in the ultra world.

And then he decides he's gonna do his first 100 miler, never done 100 miler before.

And he trained for it in a very unconventional way by doing almost, not exclusively, but way more than anybody else had before, like focusing on threshold work and running fast and acclimating his body to being able to withstand running at speeds much faster than people are used to running for distances like that.

And granted, he had this huge base that he'd been building for, you know, I don't know, 20 years or something like that.

So obviously he's tapping into that.

But his approach was really unique and it paid off.

He like, he won Leadville and like, you know, just crushed it with like an insane time.

I went, did he break the record?

I think he broke the Red Leadville.

Did he break the Leadville record?

I think he did. Yeah, in his very first 100 -Miler.

I think he got injured recently, but then he was gonna go to Western States and try to do it again.

But basically, I'm bringing all this up because he's introducing the concept of speed in a world in which for the first time kind of, or in a different and new way in that world.

And I think there is something to be said for playing around with different approaches.

And so with you being the speed master, Your world is like speed in the most finite way.

And it's unclear how much that would translate into that other very different world, but I think from a technique perspective and from a biomechanical perspective, I think there's a lot to be learned.

Yeah, I agree. 100%.

For me, the fastest athletes, even the best athletes in any other sport are the ones who coordinate all the component parts of the system the best. So they may have really strong calves So really strong quads or really strong glutes or great pecs or whatever it is.

And all the best ones have that.

But the really truly best are the ones who could coordinate every single component part of their system.

So from what's happening down the foot to the ankle to the knee to the hip to their arms and their shoulders and how they're carrying their head and all of these things, how it coordinates, how the entire system coordinates.

Now each component part of that system is really important.

It's important that you've got a really stiff spring at your ankle, so you can attenuate some of these high, high forces.

But how that ankle relates to the knee and how the knee relates to the hip and how those three joints relate together and how that relates to the entire system as a whole, that's more important and that's coordination.

So in coordination, really, what we're talking about when we talk about 100 miler, that's economy.

So if you can be more coordinated, you can be more economical.

So perhaps by doing more speed work for this guy, he became a little bit more coordinated.

He learned how to, intuitively, he wasn't probably cognitively aware of this, but his system became more connected.

So how his ankle related to his knee, to his hip, to the rest of his system, everything just started working in a much more coordinated fashion.

We don't do that when we're just doing his own two work, it's not a coordination exercise.

And being able to maintain that for a longer period of time because he trained it.

Right, 100%. Now that's kinda what we were saying before, right, we've got to identify what it is about us as individuals that make us us.

Like what are we good at, and then lean into that.

So just because he trained that way, it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone else would be trained exactly that way.

Yeah, back to the internet, you know, drawing a reductive conclusion for that, Oh, we're gonna do that now.

like this is the way, it's the Norwegian four by four, whatever, It's a different version of that idea, yeah.

Yeah. How much does technology come into play in terms of how you work with athletes?

Like, what technology do you use?

Like, I would imagine, you know, videoing your athletes and finding ways to really like get granular about like their technique or how is the body, you know, coordinating from an internal perspective?

Is there a way to measure that and like measure progress?

Yeah. A lot. Track and field is the ultimate technology sport.

So a stopwatch, and everybody's used a stopwatch for going down a hundred years or so.

And even beginner coaches have a stopwatch. And now beginner coaches also have a camera.

Beginner coaches also generally have a camera and some sort of biomechanical app that they've paid $5 for or whatever.

So that's where we start.

At the higher levels, it's significantly more than that.

So if you look at what sprinting is, step length and step frequency and velocity.

And velocity is the result of these four things, contact time, flight time, step frequency, step length.

If I watch you run out there, I can probably have a pretty good guess of what those four things are, but it wouldn't be a great one.

I wouldn't be able to accurately understand the difference between your contact time of 1200s or 1400s, for example.

So you need really robust technology to be able to do that.

Luckily there's techs out there now that we don't have to rely on doing that in a lab with a biomechanist, there's different AI apps.

In fact, we've got one, it's called Motion IQ where we just film it with a camera and it'll tell us what the contact time is, what the flight time is, what the step length is and what the step frequency is.

Now all of these are component parts of the system, they're called spatial temporal variables.

They determine how fast you are.

All of them are important.

But if I told you that my step length was 250 centimeters, that doesn't tell you anything about how fast I am until I tell you what the step frequency is, or the contact time, or the flight time is.

So it's always this connection, the interrelationship between these component parts.

So coaching at this level is you have to know this data.

You have to know that the elite males have to have a step frequency of between 4 .4 steps a second and five steps a second, and they need to have a step length of somewhere between 240 and 280.

And there's a big range because of the range of the athletes that we're talking about.

Usain Bolt had a step frequency and the world record of, I think 4 .38.

So 4 .38 steps a second, but a step length was 278 centimeters.

So if you have a small step frequency, you better have a huge length.

And if I don't know that data as a coach, then I'm just sort of blindly thinking What am I doing here?

What am I trying to improve?

And if I don't know the step length and step frequency, or the contact time and the flight time, if you've got a contact time of 0 .080, for example, which is less than a hundredth of a second, and you're in the air for, let's say, 0 .15, then you're, that's way too long in the air.

And you can kind of see that if somebody's, it looks like he's bounding, but if we've got a way in which we can actually look at that and determine objectively what that is, that for me is really, really valuable information.

Wow, that's way more intense than I thought.

Is that right? Yeah, no, that's fascinating.

And then within that, can you also gauge force?

You know, the force at which the foot is.

You can estimate force.

You can? You can estimate force.

Is that, are there like sort of power meters that you can put in those shoes?

You can do that too, there's many other different ways.

But in fact, J .B. Moran and Dr. Ken Clark and Peter Way and many other sort of sprint biomechanists have looked at this.

And there is a pretty accurate way to measure vertical force based upon how fast you're running and your body weight.

So it's, yeah, and you can estimate that with pretty good precision, actually.

And then of course, over like 100 meters or 200 meters, there's stages within this race, right.

And if you were to measure those factors across those distances, it also becomes a factor of looking at when they begin to decline, right?

Yeah. Mm, oh, yeah, yeah, and if you don't have that data, again, we always seeing this with our eyes, and the eyes are great.

We have a master's program that we've started this year, and a big part of it is, the first couple of months is trying to get across to the students the importance of actually coaching.

Over the course of the last, when I started coaching 40 years ago, there was no tech. We had no tech, we had a stopwatch, really.

We had a position - You could video people.

Yeah, but that was, even that, Like you had to have money to buy a $500 video camera.

Right. Like it was hard, right?

You had a position transducer that you could attach to a bar that might cost 300 bucks.

So we could get velocity from this position transducer, but not much else.

It was really, really hard. And now because there's so much tech, coaches are just being inundated with all of it and they've forgotten, yet we still have to coach. You still have to develop an eye.

You still have to have some basic, some subjective level of understanding of what you're seeing in front of you, and the capacity for many coaches right now is that they kind of lose that, you know?

It's still really, really important.

So when it comes to the fatigue, we can see it.

If you've got a good coaching eye, you can see, okay, this athlete's slowing down, and they're slowing down because they're spending longer on the ground.

But you still don't know when that is happening, how much longer they're on the ground, what is the second -order effects of that, and how we can improve it.

We've gotta be able to come up with ways in which we can measure that.

So that's where tech, we can use tech really well.

My rule on tech is identify the tech that is the most important for us and rely on as little as we possibly can.

But you can foresee a situation, and maybe you already can do this with your AI tool of feeding the AI all the data from a certain athlete's, training in race performances, with all of those metrics that you were talking about.

And the AI being able to crunch that and saying, listen, here's what's happening at 80 meters.

And if this athlete just shortened their stride length by two millimeters and can basically lift off more quickly or stay on the ground longer, we can avoid this because this person does this every time.

And here's a possible solution for you to look at.

Is that? Maybe. Is that?

Is that? Maybe. Yeah.

I'm like... I don't know anything, so I'm just like, yeah.

There are tools out there now that it's going that way.

Right. I'm skeptical.

Yeah. I'm really skeptical.

This is a complex system.

It's a nonlinear complex system where we don't really understand the relationship between component parts until after the fact.

Now, if AI can come in and help us understand those relationships a little bit quicker, great, but it's not gonna make decisions for us, there's no way, not in our lifetime in a way.

It's probably not gonna be able to tell you whether Noah Lyles will be better if he doesn't wear the pearl necklace, or brought out a different Pokemon card. Correct, correct.

So, I don't think your role is going anywhere.

At least for the next 20 years or so.

Yeah, humans are incomprehensible in a way that will provide you with career longevity, I think.

Good, I'm glad. What do you recommend for somebody who's listening to this, who has never really thought about sprinting and is thinking maybe I should, you know, like learn more about this, like what's a way in, on Huberman you went way deep on drills and plyometrics and skipping and tools, and I don't wanna necessarily retread all of that area.

I think, you know, you guys had an amazing conversation and if people wanna hear in detail more about that stuff, they should definitely go and watch or listen to that.

But just to initiate, you know, the average human being or that avid endurance athlete, like how do you usher them in the world a little bit?

Skip. I think skipping is really important.

So I will repeat that.

I think skipping is a really nice gateway into sprinting cause it's a very similar gait pattern that requires the coordination of the ankle and knee and the hip.

That's really important because that is the biggest difference between sprinting and jogging.

Jogging, there's not a lot of coordination going on.

Is it a lot of just over amortization essentially you're spending a lot of time on the ground and you're just rolling through the joints.

It's not super coordinated.

We're skipping you have to be coordinated.

So I think skipping is a really good way to do it.

And then skipping to warm up or put skipping into the runs or every five minutes to a 30 second skip.

I do feel like that is a really good gateway into sprinting.

Like what is it doing that is so important?

The best things are the ones that teach you without you having to think about how to do it.

Skipping is a pretty innate, intuitive gate pattern.

So it's something that we learned to do when we were like three or four years old, right?

If you skip, if we just went out and skip down the street outside here, we'd be able to do that.

And you could see that the ankle joint, the knee joint, and the hip joint all coordinate, meaning they all fire and relax in a coordinated fashion to keep us moving effectively and efficiently.

And it's much stiffer than if you were running.

You can go out there and run a zillion different ways and you can think about it, but when you're skipping, it's a lot less cognitive involvement in that.

So I think just the stiffness, the systemic stiffness, the vertical stiffness, which is the coordination between the ankle and the knee and the hip is something that we don't improve when we're jogging.

We only improve when we're at a higher velocity or when we're skipping.

So I feel like that is one way to do it.

Another way to do it is when you do do your speed work or when you're doing your interval work or your fart lick or whatever, think about sprinting as if somebody's up in the sky, they've got a rope attached to the top of your head and they're pulling you as tall as you possibly can.

So you're always up here.

And that just alone better coordinates the lower body joints, because typically running, especially if we're running longer distances, we tend to just shrink a little bit and we go small and we just drop down.

Now, if we're gonna put in a sprint, we're gonna put a 30 -second sprint in.

Just think about being taller, not pushing the chest out but just being taller from the top of the head.

So that's from the top.

That's elongating everything and just forcing a more coordinated spring.

And second being stiffer on impact through the foot.

So thinking being flat foot on the contact and getting off pretty quickly.

So just flat foot, flat foot, flat foot, flat foot.

As if you're almost jumping on a trampoline.

If you pushed off or towed off on a trampoline, you'd get over -rotated and you'd fall forward. So, but if you thought about just being flat I'm just bouncing with a really, really stiff foot and ankle that's required on sprinting, but isn't required on running, by the way.

And that's fine, but just think about doing that.

So just, for me, there's not drills other than just doing, as we said, some plyometrics, some skipping, so on and so forth.

It's just when you're running, just thinking about it.

It's just thinking about being a little bit taller, thinking about the position of your pelvis.

Am I really anterly rotated here?

Am I just sort of, do I need to tuck my pelvis under?

or do I need to be a little stiffer on impact, all of these types of things.

Just think about how you're running when you run.

What if you're an avid runner and perhaps you do tempo work and threshold work and stuff like that, but you can't remember the last time you just said, I'm going to run a hundred meters as fast as I can.

Yeah, don't do it. Like, even if you're a very fit person, this is not something I would recommend you do.

Like you're risking injury, right?

So what do you suggest in terms of building somebody up, you know, into a place where they can begin to do that kind of thing.

Yeah, there's a very unique demand on the tissue when you sprint maximally.

And if the fastest you've gone as a percentage of your maximum sprint speed is 80, and all of a sudden you go to 100, it's only gonna end one way.

You know, so it's, it's the same rules as everything else.

Yeah. Progressive overload.

But we all still think we're 14, you know what I mean?

Like, you're not - What do you mean?

I can go like, I remember when I used to do that.

Why can't I do that now?

No, you can't, you can't.

And that's, you cannot do it.

So, don't try. But if you've gone to 70%, go to 75 % and do that for three or four sessions.

And once you can do that, go to 80%, maybe 85%, time yourself.

This is the only way to get better at anything.

If you're trying to get your bench press from 200 pounds to 400 pounds, You don't put 400 pounds on the bar.

You put 205 pounds on the bar.

Next time maybe 210.

And maybe in a three years you can do 400 pounds.

It's the same. I wanna know a little bit more about the world of bobsled and skeleton.

Oh, dang. So you've coached athletes in this world, it's so interesting.

How is getting an athlete prepared in those worlds similar or different than working with a track and field athlete?

I love working with bobsleds and skeleton athletes.

I started in this business of speed in about 1995, 96.

And I started working with Bobsled athletes in 1998.

So immediately I was based up in Canada, in Calgary, where there's winter for seven months of the year.

There's not a lot of - More Bobsledders in track and field.

There's not a lot of elite sprinters in Calgary, but there's a lot of Bobsledders.

We had the 1980 Olympic games there.

So you've got a Bobsled track.

So there's lots of people wanting to do Bobsled.

but the biggest thing, the biggest difference is sprinters or elite sprinters have always been elite.

They've always been the fastest kid.

So they've always felt like they're the best athlete.

Bobsledders are failed athletes in another sport.

They're failures. So they've either failed in football or they failed in track or they failed in rugby or they failed in baseball or failed in decathlon or whatever it is.

And they pick up bobsled because they couldn't do something else.

So you have a certain type of mentality in psychology when you're working with Bob Setters.

A certain type of humility, a certain type of respect for the process that it required to be a sustainably long -term, elite athlete.

And maybe something to prove.

And something to prove, 100%, which you don't always get in sprinting because they've always been the fast kid.

So you take it for granted a little bit until it's too late.

Oh, I can't take this for granted anymore.

or I got to do something else.

Bob Seder's not like that and skeleton athletes are not like that.

So I really enjoyed working with those athletes because they're all in on whatever they needed to do.

Right, you talk about marginal gains, they're all in on whatever, what is the marginal gain that I can do this better?

How can I get better?

We're sprinters, I'm already fast, man, like, what are you gonna tell me?

I coached a kid, Andre DeGrasse, he's a seven -time Olympic medalist. He got three Olympic medals in the 2016 games when I coached him.

And we're having a conversation at the start of the year about nutrition, because his nutrition wasn't great." So I'm talking to him about it and he's listening to me and he's a really nice kid.

And he said, "'Coach, last year, I won NCAA's in the 100 meters, in the 200 meters.

In the 100 meters, in the final, I ran 975, and then I had a footlong subway.

And then 45 minutes later, I ran the 200 in 19, I think you ran 1957 windy and the 200 meters.

So that's when you stopped.

I get it, you know what I mean?

Like, what can I tell you?

We had a conversation about it, we didn't just stop there but it's fair, you know what I mean?

Like a kid at that level with that type of ability, that type of capacity can go and eat a foot long subway 45 minutes before running like 19 five and a 200 meters.

I grew up with this kid, Mike Barrowman, who went on to break world records in breaststroke and win gold medals at the Olympics.

And his pre -race meal was going to McDonald's and he would talk about it in interviews.

It's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy.

And the other thing with Bob said that I really enjoyed was, I see this in sprinting as well.

It took me a little bit of a longer time.

But in Bob said, you don't have to be really strong to be a great Bob setter.

But if you're not really strong, and you better be pretty fast. And you don't have to be really fast, but if you're not really fast, you better be really strong.

And apart from that you may not just be average strength and average speed, but you may be super elastic and you can be elite.

So there's many different ways to be super elite and Bob said, and I enjoyed the puzzle of trying to figure out what makes you unique, what makes you elite at this, and how do we get that better while maybe working on some of your weaknesses as well.

We're in sprinting, it's intuitively you think, all right, they're elite because they're incredibly fast. And it took me a long time to figure out what that was.

All right, there's much more to that than just being fast. It's still, you know, as we said before, step length and step frequency, contact time and flight time, looking a little bit deeper into the system.

But bobsled was a really simple way for me to organize my thoughts around how to improve different people, whether that be football or basketball or bobsled or splinters, yeah.

In bobsled, I mean, you have to be down low and you're pushing something.

So there's an added dynamic to all of that.

Yeah. I would suspect that the track and field athletes that are really good out of the blocks, that would be something that would translate into bobsled because you're down in that lower position where you're really driving force forward lower.

I've coached a couple of really excellent bobsledders who transitioned out of track and field And they were incredible starters, Lolo Jones and Lolo Williams. Yeah, I was going to ask about Lolo.

I mean, she's probably the most famous sort of transfer over.

Yeah, incredible athlete.

Like, absolutely incredible.

She's 41 years old and she just represented USA.

She's still doing it, right.

She's still doing it.

She was a world champion this past year pushing the USA one sled at 41.

Like really incredible athlete.

And the other one who was also incredible was Lauren Williams. Lauren Williams was an Olympic silver medalist in the 100 meters around 1084.

and she's also got an Olympic medal in bobsled.

Lolo didn't. Yeah, there hasn't been any medals there, right?

Yeah, but Lauren has too, both in winter and summer.

And the transition's really easy, like if your bobsled is not that hard for a sprinter to pick up, you're just now running with your hands on something.

Then why aren't more people doing it?

Like if you're getting fourth at the games or you're going to Diamond League and you're finaling, but you're not winning, it seems like, let's just go over here.

You don't get paid.

Yeah, there's that.

Right. Yeah. There is a potential that you can go to the Olympics and medal.

And that's great. Back to your goal too, right?

Back to your goal. Like, is your goal to go to the Olympics?

Your goal is, you've always dreamed of going to the Olympics for a hundred meters or your goal is always to run track or your goal is that.

No one dreams of being a bobsledder when they're 12 years old.

I bet there are kids in Calgary that do.

Maybe, yeah, there's probably a few, there's probably a few.

so it's always, it's hard, right?

We're going through this process right now.

I'm coaching Kaylee Humphries, American Bobsetter.

And we're trying to recruit, so if anyone's listening here and you think you can be an incredible Bobset push athlete, we're trying to recruit a push athlete for her.

This is an Olympic season in Winter Olympics.

And we're looking at the track and field lists.

You know, who are the fast, you know, 60 meter athletes or 100 meter athletes that may not be going, you know, the World Championships in track and field, but maybe could make it to the Olympics and maybe get a medal in winter Olympics.

Yeah, it's fascinating coaching athletes in both of those sports.

And in fact, I think, you know, a lot of the athletes will say, who've done both, who've gone back and forth like a Lolo, that Bob said actually makes it better.

Because Bob says, you know, you're pushing this 200 kilo thing, you've got to be pretty strong.

So it forces you to work on that capacity for a year or two, a year or two that you're not doing track, And maybe you even needed that mental break from track and then you can go back and do it again.

I've seen a lot of athletes actually improve.

So they've gone out, done the bobsled, come back to track and field and then done PBs.

And been better, yeah, seen that multiple times, yeah.

The Canadian relay coach, the Canadian four by one, four by four relay coach, his name is Glenn Roy Gilbert, he did that.

So he was part of the relay program in 95, 96, 97 for Canada.

So he's got Olympic gold medal in 1996.

He went and did bobsled, came back, and ran his PR in 100 meters.

Wow. There's quite a few of them have the same story.

Yeah, I would imagine there would be even more, but for the fact that, and maybe I'm wrong about this, that most of the athletes that make that transition are doing it in the sunset of their career.

It's a way to extend the longevity of their professional athletic career.

So the chances that they're gonna do that and then come back and do a personal best on the track are probably pretty low.

Yeah, there's less for sure.

Most of the athletes that do this, this is at the end of their whatever it was in the football career, they failed at something, as I said, right?

Some of them are not that, some of them can, like a Glenn Roy and others can do both for sure and come back to it.

But yeah, it's a lot of fun working with those athletes.

World records get broken with less regularity these days, especially in the sprint world.

But what's your perspective on ultimate human capacity at a hundred meters?

Ultimate. Yeah, like how much faster, what do you think is possible?

Given the track that we have right now, and making some assumptions that maybe that track will improve.

But not making the assumptions that they will improve it to the point where it actually can be significantly more additive.

So let's say it's about the same.

Maybe it's a little bit better, but it's about the same.

Because you can make a track that just adds to every single step.

And then who knows, right?

This is one of the issues I have with the sport right now, with some of the technology.

Super shoes, you mean?

Super shoes and things, yeah.

But not even super shoes, but also the tracks.

The tracks are going that way.

One of the fun things about track is we can compare across decades and eras.

And that's fun, that's great.

We can't really do that anymore.

When in 10 years, and it'll probably be 10 years, maybe 15 years, a male athlete comes And beats Usain Bolt's world record, you can't compare him to Usain Bolt, because he's got, Usain Bolt didn't have super shoes and had the track that was available to him in 2013 when he broke that world record. So given those constraints, that the shoes don't get significantly better, the track doesn't get significantly better and a Usain Bolt comes in, again, but maybe just a little bit better than a Usain Bolt.

And let's say rather than getting hurt, like Usain Bolt did when he was 23 years old and didn't really get any faster after that, maybe he's healthy and continues to run faster for another five, six, seven years.

Maybe we see 9 -3. His record is 9 -5 -8?

9 -58, correct. Correct.

If you had to replay Bolt in today's scenario with the Super Spikes and we did a better job, well, not we, but somebody, whoever's involved in the system, we're able to maintain his health and he stayed motivated for another five or six, seven years, he would have run close to 9 .30, I think.

Wow. Yeah. Beyond bobsled and skeleton, like you've mentioned, you work with all kinds of other athletes also though in many different sports.

Yeah. Yeah, we coach in -person only elite track and field athletes and that's fun.

You know, I started off as a coach and I really love coaching, but I've done that for 40 years.

You know, we also, you know, at this point in my career I think it's just as fun for me to educate other coaches.

So we've got this, you know, a big platform online, a digital platform.

We've got a master's degree.

And we also consult with a lot of different professional teams and the athletes that they work with.

So I just got back from Cleveland.

I do some work with the Cleveland Browns, do some work with the Cleveland Guardians.

We do a lot of stuff in baseball and help those coaches and educate those coaches and work with some of their athletes on some of the things that they're dealing with.

You know, speed is more and more important in all of these sports now, you know, whether it's soccer or football or baseball or hockey, what have you.

And so more and more coaches are reaching out to people like me who are experts quote unquote in speed for helping them with some of the challenges that they have. And what have you learned yourself from interfacing with like NFL football coaches?

It's like, I'm sure there's lessons, there's things they're doing that are informing your approach as you're counseling them on speed.

I'm not learning a lot about how to coach speed.

Yes or no. No, they're not gonna teach you how to coach speed but just being exposed to like high level coaches in a completely different sport.

I've consulted now with over 100 professional teams over the course of the last 15 years.

and the biggest takeaway that I've got is the best, the most successful organizations are the ones where all the staff are on the same page and they all have an integrated system where they all, and they work on that.

You would think that it would be really integrated, but traditionally, and still to this day, many teams have a very siloed system.

Here's the therapists, here's the doctors, here's the strength staff, here's the technical staff, here's the GMs, here's the whatever, and it's very siloed.

We never really have a conversation.

The defensive coordinator and the line coach. Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

The best football teams, the best soccer teams, the best basketball teams are those that are led well from the top.

And the person at the top of that system understand the importance of having a truly integrated one where everybody's having a conversation daily and working together daily.

That's the biggest lesson that I've taken to our work.

You know, I talk a lot about it And it's, people maybe get sick of me talking about the importance of a system and a well -functioning integrated system, but it is everything in sport at every level, at every scale, you know?

So does the athlete feel supported by the entirety of the system?

And what does that mean?

Is everybody working with the same objective, having the same words and the same conversations and singing from the same hymn sheet?

It's everything. Every time I go into a team that does not have a functioning system, it's obvious immediately.

You see it immediately.

I'll go in and they bring me in to talk to them about speed or health or performance or whatever.

And there might be six people there from the strength staff.

Right. And the physios haven't shown up or the ATs haven't shown up and the assistant GM hasn't shown up and the nutritionist hasn't shown up.

So, okay, there's a reason why you guys are four -and -12, for example, you know.

is there a team that you're comfortable sharing about that does this really well, or not necessarily a team that you've worked with, but like look at Premier League or look at different sports and you go, these people have it dialed because they're all like operating as in unison at the highest level.

Smaller clubs, smaller teams, and smaller sports are forced to do this well because they don't have very many people.

So most of the smaller teams and smaller leagues do this well.

The bigger the team, the more component parts within it, it's more and more difficult to integrate.

That said at that level, when it's a bigger team, there's two teams that I feel have done this better than anyone.

I did some work with the LA Rams a few years back.

And they're really, really impressive.

Like that is a well functioning team.

And then for a few years, I've helped out the guys at Arsenal FC in the Premier League.

Oh, that's cool. And that's a great team.

Like, really, really well functioning.

And so as I said, it requires the right leader to understand the importance of this.

And in both cases, you've got the right head coach who understands, oh, this is what is important.

This is how I'm going to build a sustainable, longterm, successful team, is by having everyone be integrated together.

Both of them have at least 45 minute morning meetings with I think Arsenal have 18 people on that table every morning with the head coach. Every morning?

Every morning. Wow!

So it's really impressive.

Those guys, Arsenal, for sure, do a great job.

It's not surprising at all how well they do.

And then I did a little bit of work with Man City for a while.

And Man City's a machine.

Like that is a massive machine with a lot of different moving parts.

And it's really, really challenging when you've got that size of machine to be integrated?

So I get it from their perspective.

It's hard. You know, you just have to work harder to get there.

I feel like they could be more successful even if they were a little bit better integrated.

Yeah, soccer is your passion.

Oh, it is, yeah, yeah.

It's like if Arsenal said, you know, come on board full time No, I wouldn't do it.

Really? No, I wouldn't do it.

I'm a Man City fan.

Man City, they're you guys.

Yeah, if they called me up and said, I still wouldn't do it.

No, I love when I'm doing this.

Though you can see a clear path to solving the problem and getting them to...

The great thing about working in multiple sports and the great thing...

Well, first of all, I get multiple different challenges across these sports and multiple different conversations and multiple different people in doing different things and that's really energizing for me, I love that.

But I coach track and field and I love coaching track and field.

If I was coaching soccer and you're a soccer player and we see this problem with how you run or how you perform or what's going on with whatever.

And we can improve that.

We don't see the direct correlation to your performance as a soccer player or the performance of the team.

It may have impacted it in a positive way.

We see that immediately in track, immediately.

If I make a technical change or a programming change or a change with your therapeutic input, we see that immediately.

And that's what I love about track and field.

Yeah. The lessons that you learn in sport are lessons for life though.

And as much as you bump up against the idea that you're shaping young minds, you are.

And I would imagine in turn, you're learning from these athletes and these experiences that you're having and these other teams and athletes outside of track and field that you're working with.

Like what are the lessons that you've taken away through these many decades of doing this that are lessons that you apply in your life off the track?

Hmm, there's not much of an off -life track.

Yeah, these things are integrated, I get that.

But you know what I'm getting at, I'm trying to like leave the audience with kind of the valid lessons for life that are applicable in sport, but are really guiding forces in your value system, your worldview, and how you approach decision -making in general.

So I'm gonna zoom in slightly, and then maybe we'll zoom out.

I'm a big believer of first and foremost, when I'm coaching an athlete, of trying my best to understand what it is that makes them them.

Like what are their unique abilities.

That's so important to me.

And I was actually, I was driving over here today.

So I have a funny story.

I was just thinking about this analogy.

So I flew into Burbank last night and I picked up a car.

I rented a car and I haven't driven a new car.

I haven't bought a new car since 1988.

I think that's the last time I bought a new car, 1988.

I don't have a new car at home.

So I'm driving this car and I'm on the freeway and I'm just changing lanes and there's no cars around so I change lanes and it pulls me back into this lane.

So there's this governing system within the car that's trying to keep me here.

And then you can push through it, right?

But the whole time I'm driving here, I'm feeling this and it's pissing me off.

It's giving you a nudge.

It's annoying. Big brother, big brother.

Like to the point where I'm getting phenomenologically like uncomfortable through this.

Like I wanna stop and figure out how to turn this thing off.

And I'm thinking while I'm doing this, this is like coaching.

So many coaches do the same thing with athletes.

They set these really narrow guidelines and they keep them here.

Our job is to try to understand what it is in that athlete that made them do this thing.

How can they express themselves fully in this thing?

And then try to find that and allow that to flourish.

And that we call that, trying to understand what their unique abilities are and then just feeding those unique abilities.

And I feel like that is a lesson for me, like a really important lesson for me.

What is it that's unique about me?

What is it unique that, what is feeds me?

What feeds my everything?

What's important for me from a movement perspective?

So don't allow the system to tell me what exercise is or what type of exercise I should be doing.

What's gonna feed me today?

What serves me? So I feel like that's one of the biggest lessons that coaching has given me.

The way in which I look at coaching towards an athlete's unique abilities, let me come back out, and rather than just falling into commodified exercise routines that the system tells me is most healthy thing to do is what do I feel like doing?

Like, how am I gonna explore this universe?

You know, the space around me?

That's probably the biggest thing.

Being connected with yourself.

And not only that, like listening to that voice.

Yes, 100%. For me, it's so important.

It really is. But you also, you need somebody outside of you to be able to see that in you and help you bring expression to that, right?

Who's coaching Stu?

Right, yeah, yeah. Well, Stu is, right?

That's part of the problem.

We all need a coach. We need somebody, we need some direction.

Problem is, we're being directed by an incentivized system, like commodified, incentivized system, to do these things that is confusing exercise with movement and health and fitness.

That's the problem, but I totally understand it.

Like I'm experienced and expert enough where I'm able to coach myself and many others are not.

Yeah, so you think.

Yeah, yeah, so I hope.

Because we all have our blind spots.

Oh, for sure, for sure, right.

What I would hope, and this is one of the factors that I kinda live my movement life by, is I try to do as many different things in as many different ways in as many different environments as possible.

And I think it's that variability that is really important to lean into as we age.

You know, we had that when we were kids, we just did everything all the time.

And the beginner's mind.

Yeah and it just becomes narrower and narrower and narrower and narrower, and now all we do is we jog and then we lift weights and do some yoga, you know?

And I feel like it's important, you know, really health is about variability.

Can you do a bunch of different things in a bunch of different ways being adaptable?

Well this relates to curiosity and curiosity is something you talk a lot about in terms of making sure that you're approaching the athletes with curiosity, that they're being curious about their own careers, like the beginner's mind, the staying active, doing different things, the variability is really about indulging your curiosity.

Yeah, I think that's really well said.

We get this question a lot in some of the education events that we do.

What is the most important trait that you have or that you think other coaches need to develop?

And that's always the answer for me.

Be curious. Curiosity, yeah.

We bring in 12 interns every year.

And I look for the curious ones.

They don't need to be experts.

They don't need to be experienced, but are you gonna ask questions?

Be curious. You can always tell who's gonna be an excellent coach. The head of strength and conditioning at Arson, his name is Sam Wilson, he came and spent 12 weeks with us about seven years ago.

He was at the time an Academy strength conditioning coach at Russell.

And man, that guy didn't leave my hip for 12 weeks.

Like he was annoying, like just asking questions over and over and over.

And I loved it. I loved every second of that.

And I knew immediately this cat's gonna be a great coach. And now he's head of strength conditioning at one of the biggest football teams in the world and just killing it.

That's pretty cool.

As we wind this down, I wanna turn attention back to some of the things that we can take away and use in our life?

We talked about skipping.

Is there other sprint -oriented, running, situational sort of things that we could start to practice and play around with, with curiosity?

I think there's two ways to look at this.

There's one, when you look at, we want to be high -quality movers.

We want to move in a high -quality way generally.

You don't want to move crappily.

I think everybody's going to admit to that.

So what is high -quality movement?

So think about it from a quantitative perspective and a qualitative perspective.

The quantity we kinda do okay on, mileage, weight on a bar, all these different things.

But quality we don't, so just think about the quality of your movement and try to be generally a little bit more aware of what that is and how I can do this thing, whatever that thing is, hiking, jogging, running, sprinting, lifting weights, yoga.

Just think about, how can I do this with more quality?

And sometimes that's enough.

You don't need somebody to say, hey, Rich, the quality of this isn't good enough, I want you to do it better.

You can feel that yourself.

I'm gonna try to do this with a little bit more quality, slow it down, be a little bit more aware of what my body is doing in space and time.

So just take the time to pay attention to how you're moving in anything.

I feel like that is really important.

And number two is the quantitative aspect.

One of the things that we don't do We do volume pretty well and we do intensity pretty well, but we don't think about the actual pattern of movement that we're trying to improve.

So think about the weights that we do.

We think about these six or seven fundamental movement patterns, or whatever they are.

The one that we kind of ignore is that hip extension pattern, which is so important.

The best walkers, the best runners, the best joggers, the best marathoners, the best printers, Because they always have the best hip extension pattern.

So find ways in which you can work on that pattern specifically.

So that means doing a lot more unilateral work in the weight room.

If you like doing weights, go in there.

Spend time on one leg or a stagger stance or kick stance stance rather than doing double -edged work.

Do lunges, do reverse lunges, do different things like that where you're working in an extended hip pattern is such an important piece.

And if you do that through different velocities, different ranges of motions at different forces, you'll become a much better mover.

Yeah, this is Kelly Starrett territory.

It is. Kelly and I have talked about this a ton.

I think he started while he's having a conversation with me on the phone one night.

Now we gotta start it, because this is when knees over toes guy was just coming out and he was just starting to get popular and Kelly says, I like this cat.

He's pretty good, but we need to start a knee behind butt.

You know, so he's got the Instagram handle, knees behind butt, that's Kelly.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, there's nothing on there right now.

But we've always talked about these feet into that thing and make this thing a thing, it is a thing.

Knees over toes is important, I think it's a little bit overplayed, but knee behind the butt is really important.

Knee behind the butt.

How do you get your, knees behind the butt.

So give me an example of that.

So doing a reverse lunge and putting this, just walking, just walking, you know, most people when they run the knee might just go just behind the butt.

And if you don't have maybe the capacity or the flexibility or the mobility in the hip, then just to get a little bit further, you might get an anterior rotation of the pelvis and then you don't have a high quality knees behind butt pattern.

I see. If you have better structure, better mobility, better flexibility, you can get your knee behind the butt better.

Well, I think you need to get on that Instagram account.

But on the first piece, I mean, I think that's the bigger piece.

When you think of sprinting, you think of athletes who are so finely attuned to their bodies and every detail in every microsecond of what's happening, right?

The level that they're paying attention to holistically, everything that's happening, is like at such an insane level.

So, and to the extent that we can take some small portion of that and apply it into our daily lives and our physical routines.

It's actually a small ask.

I know I go out and I run and half the time, I'm tuned out, I'm thinking about other things or I'll call it active meditation or whatever but if you were to ask me, how's your foot landing or what are your shoulders doing, I don't know.

I'm not paying attention to it.

You know, the best, we're always aware, it's just a matter of whether we're actually cognitively aware at that moment in time.

Where you're - Of what's going on.

Focusing your attention.

Exactly, exactly. And you know, the elites, it's not like, you know, I'm asking athletes to be aware of every single part of their system as they're doing this thing.

You know, it's just one piece, and as I said before, sometimes it's just an emotion or a mood.

But there has to be a point where you know what you're doing and I guess here would be the third thing that we can take away, is the fact that the system, the body, is a rotational system.

The hips oscillate and undulate, meaning they go back and forth.

So there's internal rotation, external rotation.

And they also go up and down.

So they go up and they go down.

And the shoulders do the same thing.

They go back and forth, and up and down.

And the spine connecting them rotates, side bends, and extends and flexes.

And it's really important for that system, that shoulder, spine, pelvic system, to do that really well.

So one thing I suggest when people go running or sprinting, is start to pay attention to what that feels like.

Can you feel your shoulders going back and forth and coming up and down a little bit?

Or are you just moving your arms and your shoulders aren't moving?

Because chances are, if your shoulders are rocking and rolling a little bit, so will your hip.

The hip has to have the capacity to do this.

It's typically, this gets worse, but it's not as big of a problem as this it's going up and down.

Back and forth is something that gets harder and harder and harder for us as we age, but this going up and down is even more problematic.

If as you're swinging through, if that side of the hip doesn't come up, that's where we trip, that's where we fall.

That's a problem. Can we still maintain the capacity to lift the hip up as we move like this?

It's so important. So think about it when you're running, of allowing the shoulders to rock and roll a little bit and feel that same rocking and rolling in the hips.

So that would be a qualitative thing to pay attention to.

You should do a Masterclass on a running.

Yeah, that was pretty good.

Thanks, I should do this for a living.

You should, I think you might have, yeah, there's something here for you.

I appreciate it. No, this was great, I really appreciate it.

Any kind of closing thoughts, anything you wanna leave the audience with?

I mean, this has been an absolute treat and a pleasure.

It's been fun, man.

I'm a big fan of your work.

It was great to be here.

a little bit jealous of your beard and your hair.

No, I mean, listen, I'm looking at your beard. No man, that's a way better beard than mine.

We could have a beard grooming podcast afterwards because this is new to me and I don't know what I'm doing and every day I'm like.

It's really good. Yeah, you're doing a great job, really good job.

Well, we can beard out later.

Yeah. But I appreciate you and you've been doing great work for a long time and you're so full of knowledge and insight and it was a real honor, thanks too.

Back at you Richard, I appreciate it.

Cheers. Thank you. Peace.

That's it for today.

Thank you for listening.

I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation.

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All right.

[The Art and Science of Sprinting: A Masterclass with Stuart McMillan]-[Olympic Coach Stuart McMillan On The Science Of Speed, Unlocking Your Body's True Potential & Why Sprinting Is The Ultimate Human Activity]

📋 Summary

The Art and Science of Sprinting: Insights from Elite Coach Stuart McMillan

The Yin-Yang of Elite Performance

Moving Beyond the "Director" Model

The Anatomy of Sprinting vs. Running

Actionable Lessons for Everyone

Conclusion: The Ultimate Human Activity

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript