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

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Stuart McMillan. Stu McMillan is one of the world's most sought after coaches for teaching people how to get stronger, run faster, be more powerful and healthier. Today, we talk about how to do that using what for most people might seem like a rather unconventional set of methods. But for any serious track athlete will be very familiar because they do it almost every day. And that's skipping and striding. You heard right. As you'll soon learn, skipping, what most of us think of as a kid's activity, is actually one of the best plyometric activities that we can all do at any age to build more power, speed, coordination, and to improve our muscle, fascial and nervous system function. Stu McMillan has coached over 70 Olympians across nine Olympic games, and he has coached the players and coaches of every major professional sport. He explains how skipping and something called striding are zero cost activities that we all can and should include in our weekly fitness routine. They not only will have you moving better and having better posture in all your activities, but they also take minimal time and they can help protect you against injuries and improve your longevity. We also talk about the best strides for running at any speed. So if you're into jogging or sprinting, we talk about all the best ways to do that. We talk about the sport of track, which both Stu and I happen to love, and why certain groups of people excel in different sports due to genetic and environmental reasons. We also have a very direct and open conversation about the use of performance enhancing tools in the athletic and wellness worlds. This is a really special episode because if you like or if you don't like things like running, swimming, cycling, or other activities such as weight training or yoga, there's going to be a lot to take away from it that you can apply. Stu McMillan is a true savant of coaching how best to move and how to improve your health. It was an honor and privilege to host him and to learn from him. I'm sure you'll agree. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Stu McMillan. Stu McMillan, welcome.

**Stuart McMillan** (2:29)
Thank you. Great to be here.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:31)
We go back a little ways.

**Stuart McMillan** (2:33)
Yeah.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:34)
And you're the guy that they call in to make athletes, or pretty much anybody, faster, stronger, healthier, and more powerful. And who wouldn't want that? Athletes or otherwise.
Let's start by talking about running. I think for a lot of people, they hear running, and they're like, oh no, running hurts, running's painful. But I think most people, when they think about running, they think about jogging. They think about running a distance longer than a mile. But even for some people, running a mile is a painful thought, let alone a practice. How should we think about running and sprinting in particular? Because when we grow up, we learn to crawl, walk, run. And kids naturally want to run fast at some point, fast for them. What is it about running that for you is such an enchanting thing? Why do you think that every four years or so, depending on when they're scheduling the Olympics, everyone in this country gets fascinated with who's fastest, who's fastest in the world. And then they tend to put track and field aside for a bit. But people can jump, they can swim, they can do all these things. But running is so fundamental to being human. What are your thoughts on running generally? And let's break it up into distances. Why do you love seeing people run fast? Why have you devoted yourself in part to helping people run faster and faster?

**Stuart McMillan** (4:00)
Yeah, there's a lot in that. First, running fast for me is the ultimate human activity. The fastest human on the planet is the fastest human on the planet, where potentially maybe the best football player is probably not the best football player. The best soccer player is probably not the best soccer player. There might be someone down in Argentina who could be a better NFL linebacker than choose your all-pro linebacker right now. We're sprinting. Everybody sprints, as you said. We all run when we're kids. And we figure out, or our teachers figure out, or our coaches figure out, well, Andrew, you're a sprinter, so you're going to sprint. Stu, you're a middle distance, so you go and do that. And over the course of time, we kind of figure out whether we're good or not. And the sprinters, like the truly elite sprinters, end up being the truly elite sprinters when they are 20, 25, 30 years old. Like that's what you do. You don't move into something else if you are a super elite sprinter. So I think that's part of it is that for me. Like it is really truly the tip of the spear in human performance. The fastest person on the planet is the fastest person on the planet. Usain Bolt is the world record holder and he is the fastest person who's ever ran. It's probably not somebody else who, you know, in the Congo somewhere in Jamaica that could have been faster than Usain because they would have displayed themselves at some point. So for me, that is it. You know, and I, you know, I started coaching kind of in 1984 Like I've been coaching for a long, long time and I started coaching professionally in 1992 And I've coached many sports, many activities, many tasks.