0:00:05 welcome to the huberman lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life
0:00:14 i’m andrew huberman and i’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at stanford
0:00:19 school of medicine my guest today is stuart mcmillan stu mcmillan is one of the world’s
0:00:25 most sought-after coaches for teaching people how to get stronger run faster be more powerful
0:00:30 and healthier today we talk about how to do that using what for most people might seem like a rather
0:00:36 unconventional set of methods but for any serious track athlete will be very familiar because they
0:00:42 do it almost every day and that’s skipping and striding you heard right as you’ll soon learn
0:00:47 skipping what most of us think of as a kid’s activity is actually one of the best plyometric
0:00:53 activities that we can all do at any age to build more power speed coordination and to improve our
0:00:59 muscle fascial and nervous system function stu mcmillan has coached over 70 olympians across
0:01:06 nine olympic games and he has coached the players and coaches of every major professional sport he
0:01:11 explains how skipping and something called striding are zero cost activities that we all can and should
0:01:17 include in our weekly fitness routine they not only will have you moving better and having better posture
0:01:22 in all your activities but they also take minimal time and they can help protect you against injuries and
0:01:27 improve your longevity we also talk about the best strides for running at any speed so if you’re into
0:01:32 jogging or sprinting we talk about all the best ways to do that we talk about the sport of track which
0:01:37 both stew and i happen to love and why certain groups of people excel in different sports due to genetic
0:01:43 and environmental reasons we also have a very direct and open conversation about the use of performance
0:01:50 enhancing tools in the athletic and wellness worlds this is a really special episode because if you like or if you don’t
0:01:55 like things like running swimming cycling or other activities such as weight training or yoga there’s
0:02:01 going to be a lot to take away from it that you can apply stew mcmillan is a true savant of coaching how best to move
0:02:07 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
0:02:12 before we begin i’d like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research
0:02:17 roles at stanford it is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost of consumer information
0:02:22 about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme this episode
0:02:29 does include sponsors and now for my discussion with stew mcmillan stew mcmillan welcome thank you great
0:02:39 to be here we go back a little ways yeah and you’re the guy that they call in to make athletes or pretty much
0:02:48 anybody faster stronger healthier and more powerful and who wouldn’t want that athletes or otherwise
0:02:54 let’s start by talking about running you know i think for a lot of people they hear running and
0:02:59 they’re like oh no running hurts running’s painful but i think most people when they think about running
0:03:04 they think about jogging they think about running a distance longer than a mile but even for some
0:03:11 people running a mile is a painful thought let alone a practice how should we think about running and
0:03:19 sprinting in particular because when we grow up we learn to crawl walk run and kids naturally want
0:03:28 to run fast at some point fast for them what is it about running that for you is such an enchanting
0:03:33 thing why do you think that every four years or so depending on when they’re scheduling the olympics
0:03:39 everyone in this country gets fascinated with who’s fastest yeah who’s fastest in the world and then
0:03:44 they tend to put track and field aside for a bit but people can jump they can swim they can do all
0:03:50 these things but running is so fundamental to being human what are your thoughts on running generally
0:03:55 and let’s break it up into distances why do you love seeing people run fast why have you devoted
0:04:04 yourself in part to helping people run faster and faster yeah there’s a lot in that first running fast for
0:04:13 me is the ultimate human activity like the fastest human on the planet is the fastest human on the planet
0:04:19 where potentially maybe like the best football player is probably not the best football player the best
0:04:24 soccer player is probably not the best soccer player there might be some someone down in argentina who
0:04:33 could be a better nfl linebacker than choose your all pro linebacker right now where sprinting everybody
0:04:38 sprints as you said we all run when we’re kids and we figure out or our teachers figure out or our
0:04:43 coaches figure out well andrew you’re a sprinter so you’re going to sprint stew you’re a middle distance
0:04:46 so you go and do that and over the course of time we kind of figure out whether we’re good or not
0:04:53 and the sprinters like the truly elite sprinters end up being the truly elite sprinters when they are
0:04:59 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
0:05:06 so i think that’s part of it is that for me like it is really truly the tip of the spear in human
0:05:12 performance the fastest person on the planet is the fastest person on the planet usain bolt is the
0:05:17 world record holder and he is the fastest person who’s ever ran it’s probably not somebody else who
0:05:21 you know in the congo somewhere in jamaica that could have been faster than usain because they would
0:05:27 have displayed themselves at some point so for me that is it you know and i you know i started coaching
0:05:32 kind of 1984 like i’ve been coaching for a long long time and i started coaching professional in 1992
0:05:42 and i’ve coached many sports many activities many tasks and i i enjoy most of them but for me it is
0:05:47 that pinnacle that true tip of the spear that interests me the most and that you only get from
0:05:54 sprinting if you’re an nfl football player most likely you are playing every game at about 80 of your best
0:06:02 if you are 80 of your best and you got onto the 100 meter start line forget about it forget about it
0:06:09 if you’re less than 99.9 of your best forget about it that’s why i truly i love the sprinting events
0:06:15 so much and zoomed out from that a little bit like guys i started off as a strength and conditioning coach
0:06:22 so it was for me it was more about this the power the strength and the speed it was all of that and i
0:06:27 coached bobsled for a long time and i really really enjoyed bobsled because you know these guys are
0:06:34 massive they’re really strong and they’re really fast so that for me was really appealing and that was
0:06:41 kind of that that fed my obsession about this peak human performance for a long time until i had the
0:06:46 opportunity to actually go and work with like super elite sprinters and now i can’t do anything other
0:06:53 than that i really can’t it’s it’s fascinating to me how do we compare the fastest person in the 100
0:07:03 meters versus the 200 versus the 400 so for you is it coaching the 100 that’s the most exciting or the 200 or the 400
0:07:09 yeah that’s a good question i i actually prefer coaching the 200 for a couple of reasons there’s a
0:07:14 little bit of tactics in the 200 or there’s more tactics than there are in the 100 in the 100 the
0:07:21 fastest person is going to win in the 200 depending on how you tactically set up your race because it’s
0:07:27 not an all-out sprint you can’t run as fast as you can for 20 seconds whereas 100 meters you can run as
0:07:33 fast as you can for 10 to 11 seconds it is a it’s all out right from the start with the 200 you have
0:07:39 to kind of either push out really really hard and then smooth it out and then try to finish strong
0:07:43 or you start off a little bit easier and you finish strong or you just go out all out and you’re just
0:07:49 going to fade and see if you can stay ahead so that tactical element to for that race for me is really
0:07:55 interesting so then you’re combining the capacity you know the actual ability to run fast and be super
0:08:00 incredibly fast you know high high velocities with the tactical component so it’s then you’re
0:08:05 thinking about okay who’s in if my athletes in lane six who’s in lane seven who’s in lane eight
0:08:11 how are we going to determine how we run based upon what the other races are going to do so for me it’s
0:08:17 the 200 that’s not to say i don’t love the 100 the 100 for me is the one that i if i’m just a fan
0:08:22 that’s the one that i’m paying attention to the most and every four years people become obsessed with
0:08:27 it that that person is generally the winner is characterized as the fastest person on the
0:08:32 planet because like you said it’s it’s all out yeah and at the same time i think most people
0:08:41 can’t really conceive in a concrete way what sprinting 100 meters really is about yeah and the world record
0:08:48 is held by usain bolt and the record is somewhere 9.58 seconds and yesterday you told me that means
0:08:54 it’s about 40 strides to cover 100 meters for usain it was 40 steps correct yeah for uh many other elite
0:08:59 sprinters it’s somewhere between 40 and 45 and the men and somewhere between sort of 47 and 52 for the
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0:12:14 the apy is subject to change for more information see the episode description yesterday we were out at
0:12:20 the track at malibu high school here teaching my producer rob and i um some bounding drills some
0:12:26 skipping drills and we’ll get back to this because there’s such immense value for everybody not just
0:12:33 people who seek to be competitive runners but for everybody to i realized this morning it’s hop skip and
0:12:40 jump we were always going to hop skip and jump away from but to learn how to move properly at speed to
0:12:45 move properly not at speed i mean there’s just so much value in in these drills and what we went
0:12:51 through and so we’ll get back to that but there was an interesting moment yesterday uh i recall where
0:12:56 some of the kids were getting out of school and started running around the track and i had this
0:13:03 question in my mind to ask you which was hey can you spot any of those kids as likely to be really
0:13:08 excellent sprinters but i didn’t even have to ask we watched them go out in a few rows
0:13:14 and then you said that kid right there yeah you said that kid right there he’s got it what was it about
0:13:23 the way he was running kid probably was eighth or ninth grade um took one run away from us and you said that
0:13:31 that kid’s a sprinter yeah what was it was it his speed was it the form what was it it was first of all
0:13:35 all it was not the form because most of those kids are you know limbs are going all over the place
0:13:42 right it’s how they interact with the ground and it’s it’s this qualitative component that is really
0:13:49 hard to define it’s if you if you watch a elite boxer hit a heavy bag there’s a pop sound to it
0:13:55 and it’s the same with elite sprinters or not even elite sprinters but anybody who’s fast and effective and
0:14:02 efficient at applying force against an object and you see that as young as as we saw yesterday with
0:14:08 what 12 13 14 year olds right some of them are just thudding on the ground and just pushing back
0:14:15 and kind of like rob you can you’re your producer um but which by the way folks we’re taking a couple
0:14:21 of jobs at rob he’s he’s in the room with us now although off camera rob has run multiple triathlons
0:14:26 he’s an incredibly impressive athlete and um as an incredibly impressive athlete we can we can jab at
0:14:31 him every now and again but this one kid he was just it was far more efficient on the ground than
0:14:37 everyone else it was just pop pop pop pop pop pop pop and you could hear it and i hear it generally i hear
0:14:41 it before i see it and that’s i think it’s actually what i heard first and i looked around and said oh
0:14:47 that’s that’s the kid like he’s a sprinter and then you just kind of look at had at his form and it just
0:14:53 looks better there’s just a quality to that that you don’t see with these other kids and even though
0:14:58 limbs are going all over the place and head is going from side to side and you know his feet are going
0:15:05 all over the place and hands are flapping you know like wings there’s just a fluidity even with him
0:15:11 looking like that he just is doing it much more coordinated and fluid than everyone else who would look
0:15:16 like they were trying hard and with him it didn’t look like he was trying hard and typically i mean
0:15:23 that is by the way the differentiator between all elite and sub elite athletes regardless of the sport
0:15:28 the best athletes are always the ones that make it look the easiest and that kid just made it look
0:15:36 easier than everyone else could you send a kid like that out for a 400 meter run and then meet him at the
0:15:44 line and say you know what you’re meant to run the 200 or you’re meant to run the 100 is it possible to
0:15:49 tell whether or not somebody is meant for a particular distance based on how they do in a slightly different
0:15:54 distance yeah i don’t i don’t especially not at that age you know at that age you want him to be
0:16:00 doing or her to be doing as many different events as possible and let’s just trial them all i don’t think
0:16:06 they should even at that age at 12 13 14 say you’re a sprinter you’re a sprinter and you’re a jumper
0:16:09 and maybe we’ll do some middle distance so we’ll do some relays and then we can do a couple throws as
0:16:15 well and see which one that you kind of enjoying the most number one and then number two what are you
0:16:20 actually showing some expertise towards and hopefully those two things match and then you can start
0:16:27 looking at specializing for the kind of event group a little bit later and you know even and that
0:16:33 comes a lot later than many you know people outside of track and field think um even with you know most
0:16:39 ncaa division one college programs are pretty elite i mean that’s some high performing athletes and many
0:16:45 of those sprinters do the one the two the four all the relays and often your best sprinters are also
0:16:50 your best jumpers so you might have a you might have your 100 meter specialist also do the long jump
0:16:55 and the triple jump and it won’t be until maybe the second or the third or fourth year of college or it
0:16:59 maybe even their first year as a pro where they start actually doing just the one or two events
0:17:05 i ran cross country as a senior in high school i’ve been running consistently since i was 16 three times
0:17:10 a week i don’t consider myself even a runner i just run for the pleasure of it a long run a medium run and
0:17:17 a short run um but perhaps it was the movies about steve prefontaine which there were two i think one’s
0:17:22 called uh prefontaine and the other one’s called without limits that are that are quite good that got me
0:17:28 excited about track and then i started going up to university of oregon and attending track meets as
0:17:34 a fan yeah um but there’s this dramatized moment about pre as they called him uh and bowerman the
0:17:44 coach up at in eugene where allegedly um purportedly uh pre wants to run the mile because everyone in
0:17:50 the country at that time was obsessed with who’s the fastest miler but bowerman says to him no you’re a
0:17:54 5 000 runner you’re gonna run the three mile and he said no one cares about the 5 000 he said you’re
0:17:59 gonna make them care and it turned out to be the right fit the 5 000 was the right event for him
0:18:05 so that was a moment where a coach could identify you you could be a great miler but you’ll be a
0:18:13 spectacular 5 000 runner is that based on sort of times and splits and recovery and all that or is
0:18:19 where is there actually a body type and a gate that um is best because one of my favorite things to find
0:18:25 on social media i promise this is not a digression is where they’ll set out a race an animated race
0:18:30 between like a rabbit a cheetah an elephant a human it’s very interesting to see which animals are
0:18:36 fastest over which distances they fall out over different distances and most people perhaps are
0:18:42 surprised to find that the animal that wins the long long long longest distance and beats all the
0:18:48 other species is us yeah the human right so we’re not good in the in the sprint compared to the cheetah
0:18:54 but we are oh so good at the marathon and ultra marathon compared to the cheetah or any other animal
0:19:02 so do you think it’s something special about the gate um the personality times in various events i mean
0:19:10 what what funnels um somebody’s understanding of themselves uh or an athlete to say you know you’re
0:19:15 meant to you’re meant to do this yeah i think you nailed it at the end their understanding of themselves
0:19:20 i think is a really important part of it you know we find ourselves through movement and we fall in love
0:19:25 with whatever it is because that’s what we do and we tend to do it really well so i coached
0:19:29 a british sprinter for a long time her name is jody williams i coached her for about a decade starting
0:19:35 in 2015 she just retired at the end of last season she went when she was young so between i think the
0:19:45 ages of 13 and 17 she won 150 straight races in the 100 and the 200 never lost was the best at every
0:19:54 single age group all over the world for five years finally lost and did not really transition into being
0:20:01 being an elite 100 meter 200 meter sprinter but this was her identity she’d always been the fastest
0:20:10 person so when i started coaching her in 2015-16 when she was 22 that was what she did she was 100 200
0:20:17 meter girl but she wasn’t elite she wasn’t world class and we kept on pushing her towards the 100 and
0:20:23 200 because this was what she saw herself as and me external to that what i saw her as as well and everyone else
0:20:30 expected from her because she was the best in the world for so long and it’s a funny thing happened
0:20:37 sort of five years into that we did a a relay a four by four early season at arizona state
0:20:43 university and she ran really fast in this four by four relay and she enjoyed it and she didn’t enjoy
0:20:51 getting beat in the 100 and the 200 anymore and she said hmm maybe i can do the 400 and then the 2019
0:20:57 world championships in doha she made the british team in the 200 didn’t do very well but ran the relay
0:21:04 ran the four by four and ran the fastest split of all the countries she ran 49 four and a four by four split
0:21:11 and said okay we’re 400 meter runner now so sometimes it’s just that sometimes it takes a long
0:21:17 time for the athlete to come to the realization that this is what they connect with like this is this is
0:21:22 who i am you know you know what i mean like it’s it’s really it’s not as easy as just saying oh we’ve got
0:21:30 a bunch of tests and you’re 100 meter you’re 200 you’re a 400 for her it took her over a decade to come to
0:21:35 terms of the fact that you know i can’t do the 100 200 anymore but i could be really good at the 400
0:21:41 and then and two years later at the 2020 olympic games which ended up being obviously in 21
0:21:49 she was sixth in the 400 meters in the olympics we’re at 49.9 twice so it’s uh you know it’s um
0:21:55 in hindsight we wonder if we moved into the 400 five years earlier three or four years earlier maybe
0:22:00 she could have had a medal but yeah it’s it’s an interesting one like it’s we’re always
0:22:05 using all the different pieces of information that we have at hand some of it’s quantitative
0:22:10 sometimes some of some of it’s qualitative some of it is just a feeling and with with jody specifically
0:22:14 it was you know what did i better connect with because you know that’s typically that’s as i said
0:22:19 that’s why we get into sport in the first place if we can’t connect with that uh as an individual
0:22:25 with why we’re doing it then why are we even doing it i feel like this is a great metaphor for life
0:22:33 in general for career i mean i’ve enjoyed different careers and um i’m glad i started in the one i did
0:22:38 but that i’ve ended up in the one i’m in now even though i still teach and i’m involved in research
0:22:45 in some ways that um there’s such an immense pleasure to uh finding the the thing yeah for
0:22:50 oneself yeah but you can’t get there first this is what i think is frustrating to young people now
0:22:54 because of the internet they think like what’s my calling what’s what’s my event what’s my sport what
0:23:00 am i built for and then you have all these examples right you’ve got your um shaquille o’neal’s
0:23:06 clearly built for basketball and then you have your growing up when i grew up your spud web right
0:23:11 much much shorter than most of the professional players in the nba but wins the slam dunk competition
0:23:17 and so he’s always used it as an example that you can bridge these these gaps but i do think that
0:23:26 dedicated application to one area is the best lane from which to exit to another freeway yeah you can’t
0:23:32 just get on to the the uh the audubon so to speak for you you have to sometimes get on you know highway
0:23:39 101 for a while and speed a little bit or or crash you know i’m not being literal here um you said
0:23:44 something that i think is immensely powerful i’d like to use as a segue which is that we find ourselves
0:23:50 through movement um i think this is so true um and not just for people who are trying to figure out
0:23:55 what athletic or exercise endeavors are best for them but certainly there i’d like to contrast
0:24:03 jogging and running yesterday you you mentioned a few things that to me just feel like gems because
0:24:11 like i said i’ll try and run far-ish for me i go by time about an hour once a week 30 minutes on
0:24:17 another day and a let’s just say about a 15 minute not all out but close to all out on a separate day
0:24:24 i’ve tried ad nauseam to figure out whether or not it’s best to heel strike and roll whether or not it’s
0:24:31 best to land on the toe when it’s best to lift the knee i mean for the the uninformed um who goes to
0:24:37 the internet you can get answers about this all sorts of ways let’s start with the slowest movement
0:24:43 possible which is walking let’s forget about speed walking for sake of this conversation for
0:24:49 a number of reasons race walking race walking excuse me race walking um see i even forgot the name of it
0:24:54 no disrespect to race walkers no disrespect to race walkers but most people don’t seek to race walk i
0:25:03 think um but let’s talk about walking yeah when we walk do we we heal to toe roll naturally do we
0:25:11 middle of foot to toe roll and then let’s proceed to jogging running and then let’s step up through the
0:25:18 various gear systems yeah yeah um there’s probably five separate gait patterns walking is the first
0:25:24 one and typically most people will strike on their heel they’ll roll over and they’ll toe off on their
0:25:33 toe and we do that up to about two to 2.2 to 2.3 meters a second until we can no longer do that so we
0:25:39 start walking we walk really really slow and if we start increasing our speed you’ll find that you’ll
0:25:46 almost self-organize into the speed that feels really nice for you if you were going going for
0:25:51 a walk you would self-organize towards your most efficient or your most stable velocity for that walk
0:25:56 and if you don’t not thinking about it you will self-organize towards your most efficient mechanical
0:26:03 solution as well that it might be flat foot it might be right up high on your heel with massive
0:26:08 amount of dorsiflexion it might be a little bit lower on the heel but that’s all contingent upon
0:26:18 your individual structure how your foot is built how it coordinates with your knee and your hip if you’re not
0:26:24 thinking about it we typically will self-organize towards what is most efficient most stable for us
0:26:31 and then as we get faster and faster and faster you’ll feel that that stability and that inefficiency
0:26:37 starts to rock a little bit and you can no longer walk and what do we do then to get and to get faster
0:26:43 we actually have to transition to a totally different gait pattern we start to jog because we’re with
0:26:51 just so much instability inefficiency that that pattern just start begins to break down and we start to jog
0:26:58 let me back up just a little bit so if you were to walk with let’s say your your 80 year old neighbor
0:27:06 and you’re doing a walk with her that’s probably going to be pretty taxing for you pretty uneconomical
0:27:10 pretty inefficient because you have to shuffle a little bit you’re walking so slow you’re probably
0:27:16 gonna be bent over a little bit but if the neighbor went in you just continue to walk you would speed up to
0:27:21 your most efficient pattern so within all of these gait patterns there is almost like an upside down
0:27:27 you where you start off really inefficient unstable as you get faster and faster and faster efficiency
0:27:33 increases stability increases and you keep getting faster and faster and faster stability goes down again
0:27:40 efficiency goes down again before you have to transition to a different pattern so jogging occurs at
0:27:48 somewhere around 20 of your maximum sprint speed so you know whether that’s 1.8 to 2 to 2.2 meters per second
0:27:55 and then we start to jog and eventually we can’t jog at that speed anymore so we have to transition to a
0:28:01 different gait pattern and we start to run and that’s kind of what we were doing yesterday in fact
0:28:06 you know we spent some time running now it’s important you asked me about kind of heel strike and
0:28:12 where we are within the foot we’re thinking about the same thing throughout and that’s just to move from
0:28:20 here to there as efficiently as we can understanding that we will typically as a sales as i said self-organize
0:28:24 towards our most efficient pattern and the only time we actually think about doing something different
0:28:30 than that is when somebody outside tells us to do something different and messes up the efficiency
0:28:36 most of the time so for me it’s uh like the big cueing and we talked about this yesterday right we
0:28:42 said flat foot contact and if you think about being flat foot contact and all of the different things that
0:28:48 you do all the different gait patterns you do the velocity is what determines where in the foot you
0:28:53 actually will contact so if you’re walking and you’re thinking flat foot you’ll actually go heel
0:28:57 strike you’ll roll over and your toe off and if you’re sprinting as fast as you can you’re thinking
0:29:03 flat foot contact you will actually plantar flex slightly just prior to ground contact and you’ll
0:29:09 contact the ground more towards your toes than you will if you’re just walking or running or jogging we
0:29:14 should clarify for people dorsiflexion is when your toes come close up towards your shin correct uh
0:29:19 you’re you’re narrowing that angle between your your foot and your you know front lower part of your lower
0:29:26 limb and um plantar flexion is the opposite yes pointing the toe i think uh attempting to go
0:29:30 ballerina and point but hopefully unless you’re a ballerina you’re not getting all the way you know
0:29:36 to get to your initial point as well it’s like how many of us were taught to sprint up high on our toes
0:29:43 when we were kids like we all were right yeah up on your toes keep your not keep your arms at 90 degrees
0:29:49 and get really really tall and that’s totally opposite to what we should be doing yeah sometimes
0:29:53 kids when they run when they’re real little you know like three or four like when they’re just running
0:29:58 around the house barefoot they’ll like run on their toes um so what you’re basically saying if i understand
0:30:05 correctly is the speed should dictate the foot strike correct okay i think that’s a very important point
0:30:11 for people um who are interested in running or already running the speed should dictate the foot
0:30:19 strike yeah that unless there’s a problem to resolve yes that a coach has told you how you need to
0:30:23 resolve and how to do it you shouldn’t be thinking about heel striking or toe striking you should be
0:30:27 thinking about the speed that you’re trying to cover the distance and yeah and if you’re thinking about
0:30:33 anything just think about being flat just think about being flat and the foot will take care of itself
0:30:41 due to the velocity let’s talk a little bit more about body position and running mechanics um there may
0:30:46 be no hard and fast rules to this but where should my eyes be you know i’ve heard oh you want to be
0:30:52 looking but assuming i’m not in a race against anyone i’m you know heading out for a run doesn’t matter
0:31:00 which duration um does it matter where i place my my vision um in sprinting a hundred percent i feel
0:31:05 like the longer the the distance is the less it probably matters because the velocity is so much
0:31:11 slower i feel like when you’re if you’re going out for a jog and it’s 10 minute miles you’re probably
0:31:16 looking pretty much straight ahead of you you know and if it’s a little bit darker and maybe you’re on
0:31:20 a rocky surface or something or a little bit uneven surface you’re looking down a little bit
0:31:26 but it doesn’t seem to really have a systemic effect on how you move but it does when you sprint
0:31:32 because obviously your body is going to follow your eyes so if you’re running down the track
0:31:37 and you’re sprinting as fast you can and your eyes creep up and you start looking up then the chin is
0:31:42 going to follow that and you just start this extension pattern in the entirety of the system
0:31:48 as soon as you lift your chin up you get into more extension through the rib cage and the spine
0:31:53 and then the lumbar and everything gets extended you end up standing up so more arched back a little
0:31:57 bit more right posture correct for those aren’t familiar with flexion and extension um unless we
0:32:02 say otherwise if we talk about flexion we’re talking about assuming the dreaded c-shaped position that
0:32:08 everyone seems so good at these days collapsed it toward their uh midline uh versus extension where
0:32:14 your chin is up and away from the chest and you’re um right upright posture and if the eyes come up
0:32:19 first you’re going to end up in what’s known as a hyper extended position there’s too much extension
0:32:23 where really what we want the eyes to do is just come with the rest of the torso
0:32:29 so how i the cue that i use for the sprinters is allow your torso to determine when the chin and when
0:32:34 the eyes come up not the opposite way around because if the eyes come first the chin follows and then
0:32:40 we get this disconnect between the head and the thorax and the pelvis and there’s just too much
0:32:45 extension we end up kind of just pushing our way down the track rather than bouncing yeah there’s a
0:32:51 wonderful movement in yoga that’s helped me a lot in my weight lifting uh over the years i did a little
0:32:56 bit of yoga when i lived in san diego um because i had good yoga classes where you they have you do this
0:33:02 kind of ragdoll hanging over at the waist position looks like a jefferson deadlift for the for the gym rats
0:33:08 or the olympic lifters rounded lower back and then they have you stand up from that position but
0:33:18 you deliberately start at your lower spine and and wrap unpeel yourself from that folded over position
0:33:24 never letting the head lead but you know so basically like a chain coming up from the spine and then that
0:33:29 the head come moves last i mean it’s moving the whole time but it uh you’re looking straight forward
0:33:33 last as opposed to what you’re saying where you lift the head first that’s been tremendously helpful
0:33:39 to me in movements in the gym which i think have helped me a lot like um glute ham raises where you
0:33:42 you know you’re essentially in that position and you come all the way up and then you go into a hamstring
0:33:50 curl or a deadlift or any kind of movement where you where i’m going from torso bent forward to up
0:33:58 i remembered it move the torso first and the head last and i’ll just say in my own experience the
0:34:03 strength increases that come from doing it that way as opposed to moving the head first and trying to
0:34:09 then pull the weight up it’s remarkable yeah you’re we are all so much stronger than we think if we
0:34:14 engage the motor neurons in the proper sequence yeah so i think that’s what you’re referring to here
0:34:20 a hundred percent okay do you um here’s a question for you when you were first uh taught how to squat
0:34:25 were you told to look at the ceiling or up on the wall yeah i was told um the weight will go where
0:34:31 my eyes go right but now i now i where did that come from i don’t understand where that came from i
0:34:35 don’t know i mean some of the most useful things that have been told to me over the years that made
0:34:39 a tremendous difference would be like this um again borrowed from yo guys who brought it into the gym then
0:34:45 when i talked to proper you know uh people like proper biomechanics folks like yourself or kelly
0:34:50 starrett they go yeah of course you have to move your spine and torso before um but one of the most
0:34:57 useful things for the squat and for the deadlift um has been because it’s very difficult to think
0:35:04 about many things at once especially when you’re on pulling or trying to squat heavy loads is to move
0:35:10 my chest and my hips at the same time together so that you don’t end up doing the the dreaded um
0:35:16 uh good morning back raise followed by standing up right um so moving them in unison so thinking
0:35:22 about my chest and my hips moving at the same time that’s been tremendously helpful and tends to put the
0:35:28 head in the right position and the other one is oh right when deadlifting to not think about pulling
0:35:33 the weight off the floor but rather pushing my feet into the ground while driving back you know and these
0:35:38 little things end up making a huge difference not just in terms of the amount of weight that you can
0:35:45 pull or or squat but the safety of the movement is just so much more stable to drive the feet into
0:35:49 the ground yeah you think why did why was i trying to pull a weight off the ground all i had to do was
0:35:54 like push my feet hard into the ground and hold on to this bar and boom you’re up that easy it’s wild how
0:36:01 we pick up bad habits it’s also wild how quickly those bad habits can be resolved so in keeping with that
0:36:07 back to running i believe that everyone can and should run most everyone there’s certain people
0:36:14 who can’t run for uh you know various reasons but um but that people who can walk very likely can run
0:36:23 and i’m becoming more of a believer with every moment i spend with you that um sprinting is more valuable
0:36:30 than jogging that sprinting is more valuable than any kind of distance run and i’m going to offend a lot
0:36:39 of people but i love long distance running so i’m offending myself um yesterday we didn’t sprint
0:36:45 but we did a lot of skipping let’s talk about skipping and yes i’m talking about skip skip skip
0:36:52 this okay this thing i’m not gonna sing the rest of that skipping is such a natural movement
0:37:01 for people most people and it feels so damn good and it’s actually a bit more taxing than people believe
0:37:07 and i came out of that workout skipping yesterday from skipping yesterday feeling like my hips were
0:37:15 nice and open tons of extension my posture’s up i feel like i grew an inch i i was strong in the gym
0:37:21 this morning i just feel incredible what is it about skipping and why do you have sprinters skip so much and
0:37:26 why is it why aren’t more people talking about skipping and yes we will return to to gate stuff but i think we
0:37:35 have to talk about skipping yeah uh yeah first of all we skipped a lot because the reality is you could
0:37:42 not sprint and that is the reality for almost everybody because we stop sprinting when we’re
0:37:48 whatever age some people stop sprinting at 15 sometimes some people it’s 20 but very few people
0:37:55 are actually sprinting through their 20s and next to nobody is sprinting through their 30s so we know that
0:38:01 the movement of sprinting or running fast and we kind of know what what this does and why this is good
0:38:08 for you right we know that yeah moving our body intensively with intensity is probably something we
0:38:16 should be able to do for as long as we possibly can but we can’t because typically we’ve still got
0:38:23 pretty good engines into our 30s and 40s and 50s but we don’t have the bodies to be able to handle the
0:38:30 stresses and the forces that this engine could put into the body so our tissue and our joints just
0:38:36 is not able to handle all of these forces if you were to go out and sprint yesterday even if we did
0:38:41 you know we ended up warming up for how long an hour and a half warm-up if we did a let’s say a real
0:38:46 proper warm-up we warmed up for 30 minutes and then i just said andrew i want you to sprint as fast as you
0:38:51 possibly can for 50 meters that’s not going to end well for most people maybe you could get through it
0:38:56 yesterday but for most people that wouldn’t end well you end up with a pull or a strain or a couple
0:39:00 days of just feeling not well because we just don’t do that and we don’t have the tissue capacity to be
0:39:05 able to handle that anymore or the joint capacity you know there’s so many people assuming they they have
0:39:09 to run really quickly somewhere and they just didn’t know that they had to do it or they’re playing
0:39:14 backyard basketball or football and they tweak a hamstring or tweak a calf or something even worse
0:39:19 something even worse right it happens all the time we just do not have the tissue capacity anymore to
0:39:27 handle those forces so what do we do instead and i i typically recommend two activities one is running
0:39:33 up hills there’s a lot less stress on the tissue and the joint system by sprinting up a hill than there
0:39:39 is on sprinting on a straightaway but second i think more important is actually skipping and i and
0:39:46 i’m with you i don’t know why we stopped skipping i think it’s associated with uh only childlike
0:39:50 behavior but that’s like saying jump rope is only associated with childlike behavior and i’m a big
0:39:56 believer in skipping rope we’ll talk about skipping rope but i think that’s it um yeah i mean maybe this
0:40:02 conversation or this portion of the conversation could be titled you know um let’s normalize skipping yeah for
0:40:10 adults absolutely it felt awesome yeah you can cover a lot of ground quickly heart rate gets up but not to
0:40:16 an outrageous degree you’re not sucking for air but it does feel a little silly if you’re not on a track
0:40:22 but you’ve mentioned uh you’ve what’s the longest distance you’ve ever skipped 10 miles did you get some
0:40:29 funny looks i got a few nice and you’re a real tall guy you’re six three so you can’t really uh hide
0:40:34 no uh very easily that was in the park so there wasn’t a lot of people okay but i skipped for uh
0:40:40 20 minutes every morning on the roads i get a few honks that’s okay i mean they could be honks of
0:40:45 approval could well be yeah or something else but you think about it like it’s you you’re actually taxing
0:40:52 the coordination patterns and the tissue and the joints in pretty similar ways as if we were going to
0:40:58 sprint we’re working on pushing the knee behind the hip getting into this knee behind butt pattern
0:41:04 this hip extension pattern which is so important and i know this is a a topic of conversation that
0:41:09 you had with kelly when kelly was on here the importance of getting your knee behind your butt
0:41:15 and finding and searching for opportunities to do that more often because we lose that so easily so
0:41:23 skipping allows us to do that secondary to that is the coordination aspect between how we coordinate
0:41:28 the flexion extension at the ankle the flexion extension at the knee and the flexion extension
0:41:35 at the hip and we do that in a very similar way as sprinting where each of them stiffen at this at this
0:41:43 time that is um uh considered throughout the entirety of the system where it’s just like the spring the leg
0:41:48 acts as a spring where if you think about when we jog or when we run we’re kind of running on our ankles
0:41:53 and knees a little bit we don’t feel like we’re really using our hips when you’re running a 10 minute
0:41:58 mile it’s all it’s a lot of stress through the foot it’s a lot of stress through the calves and by the way
0:42:04 i’m not anti-running or anti-jogging i jog and i run and i still do all that stuff i’m not saying now
0:42:10 stop doing all that and just go and skip i’m just saying find some opportunities to also skip
0:42:17 because skipping where actually can tax the system in very similar ways as pretty high intensity sprinting
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0:45:07 to get up to 20 off i want to hover a little bit on knee behind butt so knee behind kelly starrett
0:45:14 shout out kelly starrett i mean if you think about this folks like knee behind butt means into extension
0:45:20 so the hips are opening so to speak i know in yoga they say hip opening means a different thing but hip
0:45:27 extension generally means posture is more elevated chin away from chest generally i mean you could get knee
0:45:33 knee behind butt with your chin down but it’s tougher just that the um sternum comes up um kind of
0:45:39 naturally puts us into external rotation so think uh thumbs out to the side like the fawns as opposed to
0:45:48 inward and then you think about the the typical sitting standing walking jogging pattern of everybody
0:45:57 yeah especially if you’re a commuter um doesn’t matter if you’re on a subway bus um car or otherwise or
0:46:06 plane you’re you’re folded in and so what i’m starting to realize is that knee uh knee behind butt ankle
0:46:12 elevated sternum up i mean these are the hallmarks of locomotion yeah and so it’s interesting that
0:46:19 walking well jogging in particular seems to follow this kind of like forward folded kind of like
0:46:24 almost like falling forward kind of thing i’m not trying to beat up on jogging because i also like to
0:46:28 jog but i wonder if minute for minute
0:46:36 skipping would be a much better activity than jogging for people who want to elevate their heart rate
0:46:42 you know all the standard general adaptations that occur with exercise improved insulin regulation etc etc
0:46:46 um do you think for the person who has not skipped in a while to go out and
0:46:52 skip for a couple minutes is the way to do it or should they skip for a lap and then walk a lap what
0:46:57 would be the way to break into this yeah i think i think probably the the worst thing to do is go out
0:47:04 for a 10 mile skip don’t do that i think we start off with like a 30 second skip 30 second jog 30
0:47:09 second skip 30 second jog or 30 second skip followed by a 30 second walk and the difference is you’ll
0:47:14 feel this right if you think about when you skip and we talked about this a lot yesterday i was asking
0:47:21 you to be expressive express yourself think about what your posture is and how you’re holding yourself
0:47:26 you don’t really feel you don’t seem to think about those things when you jog you just jog and as you
0:47:30 said you’re kind of closed and small and short and you’re just trying to get through it right
0:47:35 the heart rate gets up to whatever it is and yeah you get some good exercise but skipping here’s your
0:47:42 opportunity to truly express yourself be big and free and open and bouncy and rhythmical all of these
0:47:48 things that were at one point in our lives pretty important to us and we lose and that’s what’s that
0:47:54 is what we get from sprinting right the best sprinters are the ones who can express themselves truly
0:47:59 maximally like totally let go and it doesn’t have to be like massively
0:48:04 powerful like the skips that we were doing yesterday were what we call low amplitude skips
0:48:09 where we’re just sort of skipping back and forth but you’re still asking you to be tall and expressive
0:48:15 and swing and be stiff on the ground and i feel like like there’s as i said there’s so many different
0:48:21 benefits to this whether it’s just been the plyometric benefit whether it’s the fascial benefit
0:48:28 whether it be it because this is such a a cross body coordinative aspect there’s all sorts of brain
0:48:34 benefits to that as you know it’s uh i mean it’s just it’s just there’s so much more benefits to
0:48:40 skipping than there is to just jogging so the on-ramp for me when i talk to people about the benefits of
0:48:45 skipping is just to put it in their jogs so i was talking to one of your photographers yesterday
0:48:51 and said how do i do this i usually jog and i i’m going like 10 minute mile pace i said well next time
0:48:57 you jog just in you know go for your jogs you know go for about a mile or so when you’re doing a typical
0:49:03 jog and then just go back and forth between skipping and jogging every 30 seconds or so and i guarantee
0:49:08 you that you will feel better with every skip that you do every single one because there’s this
0:49:14 again the self-organizing coordinative aspect to it where you start feeling a little bit more bouncy
0:49:20 a little lighter a little bit more coordinated a little bit more rhythmic which feeds your jogging
0:49:26 so for me that’s probably the best on-ramp is just to work it into your current jogs and then from there
0:49:30 start getting a little bit more powerful with it a little bit more expressive with it now we start
0:49:36 driving the thigh up and back and get again a little a little bit more hip extension so being you know
0:49:42 now we can start talking about skips for distance where you’re trying to say okay from here that
0:49:48 tree that’s 50 meters away how many steps do i need to take to get to that 50 meter away tree
0:49:54 so doing things like that yeah i’m fascinated by activities both physical and mental that facilitate
0:50:05 the transition into a more difficult activity physical or mental i started to think about this when i started
0:50:13 working on my book in earnest it’s very hard to just jump into writing but i noticed that if i did some
0:50:20 drawing listen to a lecture while i was drawing and i do anatomical drawings very easy to transition into
0:50:25 writing i enjoy drawing i’m not trying to accomplish much with it but it’s a very natural activity
0:50:33 for me and just very easy to drop into a deep groove for writing for hours really and then i started
0:50:36 talking to a musician friend of mine who he’s a songwriter very accomplished songwriter and he does
0:50:43 the same and then i saw a post from joanie mitchell that she would paint before she would sing and i think
0:50:49 these transition activities that are natural for us that don’t feel as constricted by distance over time
0:50:53 or you know sometimes i put my drawings on social media but they’re really for me their way of kind
0:50:58 of um thinking about the biology from a circuit standpoint it is very personal and kind of abstract
0:51:06 um as you talk about skipping it seems a little bit the same where you know skipping we’re not necessarily
0:51:12 trying to become the fastest skipper in the world or beat our yesterday’s skipping time we’re
0:51:17 just trying to skip with more as you said more expression more enjoyment yeah but perhaps it
0:51:24 sounds like indeed it can help transition into a faster gate with what we’re doing for jogging or
0:51:30 for running or transition us right into into sprinting and i think that these um transition
0:51:36 points for physical and mental activities are very important because these days there’s so many tools and
0:51:42 protocols you know dare i say and people start to feel like oh i have to do all of these things how
0:51:46 would i do this right how am i supposed to meditate and get sunlight and do it you know i already
0:51:52 exercising a ton now i mean now you want me to skip the way you describe it is completely different
0:51:56 it’s saying no you’re still doing your cardio quote unquote but maybe you do your zone two cardio and
0:52:02 you incorporate some skipping which will make your zone two faster for you yeah or your your your
0:52:07 high intensity interval training more um you’ll feel more pliable yeah more explosive
0:52:12 mike that yeah i think that’s that’s part of it i think step one is incorporating in so you can
0:52:18 actually be comfortable skipping and step two is now can we add a little bit more speed force velocity to
0:52:24 that skip where it becomes in and of itself a workout where you’re skipping as hard as you can for 50
0:52:29 meters and walking back and doing that 10 to 15 times is that would you consider that a solid workout for
0:52:35 skipping that would be a great skipping workout skipping 50 meters walking back yeah doing that
0:52:42 10 to 15 times yeah because that’s that is safe if you warm up i’m not saying go out and do a maximal
0:52:47 effort skip for 50 meters without doing a warm-up do a good warm-up first that includes some low amplitude
0:52:53 skips and maybe some jogs and some stretches do that for 10 or 15 minutes and then do some maximal
0:53:00 amplitude skips for over 50 meters that’s a great workout in and of itself like a lot a lot of really
0:53:07 beneficial plyometric work being done there let’s talk about concentric and eccentric aspects of running
0:53:13 and skipping so folks concentric generally associated with the lifting phase although sometimes it’s the
0:53:19 pulling phase if it’s a pull up and then eccentric would be the lowering phase of some movement um in
0:53:22 running where’s the concentric where’s the eccentric for the uninformed if you could just tell us
0:53:30 uh well in running concentric is pretty important because most of running is pretty concentric dominant
0:53:35 you’re on the ground for quite a long time and you push behind your center mass for quite a long time
0:53:42 in striding and sprinting which are the two faster gates so you’ve got walking jogging running striding and
0:53:50 sprinting striding and sprinting which is upwards of so striding if you think about being 75 to 90 percent
0:53:55 or 80 percent to 95 percent of your maximum sprint speed that’s called stride that’s called striding
0:54:01 and then sprinting is anything above that where you actually it’s purely truly maximal as we said these are
0:54:10 different uh gait patterns entirely um those sprinting and striding is almost entirely eccentric entirely
0:54:16 break you’re breaking it’s all breaking it’s all breaking forces it’s how well do you handle those
0:54:23 breaking forces if you do not handle those breaking forces well you’re not fast it’s and and concentric
0:54:30 any concentric force ability or concentric force capacity is just not a differentiator at elite at
0:54:36 elite speed in fact it seems to be reverse so we we did a lot of testing through the 90s when i was up in
0:54:41 calgary i was working for the canadian sports center in calgary uh starting in 1994 or so and was there
0:54:49 for a long time and we were we had you know because 27 different national teams are based there and all
0:54:56 of the university of calgary uh sports teams were also there we could test out the yin yang for hundreds
0:55:02 of athletes every single day and one of the things that we tested was was concentric isometric and
0:55:08 eccentric force capacities and which ones actually related to being actually good at your sport and
0:55:14 almost every single sport the concentric force capacity and you pick the one whether it’s peak
0:55:20 whether it’s rate of force application whether it’s time time to peak concentric force capacity just did
0:55:26 not at all differentiate between the elite performers in that sport and the sub elite performers in that
0:55:34 sport but eccentric did all across the board i’m absolutely struck by this stride comes before sprint
0:55:39 thing and and i’m remembering back to to uh i to cross country where they say we’re going to do a stride
0:55:46 workout at the end of a run we get back to the the track at school and they do some strides and um i’m just
0:55:52 chuckling to myself because i always would tell myself in subsequent years you know okay i’m going
0:55:59 to sprint but i’m going to sprint at you know 50 of my all-out speed yeah so i always think of all-out
0:56:05 speed for me as um somebody’s chasing me with a a syringe filled with poison okay and i’ve got to get away
0:56:13 okay um that’s all out speed i don’t want to die so 50 of that 60 70 you know it’s subject you know
0:56:16 and i’m measuring it subjectively i’m not doing this by heart rates or anything like that and indeed
0:56:21 anytime i’ve done a hundred percent all out like in my mind imagining you know someone trying to
0:56:25 try to really take my life and i’m running all out i end up with this lower back thing because of the
0:56:31 you know it you get hurt yeah um but striding sounds like something that people could work up to
0:56:38 how do you know after doing the skip workout that you described that you’re quote-unquote ready to stride
0:56:44 and start doing a stride workout and i should mention that the these workouts because we did one yesterday
0:56:51 um you finish them feeling great this is an aspect of exercise that i think most people don’t talk
0:56:57 about unfortunately that this leave it all on the mat you know you take every set to failure in the gym
0:57:03 or you’re you know these long runs where you’re just shredded that they’re not great for teaching
0:57:09 people how to be healthy because people are exhausted afterwards they’re tired they over
0:57:13 train quickly and then people say there’s no such thing as over training it’s like yeah if you can
0:57:18 sleep all day eat all day and your profession is to do this but there is such a thing as having a
0:57:23 stressful life and wanting to be healthy and exercising and trying to incorporate that in a way that feeds
0:57:28 the rest of your life yeah and i think these workouts that we did the workout we did yesterday excuse me
0:57:35 um left me feeling you know posturally energetically mood wise it’s feeling great i slept great last night
0:57:41 felt great this morning i had a great workout in the gym as i mentioned earlier so i want to encourage
0:57:47 people to give this a try and in doing that i want to give them a roadmap so a warm-up of 10 to 15 minutes
0:57:55 50 meter or so skip um could they do it on lawn dirt or concrete does it matter no it doesn’t great
0:58:01 yeah if you’ve got a really flat grass perfect okay but if you if you don’t and do it on concrete no
0:58:07 problem okay so basically no cost to this except a little bit of time and attention um 10 to 15 of
0:58:13 those you have 50 meters out walk back repeat after a warm-up and if you need a little bit longer recovery
0:58:18 than the probably 90 seconds it takes to walk back take it not a big deal the quality here is a
0:58:25 determining factor as you said you’re not trying to get really fatigued from plyometric work this is
0:58:30 a plyometric session you want to be kind of fresh going into each one and that’s going to take you know
0:58:37 for most people doing a maximal skip over the course of 50 50 meters it’s 90 seconds is about enough
0:58:43 but if you’re really explosive and you’re a really good skipper it might be three minutes that’s fine as
0:58:48 you said you want to feel good at the end of that you don’t want to be beasted at the end of that now if you
0:58:54 can do it where you’re if we transition say from the skips and you can stride really well and if you
0:59:00 can stride really well maybe you can sprint really well really well that doesn’t necessarily mean that
0:59:05 you shouldn’t be tired at the end of the session but the quality of the movement has to be the governor
0:59:11 there not the capacity no i got to get the work done and i don’t care how that work looks so what
0:59:18 it looks like i just got to get it done no with high intense work with sprint work your your governor
0:59:23 is always the quality of the work what does it look like what does it feel like it’s a lot like resistance
0:59:30 training in that way 100 always quality so um how does one transition into striding and what what
0:59:34 does that look like this is saying okay i’m gonna i’m gonna sprint but it’s not a sprint because i’m
0:59:40 gonna hold back a bit but how do you hold back and still have the expressive part because the expressive
0:59:45 part it’s a little hard to describe in words but yesterday you were encouraging rob and i to get us
0:59:49 you know tall with our posture as if we’re being pulled up by a string from our heads and it has a
0:59:55 profound psychological effect and then you just feel your your body opening up in natural movement you
0:59:59 don’t have to think about coordinating the hand lift it just you’re in you know like this full
1:00:06 bowing out it’s really wonderful if we describe the difference between all of the gait patterns
1:00:13 just through the amount of space that you take up on the planet so when you when you walk it’s a small
1:00:18 space and when you jog you’re taking up a little bit more space and when you run it’s a bit more space
1:00:22 when you start to stride it’s more space again and then when you sprint you’re up here and you’re
1:00:28 being maximally expressive so just think about it from that perspective the other part is jogging
1:00:35 and running typically happens behind your center mass you crash onto the ground and you push back
1:00:40 you have this propulsive phase there’s not a lot of a break of breaking phase here there’s a long
1:00:47 propulsive phase that happens with the foot pushing back behind the center mass striding and sprinting
1:00:53 happens in front of the center mass there’s an actually a longer eccentric phase where you
1:00:59 drive a lot of force into the ground it’s in front of the center mass and then you propel yourself off
1:01:04 and it’s a very short propulsive phase so think about it that way so it’s a bigger shape and it’s
1:01:10 primarily more in front and it’s also as i said this is important you can’t sprint and most of the people
1:01:15 that are listening to this cannot sprint are you telling us to not sprint no no i’m i’m what i’m
1:01:22 saying is you do not have that strategy available to you most of us like everybody who’s listening to
1:01:26 this almost everybody will be able to walk and if you can walk as you said you could probably jog
1:01:35 and most of the people on the planet can walk jog and maybe they can run most people on the the planet
1:01:40 can’t stride they can’t get any faster than 75 of what their capacity is because they will they just
1:01:46 can’t do that anymore if you’re a kid you can do that you can run you can you can stride along all day
1:01:51 but you get to a certain point where our tissues and our joint systems and we just do not have the
1:01:58 capacity to run that fast safely and we definitely don’t have it when we’re sprinting and the difference
1:02:05 here is when you’re striding it’s essentially a pretty simple traditional spring mass system the
1:02:11 body acts as a spring just whether it’s 50 on the front side 50 on the back side you hit and you bounce
1:02:16 off you hit and you bounce off where sprinting is a little bit different this is the work of dr ken
1:02:23 clark is a good friend of mine that he he published this in i think in 2000 and uh 18 19 it’s called a
1:02:29 two mass system where it’s not the body is not acting as a spring there’s a secondary mass of the
1:02:36 shank and the foot that’s contributing to up to about eight percent of the total force through contact
1:02:43 so there’s elite sprinter is hitting the ground so hard that so there’s another mass that’s added to the
1:02:48 spring and that’s what i’m saying that’s not available to you because you can’t move your limbs fast enough
1:02:52 and you don’t have the range of motion that’s big enough to be able to get that sort of velocity
1:03:00 there’s a dozen players in the nfl that can do that every elite sprinter is actually a sprinter
1:03:06 most every other athlete in most every other sport can’t actually sprint they’re just they’re operating
1:03:10 as spring mass they don’t have that secondary mass because they can’t move their limbs fast enough
1:03:17 when dr peter tia was on this podcast and elsewhere he talked about one of the major causes of death
1:03:26 mostly in older people is they’ll fall they’ll be mobile they’ll catch some sort of infection
1:03:35 um related to contact with the bed or um you know post-surgical lack of circulation and that’s what
1:03:40 takes them out i was shocked to learn this right i mean i thought it would be heart attack or
1:03:45 cerebrovascular disease or that instead but that led to this whole notion that i think is gaining more
1:03:51 popularity nowadays that part of longevity is maintaining things like grip strength one’s ability
1:03:58 to jump and land and jumping and landing is eccentric control yeah my mom’s turning 80 this year and she’s
1:04:03 fortunately in very good health great my dad’s already 80 he was on this podcast and for anyone that saw that
1:04:12 he’s clearly in very good health but i worry about them and i worry mostly about a step down off a curb
1:04:20 a step going down a stairwell that is not controlled and then a slip and then a fall and then the break
1:04:24 and then the immobility and then the the sequence that atia and others have referred to
1:04:34 would skipping be a good activity for people in their 60s 70s or 80s to undertake carefully as a way to
1:04:41 learn eccentric control because i’ll be honest i’ve seen some wonderful inspiring videos of um people in
1:04:48 their 70s and 80s jumping off of boxes doing plyo type work in the gym i don’t know many
1:04:56 folks in their 70s and 80s who are going to embark on that yeah but you can skip kind of small skips
1:05:01 then you can do larger skips you can skip anywhere it’s free um if you approach it carefully you probably
1:05:08 don’t even need a trainer there’s some videos now of you having us skip and um i you know here i’m like
1:05:15 inspired to start a skipping movement uh with you um for all these reasons uh you don’t need even need a
1:05:19 a piece of equipment probably even do it barefoot on grass if you couldn’t afford shoes right 100
1:05:28 what are your thoughts on folks who are um in the 16 up club yeah um skipping yeah i think you’ve nailed it
1:05:34 i think that is so important that eccentric control or the eccentric capacity is the one that we really
1:05:39 lose the ability to handle ourselves eccentrically it’s just it’s it’s we don’t do that work anymore
1:05:47 everything that we do is concentric in nature and uh it is it’s not just elite sport i said before that
1:05:57 the differentiator is always in the eccentric force capacities in elite sport also in us in gen pop
1:06:05 we have we lose the ability to apply eccentric force whether it’s fast or maximal so 100 i think it’s so
1:06:14 important my dad um was an elite athlete when he was younger and has probably averaged four days a week
1:06:23 running for almost his entire life good for him yeah he’s 78 in 2019 he ran the new york city marathon
1:06:32 ran 502 so he’s at at 74 or 73 years old and he doesn’t do that anymore but he still runs four days a
1:06:39 week and he runs about 20 to 25 miles and two of those days are skipping sessions where he walks 30
1:06:47 seconds he skips for 30 seconds and then he strides as fast as he can as fast as his capacity will allow
1:06:53 for 30 seconds and then he walks then he skips and then he strides and he walks and it’s it’s it’s so key
1:07:02 it really is like it’s it’s for me like the ability to express yourself maximally through running and i’ve
1:07:09 already said i don’t feel like most people can do this i don’t know if there is a better single metric
1:07:18 to as a measurement for whatever word you want to use here vitality or health then the ability to safely
1:07:25 express maximal speed of that you as you as an individual like you choose the o2 max you choose
1:07:31 all of these different things that you might come up with i don’t feel like any of them are as good as
1:07:37 the ability to just run maximally so let’s start with that if we feel like that is important
1:07:42 and you can argue whether whether it’s the the most important or the 10th most important we know it’s
1:07:48 important if we know that’s important how do we get there and as you said i think skipping is the way
1:07:52 so i’m on board with the skipping movement let’s get everybody skipping because it is as i said this
1:07:58 is your ability to be plyometric to work on those eccentric force capacities and move in a way in which
1:08:06 you can actually express yourself again there’s this um peculiarity to um anything related to health
1:08:13 and public health in particular for instance a colleague of mine at stanford um dr david spiegel
1:08:19 he’s our vice chair of psychiatry and he and his father actually founded this area of psychiatry which
1:08:25 is basically hypnosis for the treatment of trauma for pain relief for smoking cessation and there are
1:08:31 tremendously good data to support it as a practice it’s actually approved by the american psychiatric
1:08:37 association one of only four i think behavioral things uh emdr cognitive behavioral therapy hypnosis
1:08:44 and i think there’s another in any case the problem it’s called hypnosis and people hear hypnosis
1:08:53 and their mind goes to balking and squawking like a chicken on a stage this is why we refer to deliberate
1:08:57 respiration as opposed to breath work in our studies our clinical trials on that which david and i
1:09:08 publish et cetera and it’s it’s not euphemism the the issue is the name is a separator often and that’s
1:09:16 a shame when there’s a practice that’s very valuable yoga nidra non-sleep deep rest right yeah i have tremendous
1:09:25 respect for yoga nidra and and all of its um early uh creators and but the language is a separator i’m
1:09:29 sorry and and there’s a there’s a public health mission that to me is more important than the
1:09:39 naming just say that and i’ll take the heat for it with no guilt whatsoever skipping unless it’s
1:09:47 skipping rope has this connotation of of childlike activity let’s just be honest and adults doing
1:09:54 childlike behavior while not necessarily a problem in its own right i mean look at all these adults with
1:09:58 social media accounts acting like children and the children acting like adults different
1:10:03 discussion entirely but what if we were to give it a different name not with the intention of
1:10:10 pretending it’s not skipping yeah but to relieve people’s guilt and shame about doing it um is it bounding
1:10:19 bounding is a little bit um more nondescript for most people um i’m having this conversation with you openly in public
1:10:24 here in front of many many people um to illustrate a couple of points one is that the name often times
1:10:29 and people like i’m not gonna skip down the street but there’s so much value to this that i think it’d be
1:10:35 be a real shame to to lose the opportunity to have it um wick out to many many millions of people
1:10:42 because it’s called skipping yeah it’s plyometrics it’s plyometrics great love it and it is a
1:10:52 like bounding is left to right so you’re left right left right left right left bounding is really really
1:10:59 difficult extremely challenging skipping is a regression from bounding so if you can’t bound
1:11:03 if you can bound great go and do some bounding chances are if you can’t sprint you can’t bound
1:11:09 like it’s really really hard to do real true you know high quality bounding we can all skip
1:11:16 so look at it that way this is plyometrics this is just their your most simple and probably for most
1:11:25 people your most effective means of giving your body a plyometric activity how else you know you’re
1:11:31 jumping onto the box not a plyometric that’s all concentric it’s basically useless it’s a waste of time
1:11:37 let’s find eccentric things to do and what is your best eccentric or the war the one that is the
1:11:43 simplest the one as you said we spent entire childhood doing it’s familiar to us there’s
1:11:48 something innate in this there really is skipping so just think about it as being a plyometric
1:11:53 i’m going to do my plyos today and by the way this isn’t something that i’ve just made up
1:12:03 there is not a sprint group on the planet that don’t skip every single sprinter skips every
1:12:09 single one of them because of the of the importance of this specific gait pattern it’s really important
1:12:17 i love that thank you um and you also saved me from trying to find a name that uh you know um plyometric
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1:14:11 to function one thing that people will immediately realize when they go out and and skip when they
1:14:17 do their plyometric skipping um that’s a little bit hard to understand just from hearing us have this
1:14:21 conversation but just trust me on this well there are two things that are very surprising and immensely
1:14:27 positive at least two things one is this expressive component and the way it reshapes your psychology
1:14:35 and your mood i want to set that aside but make sure we return to that the other is the um cross body
1:14:41 coordination of movement the fact that one knee is back toward the butt on one side and the opposite arm is
1:14:47 raised up just naturally as you skip this is just you know in fact if you’re wondering now oh goodness
1:14:52 do i actually know how to skip um that occurred to me a couple times yesterday because i had many cameras
1:14:56 on me i thought do i still remember how to skip i’d been skipping the night before in preparation
1:15:00 i didn’t know we were going to skip but i’ve always worked some skips in if nobody’s looking
1:15:07 i’m a skip in private kind of guy um until now until now now i skip with pride in public
1:15:13 um plyometrics i will plyometric in public that’s right but one thing that was interesting i would
1:15:17 think okay we’d get back after walking i think okay we’re going to skip again how do i do this it’s
1:15:23 basically i i would think about lunging kind of a fast lunge out and then it automatically would put
1:15:32 me into that that motion of skipping um but this cross body coordination is incredible for purposes of
1:15:37 motor neuron coordination across the body for the fascial component could we talk a little bit more
1:15:42 about cross body coordination because i’d like at some point to talk about sprinting a little bit
1:15:47 because even if people aren’t going to sprint this idea that when we’re sprinting we’re not just turning
1:15:52 over our legs faster of course the arms are pumping but the arms and legs are coordinated in a very
1:15:58 interesting way that the forces are actually running like a like an axe from uh across from one shoulder
1:16:02 down the leg and from the other shoulder which is going to sound very um complicated people but you’ll
1:16:10 explain it so cross body coordination um when we walk we do this some people don’t they’re kind of
1:16:18 robotic yeah but most people flow their arms as they walk if if we were to put a camera above
1:16:24 the earth and look down on everybody you would see this very distinctly at every single gate starting
1:16:32 with walking we rotate so the the pelvis rotates up and down and forward and back so it oscillates and
1:16:39 undulates and then the shoulders counter oscillate and counter undulate so the shoulders go back forward
1:16:44 and backward and up and down just pay attention to this next time you’re out for a walk you can feel
1:16:48 your hips going backwards and forwards and also going up and down if it didn’t go up and down you’d trip
1:16:53 yourself every step and the shoulders do the same and then you have a spine which is this column of a
1:17:01 bunch of different pieces that connects the shoulder to the pelvis which also rotates side bends and flexes
1:17:09 and extends the whole system is this big torsional system this cross body system and some people take maximum
1:17:16 utility of this system and you can see it like some of the best movers some of the best sprinters you
1:17:21 just watch them and you can you can just see how they wind up and they coil into every single step
1:17:27 and they just use this cross body coordination so effectively and as you said some others are just
1:17:32 it doesn’t seem like there’s any rotation going on here at all what looks better to you who looks better
1:17:38 it’s the ones that are using this effectively that look okay that just looks better i don’t know why
1:17:43 necessarily but that looks way more athletic well think robot dance versus somebody who really knows
1:17:47 how to move their hips and shoulders in coordination we’ll talk about dance a little bit later you have
1:17:52 an interesting relationship to music that i think is very relevant here we’ll get back to that but i’m
1:17:58 seeding the conversation but yeah it’s um when the shoulders and the hips are moving in unison it’s
1:18:03 it’s like magic it really is yeah it really is and just feel this when you walk like when you go out for
1:18:08 your next walk just try to pay attention to what your shoulders are doing and what your hips are
1:18:13 doing and start thinking i’m not getting my knee behind my butt when i’m walking and what does that
1:18:19 feel like at my hip flexor my quad and as i do that what’s happening with the opposite shoulder
1:18:27 and is that getting wound up and is that coiling properly am i taking advantage of these extremely innate
1:18:35 extremely natural movement tendencies that we all have or have i because of the way in which i’ve
1:18:38 lived or some of the things that i’ve done or maybe even some of the things that somebody’s told me
1:18:45 tried to be really square and linear with everything i’ve done because think about it right when we’re
1:18:52 taught to run when we’re younger any excessive movement outside of in a straight line has been told to
1:18:59 us oh that’s inefficient you’re wasting energy you’re bleeding all your all your force not
1:19:04 understanding the actual biomechanical mechanism of the pelvis the shoulders and the spine that connects
1:19:11 them and how we are actually built to rotate into bend you know so it’s and that’s not to say by the
1:19:17 way that more is better everything is a is an inverted u in this world almost you know there’s a goalie
1:19:24 lots effect to this it’s what is right for you some people will use this torsional system extremely
1:19:28 effectively and there’ll be a lot of it and some will be a little bit less they’re a little bit more
1:19:34 linear and they’ll still be good that’s all dependent upon their own individual and unique structure
1:19:38 their morphology their genetics how they’re built and how they’re born what they do what they do with it
1:19:46 as they as they age but the bottom line is we are all rotational beings and we need to try to find ways
1:19:52 to take advantage of those rotational forces rather than to constrain them it’s one of the reasons why i
1:20:01 really dislike this anti-rotation um terminology that’s come into many of the exercise many of the exercises
1:20:08 that we do in the weight room this exercise is about anti-rotation why do you want to be anti-rotation
1:20:14 we are rotational beings you’re anti- excessive rotation but not anti-rotation so i feel like
1:20:19 that just as you were saying before with skipping that’s the wrong terminology for me and that’s
1:20:25 just sending the entirely the wrong message to everybody about the importance of us being a rotational
1:20:33 being yeah naming matters it does especially in in exercise and anything related to um uh
1:20:39 dare i call it wellness anything mental health physical health and performance the naming matters
1:20:45 because it can take people’s minds off track from the major point it can uh be a separator as we mentioned
1:20:54 before in the best case it can be uh an aggregator um i have to wonder with people walking around
1:21:00 looking at their phones all the time are they losing the cross body coordination i i um snuck in
1:21:07 because i uh to one talk at south by southwest i got a ticket i got a pass i don’t mean i snuck in
1:21:13 i mean i i went there for just one talk the other day and i was walking through the hallways this is a big
1:21:19 meeting tons of people and it was incredible everyone was walking looking at their phone now of course
1:21:23 there’s a program that’s on an app these days so you’re saving paper so that’s good right
1:21:31 but it was remarkable people like walking and reading at the same time so i don’t want to make
1:21:37 more of this than we have data for but this can’t be good this can’t be good i think that’s a really
1:21:41 good point i haven’t i haven’t thought about that actually but i think that’s a really good point i have
1:21:47 a rule when i’m walking that if i if my phone buzzes and i want to pick up my phone i stop i stop
1:21:51 i get out of the way of all the other walkers i push myself up against the building and i look to
1:21:56 what’s on my phone if i feel it’s important and then i start walking again i i just despise people
1:22:01 who walk and look at the phone at the same time because that’s what you see you see this unnatural
1:22:08 constrained overly flexed posture and if you spend too much time doing that i don’t think you need data
1:22:14 you know that’s not good it’s not good to walk that way that’s not the way we’re supposed to walk
1:22:18 again it’s it’s all about coming back to let’s express ourselves let’s understand what our bodies
1:22:26 are supposed to be able to do and find ways to continue to have that ability as we age this isn’t it
1:22:35 let’s talk about expression through movement um and let’s use the extremes as a starting point
1:22:40 i find that useful in any kind of scientific conversation you take the the extreme outcome so
1:22:47 the person who is trying to take up as little space as possible chin toward the chest folded in
1:22:54 thumbs toward the midline so-called internal rotation eyes down trying to make themselves small
1:22:59 i don’t need to spend another five seconds explaining all the psychological phenotypes
1:23:04 that’s associated with and the way it makes us feel now of course it’s possible to curl up in a small
1:23:09 ball and think amazing things about the world and oneself but generally that those things are not um
1:23:16 happening at the same time let’s think about the other extreme and let’s talk about him usain bolt
1:23:20 this will also be a fun opportunity for people to learn a little bit more about usain let’s start there
1:23:28 what is so special about usain bolt besides the fact that he’s still the fastest man in the world
1:23:35 and what about his willingness to express himself do you think contributed to becoming the fastest
1:23:40 person in the world not just feeling great that he’s the fastest guy in the world and therefore who
1:23:48 wouldn’t feel great yeah yeah usain is is unique if we look over the history of some of the elite male
1:23:55 sprinters there was a time you know when i started getting into the sport the way to be as an elite
1:24:04 male sprinter was hyper focused hyper intense if you think about mo green stalking behind his blocks
1:24:12 and licking his lips getting ready for this basically he’s going to war and it seemed like so many of the
1:24:19 the sprinters were trying to encapsulate this kind of feeling like sprinting is yeah it’s macho it’s ego
1:24:26 it’s i’m i’m coming here to knock you out and then usain came along with the exact opposite and i think
1:24:31 you know it’s just he’s out there having fun he’s as i told the story about jody a little bit earlier
1:24:38 right she was for a long time she would didn’t connect herself with the activity they were two separate
1:24:44 beings she was doing something that no she no longer really connected with and usain they’re like this
1:24:52 like he was really expressing his entire being in his in the way in which he went around about this task
1:24:57 of sprinting 100 meters or sprints in 200 meters and i feel like that is such an important piece
1:25:03 at all with all sport and probably with on within all things you know if you can connect your entire way
1:25:09 of being with the thing that you’re spending most of your time doing chances are you’re going to be
1:25:14 really successful at that thing and if you look at all the other sports right it’s it’s the ones that
1:25:20 you can tell they’re just really confident in who they are in what they do how they express themselves
1:25:25 and whether and that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be usain bald and playing around at
1:25:30 the line and doing things like this and you know jumping around and that’s he always like that does
1:25:35 anyone know when he was a kid oh no he’s yeah he’s he’s he’s he’s a kid he’s a big kid he still is he’s
1:25:43 he’s he’s he’s just uh you know he brings this this this really childlike intensity to things like he’s
1:25:49 still intense he’s still he wants to kill you but he’s you know he’ll laugh in your face just before he
1:25:55 does it you know like i i love that about him but when but that’s not everybody that’s not every elite
1:26:02 sprinter i coached a guy named andre degrasse for for a while who won three olympic medals in 2016
1:26:07 remember coming right behind usain bolt in that in that famous 200 meters where they were smiling at
1:26:15 each other um andre is very quiet very kind of type b kind of just down here very insular on his phone
1:26:21 not really living life kind of lived life down here very closed and that’s the way in which he
1:26:27 performed that’s the way he practiced that’s the way he trained that’s the way he competed he didn’t
1:26:33 feel like he had to be up here and bouncing around jumping around because that was not him and if there’s
1:26:39 one thing that andre is famous for he’s now got seven olympic medals i don’t think i don’t know how many
1:26:49 big races andre has won outside the olympic games but he’s got seven olympic medals he he really stands
1:26:55 up when it matters because he is connected with who he is he knows who he is and and what he brings out
1:27:02 to the performance arena is connected like this with that where others and i mean the biggest example that
1:27:10 i know is asafa powell so if anyone knows doesn’t know who asafa powell is asafa was usain bolt
1:27:18 before usain bolt asafa’s ran sub 10 seconds in 100 meters 99 times more than anyone else in history
1:27:24 he’s by all intents and purposes one of the greatest male sprinters of all time he’s a legend
1:27:30 he’s he’s he’s had a world record i think he’s had set two world records he’s an incredible sprinter
1:27:38 who’s choked at every single major championships has ever been he’s always folded and he does that
1:27:45 because he feels like he came up in the era of mo green you know this this animal thing this being
1:27:51 really really super intense so asafa tried to be that that didn’t work for him and then bernard
1:27:54 williams who’s kind of jumping around and playing around a little bit that’s that became a thing
1:27:59 for a while so asafa tried that hat on that didn’t work either and then usain came and
1:28:05 usain is usain is playing with the camera and bringing his personality out so asafa tried that
1:28:13 hat on guess what that didn’t work either so there’s this yeah usain brought this almost um
1:28:22 yeah it’s okay to get to be to jump around and to dance and have fun but it’s not for everybody if
1:28:27 that’s not who you are and i feel like that was an important thing if i was coaching asafa say man
1:28:33 asafa just be you man like you’re relaxed you’re you’re andre degrasse before andre degrasse came
1:28:39 along you’re just you’re just cool and chill just be cool and chill man just be that just bring you to
1:28:44 this performance and you’ll you’ll get a lot more out of yourself but uh you know to get back to your
1:28:49 question usain just gave everybody i think the permission to to have fun like that’s why we do
1:28:54 this thing is to have fun and if you’re not having fun then why are we bothering it’s so interesting
1:29:03 you know and his name comes up so often now and i’m grateful to have him as a close friend but you know
1:29:10 i’ve had hours upon hours of conversations with rick rubin about why certain musical artists just have
1:29:17 that thing and it doesn’t matter if you’re talking about tom petty joe strummer johnny cash adele
1:29:24 it’s just you you ask about all these different people and it’s the answer is always the same it’s
1:29:32 they know how to be themselves in that moment yeah and people will say well it’s a constructed where his
1:29:38 rick will be like no this is why he likes to work with artists early on like a lot of the hip-hop
1:29:44 artists he worked with a lot of the punk rock music artists he worked with they were just being
1:29:49 themselves they had no success prior to their you know like ll cool j sending him a demo tape
1:29:58 and so there was no self-awareness or there wasn’t enough self-awareness to hinder their expression they
1:30:04 were just being them and that’s always what explodes people to immense success now there’s something to
1:30:09 be said for ignorance there’s something to be said for ignorance and there’s something of a gravitational
1:30:20 pull as an as a spectator or a listener uh to the artist the athlete the musician who’s just being
1:30:25 themselves yeah and we know we can detect at an unconscious level when it’s not real you know
1:30:29 there’s one of the things i love so much about podcasting or at least i’m very blessed to be in the
1:30:34 early-ish cohort of podcasters i wasn’t in the first cohort like the dan carlins and the rogan’s
1:30:39 where i came in early enough that none of us really knew what to do except just be ourselves
1:30:45 it’s a it’s a now it’s changing there’s a big flood of commercial um you know uh entities and
1:30:50 podcasting and some of those are are good and and most of them are not frankly because they’re not real
1:30:54 they’re more like a new show it’s produced it’s like it’s not real the person on camera and off
1:31:01 camera are very different but i can tell you that joe rogan off camera that’s rogan yeah um and i was
1:31:07 thinking about really expressive people in different domains to compare more or less to this example that
1:31:14 you’re describing with usain so rogan i threw out the muhammad ali big yeah boisterous personality
1:31:20 huge attractor to him yeah it was not a construction he might have honed it as part of his craft but
1:31:28 clearly that’s who he was he’s a fast talker yeah um mike tyson mike tyson very different yeah but
1:31:33 that’s him right you know right and everyone loves mike tyson because it’s very clear that that is mike
1:31:39 tyson jean-michel basquiat yeah you know this like even just the size of the paintings and the way he
1:31:46 worked and the physicality of it um he was haitian i’m gonna get back to this kind of nationality thing
1:31:51 a little bit later and then we had on here the great josh waitskin who was the subject of the
1:31:57 movie the search for bobby fisher and um his whole strategy in chess of that he learned in washington
1:32:02 square park of creating chaos on the chess board this game that everyone considers very very linear and
1:32:08 very very constrained and his he liked to create chaos because washington square park especially in
1:32:15 the 80s and 90s chaos you know drug dealers and crime and there’s people uh doing it pretty much
1:32:21 every activity there um and and and on and on right you know i think that when people are just being
1:32:27 themselves this is what you’re saying and this is what rick has said over and over you know that that
1:32:37 essence piece is so magnificent and um not just to see but it it like it evolves humankind it really does
1:32:43 and um so when you work with an athlete or for the listener who’s trying to figure out well like who am
1:32:53 i does it work in reverse meaning and i believe that movement can actually teach us who we are in
1:33:00 addition to allow us to express who we are and i’m not going to say that skipping is the only way to do
1:33:08 that but it was very interesting yesterday to notice the transitions in my state of mind as i got permission
1:33:14 from you uh to you know go bigger get bigger stride bigger yeah and we were the adults on the kids
1:33:24 playground in my mind behaving like kids but it it is transformative i think to move differently makes
1:33:29 you feel different and when those things line up i think is what you’re talking about yeah i think it’s
1:33:37 a brilliant question i really do think it’s it’s everything in sport but i think as you said just when
1:33:44 you zoom out it’s not just sport it’s all everything and i feel like so so often in sports
1:33:54 specifically people like me steal the essence away from the athletes because we have our own preconceived
1:34:02 ideas of what this that what you should be doing should look like and it’s my idea but it’s not your essence
1:34:09 and it’s not your idea and i always feel like we should be coaching towards what the athlete’s best
1:34:15 solution is not what our best solution is i’ve got i’ve got an athlete i’m working with right now who’s
1:34:21 super gifted she’s a two-time olympian she’s got an olympic gold medal on the relay and she’s been
1:34:28 coached for a long time to move in a way that does not align with her essence it does not align with what she is
1:34:34 good at and what what will that do to you over the course of time it’s obviously going to negatively
1:34:40 affect your confidence it definitely negatively affects your the way you move because you’re in a
1:34:45 move you’re moving in a way that just doesn’t align with you whether that’s psychologically emotionally
1:34:53 or physically biomechanically so this is a tall elastic expressive sprinter who’s been taught to be really
1:35:00 small and compact and accelerate with really short choppy steps and she’s lost the ability to even
1:35:09 understand who she is anymore in this sport so my objective now is try to reintroduce herself to
1:35:16 herself what was it that got you into this how did you move why were you really really good at this
1:35:23 let’s reconnect with that and the challenging piece with that is how do you understand what that is
1:35:30 especially years if you’ve been being taught a certain way that is not in alignment with who you
1:35:35 are whether that is sport or anything else it’s really difficult to reconnect with it if you don’t
1:35:41 have a really good guide because so often those guides and it’s that’s that’s whether it’s a coach
1:35:49 or a music producer will screw them up not not purposefully you know they’re coming at this from a very
1:35:54 optimistic standpoint a positive standpoint i’m trying to help you andrew this is about this is what i
1:36:02 think these are my experiences this is my subjective view this is how i see you doing the thing that you’re
1:36:07 are doing and that’s based on my history rather than where it should be and that’s based on your
1:36:12 history and that’s that’s the difference between a rick rubin and many other producers and it’s the
1:36:19 difference between elite coaches and sub elite coaches you always start with the person what is the unique
1:36:24 ability that you have what is it that you have that makes you better than everyone else what is it you
1:36:32 have that that really that you want to show everyone let’s connect with that let’s show that let’s this
1:36:39 let’s build all of our training around that let’s have all of our conversations around that i’m remembering
1:36:46 the example from that documentary last the last dance about michael jordan um some of the description of the
1:36:56 chicago bulls coach um encouraging dennis rodman who in the 90s was 80s 90s like first of all very few
1:37:05 people had that many tattoos who weren’t in prison or um in a niche music community right dennis had a ton
1:37:12 of tattoos he had earrings he dyed his hair he loved to party he was wild and his coach understood that
1:37:19 it was part of his reset mechanism and you you don’t put um a bulldog in a race with
1:37:25 a bunch of greyhounds and you don’t have greyhounds tug a rope with a kettlebell on the end i know this
1:37:32 as a bulldog owner who loves all breeds of dogs so he gave dennis permission to party yeah what no
1:37:38 professional coach would probably do and it brought out his ability to play brilliant um you know incredible
1:37:43 rebounder incredible player all around but you know famous for his rebound uh stats so
1:37:51 this thing of of who am i how do i express myself i think the the authenticity piece is so key
1:37:56 like if you’re a nice person being a jerk in your sport is probably not going to work
1:38:00 but if you enjoy competition and you’re a nice person then it seems like there’s a place for that
1:38:07 and i wonder whether or not a big component of all of this and discovering it for for people that are
1:38:13 going to try plyometric skipping and these sorts of things to try and better understand themselves and
1:38:20 express themselves which i think would be a wonderful thing to come from this discussion is the trying to
1:38:27 shut down the self-conscious part this the the self-critic do you think the best sprinters are
1:38:33 also not thinking about anyone else they’re just enjoying themselves or at least are they feeling the
1:38:40 sprint more than they’re paying attention to their form as a like how does this look so i’m thinking
1:38:47 about it i’m on the track with you i’m gonna i’m gonna run or skip and i can either just feel where
1:38:54 it’s more expressive or i can try and show you that it’s more expressive two different very different
1:39:00 things one it’s a there’s a self-conscious awareness piece the showing you i’m going to show you this as
1:39:05 opposed to just doing it for the feel of it yeah is that the distinction yeah that’s a really good way to
1:39:12 put it um one really good example of this in the sprints world and i think you were there for this is
1:39:18 2022 world championships in oregon yeah i was there and uh noah lyle’s won the 200 in an american record
1:39:29 1931 and that was for me like that’s the epitome of just being so lost in what you’re doing that you
1:39:36 have no idea what you’re looking like and he’s just maximally expressing his everything that he’s got and he
1:39:42 he bounds across the line i said man that was beautiful like i’ve never seen that like it was so
1:39:49 beautiful like totally lost in flow and that it doesn’t happen as often as many who don’t work in
1:39:56 sport think it does not every single performance is a flow performance but if you’re lucky you’ll get one
1:40:01 one or two of those in your career where you just lose connection with everything that you’re doing
1:40:10 and you just wow what happened and in fact every time that a sprinter sets a personal best
1:40:18 i ask him what was that feeling like i don’t know no idea i don’t know i don’t know how that felt i just ran
1:40:25 so all of these things that we we talked about all of these incredible coaching cues that i gave you
1:40:32 to think about when you were doing this you forgot them all so i just ran i just ran and almost always
1:40:38 that is the answer to that i just ran and i just connected with it and something in the background
1:40:44 you know we were able to one of the ways i’ll bring this um home a little bit more maybe practically
1:40:54 so we train 20 to 25 hours a week and my goal each day is not to say a lot like i want the athlete
1:40:58 to kind of find a way through things and i will encourage them and guide them and sort of facilitate
1:41:03 this discovery but often we’ll talk about different things and if they’re having if they’re struggling
1:41:10 with something i’ll give them a a specific cue and over the course of time we build you know this library
1:41:16 of different things that the athlete thinks about or the different cues and then my objective coming
1:41:23 into more of a competitive season is to try to align these cues with an emotion what i call what are
1:41:31 called mood words so for example um when an athlete is accelerating they’re on the ground for a little
1:41:36 bit longer than when they are upright because they need to actually propel themselves forward they need
1:41:40 horizontal force they need the ground to push themselves forward so they push and they push or they
1:41:47 drive so cues could be drive it could be push it could be power it could be pull your thighs
1:41:53 forward it could be all of these different things that are around power but for me the mood word that
1:41:59 really expresses this better than anything is pressure i want you to feel like you’re applying as much
1:42:06 pressure through the first half of this race as you possibly can and the second half of the race is the exact
1:42:12 opposite of that so we talk about things that we do technically knees up thighs up step off the ground
1:42:18 be vertical be expressive be tall all of these different cues but really what we’re trying to get
1:42:26 to is freedom or peace so that’s what a hundred meter sprint is it’s 50 meters of pressure and 50 meters of
1:42:34 peace so i try to align with peace so i try to align these mood words with these coaching instructions
1:42:38 and then all the athletes need to think about is this emotion or this mood word and all the instructions
1:42:45 come along for the ride that is the goal and that is you know going back to it something we talked about
1:42:49 quite a while ago now probably one of the things that i love the most around 100 meters
1:43:02 is this dichotomous relationship between pressure and peace or power and fluidity or violence and rhythm
1:43:08 all of these things that are the opposing ends of the spectrum that every single elite athlete regardless
1:43:15 of the sport can come together perfectly if you can have the power but if you don’t have the peace
1:43:21 good luck you can have the peace but if you don’t have the power good luck no chance it’s always both
1:43:27 simultaneously so it’s um yeah that’s that’s the that’s the massive challenge in in this sport
1:43:36 and going back to uh to noah in 2022 that world championship uh final in the 200 incredible i said that’s
1:43:43 maybe the best example of that i’ve ever seen yeah amazing amazing race really was really feel blessed
1:43:50 to have been there and by the way folks if you have never been to a track meet it’s for for many
1:43:57 reasons it’s one of the most wonderful things first of all it will give you an example of what real
1:44:02 coordination is all about and i’m not talking about physical coordination although that too you’ll be
1:44:08 watching the pole vault and then you’ll shift your eyes to the right and there’ll be another event
1:44:12 starting right as the pole vault ends and then another one it’s a it’s a beautifully orchestrated
1:44:21 event done properly as they do in eugene and elsewhere the other piece is that um nobody goes to track meets
1:44:27 unless they love track although hopefully a few people who uh who are not familiar with track will try it
1:44:35 and so every the the amount of spirit there is incredible um and there’s also i don’t know that
1:44:40 there’s a lot of identification with individuals there that even if you’ve never seen them run or anything
1:44:47 you you pick up on the different um on the different personalities of of the the runners and the jumpers and
1:44:52 the throwers and um it’s really special check out a track meet if you can you won’t be disappointed
1:44:57 absolutely you won’t be disappointed and i don’t work for usa track and people are like do you work for
1:45:06 big track no actually i don’t i buy a ticket like everybody else um this notion of pressure and peace
1:45:12 you know it brings me back to this thing about these transition activities like for songwriters even you
1:45:17 know her so skilled that joni mitchell or you know or i was referring to earlier you know tim armstrong
1:45:24 you know having these transition activities you know trying to um to get into one’s craft and and the
1:45:30 the pressure and then it kind of opens up into peace and um i feel like anytime rick is talking about
1:45:36 working with musicians and i was like how’d it go you know it’s in the studio and it’s like they work
1:45:42 super hard they work extremely hard and then it’s always the story i always hear is oh yeah in the last
1:45:47 two days it all came together yeah right because they set real deadlines right and i think this is
1:45:54 why deadlines are important this is why um writers and artists who have no deadlines oftentimes don’t do
1:45:59 as well and maybe athletes as well that the pressure piece of getting everything organized around an
1:46:05 activity and then the nervous system just kind of takes it yeah the commonalities here are are
1:46:13 fascinating uh to me maybe we all could approach our exercise that way too that it’s okay to be rigid rigidly
1:46:19 attached to to detail at the beginning but the goal is peace in the final minutes of it right yeah i think
1:46:25 that’s a good way of looking at it yeah i think you know more than that if we zoom out i feel like
1:46:38 you know society or the way in which we think about exercise now has become detached from why why we actually
1:46:44 started doing the things to begin with movement right we fall in love with finding our way around the world
1:46:49 through moving our bodies in space and time doing whatever whether that’s hiking or playing a sport or
1:46:57 whatever and then we finish school and we get a job and now we don’t really move anymore that becomes
1:47:05 exercise and we go to the gym and we exercise and i feel like that’s so many degrees removed from why we
1:47:13 actually do the thing i feel like we don’t ask ourselves is this what is really serving me or is this what
1:47:20 everyone else is doing so i’m just going to go along with it and for me like i lift weights i go to the
1:47:25 weight room i do that four or five days a week i skip every single day i run like three or four days a
1:47:31 week i do some boxing i move my body i play i do as many different things i can i can do includes hiking
1:47:37 and i feel like that’s what we should be doing i’m asking myself what is it that i want to get out of
1:47:44 this practice is it i want to go to the gym for 45 45 minutes a day and get as strong as i can or as
1:47:50 big as i can whatever and if that if that is it great but i need to ask myself that question i don’t
1:47:55 feel like many of us are asking that question and for me we’ve alluded to this a couple times now is
1:48:02 you know what’s important about moving as we’re aging and being connected with that and having the
1:48:08 ability to continue to be able to you know express ourselves maximally over the course of our
1:48:16 lifetimes that isn’t developed in a weight room that’s developed by doing those things you know you’ll
1:48:23 you might appreciate this like if you were looking if you’re looking for good movement would you go to a
1:48:29 weight room or a skate park definitely do a skate park a hundred percent yeah because the movers are
1:48:35 so much better like the movement there is wow this is incredible don’t you want to be able to do that
1:48:40 rather than do a squat there’s some made-up exercise that somebody’s told you is going to be
1:48:44 you know do this and this and this for you or do a deadlift or do a bench press all these made-up
1:48:50 things and as i said those things can be good can be fun can be interesting can be important
1:48:54 but what really is most important is can you still move your body can you express yourself
1:49:00 maximally for as long into your lifetime as you possibly can and people i feel like they have to
1:49:06 ask the question whether the thing that they’re doing is exercise is it actually leading to that
1:49:13 and in most cases i think it’s not i came up in part through skateboarding that was my main focus in
1:49:19 high school up until about mid-high school and i got into other things um skateboarding everything
1:49:26 you’re saying is especially true the personality matches the way they skateboard uh level of
1:49:32 aggression level of technicality personality i mean sometimes there’s a mismatch like there’s a
1:49:38 the every vert skateboarder big ramp skateboarder now will attest i mean everyone from tony hawk because
1:49:44 i’ve heard him say it um uh to everyone i know that there’s a there’s a kid um named jimmy wilkins
1:49:53 who does everything faster bigger with more technical ability than anybody’s ever seen he’s a absolutely
1:50:02 remarkable um addition to the sport and a super nice kid his mom’s a ballerina oh yeah amazing and he’s got
1:50:08 very um loose hip joints he actually guides the board with his knee back knee like so he can do
1:50:15 a lot of things hands with no hands that most people have to grab to do and his dad is uh an orchestra
1:50:21 conductor so if you were to like make up a story about a highly technical powerful precise you know
1:50:28 athlete it would be jimmy wilkins and it’s um he’s he’s he’s won x games he’s astonishing um to watch and so
1:50:34 much fun to watch so skateboarding it’s very apparent um but then i was trying to think of
1:50:38 some daily activities that so getting away from sport and exercise for a moment and i was just thinking
1:50:46 in my own life like if you wanted to understand um my mom you just have to see her gardening
1:50:51 the way she moves about her garden the way she tends to it she loves gardening it’s like her
1:50:58 greatest i don’t know if it’s a greatest joy it’s one of her great joys and so if you if you could
1:51:05 just see her gardening for 10 minutes you would understand her as a person completely it’s it’s
1:51:09 amazing and and i think she’s a very good gardener but it’s not that the garden isn’t the point it’s
1:51:13 how she moves about the garden yep um and i think that’s true for certain people how they cook
1:51:18 certain people how they dance and i was going to say you know if you want to understand people at a
1:51:23 wedding or a party just when the music comes on you get a lot of insight into people’s personality
1:51:29 and the best is always that like older guy or or gal or couple that look like they’re just kind of
1:51:32 sitting there like turtles and then they get up and you’re like oh my goodness they can really dance
1:51:37 yeah or they’re just enjoying or just enjoying it completely even if they’re not great dancers
1:51:42 yeah so let’s talk about music and dance for a second i think we can’t avoid this any longer
1:51:51 um your instagram handle was maybe still is finger mash correct i thought that had something to do
1:51:57 with sprinting but i learned right before we sat down that you’re you you’re a reggae dj uh-huh
1:52:04 and you grew up around that yeah and sprinting has a lot of jamaicans in it yeah what’s the deal
1:52:11 educate us um how much of how you understand athletes and how they move and people generally
1:52:16 in the general population how they move um relates to your understanding of kind of music and rhythm
1:52:20 because this pressure piece right i mean like that’s a great song that’s a great concert that’s a great
1:52:30 album so you know i don’t think i explicitly truly understood the connection until in hindsight you
1:52:33 know because when you’re doing it you’re just doing it you’re just living your life and you’re not really
1:52:40 thinking about it i’m doing these things they have creative probably similarities but i’m not really
1:52:46 understanding those you know i’m not thinking about them you know i started uh i started djing in 1984
1:52:52 so i’ve been 15 and i stopped djing in 2010 i had a radio show in calgary for 20 years called level
1:52:57 the vibes shout out level the vibes it still goes on to this day level of vibes level the vibes level
1:53:03 the vibes level the vibes with my old dj partner tulla yeah and uh it’s yeah absolutely like it’s i was
1:53:10 an artist as well so when i was in school everyone figured i would just be the artist like i was an okay
1:53:15 athlete but not great i wasn’t good enough to go into professional sport and make money it was just
1:53:22 art that was it i went to art school and i figured out you know this just isn’t serving me anymore
1:53:26 but the entire time i’m doing this music thing and i’m doing this sport thing and i think all of these
1:53:33 creative outlets are just all coming together i’ve always been sort of a creative coach and i think like
1:53:39 this is how i actually got into sprinting is i was a soccer player most of my most of my friends were
1:53:44 sprinters most of them most of those sprinters because i was based in calgary there’s a big gym jamaican
1:53:48 population there so most of them were jamaican and i just got into sprinting through that
1:53:55 so as uh i feel like as as i said it’s it wasn’t an explicit connection that i understood at the time
1:54:05 but in hindsight i could say okay me being a a dj an understanding rhythm and putting things together
1:54:12 and how putting these things together influenced other things less than maybe the people that i’m
1:54:20 playing the music for that really served my coaching ability one hundred percent hundred percent as did
1:54:27 my art it’s really interesting in hindsight to to look at those things and look at those as you say
1:54:32 these call them the transition events and these other things the other skills that you know masters in
1:54:39 some of the domains have what athletes nowadays um which athletes are you excited about because they
1:54:44 seem to have this essence we don’t want to make them self-conscious but um that you’re like wow like
1:54:51 there’s really something there yeah yeah who are you excited about in track specifically yeah or well any
1:54:59 sport yeah it’s i mean honestly i’m not a massive sports fan like i don’t watch a lot of team sports
1:55:04 in fact i watch no team sports other than soccer and i watch soccer because you know that’s the game i
1:55:09 played that’s the game my father plays your team uh manchester city and so who’s the greatest soccer
1:55:13 player in the world in your mind for you like the one that not necessarily the one that everyone agrees is
1:55:19 the best but messi is the best player and i think most people would agree that leon messi is now
1:55:25 playing for inter inter miami is maybe even still at the age of 35 or 36 the best player on the planet
1:55:30 because of his expressiveness just the the way in which he plays his game and expresses himself is
1:55:36 just perfect and in fact this is a really good uh analogy to to discuss what you’re talking about
1:55:42 here because there’s there’s in the goat debate the greatest of all time debate there’s two players
1:55:47 that come up in soccer cristiano ronaldo and leonel messi maradona is no longer in the no
1:55:53 and pelle is no longer in the in the mix it’s the it’s these two okay ronaldo is 40 and messi i think
1:55:59 is 36 and i i’d say probably if you took a poll of all of the millions of people that have an opinion
1:56:06 on this 45 of them or so would say cristiano ronaldo and 55 it’s that close 55 would say messi
1:56:15 but both of them are so authentically themselves it’s crazy like cristiano ronaldo is perfect like
1:56:21 he is the perfect greek god he’s 40 years old he’s about five percent body fat he’s big muscular
1:56:28 powerful fast he’s always shot he shines he shines he literally he gleams he does yeah and he plays that
1:56:34 way right and he’s he’s just got a certain personality that he brings to the field and messi’s just like this
1:56:40 you know just glides around and just elusive and you can’t see him and oh there he’s over there and
1:56:45 just the things that he can do with his feet and the ball and the interaction between his feet and the
1:56:52 ball it’s just oh that’s incredible and for me i align with more of the messi you know i just love the
1:56:58 creativity that’s a player like that has or uh or in you know a little bit more um up to date maybe you
1:57:05 you know um steph steph curry like change the game of basketball totally be wild or through
1:57:11 being authentically himself he’s totally changed the league he’s changed how everybody plays basketball
1:57:18 and how and everybody will play basketball forevermore so it’s yeah it’s it’s i really really appreciate
1:57:26 incredibly beautiful and authentic movers i don’t like sport but i love the the movement part of it
1:57:32 yeah it’s the son of an argentine you know my dad’s first generation immigrant to the united states
1:57:41 i i um i really put myself to shame by not being a huge soccer fan but i’ve got cousins that you’ll
1:57:46 listen and watch at the dinner table and you couldn’t distract them if an atom bomb went off you know it’s
1:57:52 and his kids you know um such a such an interesting sport because of the this notion that different
1:57:58 teams and different players play it differently right like the brazilians like the rhythm to their game
1:58:04 versus that you know argentines are considered a little bit more uh traditionally more rigid among
1:58:09 south americans as a culture more rigid and a little bit more aggressive as well more stiff upper lip
1:58:13 absolutely yeah yeah absolutely they take them argentines take themselves very seriously i can say that as a
1:58:18 a half of argentine yeah we’re taught to take ourselves seriously as people and um at the same
1:58:22 time to enjoy life but to take ourselves seriously yeah i think there’s a lesson in that too right
1:58:29 brazil has been the most successful national soccer team of all time and you know like you just said you
1:58:33 don’t know the soccer fan but you know how brazil plays soccer everyone knows how brazil plays soccer
1:58:38 they dance and they play and it’s just this thing you know it’s a party it’s a party yeah and that’s how they
1:58:42 play and everyone kind of knows how argentina plays as well you just said that you’re not a soccer fan
1:58:50 but you know that nobody knows how england plays england haven’t won a world cup since 1966 they
1:58:56 haven’t won a major title since 1966 even though this is where the sport originated from everyone knows
1:59:02 how germany plays and how germany has always played there’s a way there’s a german way of playing football
1:59:07 there’s a brazilian way of playing football there’s an argentinian way of playing football there is no british way
1:59:12 anymore so i think there’s something in that right like if there’s a connection where every single
1:59:16 person that comes up from the age of four years old they know that the way in which everybody in this
1:59:23 country plays oh okay i get that and we’re all on the same team and all contributing to the same system
1:59:29 in the same way we’re in the uk it’s so disparate that no one understands it anymore i’m just soaking
1:59:36 this in because my mind immediately goes to like like art one of my favorite movies is
1:59:42 the movie basquiat by jump about john michelle basquiat not the documentary i mean the cast is like
1:59:47 gary oldman david bowie i mean it’s in dennis hopper christopher walk and it’s just in an unbelievable
1:59:55 cast um and the fact that basquiat was part haitian news in new york in a time when new york was pretty
2:00:01 gritty and like brought that together in his art it was like one part graffiti modern art and had this
2:00:06 kind of tribal component that people made more of than they probably should have and and you could say
2:00:12 say the same thing about you know um andy warhol or about chuck close or about you know when people
2:00:17 are just being themselves but they’re also taking their ancestry and they’re taking their personal
2:00:21 history which includes their ancestry and they’re putting it into their art or their sport
2:00:29 spectacular things happen so along those lines this is a somewhat controversial topic but
2:00:32 i’m just gonna go right into it because i think everyone wonders about this
2:00:42 i’ll say this directly why are there fewer white strength and speed champion athletes
2:00:47 in fact if you hang around track and field long enough you’ll hear that’s the third fastest white
2:00:57 woman that’s the second fastest white guy um people are using very specific language but we could put it
2:01:07 differently get a lot of fast jamaicans um what’s the deal is it um genetic contribution to fiber type
2:01:14 um let’s also talk about calf belly length which turns out to not be about calf belly length at all
2:01:19 um what i’m saying there is people with quote-unquote small calves tend to be fast runners
2:01:27 what’s the deal and i realize why this is a controversial topic but it’s like so obvious
2:01:32 because that it’s almost silly to avoid at this point how can you not have the conversation yeah
2:01:38 let’s have a conversation about it it’s it’s it’s obvious so what’s the deal well as in all things when
2:01:44 we’re having discussions around topics like this it’s both nature and nurture sure it’s primarily in this
2:01:52 case nature if you don’t have the genetic capacity to run fast you won’t run fast sorry you just don’t
2:01:57 you don’t have enough type 2 fibers whatever it is proportion of type 2 it could be limb length it
2:02:03 could be joint structure uh typically faster people have tighter smaller joints typically faster people
2:02:08 have longer tendons and smaller muscle bellies typically faster people have more type 2x fibers
2:02:15 typically faster people are slightly taller so all of these contributing genetic factors if you do not
2:02:19 have those things and then that’s not even talking about some of the hormonal factors some of the
2:02:25 endocrinological factors some of the neural factors that we may not even understand yet there’s all of
2:02:33 these genetic determinants that play a part in what you are able to do so first and foremost we have to
2:02:41 yes that is a fact that almost every single statistically almost every single human being
2:02:53 that’s ever ran sub 10 seconds is a black athlete from you know evolutionarily from maybe say west africa
2:02:59 let me ask you uh sorry for interrupting but i think has a white person ever broken the 10 second
2:03:04 mark in the 100 meters there’s been a few so it was first uh christophe lemetra i believe in either
2:03:13 2017 or 2018 was the first white athlete to break 10 seconds and then there’s been uh i feel like it’s
2:03:19 probably five maybe six asians now who have broken 10 seconds everybody else and that’s
2:03:29 close to 200 are are black and of course there’s the nature component too which is if you come from a
2:03:38 country where sprinting yes is a popular sport um or soccer is a popular sport or um you know
2:03:42 distance running is a popular sport then there’s going to be a selection bias 100 yeah so we’re taking
2:03:47 those into that is that i would say that the gen if you don’t have the genetics good luck you’re not
2:03:51 not even in the room the genetics will get you in the room once you do in that room whether what that
2:03:55 nature is what that upbringing is what that environment is that is going to determine what
2:04:01 you know what you do with your genetics so for example a massive percentage and i don’t know what
2:04:08 this is but it’s big a massive percentage of the athletes or the male athletes who have ran sub 210 in
2:04:16 a marathon come from the same little district in kenya like it’s very very high percentage and part of that
2:04:21 is not only their genetics but the environment which they’re growing up in every single person
2:04:28 that they know is a marathoner every single person they know are running in excess of 100 miles a week
2:04:35 every single person they know uh you know this these are all of the things that that we need to do to be
2:04:39 this right so they’re seeing that from the day that they’re born so for sure environment really
2:04:44 matters what you do with that nature really really matters but if you don’t have the genetic capacity to
2:04:48 begin with you just as i said you don’t have any chance at all and as you said like jamaica
2:04:54 sprinting is massive in jamaica like it’s really really important if i would encourage you to do one
2:05:01 thing go to champs at one point if you like track meets this is the best track meet in the world champs is
2:05:08 the jamaican high school national championships and it’s in kingston and it is incredible absolutely
2:05:16 incredible the stands are packed so there’s 45 50 000 people it’s loud it’s noisy it’s boisterous and
2:05:21 kids are just killing themselves trying to beat each other it’s just an amazing event over the
2:05:26 course of three or four days go to the last couple days of champs and just watch that you just see oh
2:05:33 i understand why jamaicans are so fast this is the environment in which many of them are operating
2:05:38 within as they come up and this is like this is you know i i talked to uh so i’m a good friends with
2:05:42 donovan bailey donovan bailey was a 1996 olympic champion he was a world record holder in 100 meters
2:05:49 for a while he’s of jamaican descent uh grew up in jamaica until he was 12. he moved to canada in 1981
2:05:55 which is the same year that i moved to canada so we’ve talked about this a lot and he said if you
2:06:01 know if you do well at champs you’re set you’re going to do really well as a professional sprinter
2:06:08 because there’s nothing that has more pressure in it than actually competing well at jamaican high
2:06:14 school national championships so understand what that environment does for the ability for your typical
2:06:20 jamaican athlete to succeed at higher levels and all of those pockets you know pockets like this
2:06:25 exist all over the world whether it’s in in russia or whether it’s in kenya whether it’s in west
2:06:29 africa or whether it’s in you know right now we’re seeing some interesting things in norway and some
2:06:35 of the endurance sports right so it’s for sure nurture is really really important but genetics
2:06:38 gets you in the room what you do in it within that room that’s that’s up to you and your environment
2:06:43 that you create it’s so interesting how these different cultures shape the the future of a sport or an
2:06:53 endeavor um in china kids are highly incentivized to um learn a lot and test a lot in math and sciences
2:06:58 and they’re really big on neuroscience in china i think these nature nurture questions are are super
2:07:04 interesting it sounds like jamaica is still churning out a lot of excellent sprinters um because
2:07:11 of the huge numbers that are fed fed to the sport and and can be you know essentially grow up their nervous
2:07:16 systems are shaped around sprinting yeah couple that with any number of different um features
2:07:22 and we were talking about you talk about short calf bellies right this is the um this is the fear of
2:07:30 every uh uh bodybuilder right they they want long calf bellies but short calf bellies make people faster
2:07:36 and better jumpers not because the calf is short but because because the tendon is long okay essentially
2:07:42 we’ve got you know each muscle is really a muscle tendon unit and if you’ve got a longer tendon
2:07:47 relative to your muscle effectively you’re a little bit more plyometric you can store and release energy
2:07:52 a little bit more effectively than somebody who has a shorter tendon and a longer or bigger fatter
2:07:58 thicker muscle so we want really if you want to be fast you want long skinny tendons and small little
2:08:07 muscle bellies so you know so what uh serves ascetics sometimes doesn’t necessarily serve the sport and
2:08:13 and vice versa so if you had to pick one you’d want to be able to jump and run faster would you sure i mean
2:08:19 i i don’t i’m not yeah i mean i suppose that having very short calves would be weird but who wouldn’t
2:08:25 want to run faster or jump higher you know uh for all sorts of reasons just be so much fun yeah absolutely
2:08:31 i i don’t have a lot of hops but um this is actually a time to talk about knees over toes guy
2:08:40 ben patrick yeah he um uh fought a lot of adversity to like encourage people um including a lot of
2:08:46 exercise physiologists and the people who do rehab from various um aspects that you know putting your
2:08:53 knees out over your toes is okay um caught a lot of heat but i think the fact that he’s so skilled at
2:08:58 jumping and dunking and back bent and landing and back bends and things that sort puts them all to
2:09:02 shame frankly i think most people understand now that ben is really onto something with this
2:09:10 um one of the things that he’s a big proponent of is um a lot of eccentric loading um but also
2:09:17 not being afraid to get that knee way out over the toe what what is the deal with running form as it
2:09:22 were is the idea that if you can get your knee higher you can stride further and then when we
2:09:29 talk about um knee back toward butt how far back are we supposed to like kick our own glutes when we
2:09:34 when we stride i mean what is a proper running stride or is it going to vary by by structure
2:09:40 well that’s uh that’s a big question yeah like like explain that in five seconds i’m just kidding
2:09:46 but you know for those of us who want to run a bit faster do some some um stride work yeah should
2:09:50 i be reaching with my front leg and pulling myself forward on the ground 100 percent not please do not
2:09:57 do that right and i shouldn’t be just quickening my uh my turnover of a jogging stride so that’s part
2:10:03 of it yeah first of all let’s start at the start and understand that the way you move is going to be
2:10:09 be governed by the things that you are moving so how you move is governed by the stuff that you’ve got
2:10:15 so you cannot move in a way in which your body will not allow so if you have a certain structure of your
2:10:21 joints or a certain mobility structure or or a certain genetic makeup or a certain stiffness or a certain
2:10:29 muscle fiber type all of those things come together together they all coalesce to sort of govern
2:10:37 your motor strategy so the lab the last thing that i would want you to do andrew is to copy
2:10:45 usain bolt’s sprinting stride because usain bolt is six foot five 215 pounds he’s a little bit more
2:10:51 dynamic than you he’s probably got slightly longer achilles tendons than you he’s probably got tighter
2:10:56 smaller joints than you he’s probably a lot more elastic than you are he’s probably a little bit more
2:11:02 coordinated than you are so why would i want you to try to copy that so my job first and
2:11:09 foremost is to understand how you should or how you could move based upon the constraints that you have
2:11:16 based upon what are known as your action capabilities so your force capacity your mobility capacity all of
2:11:21 these things that make up who you are your height your weight your joint length your joint ratios all of
2:11:27 these different things your limb limb ratios so first it’s understanding that we are governed by the stuff
2:11:34 that we have so it’s we should never be trying to copy someone else first and foremost number two
2:11:44 is then we should have some sort of understanding of what is the common way to do a thing and if we can
2:11:51 probably simplify this we kind of know a little bit about how we what a model looks like for a back
2:11:58 squat or for a deadlift or for you choose your exercise we kind of have a model for that whether
2:12:03 that’s a mathematical model or whether that model was based upon the average of a bunch of elite movers
2:12:11 we kind of okay we can understand what quote-unquote optimal is mathematically but we also have to
2:12:18 understand that we are not math we are biological beings that will all move in slightly varying ways
2:12:23 depending upon the stuff that we are moving so yes we look at that model but we also look at what
2:12:31 we’ve got and we try to find somewhere in the middle that serves us so in sprinting and in probably in most
2:12:39 activities we try to identify like what are the non-negotiables what are the rules here like in
2:12:43 squatting we know what the rules are right we don’t want to bend to one side we don’t want to overly flex
2:12:49 our our spine we don’t want to anteriorly rotate our shoulders we don’t want to have knee valgus where
2:12:54 our knees come in and touch each other we don’t want to have super wide feet we don’t want to have
2:12:59 internally rotated feet when we’re when we’re squatting all of these things that we know that we
2:13:04 don’t do they govern the things that we can do so in sprinting we have something similar we don’t know
2:13:12 as much about sprinting as we do in some of the more or maybe the less complex movements more
2:13:17 discrete movements like a squat like a deadlift like a power clean the sprinting is coordinative it
2:13:23 continues it’s rhythmic so it’s a little bit harder for us to actually study but we do know that as you
2:13:29 said uh one of the things you said was high knees and most of the elite sprinters converge upon similar
2:13:35 positions when their knee is super high and that knee gets up to about waist height like just almost
2:13:40 belly button height when they’re running as fast as they can so we know if we want to be fast we’ve got
2:13:45 to kind of try and bring our knees up and we talked about that before too right the difference between
2:13:50 striding and sprinting and jogging and running where jogging and running happens behind the center mass
2:13:55 and striding and sprinting is in front of the center mass so maybe first and foremost we think about
2:13:59 bringing the knee up knees got to be a little bit higher you have to think about being in front
2:14:09 we know that for sure every elite sprinter sets up a very stiff spring on the ground by being very very
2:14:16 strong and stiff and rigid through the foot ankle complex so you have to be stiff on impact so think
2:14:23 about the analogy that i give all the time is if you think about you’re a boxer or you’re boxing and you’re
2:14:29 hitting a heavy bag what would you do with your wrists and your fist you’d squeeze it and hold it rigidly
2:14:33 because if you didn’t it would really hurt and if you’re trying to hit it as hard as you can you want
2:14:39 it to be you have to be squeezed it’s the same thing with sprinting because the forces by the way are
2:14:46 pretty similar an elite boxer hits a heavy bag in somewhere in excess of five times their body weight
2:14:51 in less than three hundredths of a second it’s exactly the same as sprinting and elite sprinting
2:14:55 is in excess of five times their body weight in less than three hundredths of a second time to peak
2:15:02 force on ground ground contact so knees are up and we’re very stiff on the ground and the third thing
2:15:10 is if you do not have an effective hip extension pattern you just can’t move well never mind run
2:15:18 fast you have to have the the ability for your knee to come behind your butt now that’s a hard thing to
2:15:24 define it’s a hard thing to quantify people ask me all the time like what do you mean like what is a good
2:15:29 pattern if i talk about the hip extension pattern and the importance of that it’s not just range of
2:15:35 motion so that’s the one that you alluded to is you know how far behind well the further the knee gets
2:15:39 behind the center mass the more the range of motion it’s not just that because in sprinting when you’re
2:15:46 upright especially you want to almost limit the amount of time that the knee travels behind the butt
2:15:51 because the longer that the knee travels behind the butt the longer you’re on the ground the slower you
2:15:59 are so range of motion for you or for me or for rob or for anyone listening for running is going to be
2:16:08 very different from a noah lyles or an andre degrasse or usain bald but this the qualitative aspect of all
2:16:13 of those things is still really important and the way in which i judge the quality of a pattern is kind
2:16:18 of five five fold do you have the force capacity to be able to extend your hip are you strong enough
2:16:23 can you actually get your knee behind the hip and many people just can’t do that because they’re not
2:16:28 strong enough do you have the velocity capacity can you actually move your limb fast enough to get it
2:16:34 behind do you have the range of motion and most team sport athletes you know if i’m going in and
2:16:38 talking to to coaches who work in team sports that’s the big that’s the low-hanging fruit that
2:16:44 they just don’t have the range so number three is the range number four is the control and if you’re
2:16:49 a kid if you’re a 14 year old you probably don’t have the control of that pattern and five is can you
2:16:54 do it over and over again can you actually repeat it so when we’re looking at the judging of a
2:17:01 pattern it’s force velocity repeatability control and range of motion is those those five things so
2:17:08 that’s you know that’s a long answer to what i could talk about for for literally days is what are the
2:17:12 things that we’re looking at for sprinting the ability to get the thigh out high the ability to
2:17:18 contact the ground really aggressively and the the ability to get the thigh or the knee behind the hip
2:17:27 with high quality what are your thoughts on skipping rope yeah i think the ability to coordinate flexion
2:17:31 extension at the ankle knee and hip is really important so you’re coordinating the movement
2:17:36 pattern of both the or at the ankle at the knee and the hip and coordinating all of those in space and
2:17:41 time and the ability to do that as we’ve talked about is one of the things that we lose as we age
2:17:47 so skipping is one of those things that can quite simply work on that coordinate of aspect what i see
2:17:52 too often though is people skipping incorrectly and skipping only through their ankles and not really
2:17:56 doing a lot through the knees and the hip and they just sort of plantar flex or dorsiflex plantar flex
2:18:00 dorsiflex so they just push up on their toes and they come off where we need to understand that
2:18:08 plantar flexion or going up onto your toes is in dynamic movements a reflexive movement it’s not a
2:18:13 volitional movement it’s not a movement that we should be thinking about or trying to control all we should
2:18:19 be thinking about is just bouncing as if we’re bouncing on a trampoline just bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce
2:18:26 and actually keeping our foot as stiff as we can just like skipping for me i just equate it to hitting
2:18:31 a heavy bag over and over and over again pop pop pop pop pop pop pop you can’t do that if you’re on
2:18:36 your toes you want to be on the balls of your feet like right on the base of your of your toes like and
2:18:42 just then it’s a lot easier to just bounce think about it bouncing so i think it’s a great activity from
2:18:49 that perspective is sort of just teaching how to coordinate the the uh what’s called the
2:18:54 amortization of all of the joints of the lower body and then as far as how to do it what to do
2:18:58 it i just feel just do it yeah you know what i mean like just do it with heavy ropes do it do the light
2:19:04 ropes have have fun with it i think there’s there’s probably too many times that we’re constrained by what
2:19:10 people like me say to do what is right just have fun man just just just you know find a way in which to
2:19:15 express yourself and enjoy the movement if you love jumping rope or hopping rope go do that just make
2:19:22 sure that you try to understand what doing it well looks like or feels like so you can do it well i like
2:19:30 to put on an album and skip for the album and then somehow just let the the music when i feel moved to
2:19:34 skip different faster or high knees or something like that dictate yeah because then there’s like
2:19:40 this external coach slash rhythm it’s something i like i’m not thinking about too much and then next
2:19:46 thing i know i’ve got you know 35 minutes of quote-unquote cardio done um with a piece of plastic i don’t
2:19:52 know something very satisfying about doing that i don’t know why um no i love it it’s a yeah i i as you
2:20:00 you can probably tell i’m getting more and more interested in things that um drawn more aspects of
2:20:06 the nervous system mind and body for exercise because i i while i love the gym i think it’s it can be
2:20:12 too linear and too rigid yeah and i think it leads to rigidity in one’s thinking yeah um and that might
2:20:16 come as a surprise to a lot of people think oh you know it’s all you know all these protocols have to be
2:20:22 done you know there’s a fundamentally correct way to do most things like get morning sunlight in your
2:20:27 eyes but if it’s five minutes or seven minutes depends on how bright it is and that what time
2:20:36 of year i mean you know i feel like the biology is flexible yeah um and learning to go by field can
2:20:41 be very very helpful yeah i think we lose that too right we got to remember you know principles are few
2:20:44 and methods are many there’s many ways to do different things as long as they align with the
2:20:49 principles just think about what the principles are and then just be creative in choosing the methods
2:20:56 that work for you yeah this is where peer-reviewed science unfortunately can’t measure every variable
2:21:01 yeah you know people say well like what have there been a study comparing you know 5 10 15 20 minutes or
2:21:07 30 minutes of morning sunlight you know yeah because you’re lucky if you get 100 subjects you got to pay
2:21:12 those subjects you got to get them to come in you’re tracking sleep you’re you use 10 000 lux in one group
2:21:16 and you know you know you know control light and another i mean you just don’t have the option to
2:21:24 work through every variable in anything even a dose response study of a drug you can’t account for
2:21:30 nutrition and the drug and then people go well then how can we trust any of this is a you know standard
2:21:36 science as it were a reduction of science is just one lens through these things yeah that doesn’t mean
2:21:41 that people’s experience is necessarily smarter than data it just means that data have to mesh with
2:21:48 experience and and experience with data yeah i think data data can inform the decisions we make but they
2:21:54 are not the decisions that we make you know we use that data but what’s you know it’s it’s um what’s most
2:22:00 important is how all of these data points all this information comes together you know it’s the it’s the
2:22:05 relationships and the interactions between the component parts which is more important than the individual
2:22:10 component parts themselves so we have to understand what those relationships are that’s the thing we
2:22:16 need to focus a little bit more on i’d like to talk about weight training what do sprinters do for their
2:22:22 weight training and if somebody like me is interested in becoming a faster runner doing maybe even
2:22:29 sprinting someday besides just doing skips and strides what are some ways of doing exercises in the gym
2:22:36 that can potentially facilitate our ability to move better outside of the gym first let’s look at the
2:22:43 kinetics of sprinting sprinting is only really truly about four things how much force you apply in the
2:22:50 ground how fast can you apply it the direction in which you apply it and how heavy you are and it’s just
2:22:58 those four things how much force how fast which direction what is your mass so we need to yeah
2:23:02 force is important we have to be able to apply a certain level of force but there’s a threshold to
2:23:09 this everyone says there’s a big question and has been for a long time how much strength quote unquote is
2:23:15 enough in sprinting well enough is it’s the same question that we ask we should ask in every task
2:23:20 there’s a rate of diminishing returns on all of these capacities that we need that we require
2:23:30 is spending an extra few years trying to get an extra five kilos to your power clean or an extra 25
2:23:36 pounds to your back squat as effective as a means to get faster than it would be if you say you start
2:23:42 skipping maybe do some more explosive work actually start sprinting a little bit more so there’s always this
2:23:49 from a programming perspective is understanding where the athlete is what they require what
2:23:52 they’ve got where they are in the rate of diminishing returns on each of those capacities
2:23:59 so first we have to understand that um let me zoom out just a little bit i coach andre andre degrasse
2:24:03 as we talked about andre when i started coaching him in 2015 could barely squat his body weight
2:24:11 eight months later he’s three-time olympic medalist eight months later he was one and a half years into his
2:24:19 sprinting career he’d sprinted for 18 months he had three olympic medals in the sprints the 100 the 200
2:24:27 and the four by one he could barely squat his body weight he could clean 60 kilos so 135 pounds he
2:24:36 definitely couldn’t bench a plate and a half he might have had 145 pound plate uh bench yeah maybe super weak
2:24:43 but on the other end of the spectrum this is the example that everyone gives you’ve got ben johnson
2:24:52 famously ben johnson did the 600 pound squat a couple of days prior to winning in the tokyo olympics
2:25:00 in 1988 running 979 obviously that was thereafter taken away after he tested positive so you’ve gone on one
2:25:06 end of the spectrum somebody like ben johnson who applies incredibly incredible amounts of force
2:25:13 and on the other end you’ve got somebody like andre degrasse who doesn’t apply relatively any force but
2:25:20 does it really really fast so this gives you like an understanding of the spectrum of capacities and
2:25:28 abilities that humans have to do a task in an almost infinite number of ways so to get to your question
2:25:33 it depends on who you are and what you’re good at and why you’re good at it there’s not one way
2:25:37 when you’ve got a ben johnson who can apply incredible amounts of forces and that’s one of
2:25:42 the reasons why he’s fast on the other end of the spectrum you’ve got andre degrasse who’s weaker than
2:25:48 most high school girls who’s incredible fat incredibly fast where does that leave us that
2:25:53 just tells us okay there’s many different ways to do this which is great it’s cool that gives us again
2:25:57 some freedom to better ask the questions about what it is that makes you andrew really good
2:26:03 like you apply a lot of force okay let’s lean into that let’s try to improve your speed by
2:26:09 try to maximize your force but what are you limited by okay you’re having trouble getting
2:26:14 off the ground you’re not super reactive or reflexive so we have to work some things into
2:26:19 your program that’s going to make you a little bit more reactive or reflexive so maybe we’ll do some
2:26:24 jump squats maybe we’ll do some hurdle hops maybe we’ll do some more skipping maybe maybe we feel like
2:26:30 okay you’ve reached the rate of diminishing returns on your force capacity you don’t need to squat
2:26:37 four plates if you squat 385 is going from 385 to 405 going to make you any faster no not at all so
2:26:43 let’s keep you at 385 and we’ll just do some other things so first and foremost it’s respecting the
2:26:50 individuality of all things and understanding that there’s not one way in which i can tell you do this
2:26:56 because this is what he did and that’s what’s going to work for you now there is as i said before there’s
2:27:04 non-negotiables and there’s rules to things so sprinting is how you transmit that force into the
2:27:11 track in a really fast period of time in the right direction so the transmission of force is typically
2:27:19 more important than the magnitude of the force at least at the elite end at least at the adult end
2:27:26 so transmission of force means how the the amount of force that you put into the ground how do you
2:27:31 use it to propel yourself forward so what are the types of exercises that maybe what would you think
2:27:38 about if i said this is a force transmission exercise rather than say a force magnitude exercise is that
2:27:46 something that appeals to you yeah jump squat comes to mind you know um jump squat comes to mind um
2:27:56 any kind of uh like push clap push-ups um you know the ability to like yep double clap or you know or
2:28:02 more um yes that’s what comes to mind i think that’s pretty accurate olympic lifts is one is one that
2:28:06 where a lot of people would say yes olympic lift that’s kind of what we’re doing with like a clean
2:28:11 you’re kind of yeah i’m not i don’t do olympic lifts but from what i understand i you know that they’re
2:28:17 they’re pushing off the ground to get get the bar up yeah it’s it’s essentially can we apply high
2:28:24 forces fast over a long period of time so that’s kind of what we do we spend a lot of time looking
2:28:30 at those types of exercises sled work uh we don’t do any sled work i’ll be all about we could get back
2:28:35 to that if you know sled work for elite sprinter we don’t we do resisted acceleration work so we’ll
2:28:43 sprint we’ll do some specific strength work where we’re pulling uh you know probably in excess of 10 to
2:28:48 15 kilos you know so 20 to 30 pounds ish do you use the parachute that was a big thing a few years
2:28:52 back remember that yeah like the parachute i used the parachute 20 years ago absolutely we don’t now
2:28:57 we we uh we actually have a we have a piece of equipment called the power cord we use that i use
2:29:02 that that’s really good spring loaded and the 1080 sprint which is this uh incredible piece of
2:29:08 equipment that we use that we can really dial in the resistance down to like you know a half a kilo
2:29:12 that’s it’s beautiful so we use that but that’s for different reasons so the you you talked about
2:29:20 the weight room in in the in the um the population of athletes i work with maximum strength is at the
2:29:27 rate of diminution returns already we don’t spend almost any time working on that at a lower level of
2:29:33 population maybe if you’re high school kid or if you’re in your 20s when you’re not super or if you’re
2:29:40 super weak just by increasing your force capacity so your ability to apply force you will get faster
2:29:47 because remember what the calculation is amount of force how fast direction and body mass so it is
2:29:53 important it just becomes less and less and less important the faster you get so it’s and then it
2:29:59 becomes when it’s less important when the ability to produce a high magnitude of force isn’t important
2:30:04 what is important so then we’re starting looking at plyometric things and probably most specifically
2:30:12 i’m looking at specific isometric stuff in the weight room so let’s look at the position in which we’re
2:30:18 applying in excess of five times our body weight and that’s when the foot is directly underneath the
2:30:26 center mass the foot is flat on the ground there’s about a 15 degree knee bend and there’s about a
2:30:33 five to 10 degree hip bend so if you can you think of think about that position so we’re pushing up
2:30:41 against an immovable bar or holding a very very heavy bar on one leg with as heavy as we can or as hard
2:30:47 as we can for somewhere between three to five seconds times three to four repetitions and we’ll do like
2:30:53 three sets of that that’s alex notero’s work he’s one of the the premier researchers in what’s called
2:31:01 run specific isometric strength training so it’s getting strong in really specific positions to the
2:31:07 task that you’re trying to be come better at so that’s that’s the primary one for me is that position
2:31:10 where the foot is directly underneath the center mass there’s a little bit of a knee bend there’s a little
2:31:18 bit of a hip bend and we do a lot of isometric work right there that’s that’s and then i and this is
2:31:26 my bias i do nothing bilateral at all you mean parallel stance parallel stance nothing except
2:31:34 occasionally if it is an issue you know with neural drive or whatever i’ll do some uh trap bar deadlifts
2:31:39 so some parallel stance trap bar deadlifts i think it’s a great exercise i think that’s difficult to do
2:31:46 with a staggered stance it’s very difficult to do with a uh a single leg stance but you can load up
2:31:51 some pretty good weight on a parallel stance trap bar deadlift and yeah i feel pretty good and you
2:31:57 you get a good feeling out of that it’s not necessarily to be um be able to apply or generate
2:32:02 more force it’s more about sort of neural drive than it is for anything else everything every single
2:32:08 other thing that we do is in a staggered stance heel to toe or kickstand which is kind of the same
2:32:13 same sort of thing just a different terminology or split stance or a stance where the front foot is
2:32:19 elevated or the rear foot is elevated so we’ll do as as we as we’ve talked about quite a bit now find
2:32:25 opportunities to get the knee behind the butt that’s a really important position can we get stronger
2:32:30 faster more control more repeatability and more range at that position one of the things i learned from
2:32:37 you yesterday is um well let’s i’ll double click first on this um the staggered stance so this is one
2:32:42 foot slightly in front of the other um i’ve been doing this with various lifts in the gym for a long
2:32:47 time i would say the exception would be if i’m belt squatting or hack squatting i don’t do that
2:32:53 um but for everything else overhead presses um anything where my feet are in contact with the
2:32:59 ground that is uh not on pull-ups and dips of course but um curls tricep extensions and i make
2:33:04 sure to vary the stance so one foot is in front for one set one is in front for the sometimes even in
2:33:11 the middle of the set i’ll i’ll switch them up after um and i found that to be tremendously helpful for
2:33:16 building core stability and a number of other things uh and it sounds like it might help running
2:33:21 gate as well the other thing that you said yesterday that i think is really important i’ve not thought
2:33:26 of before but now i’m doing is anytime you have a a foot elevated in the gym to get onto the toe
2:33:32 front foot can be flat yeah i think the ability to get off your first ray so for the big toe to bend
2:33:39 and flex is really important so for me if i if that’s important i’m going to search for opportunities
2:33:46 to do that as often as i can so if i have an option to either flex the big toe or not then we’re going
2:33:51 to flex the big toe now if you can’t and many athletes cannot you know there’s a lot of athletes
2:33:56 that just cannot extend to that big toe or some athletes have bunions and just can’t get over it
2:34:00 and that’s okay we can go on to the top of the foot but it’s not the not the end of the world
2:34:05 but i look for opportunities like that like i look for opportunities to extend the hip how can i work hip
2:34:15 extension exercises into everything i do how do i look at or do i look for full um full chain or
2:34:21 full body force transmission exercises as much as i possibly can ideally from the left foot to the
2:34:26 right hand and the right foot to the left hand so cross body so i’m looking for these long fascial
2:34:33 chains like ways in which i can bring some function to the work that i’m doing in the weight room some
2:34:38 level of transferability between the things that i do in the weight room and the things that we do on
2:34:42 the track because frankly most of the things that we do in the weight room don’t transfer to the track
2:34:47 a squat doesn’t really transfer it’s a totally different exercise performed a totally different
2:34:53 way at a totally different time totally different weights so the transference is very very far it’s very
2:35:00 it’s not very nebulous so i’m looking for ways in which we can find a way to transfer the capacities
2:35:05 that we are building in the weight room directly to the track and with respect to stretching i’m
2:35:09 thinking again of yoga because this is where the probably the first time i’ve done this where one
2:35:17 would lunge so front foot planted flat rear foot up on the big toe if possible the knee back of that rear
2:35:24 foot um or rear leg excuse me back behind the butt and then the opposite arm raised above that’s that
2:35:32 fascial um sling that cuts across from and you know in anatomy nomenclature contralateral across the
2:35:41 midline and then essentially trying to learn to feel that um line that goes all the way from one’s big toe
2:35:46 that’s planting back across up the leg across the the pelvis up the body and shoulder to the opposite
2:35:53 tips of finger hundred percent and it’s it’s if uh if i can add to that stretch um this is something
2:36:01 that i really love kelly about you know he’s he’s so much on i need you to be in control of your body
2:36:07 there is a way to do this but then it’s up to you to find out a better way for you specifically so you’ve
2:36:11 done a great job of outlining what the stretch looks like now what can i do with my body to
2:36:18 actually make this better do i rotate to one side do i side bend to one side do i flex the hand as
2:36:24 well as as well as doing this so because this will be a better stretch than that so palm parallel to the
2:36:29 to the ceiling 100 of the raised hand correct if i push the knee back and try to push the heel on the
2:36:36 ground and actually contract if i rotate my pelvis underneath me posteriorly like you know do a a
2:36:42 pelvic tilt underneath me well will that increase it so it’s always this explore exploratory process
2:36:47 there is a right way to do things but you are an individual we’re all unique snowflakes right we’re
2:36:54 all moving different ways and it’s up to us to explore all of our uniqueness distant topic from the
2:37:00 one that we’re on but one that i and i think a number of people are curious about is drugs in sports
2:37:11 um performance enhancing drugs there’s a new um potentially new sports league track league which
2:37:17 is the enhanced games who knows if that will go through um but right now using performance enhancing
2:37:25 drugs most performance enhancing drugs is banned in track but because of the ben johnson thing that was 88
2:37:31 olympics where he was like jaundiced at the eyes and you know it turned out he was taking winstraw and
2:37:38 he was stripped of his medal um and then the discussion is they’re all using it some just get caught this
2:37:45 kind of thing or they’re using in the off season how common is um people usually say steroid use but
2:37:51 androgen enhancement right because performance enhancing drugs could be drugs to lower the heart rate for the
2:37:55 bi athletes they do that too right keep your heart rate lower you know there’s all sorts of drugs that
2:38:04 are banned that are not androgen increasing but yeah but things like um testosterone derivatives yeah in
2:38:13 the men and women how common is it yeah um uh now not common at all in fact i don’t know of any elite
2:38:23 sprinter that i could um definitely point to say that person is dirty none it was common 60s and 70s
2:38:30 extremely common 80s very very common 90s when testing started becoming a bit better much less
2:38:37 common 2000s 2010s and 20s i just don’t know how much of it is getting done now or being done across the
2:38:43 the board there are pockets so we obviously know about russia and what’s going on with the eastern
2:38:47 bloc and all of the drugs that they’ve taken that’s been state sponsored all of that is out there we know
2:38:54 that for sure if you were an elite russian athlete almost certainly you were taking drugs you didn’t
2:38:58 have a choice true now you didn’t have a choice what no one really knows now because russia has been
2:39:04 banned from all sports so you don’t see russian athletes almost anywhere um i think there’s a few few
2:39:09 sports that you do but most of them now you don’t see russian athletes but it’s so hard like that’s
2:39:15 a part of the culture and has been part of the culture for you know since the 50s that’s what we do
2:39:19 because everyone else is cheating so this is what we do so it’s a state-sponsored system
2:39:28 and i feel like there’s you know there’s 150 or 160 something like that positive drug uh cases come out of
2:39:34 kenya over the course of the last decade so you think okay there’s something going on with in with
2:39:39 kenyans is that distance running distance running and there i should say because some people might not
2:39:46 be uh familiar with this um with distance running or cycling triathlon it’s probably not increasing
2:39:52 androgens like testosterone dihydrotestosterone etc it’s probably um things that increase red blood cell
2:39:59 count right ability to deliver more oxygen and fuel sources to the cells this kind of blood uh epo these
2:40:04 and things like that yeah but but and and this one in kenya like i understand it i understand the russian
2:40:10 thing as well like if you’re a kenyan kid you’re 18 years old you’ve got some talent an agent comes to you
2:40:15 and says i’m going to give you fifty thousand dollars and i’m going to support you for the
2:40:20 first two years of your career and this is what everyone does anyway and you know we’ll take the
2:40:27 risk a little bit but we can you know you can actually make something of yourself become a star get a house
2:40:33 feed your family do this do that that’s a hard calculation for a kid to make as it was in the
2:40:39 steroid era in baseball it’s almost logical to take drugs at that point right these guys aren’t testing me
2:40:46 at all so why wouldn’t i why wouldn’t barry bonds take drugs now that’s a different calculation for
2:40:51 most of the rest of the world where there isn’t these practices going on in kenya with a lot of
2:40:58 a lot of shady people to be honest with you and and i honestly i do not see drugs at all in the
2:41:02 sport anymore there will be pockets of people like for sure there will be some dirt there will be a few
2:41:08 dirty coaches there’ll be a few dirty managers there’ll be a few people doing some dirty things but i’m
2:41:15 very very confident that the top people in all of the events are doing it clean very confident
2:41:21 that’s great to hear it and i i would not know the first like i’ve been in this sport for a long time
2:41:26 i wouldn’t know what to do what to take who to get it from so when i look at you know i look at uh you
2:41:30 know choose your athlete i won’t name any names and you look at their who they’re surrounded by i know
2:41:37 those people well how would they do it i had no idea like no one really knows right because i mean
2:41:43 the the drug testing is pretty stringent now it’s really it’s hard it’s really really hard that’s um
2:41:49 encouraging to hear um especially for young people who are watching olympics and you know it’s a terrible
2:41:57 thing that if they were to think oh you know they’re all they’re all using um and i think one good
2:42:02 trend in the last few years is there’s a lot more openness now in the kind of fitness world because
2:42:06 when i was growing up of course those like veiny bodybuilder people were they were all juiced to
2:42:11 the gills and they’d say they weren’t but they absolutely were and nowadays you know if people are
2:42:17 doing trt or something they say it right you know i’ve talked about it microdose every other day since
2:42:23 i was 45 never before then but i’ve relied on other things to keep testosterone in range and
2:42:28 i take hcg maintain fertility that’s all checked out but i’m very clear about exactly how much the
2:42:34 internet has it wrong it’s 25 milligrams every other day by the way i’m staggered with 600 i use of hcg
2:42:38 every other day i said that early on because i was like i’m not a competitive athlete i got nothing to
2:42:44 hide right and i’ll say that was it trt i’ll say not really because my testosterone was in mid-sevens
2:42:49 but i was getting fatigued a lot and bumping it up a little bit higher which is what this has done
2:42:56 has been great for me but it’s the people that lie like the liverking situation where he looked at the
2:43:02 camera unfortunately and filmed himself saying i i that he doesn’t and then he gets caught it’s like
2:43:08 duh and then you’ve got people that are juicing really hard and um and it’s tricky in sports because
2:43:14 or in movies right like when an actor suddenly is like big and shredded and you’re just like
2:43:18 oh you know the telltale signs it’s probably not testosterone it’s probably oxandrolone or
2:43:22 something a little bit quote-unquote lighter but there’s not nothing light about oxandrolone
2:43:28 on your liver or your hairline folks so um but this is a bigger discussion but i think it’s important
2:43:36 to just be open about it yeah you know because um we want to see people run faster than ever before
2:43:41 we want to see people jump higher than ever before we want to see people run marathons faster than ever
2:43:49 before and it sucks when we find out that they were enhanced and that was breaking the rules what
2:43:56 what sucks more is the reputational damage that those things do for the people who are actually doing
2:44:02 this well and clean right the 99.9 of the people who are trying to do this the right way that are being
2:44:07 colored with the same brush right and that’s what really frustrates me it was really frustrated i’ve
2:44:14 coached one athlete in my career who tested positive 2001 olympic trials and bobsled his name
2:44:24 was pavly jovanovic he was um at the time the best bobsledder on the planet
2:44:36 so tested positive for nandrolone so decaduravolone um later it was shown that it came from his
2:44:44 supplement so if you remember this was 2001 oh yeah you could you could buy ghb late 90s at gnc at that
2:44:52 time correct late 90s up until the the early 2000s there were supplement companies purposefully lacing their
2:44:58 protein with steroids to try to sell more supplements goodness gracious and there’s studies that showed
2:45:04 this and they ended up there was a group of athletes that all tested positive that sued this one company
2:45:11 that uh and you know the company ended up just you know declaring bankruptcy and nobody got a cent and
2:45:17 long story short ruined his career ruined his reputation ended up taking his own life
2:45:23 so i’ve seen and this is you know this is just people from the outside just look at that and say
2:45:30 just another druggy bobsledder just another druggy football player just another druggy sprinter they’re
2:45:37 all on drugs and they’re not they’re not 99.9 percent of people are trying to do this right like they’re good
2:45:43 people not making any money in this sport especially in track and field it’s a different calculation as you said
2:45:50 in hollywood or in the nfl or in baseball where the testing is significantly more lax than it is in track
2:45:56 and field or significantly more lax than what it is in almost all amateur sports amateur sports is almost
2:46:03 impossible to be dirty these days it really is and if you just think about this trayvon bromell ran
2:46:12 997 as a high school kid he was five foot seven 135 pounds think that kid was taking drugs of course he
2:46:20 wasn’t so if you can run 997 as a 17 year old at that age why can’t you run nine seven
2:46:27 six seven eight years later after actually training and being in an elite program of course you can
2:46:34 usain bolt ran 1984 when he was 18 years old he ran sub 10 when he was 19 years old world class
2:46:39 just a kid just a kid yeah like these these you know you’re seeing high school kids now running
2:46:45 ridiculously fast times in the mile as well in in every single event right every event across
2:46:49 and they’re not assisted this is one thing where i hear we’re cutting between sport and we’re talking
2:46:57 about fitness and you know i the reason i mentioned the age when i started trt is that a um
2:47:04 never never occurred to me didn’t need it i felt like i got great results uh until then um and i think
2:47:08 the biggest thing is recovery i think it helps i do think it helps you recover you know uh better no
2:47:18 question actually um but a real shame nowadays is that because of instagram and people showing their bodies
2:47:26 and this desire for people to get results more quickly a lot of guys in their teens 20s and 30s are taking
2:47:32 testosterone when they don’t need it it does shut down sperm production unless they’re offsetting
2:47:37 that with hcg or something like that and um they may think they don’t want kids now but they may want
2:47:42 them later and some permanent damage can be done in addition to that i mean puberty is a very protracted
2:47:46 thing for a lot of people it’s not like oh yeah you know you start puberty at 14 it ends at 16
2:47:52 your brain’s still developing so we we don’t really understand how all that works not this olympics but prior to that
2:48:00 one there was a female athlete who tested positive for deca um the deca burrito she blamed it on a
2:48:06 burrito meat and i remember hearing that and i sort of facetiously said and i’ll say it again not
2:48:15 facetiously like if she got caught for deca i hope she took deca because to knowingly take a banned
2:48:22 substance and get caught and then banned from the sport is one thing but to inadvertently take a
2:48:29 banned substance as did this bobsledder and then get banned from your sport that’s a real tragedy for
2:48:36 multiple reasons that and that’s what happened dreadful it is it’s absolutely dreadful she just she
2:48:41 just started competing again like last month rob and i were actually talking about this yesterday at the
2:48:48 the track she’s she’s made the the world indoor team for usatf uh starting next week i think it
2:48:53 definitely happens you know we we look at that and there’s yeah they’re blaming the burrito they’re
2:48:59 blaming meat or whatever but 100 why would you you run 5k why are you taking deca why are you taking
2:49:04 natural long it doesn’t make sense no it makes zero sense you’re not doing that yeah like that is from the
2:49:12 meat well i get contacted a lot um probably not as much as other people do uh by athletes at different
2:49:18 levels professional amateur etc asking about ways to improve testosterone etc i got great results all
2:49:25 through my um mid-30s until mid-40s and and still with like tonga ali freeing some testosterone up my
2:49:30 blood charts told me that worked for me may not work for everybody great fedogia things like that
2:49:36 things like that subtle effects but meaningful subtle but meaningful um and then athletes will
2:49:41 ask me well is it allowed i said you have to check with your organization you just can’t take something
2:49:46 you have to check with your organization the thing i am well aware of now is all the peptide use
2:49:52 right peptides are really really big and they’re in use in the general population more and more and it’ll
2:49:56 be interesting to see how those impact sport i’m not aware of any athletes at least none have come to me
2:50:03 saying they take these peptides but um it’s going to be interesting to see how that shapes sport i think
2:50:12 people over estimate how much these drugs contribute to success at the elite level yeah i i because i
2:50:18 mean what you’re talking about with these athletes you work with are just the you know hundreds and
2:50:26 hundreds of hours of work to get a one percent improvement in some metric or point one percent
2:50:31 point one percent it’s just you know i think people really overestimate it sure if people just want to be
2:50:38 big with a bunch of acne yeah you can do that big acne sterile like there you know that you can get
2:50:45 that in the locker room most any gym nowadays um please don’t do it um but to get you know half a second off
2:50:53 your time it’s no drugs drugs thousands of hours of work right it is sleeping really well it’s eating
2:51:01 really well it’s having a good proper life you know it’s there’s no shortcut to that there really isn’t
2:51:09 you’ve got to get really really fast to be fast and this is even back in the drug era you didn’t take drugs
2:51:16 to be fast you got fast first and then you took drugs and that made you faster that’s how people
2:51:21 did it you don’t take drugs to get fast you don’t go from 10 2 to 10 flat or 10 3 to 10 flat or 10 2 to
2:51:28 9 8 it doesn’t happen that way so it’s now it’s it’s for me it’s like the most important one for me is
2:51:34 are you training well is it organized properly are you sleeping well are you eating well are you taking
2:51:40 whatever the the good clean supplements that you can take and we take very very few by the way
2:51:46 and do you have a good social life and then all of these things come together and interact in a way
2:51:53 that feeds your purpose of running fast you know that’s that’s it honestly it says as i said with with
2:51:59 andre i spoke i started working with andre in 2015 like he could not squat his body weight basically you
2:52:06 know three olympic medals 18 months after starting the sport it can be done which shows yeah okay this
2:52:13 is being done that’s awesome and it it points to the fact that more muscle isn’t always the solution
2:52:21 no the things that keep coming to mind are the ability to put away uh self-consciousness to use the
2:52:27 body to express to find oneself yeah um and it’s so interesting because i thought we were going to sit
2:52:35 down and talk about running yeah me too um but i think these are much larger and if i may uh more
2:52:45 important themes although people should definitely skip and stride and uh dupli metrics i’d be interested
2:52:52 to hear your thoughts i asked you this question earlier like do you feel like there is a single metric
2:53:00 that is a better determinant for overall health and vitality than the ability to maximally sprint
2:53:08 now not be fast but to go out and actually sprint maximally think about all of the things that come
2:53:15 along with the ride with that think about vo2 max like vo2 max in and of itself isn’t important it’s
2:53:20 a proxy for all of these other things that are important the ability to sprint maximally isn’t necessarily
2:53:26 important but it’s a proxy for everything else i can’t think of anything else and you’re talking
2:53:33 to somebody who’s now working on grip strength uh because i was challenged publicly by paul saladino
2:53:39 the carnivore md who now talks about animal diet and people are starting to take him more seriously
2:53:44 by the way because at first it was all meat then it is meat and fruit there’s meat fruit and some dairy
2:53:51 yeah um i do this and i also eat vegetables guy has salad in his name for god’s sake uh he’s a friend
2:53:56 i’m friends with him i’m friends with lane i’m friends with the t i i get along with all those guys but
2:54:02 some of them don’t get along with each other i’ll tell you that um but he challenged me to a grip
2:54:07 strength contest which actually was not grip strength and he said this is the marker of longevity
2:54:18 um and he hello bastard hung from a bar switching hands yeah for 12 plus minutes yeah in the rain now
2:54:24 he had someone toweling off the bar but that is a very impressive grip strength slash endurance
2:54:29 score sure um as long as we’re on this i mean this has become like kind of an online thing people want
2:54:33 to um challenge each other with here are my biometrics you asked what are the markers of longevity brian
2:54:37 johnson is big on these are my markers those have become controversial lately because
2:54:42 it’s unclear the markers were all collected at the same date uh you know there’s questions about
2:54:50 uh for instance um it’s weird that testosterone will be elevated but not showing lh means you’re
2:54:55 probably enhanced and if he is cool but people need to be very open the nice thing about what paul showed
2:55:00 is he showed the full length video right you have to show the video folks brian i’m calling you out
2:55:09 specifically you can’t post vo2 max and not show the actual ride and the read off the off the the
2:55:15 you have to show video people don’t trust it anymore and so the point here is is grip strength
2:55:20 is it vo2 max is it your testosterone relative to free testosterone it’s all these things like you said
2:55:23 if i were to step back and say is there a single
2:55:31 physical metric i i think you got me i think that the ability to run fast without blowing a gasket
2:55:40 yeah or injuring yourself in some way um run fast for you it would be it and and i did not think
2:55:46 about that or and i certainly wouldn’t have said that at the beginning of this conversation so i think
2:55:51 it’s a very important insight and that’s if nothing else should motivate everybody to get better at it
2:55:57 great and they can check out the video that we did what you said earlier has become to me and will
2:56:04 remain my goal i think that well-being physical well-being mental well-being is the ability to
2:56:13 exert express pressure mentally and physically like sit down like you know to actually generate pressure
2:56:17 around doing something hard that’s you know takes an organization of mind and body it could be a
2:56:26 physical pursuit and then to feel peace from the better expression of that cognitive or physical
2:56:33 or creative endeavor i think this um this pressure peace thing is is more than non-trivial i think
2:56:39 i think it’s the essence of what i’ve been seeking my whole life the ability to exert pressure and to
2:56:46 create things that are meaningful and then the ability to feel peace uh i think is um well it’s
2:56:51 it’s yours you came up with it i’m just yeah but i was applying it to specifically a task 100
2:56:56 meter sprint test and you’ve taken it and yeah that makes a lot of sense i love that because you got to
2:57:03 sleep at night you gotta train hard 100 you gotta do your if you’re me you know formal education and
2:57:07 then you got to also relax and have a good time and can you do them all at the same time that’s the
2:57:12 that’s the key yeah can you structure your days in a way where the first two-thirds is just pure
2:57:16 pressure and be okay with that because you know there’s peace coming yeah because of some of the
2:57:22 things that you pressured upon yourself love it well i love it and it’s all it’s all yours stu and um
2:57:26 i have to say i it’s been years i’ve been wanting to sit down and talk with you for
2:57:32 a very long time we run into each other at track meets we do and um it’s a real honor and
2:57:36 pleasure you’ve taught us so much and and there’s much more so i hope you’ll come back at some point
2:57:43 and we’ll um talk about other things as things evolve but talk about sprinting talk about sprinting and um
2:57:48 i’ll do a dangerous thing uh which is to say if folks want to go to a track meet i’ll be at the
2:57:54 track meets um and i’ll probably be letting people know when i’ll be at track meets i go as a fan
2:58:01 um i’m not looking for uh attention there i’m actually there to just enjoy the the incredible
2:58:06 expression of the athletes both physical and emotional expression it’s it’s a real it’s a real
2:58:10 beautiful thing it really is no i appreciate you and i appreciate you showing up to those meets and
2:58:17 talking about those meets it’s important for our our uh possibly dying sport so it’s uh it’s important
2:58:22 that we get more people out to these meets and and support track and field the the foundation of human
2:58:30 movement well you’re a legend as everyone says in the sport and outside of it too thanks so much for your
2:58:35 time it’s been it’s been a real pleasure and an honor thanks andrew appreciate you thank you for
2:58:39 joining me for today’s discussion with stew mcmillan to learn more about his work and to find links to
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