A Complete Guide to Improving Your Running Form | Stuart McMillan & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.260 | - What is the deal with a running form as it were?

00:00:05.000 | Is the idea that if you can get your knee higher,

00:00:08.740 | you can stride further?

00:00:10.660 | And then when we talk about knee back toward butt,

00:00:14.860 | how far back are we supposed to like kick our own glutes

00:00:17.920 | when we stride?

00:00:19.240 | I mean, what is a proper running stride

00:00:21.880 | or is it gonna vary by structure?

00:00:24.480 | - Well, that's a big question.

00:00:25.840 | - Yeah, like explain that in five seconds.

00:00:28.000 | I'm just kidding.

00:00:29.220 | But you know, for those of us who want to run a bit faster,

00:00:31.600 | do some stride work,

00:00:34.440 | should I be reaching with my front leg

00:00:36.080 | and pulling myself forward on the ground?

00:00:37.640 | - 100% not, please do not do that.

00:00:39.580 | - And I shouldn't be just quickening my turnover

00:00:43.320 | of a jogging stride.

00:00:45.040 | - But that's part of it.

00:00:46.460 | First of all, let's start at the start

00:00:49.220 | and understand that the way you move

00:00:51.720 | is going to be governed by the things that you are moving.

00:00:55.540 | So how you move is governed by the stuff that you've got.

00:00:58.440 | You cannot move in a way in which your body will not allow.

00:01:01.700 | So if you have a certain structure of your joints

00:01:04.500 | or a certain mobility structure

00:01:06.160 | or a certain genetic makeup or a certain stiffness

00:01:09.860 | or a certain muscle fiber type,

00:01:12.320 | all of those things come together.

00:01:15.740 | They all coalesce to sort of govern your motor strategy.

00:01:21.060 | So the last thing that I would want you to do, Andrew,

00:01:24.320 | is to copy Usain Bolt's sprinting stride.

00:01:28.780 | Because Usain Bolt is six foot five, 215 pounds.

00:01:32.280 | He's a little bit more dynamic than you.

00:01:34.820 | He's probably got slightly longer Achilles tendons than you.

00:01:37.320 | He's probably got tighter, smaller joints than you.

00:01:40.620 | He's probably a lot more elastic than you are.

00:01:43.880 | He's probably a little bit more coordinated than you are.

00:01:45.800 | So why would I want you to try to copy that?

00:01:49.060 | So my job first and foremost is to understand how you should

00:01:54.000 | or how you could move based upon the constraints that you have,

00:01:57.680 | based upon what are known as your action capabilities.

00:02:01.120 | So your force capacity, your mobility capacity,

00:02:04.280 | all of these things that make up who you are,

00:02:06.400 | your height, your weight, your joint length,

00:02:08.660 | your joint ratios, all of these different things,

00:02:11.140 | your limb ratios.

00:02:13.200 | So first, it's understanding that we are governed by the stuff that we have.

00:02:17.240 | So we should never be trying to copy someone else, first and foremost.

00:02:22.160 | Number two is then we should have some sort of understanding

00:02:27.600 | of what is the common way to do a thing.

00:02:31.700 | And we can probably simplify this.

00:02:33.880 | We kind of know a little bit about how we,

00:02:37.280 | what a model looks like for a back squat or for a deadlift.

00:02:43.040 | or for you choose your exercise.

00:02:45.000 | We kind of have a model for that, whether that's a mathematical model

00:02:47.940 | or whether that model was based upon the average of a bunch of elite movers.

00:02:51.860 | We kind of, okay, we kind of understand what quote unquote optimal is mathematically.

00:02:57.860 | But we also have to understand that we are not math.

00:03:02.080 | We are biological beings that will all move in slightly varying ways

00:03:06.880 | depending upon the stuff that we are moving.

00:03:09.080 | So yes, we look at that model, but we also look at what we've got

00:03:12.840 | and we try to find somewhere in the middle that serves us.

00:03:16.500 | So in sprinting and in probably in most activities,

00:03:21.120 | we try to identify like, what are the non-negotiables?

00:03:24.780 | What are the rules here?

00:03:26.800 | Like in squatting, we know what the rules are, right?

00:03:29.180 | We don't want to bend to one side.

00:03:30.440 | We don't want to overly flex our spine.

00:03:33.000 | We don't want to anteriorly rotate our shoulders.

00:03:36.200 | We don't want to have knee valgus where our knees come in and touch each other.

00:03:39.660 | We don't want to have super wide feet.

00:03:42.100 | We don't want to have internally rotated feet when we're squatting.

00:03:45.920 | All of these things that we know that we don't do, they govern the things that we can do.

00:03:50.520 | So in sprinting, we have something similar.

00:03:52.780 | We don't know as much about sprinting as we do in some of the more,

00:03:56.100 | or maybe the less complex movements,

00:03:59.660 | more discrete movements like a squat, like a deadlift, like a power cling.

00:04:03.640 | The sprinting is coordinative, it continues, it's rhythmic.

00:04:07.320 | So it's a little bit harder for us to actually study.

00:04:09.340 | But we do know that, as you said, one of the things you said was high knees.

00:04:14.060 | And most of the elite sprinters converge upon similar positions when their knee is super high.

00:04:20.600 | And that knee gets up to about waist height,

00:04:23.280 | like just almost belly button height when they're running as fast as they can.

00:04:26.800 | So we know if we want to be fast, we've got to kind of try and bring our knees up.

00:04:31.200 | And we talked about that before too, right?

00:04:33.060 | The difference between striding and sprinting and jogging and running,

00:04:35.840 | where jogging and running happens behind the center mass,

00:04:38.860 | and striding and sprinting is in front of the center mass.

00:04:41.760 | So maybe first and foremost, we think about bringing the knee up.

00:04:44.260 | Knee's got to be a little bit higher.

00:04:45.900 | You have to think about being in front.

00:04:47.820 | We know that for sure, every elite sprinter sets up a very stiff spring on the ground

00:04:56.280 | by being very, very strong and stiff and rigid through the foot-ankle complex.

00:05:02.480 | So you have to be stiff on impact.

00:05:04.440 | So think about the analogy that I give all the time is if you think about you're a boxer

00:05:10.220 | or you're boxing and you're hitting a heavy bag, what would you do with your wrists and your fist?

00:05:15.600 | You'd squeeze it and hold it rigidly?

00:05:17.500 | Because if you didn't, it would really hurt.

00:05:19.720 | And if you're trying to hit it as hard as you can, you want it to be, you have to be squeezed.

00:05:24.380 | It's the same thing with sprinting.

00:05:26.020 | Because the forces, by the way, are pretty similar.

00:05:28.500 | An elite boxer hits a heavy bag in somewhere in excess of five times their body weight in less than three hundredths of a second.

00:05:36.960 | It's exactly the same as sprinting.

00:05:38.660 | An elite sprinting is in excess of five times their body weight in less than three hundredths of a second time to peak force on ground contact.

00:05:46.200 | So knees are up and we're very stiff on the ground.

00:05:49.080 | And the third thing is if you do not have an effective hip extension pattern, you just can't move well.

00:05:57.360 | Never mind run fast.

00:05:59.540 | You have to have the ability for your knee to come behind your butt.

00:06:05.160 | Now, that's a hard thing to define.

00:06:07.440 | It's a hard thing to quantify.

00:06:09.300 | People ask me all the time, like, what do you mean?

00:06:11.920 | Like, what is a good pattern?

00:06:13.660 | If I talk about the hip extension pattern and the importance of that, it's not just range of motion.

00:06:18.700 | So that's the one that you alluded to is, you know, how far behind.

00:06:22.160 | Well, the further the knee gets behind the center mass, the more the range of motion.

00:06:25.720 | It's not just that.

00:06:26.580 | Because in sprinting, when you're upright especially, you want to almost limit the amount of time that the knee travels behind the butt.

00:06:34.580 | Because the longer that the knee travels behind the butt, the longer you're on the ground, the slower you are.

00:06:39.760 | So range of motion for you or for me or for Rob or for anyone listening for running is going to be very different from a Noah Lyles or an Andre de Grasse or Usain Bolt.

00:06:51.380 | But the qualitative aspect of all of those things is still really important.

00:06:58.840 | And the way in which I judge the quality of a pattern is kind of five-fold.

00:07:02.860 | Do you have the force capacity to be able to extend your hip?

00:07:06.060 | Are you strong enough?

00:07:07.180 | Can you actually get your knee behind the hip?

00:07:09.720 | And many people just can't do that because they're not strong enough.

00:07:12.420 | Do you have the velocity capacity?

00:07:14.720 | Can you actually move your limb fast enough to get it behind?

00:07:17.480 | Do you have the range of motion?

00:07:20.420 | And most team sport athletes, you know, if I'm going in and talking to coaches who work in team sports, that's the low-hanging fruit.

00:07:27.220 | They just don't have the range.

00:07:28.440 | So number three is the range.

00:07:29.720 | Number four is the control.

00:07:31.380 | And if you're a kid, if you're a 14-year-old, you probably don't have the control of that pattern.

00:07:36.920 | And five is can you do it over and over again?

00:07:39.080 | Can you actually repeat it?

00:07:40.660 | So when we're looking at the judging of a pattern, it's force, velocity, repeatability, control, and range of motion is those five things.

00:07:49.540 | So that's, you know, that's a long answer to what I could talk about for literally days is what are the things that we're looking at for sprinting?

00:07:58.640 | The ability to get the thigh up high, the ability to contact the ground really aggressively, and the ability to get the thigh or the knee behind the hip with high quality.

00:08:08.760 | The ability to get the thigh up high, the ability to get the thigh.

A Complete Guide to Improving Your Running Form | Stuart McMillan & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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