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

00:00:00.320 | welcome to the huberman lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life

00:00:05.600 | i'm andrew huberman and i'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at stanford

00:00:14.320 | school of medicine my guest today is stuart mcmillan stu mcmillan is one of the world's

00:00:19.680 | most sought after coaches for teaching people how to get stronger run faster be more powerful and

00:00:25.840 | healthier today we talk about how to do that using what for most people might seem like a rather

00:00:30.960 | unconventional set of methods but for any serious track athlete will be very familiar because they

00:00:36.240 | do it almost every day and that's skipping and striding you heard right as you'll soon learn

00:00:42.400 | skipping what most of us think of as a kid's activity is actually one of the best plyometric

00:00:47.440 | activities that we can all do at any age to build more power speed coordination and to improve our

00:00:53.760 | muscle fascial and nervous system function stu mcmillan has coached over 70 olympians across

00:00:59.840 | nine olympic games and he has coached the players and coaches of every major professional sport he

00:01:06.000 | explains how skipping and something called striding are zero-cost activities that we all can and should

00:01:11.520 | include in our weekly fitness routine they not only will have you moving better and having better posture

00:01:17.200 | in all your activities but they also take minimal time and they can help protect you against injuries and

00:01:22.240 | improve your longevity we also talk about the best strides for running at any speed so if you're into

00:01:27.280 | jogging or sprinting we talk about all the best ways to do that we talk about the sport of track which

00:01:32.400 | both stu and i happen to love and why certain groups of people excel in different sports due to genetic

00:01:37.840 | and environmental reasons we also have a very direct and open conversation about the use of performance

00:01:43.280 | enhancing tools in the athletic and wellness worlds this is a really special episode because if you like or if you

00:01:50.160 | don't like things like running swimming cycling or other activities such as weight training or yoga

00:01:55.600 | there's going to be a lot to take away from it that you can apply stew mcmillan is a true savant of

00:01:59.920 | coaching how best to move and how to improve your health it was an honor and privilege to host him and to

00:02:06.080 | learn from him i'm sure you'll agree before we begin i'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate

00:02:11.360 | from my teaching and research roles at stanford it is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost of consumer information

00:02:17.200 | about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme this episode

00:02:22.640 | does include sponsors and now for my discussion with stew mcmillan stew mcmillan welcome thank you great to

00:02:29.920 | be here we go back a little ways yeah and you're the guy that they call in to make athletes or pretty much anybody

00:02:39.440 | faster stronger healthier and more powerful and who wouldn't want that athletes uh or otherwise

00:02:48.720 | let's start by talking about running you know i think for a lot of people they hear running and

00:02:54.560 | they're like oh no running hurts running's painful but i think most people when they think about running

00:02:59.200 | they think about jogging they think about running a distance longer than a mile but even for some

00:03:04.400 | people running a mile is a painful thought let alone a practice how should we think about running and

00:03:11.680 | sprinting in particular because when we grow up we learn to crawl walk run and kids naturally want to run

00:03:20.240 | fast at some point fast for them what is it about running that for you is such an enchanting thing why do you

00:03:29.200 | think that every four years or so depending on when they're scheduling the olympics everyone in this

00:03:34.960 | country gets fascinated with who's fastest yeah who's fastest in the world and then they tend to put track

00:03:41.040 | and field aside for a bit but people can jump they can swim they can do all these things but running

00:03:46.000 | is so fundamental to being human what are your thoughts on running generally and let's break it up into

00:03:51.280 | distances why do you love seeing people run fast why have you devoted yourself in part to helping people run

00:03:57.680 | faster and faster yeah there's a lot in that first running fast for me is the ultimate human activity

00:04:07.200 | like the fastest human on the planet is the fastest human on the planet where potentially maybe like

00:04:15.440 | the best football player is probably not the best football player the best soccer player is probably not

00:04:20.640 | the best soccer player there might be some someone down in argentina who could be a better nfl linebacker

00:04:27.120 | than choose your all pro linebacker right now we're sprinting everybody sprints as you said we all run

00:04:34.640 | when we're kids and we figure out or our teachers figure out or our coaches figure out well andrew you're

00:04:40.640 | a sprinter so you're going to sprint stew you're a middle distance so you go and do that and over the

00:04:44.720 | course of time we kind of figure out whether we're good or not and the sprinters like the truly elite

00:04:49.280 | sprinters end up being the truly elite sprinters when they are 20 25 30 years old like that's what

00:04:55.280 | you do you don't move into something else if you are a super elite sprinter so i think that's part of it

00:05:01.040 | is that for me like it is really truly the tip of the spear in human performance the fastest person on the

00:05:08.400 | planet is the fastest person on the planet usain bolt is the world record holder and he is the fastest

00:05:14.240 | person who's ever ran there's probably not somebody else who you know in the congo somewhere in jamaica

00:05:18.960 | that could have been faster than usain because they would have displayed themselves at some point

00:05:23.200 | so for me that is it you know and i you know i started coaching kind of 1984 like i've been coaching

00:05:28.880 | for a long long time and i started coaching professional in 1992 and i've coached many sports

00:05:34.960 | many activities many tasks and i i enjoy most of them but for me it is that pinnacle that

00:05:43.200 | true tip of the spear that interests me the most and that you only get from sprinting if you're an

00:05:48.880 | nfl football player most likely you are playing every game at about 80 of your best

00:05:54.880 | if you are 80 of your best and you got onto the 100 meter start line forget about it forget about it

00:06:02.000 | if you're less than 99.9 of your best forget about it that's why i truly i love the sprinting events

00:06:09.600 | so much and zoomed out from that a little bit like guys i started off as a strength and conditioning coach

00:06:15.360 | so it was for me it was more about this the power the strength and the speed it was all of that

00:06:21.680 | and i coached bobsled for a long time and i really really enjoyed bobsled because you know these guys are

00:06:27.360 | massive they're really strong and they're really fast so that for me was really appealing and that

00:06:34.160 | was kind of that that fed my obsession about this peak human performance for a long time

00:06:39.760 | until i had the opportunity to actually go and work with like super elite sprinters and now i can't do

00:06:46.400 | anything other than that i really can't it's it's fascinating to me how do we compare the fastest

00:06:52.640 | person in the 100 meters versus the 200 versus the 400 so for you is it coaching the 100 that's the most

00:07:01.120 | exciting or the 200 or the 400 yeah that's a good question i i actually prefer coaching the 200

00:07:06.640 | for a couple of reasons there's a little bit of tactics in the 200 or there's more tactics than there

00:07:12.880 | are in the 100 in the 100 the fastest person is going to win in the 200 depending on how you

00:07:18.720 | tactically set up your race because it's not an all-out sprint you can't run as fast as you can for 20

00:07:24.640 | seconds whereas 100 meters you can run as fast as you can for 10 to 11 seconds it is a it's all out

00:07:31.040 | right from the start with the 200 you have to kind of either push out really really hard and then smooth

00:07:37.120 | it out and then try to finish strong or you start off a little bit easier and you finish strong or you

00:07:41.840 | just go out all out and you're just going to fade and see if you can stay ahead so that tactical

00:07:46.400 | element to for that race for me is really interesting so then you're combining the capacity

00:07:52.000 | you know the actual ability to run fast and be super incredibly fast you know high high velocities

00:07:58.560 | with the tactical component so it's then you're thinking about okay who's in if my athletes in lane

00:08:03.600 | six who's in lane seven who's in lane eight how are we going to determine how we run based upon

00:08:08.720 | what the other races are going to do so for me it's a 200. that's not to say i don't love the

00:08:13.360 | 100. the 100 for me is the one that i if i'm just a fan that's the one that i'm paying attention to the

00:08:19.600 | most and every four years people become obsessed with it that that person is generally the winner is

00:08:25.200 | characterized as the fastest person on the planet because like you said it's it's all out yeah and at

00:08:30.880 | the same time i think most people can't really conceive in a concrete way what sprinting 100

00:08:38.080 | meters really is about yeah and the world record is held by usain bolt and the record is somewhere

00:08:44.480 | 9.58 seconds and yesterday you told me that means it's about 40 strides to cover 100 meters for usain

00:08:50.800 | it was 40 steps correct yeah for uh many other elite sprinters it's somewhere between 40 and 45

00:08:56.560 | and the men and somewhere between sort of 47 and 52 for the women i'd like to take a quick break and

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00:12:13.520 | yesterday we were out at the track at malibu high school here teaching my producer rob and i some

00:12:19.920 | bounding drills some skipping drills and we'll get back to this because there's such immense value for

00:12:24.880 | everybody not just people who seek to be competitive runners but for everybody to i realized this morning

00:12:31.920 | it's hop skip and jump we were always going to hop skipping a jump away from but to learn how to

00:12:37.920 | move properly at speed to move properly not at speed i mean there's just so much value in in these drills

00:12:44.720 | and what we went through and so we'll get back to that but there was an interesting moment yesterday

00:12:49.760 | i recall where some of the kids were getting out of school and started running around the track

00:12:54.640 | and i had this question in my mind to ask you which was hey can you spot any of those kids as likely to

00:13:02.640 | be really excellent sprinters but i didn't even have to ask we watched them go out in a few rows

00:13:08.240 | and then you said that kid right there yeah you said that kid right there he's got it

00:13:13.280 | what was it about the way he was running kid probably was eighth or ninth grade um took one run away from

00:13:22.160 | us and you said that that kid's a sprinter yeah what was it was it his speed was it the the form what was

00:13:29.360 | it was first of all it was not the form because most of those kids are you know limbs are going

00:13:34.400 | all over the place right it's how they interact with the ground and it's it's this qualitative

00:13:40.720 | component that is really hard to define it's if you if you watch a elite boxer hit a heavy bag there's

00:13:47.600 | a pop sound to it pop pop pop pop and it's the same with elite sprinters or not even elite sprinters but

00:13:53.920 | anybody who's fast and effective and efficient at applying force against an object and you see that

00:14:01.040 | as young as as we saw yesterday with what 12 13 14 year olds right some of them are just thudding on the

00:14:07.120 | ground and just pushing back and kind of like rob you're your producer um but which by the way folks we're

00:14:14.720 | taking a couple of jobs at rob he's he's in the room with us now although off camera rob has run multiple

00:14:20.320 | triathlons he's an incredibly impressive athlete and um as an incredibly impressive athlete we can

00:14:25.680 | we can jab at him every now and again but this one kid he was just re it was far more efficient on the

00:14:30.800 | ground than everyone else it was just pop pop pop pop pop pop pop and you could hear it and i hear it

00:14:36.480 | generally i hear it before i see it and that's i think it's actually what i heard first and i looked

00:14:41.120 | around and said oh that's that's the kid like he's a sprinter and then you just kind of look at had at his

00:14:46.320 | form and it just looks better there's just a quality to that that you don't see with these

00:14:52.080 | other kids and even though limbs are going all over the place and head is going from side to side and

00:14:57.440 | you know it's his feet are going all over the place and hands are flapping you know like wings

00:15:01.680 | there's just a fluidity even with him looking like that he just is doing it much more coordinated and

00:15:09.360 | fluid than everyone else who looked like they were trying hard and with him it didn't look like he was

00:15:15.120 | trying hard and typically i mean that is by the way the differentiator between all elite and sub-elite

00:15:21.840 | athletes regardless of the sport the best athletes are always the ones that make it look the easiest

00:15:26.480 | and that kid just made it look easier than everyone else could you send a kid like that out for a 400

00:15:33.760 | meter run and then meet him at the line and say you know what you're meant to run the 200 or you're meant to run

00:15:42.000 | the 100 is it possible to tell whether or not somebody is meant for a particular distance based

00:15:47.760 | on how they do in a slightly different distance yeah i don't i don't especially not at that age you know

00:15:53.200 | at that age you want him to be doing or her to be doing as many different events as possible and let's

00:15:58.320 | just trial them all i don't think they should even at that age at 12 13 14 say you're a sprinter

00:16:04.160 | you're a sprinter and you're a jumper and maybe we'll do some middle distance and we'll do some

00:16:07.600 | relays and then we can do a couple throws as well and see which one that you kind of enjoying the most

00:16:12.960 | number one and then number two what are you actually showing some expertise towards and hopefully those

00:16:18.720 | two things match and then you can start looking at specializing for the kind of event group a little

00:16:25.120 | bit later and you know even and that comes a lot later than many you know people outside of track

00:16:30.480 | and field think um even with you know most ncaa division one college programs are pretty elite i

00:16:37.040 | mean that's some high performing athletes and many of those sprinters do the one the two the four all the

00:16:42.320 | relays and often your best sprinters are also your best jumpers so you might have a you might have

00:16:47.520 | your 100 meter specialist also do the long jump and the triple jump and it won't be until maybe the

00:16:53.120 | second or the third or fourth year of college or maybe even the first year as a pro where they start

00:16:57.680 | actually doing just the one or two events i ran cross country as a senior in high school i've been

00:17:02.800 | running consistently since i was 16 three times a week i don't consider myself even a runner i just run

00:17:08.000 | for the pleasure of it a long run a medium run and a short run um but perhaps it was the movies about

00:17:15.440 | steve prefontaine of which there were two i think one's called uh prefontaine and the other one's

00:17:20.080 | called without limits that are quite good that got me excited about track and then i started going up

00:17:25.600 | to university of oregon and attending track meets as a fan yeah um but there's this dramatized moment

00:17:31.360 | about pre as they called him uh and bowerman the coach up at in eugene where allegedly um purportedly uh

00:17:41.840 | pre wants to run the mile because everyone in the country at that time was obsessed with who's the

00:17:46.160 | fastest miler but bowerman says to him no you're a 5 000 runner you're gonna run the three mile and he

00:17:52.240 | said no one cares about the 5 000 he said you're gonna make them care and it turned out to be the

00:17:56.480 | right fit the 5 000 was the right event for him so that was a moment where a coach could identify

00:18:03.040 | you could be a great miler but you'll be a spectacular 5 000 runner is that based on sort

00:18:09.680 | of times and splits and recovery and all that or is there actually a body type and a gate that um is

00:18:17.520 | best because one of my favorite things to find on social media i promise this is not a digression is

00:18:22.640 | where they'll set out a race an animated race between like a rabbit a cheetah an elephant a human it's very

00:18:29.360 | interesting to see which animals are fastest over which distances they fall out over different

00:18:33.680 | distances and most people perhaps are surprised to find that the animal that wins the long long

00:18:39.280 | long longest distance and beats all the other species is us yeah the human right so we're not

00:18:45.680 | good in the in the sprint compared to the cheetah but we are oh so good at the marathon and ultra marathon

00:18:52.560 | compared to the cheetah or any other animal so do you think it's something special about the gate

00:18:58.800 | um the personality times in various events i mean what what funnels um somebody's understanding of

00:19:06.720 | themselves uh or an athlete to say you know you're meant to you're meant to do this yeah i think you

00:19:12.560 | nailed it at the end their understanding of themselves i think is a really important part of it

00:19:17.920 | you know we find ourselves through movement and we fall in love with whatever it is because that's

00:19:22.320 | what we do and we tend to do it really well so i coached a british sprinter for a long time her name

00:19:27.120 | is jody williams i coached her for about a decade starting in 2015 she just retired at the end of last

00:19:31.440 | season she went when she was young so between i think the ages of 13 and 17 she won 150 straight

00:19:40.400 | races in the 100 and the 200 never lost was the best at every single age group all over the world

00:19:47.360 | for five years finally lost and did not really transition into being an elite 100 meter 200 meter

00:19:57.200 | sprinter but this was her identity she'd always been the fastest person so when i started coaching her in

00:20:03.520 | 2015-16 when she was 22 that was what she did she was 100 200 meter girl but she wasn't elite she wasn't

00:20:13.440 | world class and we kept on pushing her towards the 100 and 200 because this was what she saw herself as

00:20:20.160 | and me external to that what i saw her as as well and everyone else expected from her because she was

00:20:25.760 | the best in the world for so long and it's a funny thing happened sort of five years into that we did

00:20:32.800 | a a relay a four by four early season at arizona state university and she ran really fast in this

00:20:39.600 | four by four relay and she enjoyed it and she didn't enjoy getting beat in the 100 and the 200 anymore

00:20:46.880 | and she said hmm maybe i can do the 400 and then the 2019 world championships in doha she made the british

00:20:53.760 | team in the 200 didn't do very well but ran the relay ran the four by four and ran the fastest split

00:21:00.720 | of all the countries she ran 49-4 on a four by four split and said okay we're 400 meter runner now so

00:21:08.800 | sometimes it's just that sometimes it takes a long time for the athlete to come to the realization that

00:21:15.040 | this is what they connect with like this is this is who i am you know what you know what i mean like

00:21:20.000 | it's it's really it's not as easy as just saying oh we've got a bunch of tests and you're 100 meter

00:21:24.560 | you're 200 you're a 400 for her it took her over a decade to come to terms of the fact that you know

00:21:31.520 | i can't do the 100 200 anymore but i could be really good at the 400 and then and two years later at the

00:21:38.080 | 2020 olympic games which ended up being obviously in 21 uh she was sixth in the 400 meters in the olympics

00:21:45.520 | 49.9 twice so it's uh you know it's um in hindsight we wonder if we moved into the 400 five years

00:21:53.280 | earlier three or four years earlier maybe she could have had a medal but yeah it's it's an interesting

00:21:58.560 | one like it's we're always using all the different pieces of information that we have at hand some of

00:22:04.480 | it's quantitative sometimes some of some of it's qualitative some of it is just a feeling and with

00:22:09.200 | with jody specifically it was you know what did i better connect with because you know that's

00:22:14.000 | typically that's as i said that's why we get into sport in the first place if we can't connect with

00:22:18.080 | that as an individual with why we're doing it then why are we even doing it i feel like this is a great

00:22:24.720 | metaphor for life in general for career i mean i've enjoyed different careers and um i'm glad i started in

00:22:32.720 | the one i did but that i've ended up in the one i'm in now even though i still teach and i'm involved

00:22:37.600 | in research in some ways that um there's such an immense pleasure to finding the the thing yeah for

00:22:45.840 | oneself yeah but you can't get there first this is what i think is frustrating to young people now because

00:22:51.120 | of the internet they think like what's my calling what's what's my event what's my sport what am i built

00:22:55.280 | for and then you have all these examples right you've got your um shaquille o'neal's clearly built

00:23:01.600 | for basketball and then you have your growing up when i grew up your spud web yeah right much much

00:23:06.800 | shorter than most of the professional players in the nba but wins the slam dunk competition and so he's

00:23:11.600 | always used as an example that you can bridge these these gaps but i do think that dedicated application

00:23:19.600 | to one area is the best lane from which to exit to another freeway yeah you can't just get on to the

00:23:27.680 | the uh the audubon so to speak for you you have to sometimes get on you know highway 101 for a while

00:23:32.960 | and speed a little bit or or crash you know i'm not being literal here um you said something i think

00:23:39.600 | is immensely powerful i'd like to use as a segue which is that we find ourselves through movement

00:23:45.760 | i think this is so true um and not just for people who are trying to figure out what athletic or

00:23:51.440 | exercise endeavors are best for them but certainly there i'd like to contrast jogging and running

00:23:57.120 | yesterday you you mentioned a few things that to me just feel like gems because like i said i'll try and

00:24:06.720 | run far-ish for me i go by time about an hour once a week 30 minutes on another day and a what's to say

00:24:13.680 | about a 15 minute not all out but close to all out on a separate day i've tried ad nauseam to

00:24:20.480 | figure out whether or not it's best to heel strike and roll whether or not it's best to land on the toe

00:24:25.440 | whether it's us to lift the knee i mean for the the uninformed um who goes to the internet you can get

00:24:32.560 | answers about this all sorts of ways let's start with the slowest movement possible which is just walking

00:24:40.320 | let's forget about speed walking for sake of this conversation for a number of reasons race walking

00:24:44.960 | race walking excuse me race walking um see i even forgot the name of it no disrespect to race walkers

00:24:51.280 | no disrespect to race walkers but most people don't seek to race walk i think um but let's talk about

00:24:57.760 | walking yeah when we walk do we we heel to toe roll naturally do we middle of foot to toe roll and then let's

00:25:05.280 | proceed to jogging running and then let's step up through the various gear systems yeah yeah um there's

00:25:14.240 | probably five separate gait patterns walking is the first one and typically most people will strike on

00:25:22.240 | their heel they'll roll over and they'll toe off on their toe and we do that up to about

00:25:28.160 | two to 2.2 to 2.3 meters a second until we can no longer do that so we start walking we walk really

00:25:34.800 | really slow and if we start increasing our speed you'll find that you'll almost self-organize into

00:25:42.160 | the speed that feels really nice for you if you were going going for a walk you would self-organize towards

00:25:47.840 | your most efficient or your most stable velocity for that walk and if you don't not thinking about it you

00:25:53.840 | will self-organize towards your most efficient mechanical solution as well that it might be flat

00:26:00.480 | foot it might be right up high on your heel with massive amount of dorsiflexion it might be a little

00:26:05.360 | bit lower on the heel but that's all contingent upon your individual structure how your foot is

00:26:13.120 | built how it coordinates with your knee and your hip if you're not thinking about it we typically will

00:26:19.680 | self-organize towards what is most efficient most stable for us and then as we get faster and faster

00:26:27.040 | and faster you'll feel that that stability and that inefficiency starts to rock a little bit and you can

00:26:33.280 | no longer walk and what do we do then to get and to get faster we actually have to transition to a totally

00:26:39.600 | different gait pattern we start to jog because we're with just so much instability inefficiency that that

00:26:48.000 | pattern just start begins to break down and we start to jog let me back up just a little bit so if you

00:26:54.720 | were to walk with let's say your your 80 year old neighbor and you're doing a walk with her that's

00:27:02.000 | probably going to be pretty taxing for you pretty uneconomical pretty inefficient because you have to

00:27:08.240 | shuffle a little bit you're walking so slow you're probably gonna be bent over a little bit but if the

00:27:12.720 | neighbor went in you just continue to walk you would speed up to your most efficient pattern so within

00:27:18.400 | all of these gait patterns there is almost like an upside down you where you start off really inefficient

00:27:24.320 | unstable as you get faster and faster and faster efficiency increases stability increases and you

00:27:30.560 | keep getting faster and faster and faster stability goes down again efficiency goes down again before you

00:27:35.760 | have to transition to a different pattern so jogging occurs at somewhere around 20 percent of your maximum

00:27:43.200 | sprint speed so you know whether that's 1.8 to 2 to 2.2 meters per second and then we start to jog and

00:27:51.600 | eventually we can't jog at that speed anymore so we have to transition to a different gait pattern and we

00:27:57.120 | start to run and that's kind of what we were doing yesterday in fact you know we spent some time running now it's

00:28:03.920 | important you asked me about kind of heel strike and and where we are within the foot we're thinking

00:28:09.520 | about the same thing throughout and that's just to move from here to there as efficiently as we can

00:28:15.760 | understanding that we will typically as a sales as i said self-organize towards our most efficient

00:28:21.120 | pattern and the only time we actually think about doing something different than that is when somebody

00:28:26.400 | outside tells us to do something different and messes up the efficiency most of the time so for me it's

00:28:32.400 | uh like the big cueing and we talked about this yesterday right we said flat foot contact and if

00:28:38.480 | you think about being flat foot contact and all of the different things that you do all the different

00:28:43.840 | gait patterns you do the velocity is what determines where in the foot you actually will contact so if

00:28:50.000 | you're walking and you're thinking flat foot you'll actually go heel strike you'll roll over and your toe

00:28:54.800 | off and if you're sprinting as fast as you can you're thinking flat foot contact you will actually plantar

00:29:00.320 | flex slightly just prior to ground contact and you'll contact the ground more towards your toes than you

00:29:06.000 | will if you're just walking or running or jogging we should clarify for people dorsiflexion is when

00:29:11.120 | your toes come close up towards your shin correct uh you're you're narrowing that angle between your your

00:29:16.400 | foot and your you know front lower part of your lower limb and um plantar flexion is the opposite yes

00:29:22.960 | pointing the toe i think uh attempting to go ballerina and point but hopefully unless you're

00:29:28.560 | a ballerina you're not getting all the way you know to get to your initial point as well it's like

00:29:32.400 | how many of us were taught to sprint up high on our toes when we were kids like we all were right yeah

00:29:39.840 | up on your toes keep your not keep your arms at 90 degrees and get really really tall and that's totally

00:29:46.400 | opposite to what we should be doing yeah sometimes kids when they run when they're real little you

00:29:51.520 | know like three or four like when they're just running around the house barefoot they'll like run on their

00:29:55.040 | toes um so what you're basically saying if i understand correctly is the speed should dictate

00:30:02.240 | the foot strike correct okay i think that's a very important point for people um who are interested in

00:30:08.160 | running or already running the speed should dictate the foot strike yeah that unless there's a problem

00:30:14.720 | to resolve yes that a coach has told you you need to resolve and how to do it you shouldn't be thinking

00:30:21.120 | about heel striking or toe striking you should be thinking about the speed that you're trying to cover

00:30:25.280 | the distance and yeah and if you're thinking about anything just think about being flat just think

00:30:30.960 | about being flat and the foot will take care of itself due to the velocity let's talk a little bit more

00:30:36.320 | about body position and running mechanics um there may be no hard and fast rules to this but

00:30:42.880 | where should my eyes be you know i've heard oh you want to be looking but assuming i'm not in a race

00:30:48.160 | against anyone i'm you know heading out for a run doesn't matter which duration um does it matter where

00:30:54.640 | i place my my vision um in sprinting a hundred percent i feel like the longer the the distance is the

00:31:03.200 | less it probably matters because the velocity is so much slower i feel like when you're if you're going

00:31:08.320 | out for a jog and it's 10 minute miles you're probably looking pretty much straight ahead of you

00:31:14.320 | you know and if it's a little bit darker and maybe you're on a rocky surface or something or a little

00:31:17.520 | bit uneven surface you're looking down a little bit but it doesn't seem to really have a systemic effect on

00:31:24.480 | how you move but it does when you sprint because obviously your body is going to follow your eyes

00:31:30.240 | so if you're running down the track and you're sprinting as fast you can and your eyes creep up

00:31:35.440 | and you start looking up then the chin is going to follow that and you just start this extension

00:31:40.880 | pattern in the entirety of the system as soon as you lift your chin up you get into more extension through

00:31:46.640 | the rib cage and the spine and then the lumbar and everything gets extended you end up standing

00:31:51.600 | up so more arched back a little bit more right posture correct for those aren't familiar with

00:31:55.440 | flexion and extension um unless we say otherwise if we talk about flexion we're talking about assuming the

00:32:00.480 | dreaded c-shaped position that everyone seems so good at these days collapsed it toward their uh midline

00:32:06.320 | uh versus extension where your chin is up and away from the chest and your um right upright posture and if

00:32:13.520 | the eyes come up first you're going to end up in what's known as a hyper extended position it's too

00:32:18.320 | much extension where really what we want the eyes to do is just come with the rest of the torso

00:32:23.120 | so how i the cue that i use for the sprinters is allow your torso to determine when the chin and when

00:32:29.600 | the eyes come up not the opposite way around because if the eyes come first the chin follows and then we

00:32:34.640 | get this disconnect between the head and the thorax and the pelvis and there's just too much extension we end

00:32:41.040 | up kind of just pushing our way down the track rather than bouncing yeah there's a wonderful movement

00:32:46.480 | in yoga that's helped me a lot in my weight lifting uh over the years i did a little bit of yoga when i

00:32:52.560 | lived in san diego um because they had good yoga classes where you they have you do this kind of

00:32:57.200 | ragdoll hanging over at the waist position looks like a jefferson deadlift for the for the gym rats or

00:33:02.560 | the olympic lifters rounded lower back and then they have you stand up from that position but

00:33:09.600 | you deliberately start at your lower spine and and rap unpeel yourself from that folded over position

00:33:18.240 | never letting the head lead but you know so basically like a chain coming up from the spine

00:33:24.240 | and then that the head come moves last i mean it's moving the whole time but it uh you're looking

00:33:29.200 | straightforward last as opposed to what you're saying where you lift the head first that's been

00:33:32.720 | tremendously helpful to me in movements in the gym which i think have helped me a lot like glute ham raises

00:33:38.640 | where you you know you're essentially in that position and you come all the way up and then you

00:33:41.840 | go into a hamstring curl or a deadlift or any kind of movement where you have where i'm going from

00:33:48.080 | torso bent forward to up i remembered it move the torso first and the head last and i'll just say

00:33:57.200 | in my own experience the strength increases that come from doing it that way as opposed to moving the

00:34:02.160 | head first and trying to then pull the weight up it's remarkable yeah you're we are all so much

00:34:08.000 | stronger than we think if we um engage the motor neurons in the proper sequence yeah so i think

00:34:12.800 | that's what you're referring to here 100 okay do you um here's a question for you when you were first

00:34:18.800 | uh taught how to squat were you told to look at the ceiling or up on the wall yeah i was told um the

00:34:24.640 | weight will go where my eyes go right but now i now i where did that come from i still don't understand

00:34:30.880 | where that came from i don't know i mean some of the most useful things that have been told to me over

00:34:34.480 | the years that made a tremendous difference would be like this um again borrowed from yoga i sort of

00:34:38.640 | brought it into the gym then when i talked to proper you know uh people like proper biomechanics folks

00:34:44.240 | like yourself or kelly starrett they go yeah of course you have to move your spine and torso before

00:34:48.640 | um but one of the most useful things for the squat and for the deadlift um has been

00:34:54.720 | because it's very difficult to think about many things at once especially when you're on

00:34:59.760 | you're pulling or trying to squat heavy loads is to move uh my chest and my hips at the same time

00:35:07.360 | together so that you don't end up doing the the dreaded um uh good morning back raise followed by

00:35:13.600 | standing up right um so moving them in unison so thinking about my chest and my hips moving at the

00:35:18.480 | same time that's been tremendously helpful and tends to put the head in the right position and

00:35:24.160 | the other one is oh right when dead lifting to not think about pulling the weight off the floor but

00:35:30.080 | rather pushing my feet into the ground while driving back you know and these little things end up making

00:35:35.040 | a huge difference not just in terms of the amount of weight that you can pull or squat but the safety

00:35:41.760 | of the movement is just so much more stable to drive the feet into the ground yeah you think why did why was i

00:35:47.680 | trying to pull a weight off the ground all i had to do was like push my feet hard into the ground and

00:35:51.040 | hold on to this bar and boom you're up that easy it's wild how um we pick up bad habits it's also

00:35:57.680 | wild how quickly those bad habits can be resolved so in keeping with that back to running i believe that

00:36:03.920 | everyone can and should run most everyone there's certain people who can't run for uh you know various

00:36:09.520 | reasons but um but that people who can walk very likely can run and i'm becoming more of a believer

00:36:16.160 | with every moment i spend with you that uh sprinting is more valuable than jogging

00:36:24.000 | that sprinting is more valuable than any kind of distance run and i'm going to offend a lot of people but

00:36:31.200 | i love long distance running so i'm offending myself um yesterday we didn't sprint but we did a lot of

00:36:40.960 | skipping let's talk about skipping and yes i'm talking about skip skip skip this okay this thing i'm not

00:36:47.440 | gonna sing the rest of that skipping is such a natural movement for people most people and it

00:36:56.320 | feels so damn good and it's actually a bit more taxing than people believe and i came out of that

00:37:03.040 | workout skipping yesterday from skipping yesterday feeling like my hips were nice and open tons of

00:37:09.440 | extension my posture's up i feel like i grew an inch i i was strong in the gym this morning i just feel

00:37:16.800 | incredible what is it about skipping and why do you have sprinters skip so much and why is it why aren't

00:37:22.240 | more people talking about skipping and yes we will return to to gate stuff but i think we have to talk

00:37:27.360 | about skipping yeah uh yeah first of all we skipped a lot because the reality is you could not sprint

00:37:37.360 | and that is the reality for almost everybody because we stop sprinting when we're whatever

00:37:43.600 | age some people stop sprinting at 15 sometimes some people it's 20 but very few people are actually

00:37:49.120 | sprinting through their 20s and next to nobody is sprinting through their 30s so we know that the

00:37:55.840 | movement of sprinting or running fast and we kind of know what what this does and why this is good for

00:38:01.600 | you right we know that yeah moving our body intensively with intensity is probably something

00:38:08.480 | we should be able to do for as long as we possibly can but we can't because typically we've still got

00:38:16.400 | pretty good engines into our 30s and 40s and 50s but we don't have the bodies to be able to handle the

00:38:23.760 | stresses and the forces that this engine could put into the body so our tissue and our joints just

00:38:30.640 | is not able to handle all of these forces if you were to go out and sprint yesterday even if we did

00:38:36.000 | 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

00:38:41.680 | proper warm-up we warmed up for 30 minutes and then i just said andrew i want you to sprint as fast as you

00:38:46.320 | possibly can for 50 meters that's not going to end well for most people maybe you could get through

00:38:51.280 | it yesterday but for most people that wouldn't end well you end up with a pull or a strain or a couple

00:38:56.320 | days of just feeling not well because we just don't do that we don't have the tissue capacity to be able

00:39:00.800 | to handle that anymore or the joint capacity you know there's so many people assuming they they have

00:39:05.680 | to run really quickly somewhere and they just didn't know that they had to do it or they're playing

00:39:09.520 | backyard basketball or football and they tweak a hamstring or tweak a calf or something even worse

00:39:15.120 | right it happens all the time we just do not have the tissue capacity anymore to handle those forces

00:39:20.160 | so what do we do instead and i i typically recommend two activities one is running up hills

00:39:28.000 | there's a lot less stress on the tissue and the joint system by sprinting up a hill than there is on

00:39:34.160 | sprinting on a straightaway but second i think more important is actually skipping and i and i

00:39:39.440 | i'm i'm with you i don't know why we stopped skipping i think it's associated with uh only childlike

00:39:46.160 | behavior but that's like saying jump rope is only associated with childlike behavior and i'm a big

00:39:50.160 | believer in skipping rope we'll talk about skipping rope but i think that's it um yeah i mean maybe

00:39:56.560 | this conversation or this portion of the conversation could be titled you know um let's normalize skipping

00:40:02.000 | yeah for adults absolutely it felt awesome yeah you can cover a lot of ground quickly heart rate gets

00:40:09.280 | up but not to an outrageous degree you're not sucking for air but it does feel a little silly

00:40:15.200 | if you're not on a track but you've mentioned uh you've what's the longest distance you've ever

00:40:20.800 | skipped 10 miles did you get some funny looks i got a few nice and you're a real tall guy you're

00:40:26.400 | 6'3 so you can't really uh hide no uh very easily that was in the park so there wasn't a lot of people

00:40:32.960 | okay but i skipped for uh 20 minutes every morning on the roads i get a few honks that's okay i mean

00:40:39.600 | they could be honks of approval it could well be yeah or something else but you think about it like

00:40:43.600 | it's you you're actually taxing the coordination patterns and the tissue and the joints in pretty

00:40:49.520 | similar ways as if we were going to sprint we're working on pushing the knee behind the hip getting into

00:40:56.640 | this knee behind butt pattern this hip extension pattern which is so important and and i know this

00:41:03.040 | is a a topic of conversation that you had with kelly when kelly was on here the importance of getting

00:41:07.760 | your knee behind your butt and finding and searching for opportunities to do that more often because we

00:41:13.440 | lose that so easily so skipping allows us to do that secondary to that is the coordination aspect

00:41:20.640 | between how we coordinate the flexion extension at the ankle the flexion extension at the knee and the

00:41:26.960 | flexion extension at the hip and we do that in a very similar way as sprinting where each of them

00:41:32.880 | stiffen at this at this time that is um uh considered throughout the entirety of the system

00:41:41.040 | where it's just like the spring the leg acts as a spring where if you think about when we jog or when

00:41:46.240 | we run we're kind of running on our ankles and knees a little bit we don't feel like we're really using

00:41:50.880 | our hips when you're running a 10 minute mile it's all it's a lot of stress through the foot it's a lot

00:41:56.560 | of stress through the calves and by the way i'm not anti-running or anti-jogging i jog and i run and i still

00:42:02.000 | do all that stuff i'm not saying now stop doing all that and just go and skip i'm just saying find some

00:42:08.320 | opportunities to also skip because skipping where ashley can tax the system in very similar ways as

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00:44:57.600 | sleep.com huberman to get up to 20 off i want to hover a little bit on knee behind butt

00:45:06.000 | so shout out kelly starrett shout out kelly starrett i mean if you think about this

00:45:11.280 | folks like knee behind butt means into extension so the hips are opening so to speak i know in yoga

00:45:18.160 | they say hip opening means a different thing but hip extension generally means posture is more elevated

00:45:24.480 | chin away from chest generally i mean you could get knee behind butt with your chin down but it's tougher

00:45:29.280 | just that the sternum comes up um kind of naturally puts us into external rotation so think uh thumbs

00:45:36.800 | out to the side like the fawns as opposed to inward and then you think about the the typical sitting

00:45:43.280 | standing walking jogging pattern of everybody yeah especially if you're a commuter um doesn't matter

00:45:52.320 | if you're on a subway bus um car or otherwise or plane you're you're folded in and so what i'm

00:46:00.400 | starting to realize is that knee uh knee behind butt ankle elevated sternum up i mean these are the

00:46:09.360 | hallmarks of locomotion yeah and so it's interesting that walking well jogging in particular seems to

00:46:16.560 | follow this kind of like forward folded kind of like almost like falling forward kind of thing i'm not

00:46:22.240 | trying to beat up on jogging because i also like to jog but i wonder if minute for minute

00:46:28.560 | skipping would be a much better activity than jogging for people who want to elevate their

00:46:36.080 | heart rate you know all the standard general adaptations that occur with exercise improved

00:46:40.560 | insulin regulation etc etc um do you think for the person who has not skipped in a while to go out and

00:46:46.640 | skip for a couple minutes is the way to do it or should they skip for a lap and then walk a lap

00:46:52.160 | what would be the way to break into this yeah i think i think probably the the worst thing to do

00:46:56.400 | is go out for a 10 mile skip don't do that i think we start off with like a 30 second skip 30

00:47:02.960 | second jog 30 second skip 30 second jog or 30 second skip followed by a 30 second walk and the

00:47:08.880 | difference is you'll feel this right if you think about when you skip and we talked about this a lot

00:47:13.440 | yesterday i was asking you to be expressive express yourself think about what your posture is and how

00:47:20.240 | you're holding yourself you don't really feel you don't seem to think about those things when you jog

00:47:25.600 | you just jog and as you said you're kind of closed and small and short and you're just trying to get

00:47:30.000 | through it right the heart rate gets up to whatever it is and yeah you get some good exercise but skipping

00:47:35.280 | here's your opportunity to truly express yourself be big and free and open and bouncy and rhythmical

00:47:41.360 | all of these things that were at one point in our lives pretty important to us and we lose and that's

00:47:47.680 | what's that is what we get from sprinting right the best sprinters are the ones who can express themselves

00:47:53.840 | truly maximally like totally let go and it doesn't have to be like massively powerful like the skips

00:48:01.760 | that we were doing yesterday were what we call low amplitude skips where we're just sort of skipping

00:48:05.600 | back and forth but you're still asking you to be tall and expressive and swing and be stiff on the ground

00:48:11.680 | and i feel like like there's as i said there's so many different benefits to this whether it's just

00:48:17.520 | been the plyometric benefit whether it's the fascial benefit whether it be it because this is such

00:48:23.600 | a a cross body coordinative aspect there's all sorts of brain benefits to that as you know

00:48:30.160 | it's uh i mean it's just it's just there's so much more benefits to skipping than there is to just

00:48:36.080 | jogging so the on-ramp for me when i talk to people about the benefits of skipping is just to put it in

00:48:41.760 | their jogs so i was talking to one of your photographers yesterday and said how do i do this

00:48:46.640 | i usually jog and i'm going like 10 minute mile pace i said well next time you jog just in

00:48:53.360 | you know go for your jogs you know go for about a mile or so when you're doing a typical jog and

00:48:58.000 | then just go back and forth between skipping and jogging every 30 seconds or so and i guarantee you

00:49:04.000 | that you will feel better with every skip that you do every single one because there's this again the

00:49:09.360 | self-organizing coordinative aspect to it where you start feeling a little bit more bouncy a little lighter

00:49:15.600 | a little bit more coordinated a little bit more rhythmic which feeds your jogging so for me that's

00:49:21.360 | probably the best on-ramp is just to work it into your current jogs and then from there start getting

00:49:27.200 | a little bit more powerful with it a little bit more expressive with it now we start driving the thigh

00:49:31.920 | up and back and get again a little a little bit more hip extension so being you know now we can start

00:49:37.360 | talking about skips for distance where you're trying to say okay from here that tree that's 50 meters away

00:49:44.320 | how many steps do i need to take to get to that 50 meter away tree so doing things like that yeah i'm

00:49:50.160 | fascinated by activities both physical and mental that facilitate the transition into a more difficult

00:49:57.200 | activity physical physical or mental i started to think about this when i started working on my book

00:50:06.240 | in earnest it's very hard to just jump into writing but i noticed that if i did some drawing listen to a

00:50:14.240 | lecture while i was drawing and i do anatomical drawings very easy to transition into writing i enjoy drawing i'm not

00:50:22.480 | trying to accomplish much with it but it's a very natural activity for me and just very easy to drop

00:50:27.680 | into a deep groove for writing for hours really and then i started talking to a musician friend of mine

00:50:34.560 | who he's a songwriter very accomplished songwriter and he does the same and then i saw a post from

00:50:39.360 | joanie mitchell that she would paint before she would sing and i think these transition activities that

00:50:44.320 | are natural for us that don't feel as constricted by distance over time or you know sometimes i put my

00:50:50.640 | drawings on social media but they're really for me their way of kind of thinking about the biology from

00:50:55.680 | a circuit standpoint it is very personal and kind of abstract as you talk about skipping it seems a little

00:51:02.560 | bit the same where you know skipping we're not necessarily trying to become the fastest skipper in the world

00:51:08.960 | or beat our yesterday's skipping time we're just trying to skip with more as you said more expression

00:51:15.040 | more enjoyment yeah but perhaps it sounds like indeed it can help transition into a faster gate with what

00:51:21.920 | we're doing for jogging or for running or transition us right into into sprinting

00:51:27.120 | and i think that these um transition points for physical and mental activities are very important

00:51:33.600 | because these days there's so many tools and protocols you know dare i say and people start

00:51:40.000 | to feel like oh i have to do all of these things how would i do this right how am i supposed to meditate

00:51:44.320 | and get sunlight and do it you know i already exercising a ton now i mean now you want me to skip

00:51:48.400 | the way you describe it is completely different it's saying no you're still doing your cardio quote

00:51:54.720 | unquote but maybe you do your zone two cardio and you incorporate some skipping which will make your zone two

00:52:00.160 | faster for you yeah or your your your high intensity interval training more um you'll feel more pliable

00:52:06.400 | more explosive mike that yeah i think that's that's part of it i think step one is incorporating in so

00:52:12.640 | you can actually be comfortable skipping and step two is now can we add a little bit more speed force

00:52:18.160 | velocity to that skip where it becomes in and of itself a workout where you're skipping as hard as you can

00:52:24.160 | for 50 meters and walking back and doing that 10 to 15 times is that would you consider that a solid

00:52:29.360 | workout for skipping that would be a great skipping workout skipping 50 meters yeah walking back yeah

00:52:34.080 | doing that 10 to 15 times yeah because that's that is safe if you warm up i'm not saying go out and do

00:52:41.520 | a maximal effort skip for 50 meters without doing a warm-up do a good warm-up first that includes some

00:52:47.120 | low amplitude skips and maybe some jogs and some stretches do that for 10 or 15 minutes and then do some

00:52:52.640 | maximal amplitude skips for over 50 meters that's a great workout in and of itself like a lot a lot of

00:52:59.840 | really beneficial plyometric work being done there let's talk about concentric and eccentric aspects of

00:53:06.720 | running and skipping so folks concentric generally associated with the lifting phase although sometimes

00:53:13.040 | it's just the pulling phase if it's a pull up and then eccentric would be the lowering phase of some

00:53:18.080 | movement um in running where's the concentric where's the eccentric for the uninformed if you could just

00:53:22.560 | tell us uh well in running concentric is pretty important because most of running is pretty concentric

00:53:30.400 | dominant you're on the ground for quite a long time and you push behind your center mass for quite a long

00:53:35.040 | time in striding and sprinting which are the two faster gates so you've got walking jogging running

00:53:41.760 | striding and sprinting striding and sprinting which is upwards of so striding if you think about being

00:53:48.640 | 75 to 90 percent or 80 percent to 95 percent of your maximum sprint speed that's called stride that's called

00:53:55.280 | striding and then sprinting is anything above that where you actually it's purely truly maximal as we said

00:54:01.360 | these are different uh gait patterns entirely um those sprinting and striding is almost entirely

00:54:09.120 | eccentric entirely you're breaking it's all breaking it's all breaking forces is how well do you handle

00:54:15.760 | those breaking forces if you do not handle those breaking forces well you're not fast it's and and

00:54:22.720 | concentric any concentric force ability or concentric force capacity is just not a differentiator at elite

00:54:30.000 | elite speed in fact it seems to be reverse so we we did a lot of testing through the 90s when i was

00:54:36.160 | up in calgary i was working for the canadian sports center in calgary uh starting in 1994 or so and was

00:54:41.600 | there for a long time and we were we had you know because 27 different national teams are based there

00:54:48.160 | and all of the university of calgary uh sports teams were also there we could test out the yin yang for

00:54:55.760 | hundreds of athletes every single day and one of the things that we tested was was concentric isometric

00:55:01.840 | and eccentric force capacities and which ones actually related to being actually good at your sport

00:55:07.600 | and almost every single sport the concentric force capacity and you pick the one whether it's peak

00:55:14.480 | whether it's rate of force application whether it's time time to peak concentric force capacity just did not

00:55:21.280 | at all differentiate between the elite performers in that sport and the sub elite performers in that

00:55:26.320 | sport but eccentric did all across the board i'm absolutely struck by this stride comes before sprint

00:55:34.720 | thing and and i'm remembering back to to uh to cross country where they say we're going to do a stride

00:55:39.840 | 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

00:55:46.800 | chuckling to myself because i always would tell myself in subsequent years you know okay i'm going to

00:55:52.160 | sprint but i'm going to sprint at you know 50 of my all-out speed yeah so i always think of all-out speed

00:55:59.760 | for me as um somebody's chasing me with a a syringe filled with poison okay and i've got to get away

00:56:05.360 | 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 and

00:56:13.120 | i'm measuring it subjectively i'm not doing this by heart rates or anything like that and indeed

00:56:16.640 | anytime i've done a hundred percent all out like in my mind imagining you know someone trying to

00:56:21.440 | try to really take my life and i'm running all out i end up with this lower back thing because of the

00:56:25.920 | you know it you get hurt yeah um but striding sounds like something that people could work up to

00:56:31.680 | how do you know after doing the skip workout that you described that you're quote unquote ready to stride

00:56:38.640 | and start doing a stride workout and i should mention that the these workouts because we did

00:56:42.960 | one yesterday um you finish them feeling great this is an aspect of exercise that i think most people

00:56:50.720 | don't talk about unfortunately that this leave it all on the mat you know you take every set to failure

00:56:56.480 | in the gym or you're you know these long runs where you're just shredded that they're not great for

00:57:03.440 | teaching people how to be healthy because people are exhausted afterwards they're tired they over

00:57:09.760 | train quickly and then people say there's no such thing as over training it's like yeah if you can

00:57:13.600 | sleep all day eat all day and your profession is to do this but there is such a thing as having a

00:57:18.400 | stressful life and wanting to be healthy and exercising and trying to incorporate that in a way

00:57:22.400 | that feeds the rest of your life yeah and i think these workouts that we did the workout we did yesterday

00:57:27.520 | excuse me um left me feeling you know posturally energetically mood wise it's feeling great i slept

00:57:34.720 | great last night felt great this morning i had a great workout in the gym as i mentioned earlier so

00:57:39.440 | i want to encourage people to give this a try and in doing that i want to give them a road map so

00:57:45.440 | a warm-up of 10 to 15 minutes 50 meter or so skip um could they do it on lawn dirt or concrete does it

00:57:53.520 | matter no it doesn't great yeah if you've got a really flat grass perfect okay but if you if you

00:58:00.560 | don't and do it on concrete no problem okay so basically no cost to this except a little bit of

00:58:04.480 | time and attention um 10 to 15 of those you have 50 meters out walk back repeat after and if you need a

00:58:12.160 | little bit longer recovery than the probably 90 seconds it takes to walk back take it not a big deal the

00:58:17.680 | quality here is a term determining factor as you said you're not trying to get really fatigued from

00:58:23.680 | plyometric work this is a plyometric session you want to be kind of fresh going into each one and

00:58:29.680 | that's going to take you know for most people doing a maximal skip over the course of 50 50 meters it's

00:58:36.080 | 90 seconds is about enough but if you're really explosive and you're a really good skipper it might

00:58:40.800 | be three minutes that's fine as you said you want to feel good at the end of that you don't want to

00:58:46.160 | be beasted at the end of that now if you can do it where you're if we transition say from the skips

00:58:52.560 | and you can stride really well and if you can stride really well maybe you can sprint really well

00:58:56.720 | really well that doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't be tired at the end of the session

00:59:02.560 | but the quality of the movement has to be the governor there not the capacity no i got to get

00:59:08.560 | the work done and i don't care how that work looks or what it looks like i just got to get it done no

00:59:14.160 | with high intense work with sprint work your your governor is always the quality of the work what does

00:59:20.080 | it look like what does it feel like it's a lot like resistance training in that way 100 always quality

00:59:25.280 | so um how does one transition into striding and what what what does that look like this is saying okay i'm

00:59:31.680 | gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna sprint but it's not a sprint because i'm gonna hold back a bit but how do you

00:59:37.040 | hold back and still have the expressive part because the expressive part it's a little hard to describe

00:59:41.600 | in words but yesterday you were encouraging rob and i to get us you know tall with our posture as if we're

00:59:47.200 | being pulled up by a string from our heads and it has a profound psychological effect and then you just

00:59:51.840 | feel your your body opening up in natural movement you don't have to think about coordinating the hand lift

00:59:56.960 | it's just you're in you know like this full bowing out it's really wonderful if we describe the

01:00:03.280 | difference between all of the gait patterns just through the amount of space that you take up on the

01:00:10.880 | planet so when you when you walk it's a small space and when you jog you're taking up a little bit more

01:00:15.600 | space and when you run it's a bit more space when you start to stride it's more space again and then when

01:00:20.480 | you sprint you're up here and you're being maximally expressive so just think about it from that

01:00:25.040 | perspective the other part is jogging and running typically happens behind your center mass you crash

01:00:33.520 | onto the ground and you push back you have this propulsive phase there's not a lot of a break of

01:00:38.880 | breaking phase here there's a long propulsive phase that happens with the foot pushing back behind the

01:00:44.800 | center mass striding and sprinting happens in front of the center mass there's an actually a longer

01:00:51.520 | eccentric phase where you drive a lot of force into the ground it's in front of the center mass and then

01:00:58.080 | you propel yourself off and it's a very short propulsive phase so think about it that way so it's a bigger

01:01:03.360 | shape and it's primarily more in front and it's also as i said this is important you can't sprint and

01:01:10.160 | most of the people that are listening to this cannot sprint are you telling us to not sprint no no i'm

01:01:14.960 | what i'm saying is you do not have that strategy available to you most of us like everybody who's

01:01:21.600 | listening to this almost everybody will be able to walk and if you can walk as you said you could

01:01:26.000 | probably jog and most of the people on the planet can walk jog and maybe they can run most people on the

01:01:34.560 | the planet can't stride they can't get any faster than 75 of what their capacity is because they will

01:01:40.240 | they just can't do that anymore if you're a kid you can do that you can run you can you can stride along

01:01:45.920 | all day but you get to a certain point where our tissues and our joint systems and we just do not have

01:01:51.360 | the capacity to run that fast safely and we definitely don't have it when we're sprinting and the difference

01:01:58.640 | here is when you're striding it's essentially a pretty simple traditional spring mass system

01:02:05.440 | the body acts as a spring just whether it's 50 on the front side 50 on the back side you hit

01:02:10.640 | and you bounce off you hit and you bounce off where sprinting is a little bit different this is the work

01:02:15.920 | of dr ken clark is a good friend of mine that he he published this in i think in 2018 19. it's called a

01:02:23.920 | two mass system where it's not the body is not acting as a spring there's a secondary mass of the shank

01:02:29.920 | and the foot that's contributing to up to about eight percent of the total force through contact

01:02:36.480 | so this elite sprinter is hitting the ground so hard that so there's another mass that's added to the

01:02:43.040 | spring and that's what i'm saying that's not available to you because you can't move your limbs fast enough

01:02:48.400 | and you don't have the range of motion that's big enough to be able to get that sort of velocity

01:02:52.960 | there's a dozen players in the nfl that can do that every elite sprinter is actually a sprinter

01:03:00.640 | most every other athlete and most every other sport can't actually sprint they're just they're

01:03:05.760 | operating as spring mass they don't have that secondary mass because they can't move their limbs fast enough

01:03:11.360 | when dr peter tia was on this podcast and elsewhere he talked about one of the major causes of death

01:03:17.200 | mostly in older people is they'll fall they'll be mobile they'll catch some sort of infection

01:03:26.400 | um related to contact with the bed or um you know cert post-surgical lack of circulation and

01:03:34.720 | that's what takes them out i was shocked to learn this right i mean i thought it'd be heart attack or

01:03:40.240 | uh cerebrovascular disease or that instead but that led to this whole notion that i think is

01:03:45.440 | gaining more popularity nowadays that part of longevity is maintaining things like grip strength

01:03:50.240 | one's ability to jump and land and jumping and landing is eccentric control yeah

01:03:55.360 | my mom's turning 80 this year and she's fortunately in very good health

01:03:59.760 | my dad's already 80 he was on this podcast and for anyone that saw that he's clearly in very good health

01:04:06.400 | but i worry about them and i worry mostly about a step down off a curb a step going down a stairwell

01:04:15.520 | that is not controlled and then a slip and then a fall and then the break and then the immobility and

01:04:21.200 | then the the sequence that atiyah and others have referred to would skipping be a good activity for

01:04:28.480 | people in their 60s 70s or 80s to undertake carefully as a way to learn eccentric control

01:04:35.520 | because i'll be honest i've seen some wonderful inspiring videos of people in their 70s and 80s

01:04:42.640 | jumping off of boxes doing plyo type work in the gym i don't know many folks in their 70s and 80s who are

01:04:51.200 | going to see where we're going to embark on that yeah but you can skip kind of small skips then you

01:04:56.720 | can do larger skips you can skip anywhere it's free if you approach it carefully you probably don't even

01:05:01.840 | need a trainer there's some videos now of you having us skip and um i you know here i'm like inspired to

01:05:09.040 | start a skipping movement uh with you um for all these reasons uh you don't need even need a piece of

01:05:15.680 | equipment probably even do it barefoot on grass if you couldn't afford shoes right 100 what are your

01:05:20.960 | thoughts on folks who are um in the 16 up club yeah um skipping yeah i think you've nailed it i think

01:05:28.960 | that is so important that eccentric control or the eccentric capacity is the one that we really lose

01:05:34.640 | the ability to handle ourselves eccentrically is just it's it's we don't do that work anymore

01:05:39.120 | everything that we do is concentric in nature and uh it is it's not just elite sport i said before that

01:05:47.520 | the differentiator is always in the eccentric force capacities in elite sport also in us in gen pop

01:05:57.280 | we have we lose the ability to apply eccentric force whether it's fast or maximal so 100 i think it's

01:06:05.440 | so important my dad um was an elite athlete when he was younger and has probably averaged four days a

01:06:14.480 | week running for almost his entire life good for him yeah he's 78 in 2019 he ran the new york city

01:06:22.800 | marathon ran 502 so he's at at 74 or 73 years old and he doesn't do that anymore but he still runs four

01:06:32.560 | days a week and he runs about 20 to 25 miles and two of those days are skipping sessions where

01:06:38.800 | he walks 30 seconds he skips for 30 seconds and then he strides as fast as he can as fast as his

01:06:46.080 | capacity will allow for 30 seconds and then he walks then he skips and then he strides and he walks and

01:06:51.920 | it's it's it's so key it really is like it's it's for me like the ability to express yourself maximally

01:06:59.280 | through running and i've already said i don't feel like most people can do this

01:07:05.040 | i don't know if there is a better single metric to as a measurement for whatever word you want to use

01:07:14.160 | here vitality or health than the ability to safely express maximal speed of that you as you as an individual

01:07:24.080 | like you choose vo2 max you choose all of these different things that you might come up with

01:07:27.760 | i don't feel like any of them are as good as the ability to just

01:07:32.320 | run maximally so let's start with that if we feel like that is important and you can argue whether it

01:07:39.760 | whether it's the the most important or the 10th most important we know it's important

01:07:42.720 | if we know that's important how do we get there and as you said i think skipping is the way so i'm on

01:07:48.960 | board with the skipping movement let's get everybody skipping because it is as i said this is your

01:07:53.120 | ability to be plyometric to work on those eccentric force capacities and move in a way in which you can

01:07:59.120 | actually express yourself again there's this um peculiarity to um anything related to health

01:08:06.080 | and public health in particular uh for instance a colleague of mine at stanford um dr david spiegel he's

01:08:13.520 | our uh vice chair of psychiatry and he and his father actually founded this area of psychiatry which

01:08:19.040 | is basically hypnosis for the treatment of trauma for pain relief for smoking cessation and there are

01:08:25.840 | tremendously good data to support it as a practice it's actually approved by the american psychiatric

01:08:31.280 | association one of only four i think behavioral things uh emdr cognitive behavioral therapy hypnosis and i

01:08:37.520 | think there's another in any case the problem it's called hypnosis and people hear hypnosis yeah and

01:08:45.760 | their mind goes to balking and squawking like a chicken on a stage this is why we refer to deliberate

01:08:53.280 | respiration as opposed to breath work in our studies our clinical trials on that which david and i have

01:08:57.440 | published and published et cetera and it's it's not euphemism the the issue is the name is a separator

01:09:07.520 | often and that's a shame when there's a practice that's very valuable yoga nidra non-sleep deep rest right

01:09:14.960 | right yeah i have tremendous respect for yoga nidra and and all of its um early uh creators and but

01:09:23.680 | the language is a separator i'm sorry and there's a there's a public health mission

01:09:27.760 | that to me is more important than the naming just say that and i'll take the heat for it with no guilt

01:09:34.400 | whatsoever skipping unless it's skipping rope has this connotation of of childlike activity let's just be

01:09:44.800 | honest and adults doing childlike behavior while not necessarily a problem in its own right i mean look at

01:09:52.960 | all these adults with social media accounts acting like children and the children acting like adults

01:09:57.760 | different discussion entirely but what if we were to give it a different name not with the intention

01:10:03.120 | of pretending it's not skipping yeah but to relieve people's guilt and shame about doing it um is it

01:10:10.080 | bounding bounding is a little bit um more nondescript for most people um i'm having this conversation with

01:10:18.160 | you openly in public here in front of many many people um to illustrate a couple of points one is

01:10:22.960 | that the name often times and people like i'm not gonna skip down the street but there's so much value

01:10:28.720 | to this that i think it'd be a real shame to to lose the opportunity to have it um wick out to many many

01:10:34.720 | millions of people because it's called skipping yeah it's plyometrics it's plyometrics great love it and it is a

01:10:43.840 | like bounding is left to right so you're left right left right left right left bounding is really really

01:10:52.400 | difficult extremely challenging skipping is a regression from bounding so if you can't bound

01:10:59.360 | if you can bound great go and do some bounding chances are if you can't sprint you can't bound

01:11:03.760 | like it's really really hard to do real true you know high quality bounding we can all skip

01:11:09.120 | so look at it that way this is plyometrics this is just their your most simple and probably for most

01:11:16.800 | people your most effective means of giving your body a plyometric activity how else you know you're

01:11:25.200 | jumping onto the box not a plyometric that's all concentric it's basically useless it's a waste of time

01:11:32.080 | let's find eccentric things to do and what is your best eccentric or the war the one that is the

01:11:37.600 | simplest the one as you said we spent an entire childhood doing it's familiar to us there's something

01:11:43.280 | innate in this there really is skipping so just think about it as being a plyometric i'm going to do my

01:11:49.440 | plyos today and by the way this isn't something that i've just made up there is not a sprint group on the

01:11:56.480 | planet that don't skip every single sprinter skips every single one of them because of the of the

01:12:05.360 | importance of this specific gait pattern it's really important i love that thank you um and you also saved

01:12:13.200 | me from trying to find a name that uh you know um plyometric i'd like to take a quick break and

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01:14:03.120 | slash huberman to get early access to function one thing that people will immediately realize when

01:14:09.680 | they go out and and skip when they do their plyometric skipping um that's a little bit hard to

01:14:15.920 | understand just from hearing us have this conversation but just trust me on this well the two things that

01:14:20.000 | are very surprising and immensely positive at least two things one is this expressive component and the

01:14:26.160 | way it reshapes your psychology and your mood i want to set that aside but make sure we return to that

01:14:32.000 | the other is the um cross body coordination of movement the fact that one knee is back toward

01:14:39.440 | the butt on one side and the opposite arm is raised up just naturally as you skip this is just you know

01:14:44.880 | in fact if you're wondering now oh goodness do i actually know how to skip um that occurred to me

01:14:50.960 | a couple times yesterday because i had many cameras on me i thought do i still remember how to skip i'd been

01:14:54.800 | skipping the night before in preparation i didn't know we were going to skip but i've always worked some skips

01:14:59.360 | in if nobody's looking i'm a skip in private kind of guy um until now until now now i skip with pride

01:15:06.720 | there you go in public um plyometrics i will plyometric in public that's right but one thing that was

01:15:12.640 | interesting i would think okay we'd get back after walking i think okay we're going to skip again

01:15:16.720 | how do i do this it's basically i would think about lunging kind of a fast lunge out and then it

01:15:22.240 | automatically would put me into that that motion of skipping yeah um but this cross body coordination

01:15:29.360 | is incredible for purposes of motor neuron coordination across the body for the fascial

01:15:36.560 | component can we talk a little bit more about cross body coordination because i'd like at some point to

01:15:40.960 | talk about sprinting a little bit because even if people aren't going to sprint this idea that when

01:15:45.360 | we're sprinting we're not just turning over our legs faster of course the arms are pumping but the

01:15:50.480 | arms and legs are coordinated in a very interesting way that the forces are actually running like a like

01:15:55.360 | an x from uh across from one shoulder down the leg and from the other shoulder which is going to sound

01:16:00.880 | very um complicated people but you'll explain it so cross body coordination um when we walk we do this

01:16:08.640 | some people don't they're kind of robotic yeah but most people flow their arms as they walk if if we

01:16:16.240 | were to put a camera above the earth and look down on everybody you would see this very distinctly at

01:16:23.280 | every single gate starting with walking we rotate so the the pelvis rotates up and down and forward and back

01:16:31.120 | so it oscillates and undulates and then the shoulders counter oscillate and counter undulate so the

01:16:38.000 | shoulders go back forward and backward and up and down just pay attention to this next time you're

01:16:42.640 | out for a walk you can feel your hips going backwards and forwards and also going up and down

01:16:46.800 | if they didn't go up and down you'd trip yourself every step and the shoulders do the same and then

01:16:51.440 | you have a spine which is this column of a bunch of different pieces that connects the shoulder to the

01:16:56.480 | pelvis which also rotates side bends and flexes and extends the whole system is this big torsional system

01:17:05.280 | this cross body system and some people take maximum utility of this system and you can see it like some

01:17:14.320 | of the best movers some of the best sprinters you just watch them and you can you can just see how

01:17:18.080 | they wind up and they coil into every single step and they just use this cross body coordination so

01:17:24.240 | effectively and as you said some others are just it doesn't seem like there's any rotation going on here at

01:17:29.840 | all what looks better to you who looks better it's the ones that are using this effectively that look

01:17:36.480 | okay that just looks better i don't know why necessarily but that looks way more athletic well

01:17:41.360 | think robot dance versus somebody who really knows how to move their hips and shoulders in coordination

01:17:46.000 | we'll talk about dance a little bit later you have an interesting relationship to music that i think is

01:17:50.640 | very relevant here we'll get back to that but i'm seeding the conversation but yeah it's um when the

01:17:56.560 | shoulders and the hips are moving in unison it's it's like magic it really is yeah it really is

01:18:01.520 | and just feel this when you walk like when you're going out for your next walk just try to pay attention

01:18:06.080 | to what your shoulders are doing and what your hips are doing and start thinking am i getting my knee

01:18:10.560 | behind my butt when i'm walking and what does that feel like at my hip flexor my quad and as i do that

01:18:17.760 | what's happening with the opposite shoulder and is that getting wound up and is that coiling properly

01:18:22.960 | am i taking advantage of these extremely innate extremely natural movement tendencies that we all

01:18:32.320 | have or have i because of the way in which i've lived or some of the things that i've done or maybe even

01:18:37.280 | some of the things that somebody's told me tried to be really square and linear with everything i've done

01:18:43.360 | because think about it right when we're taught to run when we're younger any excessive movement

01:18:48.880 | outside of in a straight line has been told to us oh that's inefficient you're wasting energy you're

01:18:55.600 | bleeding all your all your force not understanding the actual biomechanical mechanism of the pelvis the

01:19:03.200 | shoulders and the spine that connects them and how we are actually built to rotate into bend you know so

01:19:09.360 | it's and that's not to say by the way that more is better everything is a is an inverted u in this

01:19:16.400 | world almost you know there's a goalie locks effect to this it's what is right for you some people will

01:19:22.000 | use this torsional system extremely effectively and there'll be a lot of it and some will be a little

01:19:27.120 | bit less they're a little bit more linear and they'll still be good that's all dependent upon their own

01:19:32.000 | individual and unique structure their morphology their genetics how they're built and how they're born

01:19:37.040 | what to do what they do with it as they as they age but the bottom line is we are all rotational beings

01:19:44.640 | and we need to try to find ways to take advantage of those rotational forces rather than to constrain

01:19:50.800 | them it's one of the reasons why i really dislike this anti-rotation um terminology that's come into many of

01:19:59.600 | the exercise many of the exercises that we do in the weight room this exercise is about anti-rotation

01:20:05.280 | why do you want to be anti-rotation we are rotational beings you're anti-excessive rotation but not anti-rotation

01:20:13.920 | so i feel like that just as you were saying before with skipping that's the wrong terminology for me and

01:20:19.120 | that's just sending the entirely the wrong message to everybody about the importance of us being a

01:20:24.720 | rotational being yeah naming matters it does especially in in exercise and anything related to um

01:20:32.560 | uh dare i call it wellness anything mental health physical health and performance the naming matters

01:20:39.200 | because it can take people's minds off track from the the major point it can uh be a separator as we

01:20:45.360 | mentioned before in the best case it can be uh an aggregator um i have to wonder with people walking

01:20:53.520 | around looking at their phones all the time are they losing the cross-body coordination i i um snuck in

01:21:00.320 | 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 i

01:21:08.000 | mean i i went there for just one talk the other day and i was walking through the hallways this is a big

01:21:13.760 | meeting tons of people and it was incredible everyone was walking looking at their phone now of course

01:21:19.520 | there's a program that's on an app these days so you're saving paper so that's good right but it

01:21:24.560 | was remarkable people were like walking and reading at the same time so i don't want to make more of

01:21:31.760 | this than we have data for but this can't be good this can't be good i think that's a really good point

01:21:38.080 | i haven't i haven't thought about that actually but i think that's a really good point i have a rule when

01:21:42.160 | i'm walking that if i if my phone buzzes and i want to pick up my phone i stop i stop i get out of

01:21:47.520 | the way of all the other walkers i push myself up against the building and i look to what's on my phone

01:21:52.240 | if i feel it's important and then i start walking again i i just despise people who walk and look at

01:21:58.000 | the phone at the same time because that's what you see you see this unnatural constrained overly flexed

01:22:04.000 | posture and if you spend too much time doing that i don't think you need data you know that's not good

01:22:11.040 | it's not good to walk that way that's not the way we're supposed to walk again it's all about coming

01:22:15.280 | back to let's express ourselves let's understand what our bodies are supposed to be able to do and find

01:22:21.920 | ways to continue to have that ability as we age this isn't it let's talk about expression through

01:22:29.520 | movement um and let's use the extremes as a starting point i find that useful in any kind of scientific

01:22:37.520 | conversation you take the extreme outcome so um the person who is trying to take up as little space as

01:22:45.040 | possible chin toward the chest folded in thumbs toward the midline so-called internal rotation

01:22:50.800 | eyes down trying to make themselves small i don't need to spend another five seconds explaining all the

01:22:58.640 | psychological phenotypes that's associated with and the way it makes us feel now of course it's possible

01:23:03.520 | to curl up in a small ball and think amazing things about the world and oneself but generally that those

01:23:08.880 | things are not um happening at the same time let's think about the other extreme and let's talk about

01:23:14.880 | him usain bolt this will also be a fun opportunity for people to learn a little bit more about usain

01:23:19.920 | let's start there

01:23:20.720 | what is so special about usain bolt besides the fact that he's still the fastest man in the world

01:23:28.720 | and what about his willingness to express himself do you think contributed to becoming the fastest

01:23:35.600 | person in the world not just feeling great that he's the fastest guy in the world and therefore who

01:23:40.480 | wouldn't feel great yeah yeah usain is is unique if we look over the history of some of the elite male

01:23:48.480 | sprinters there was a time you know when i started getting into the sport the way to be as an elite male

01:23:56.160 | sprinter was hyper focused hyper intense if we think about mo green stalking behind his blocks and licking

01:24:05.120 | his lips getting ready for this basically he's going to war and it seemed like so many of the sprinters

01:24:12.880 | were trying to encapsulate this kind of feeling like sprinting is it's macho it's ego it's i'm i'm

01:24:19.680 | coming here to knock you out and then usain came along with the exact opposite and i think you know

01:24:26.480 | it's just he's out there having fun he's as i told the story about jody a little bit earlier right she was

01:24:32.080 | for a long time she would didn't connect herself with the activity they were two separate beings

01:24:39.040 | she was doing something that no she no longer really connected with and usain they're like this

01:24:44.640 | like he was really expressing his entire being in his in the way in which he went around about this

01:24:51.360 | task of sprinting 100 meters or sprints in 200 meters and i feel like that is such an important

01:24:56.800 | piece at all with all sport and probably with on within all things you know if you can connect your

01:25:02.720 | entire way of being with the thing that you're spending most of your time doing chances are you're

01:25:09.200 | going to be really successful at that thing and if you look at all the other sports right it's it's

01:25:13.600 | the ones that you can tell they're just really confident in who they are in what they do how

01:25:19.200 | they express themselves and whether and that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be

01:25:23.680 | usain bald and playing around at the line and doing things like this and you know jumping around and

01:25:29.120 | that's he always like that does anyone know when he was a kid oh no he's yeah he's he's he's a kid

01:25:33.920 | he's a big kid he still is he's he's he's just uh you know he brings this this this really childlike

01:25:41.360 | intensity to things like he's still intense he's still he wants to kill you but he's you know he'll

01:25:47.760 | laugh in your face just before he does it you know like i i love that about him but when but that's not

01:25:54.000 | everybody that's not every elite sprinter i coached a guy named uh andre degrasse for for a while

01:26:00.240 | who won three olympic medals in 2016 i remember coming right behind usain bolt in that name in

01:26:05.120 | that famous 200 meters where they were smiling at each other um andre is very quiet very kind

01:26:12.160 | of type b kind of just down here very insular on his phone not really living life kind of lived life

01:26:18.160 | down here very closed and that's the way in which he performed that's the way he practiced that's the

01:26:23.600 | way he trained that's the way he competed he didn't feel like he had to be up here and bouncing

01:26:29.600 | around jumping around because that was not him and if there's one thing that andre is famous for

01:26:34.560 | and he's now got seven olympic medals i don't think i don't know how many big races andre has won

01:26:41.760 | outside of the olympic games but he's got seven olympic medals he's he he really stands up when it

01:26:49.600 | matters because he is connected with who he is he knows who he is and and what he brings out to the

01:26:55.360 | performance arena is connected like this with that where others and i mean the biggest example that i

01:27:02.320 | know is asafa powell so if anyone knows doesn't know who asafa powell is asafa was usain bolt before

01:27:10.480 | usain bolt asafa's ran sub 10 seconds in 100 meters 99 times more than anyone else in history he's by all

01:27:19.520 | intents and purposes one of the greatest male sprinters of all time he's a legend he's he's

01:27:26.000 | he's had a world record i think he's had set two world records he's an incredible sprinter who's choked

01:27:32.720 | at every single major championships has ever been he's always folded and he does that because he feels

01:27:39.360 | like he came up in the era of mo green you know this this animal thing this being really really super

01:27:45.920 | intense so asafa tried to be that that didn't work for him and then bernard williams who's kind

01:27:52.000 | of jumping around and playing around a little bit that's that became a thing for a while so asafa tried

01:27:55.920 | that hat on that didn't work either and then usain came and it's saying is usain is playing with the

01:28:01.760 | camera and being bringing his personality out so asafa tried that hat on guess what that didn't work either

01:28:08.240 | so there's this yeah usain brought this almost um yeah it's okay to j to be to jump around and to dance

01:28:19.440 | and have fun but it's not for everybody if that's not who you are and i feel like that was an important

01:28:26.160 | thing if i was coaching asafa say man asafa just be you man like you're relaxed you're you're andre degrasse

01:28:32.160 | before andre degrasse came along you're just you're just cool and chill just be cool and chill man

01:28:37.280 | just be that just bring you to this performance and you'll you'll get a lot more out of yourself

01:28:42.240 | but uh you know to get back to your question usain just gave everybody i think the permission

01:28:46.480 | to to have fun like that's why we do this thing is to have fun and if you're not having fun then why are we

01:28:52.000 | bothering it's so interesting you know and his name comes up so often now and i'm grateful to have him

01:29:01.680 | as a close friend but you know i've had hours upon hours of conversations with rick rubin about why

01:29:08.800 | certain musical artists just have that thing um and it doesn't matter if you're talking about tom petty

01:29:15.120 | joe strummer johnny cash adele it's just you you ask about all these different people and it's

01:29:21.680 | the answer is always the same it's they know how to be themselves in that moment yeah and people will

01:29:30.720 | say well it's a constructive his rick will be like no this is why he likes to work with artists early on

01:29:36.000 | like a lot of the hip-hop artists he worked with a lot of the punk rock music artists he worked with

01:29:43.200 | they were just being themselves they had no success prior to their

01:29:46.720 | you know like ll cool j sending him a demo tape and so there was no self-awareness or there wasn't

01:29:55.040 | enough self-awareness to hinder their expression they were just being them and that's always what

01:30:00.960 | explodes people to immense success now there's something to be said for ignorance isn't there

01:30:06.080 | there's something to be said for ignorance and there's something of a gravitational pull as an as a

01:30:11.440 | spectator or a listener uh to the artist the athlete the musician who's just being themselves

01:30:20.480 | and we know we can detect at an unconscious level when it's not real you know there's one of the

01:30:26.160 | things i love so much about podcasting or at least i'm very blessed to be in the earlyish cohort of

01:30:30.800 | podcasters i wasn't in the first cohort like the dan carlins and the rogan's but i came in early enough

01:30:36.480 | that none of us really knew what to do except just be ourselves it's a so now it's changing

01:30:41.040 | there's a big flood of commercial um you know uh entities and podcasting and some of those are are

01:30:47.040 | good and and most of them are not frankly because they're not real they're more like a new show it's

01:30:51.360 | produced it's like it's not real the person on camera and off camera are very different but i can

01:30:56.960 | tell you that joe rogan off camera that's rogan yeah um and i was thinking about really expressive

01:31:03.200 | people in different domains to compare more or less to this example that you were describing with

01:31:08.480 | usain so rogan i threw out the muhammad ali big yeah boisterous personality huge attractor to him

01:31:16.320 | it was not a construction he might have honed it as part of his craft but clearly that's who he was

01:31:22.240 | he's a fast talker yeah um mike tyson mike tyson very different yeah but that's him right you know right and

01:31:30.160 | everyone loves mike tyson because it's very clear that that is mike tyson jean-michel basquiat

01:31:35.360 | yeah you know this like even just the size of the paintings and the way he worked and the physicality

01:31:41.040 | of it um he was haitian i'm gonna get back to this kind of nationality thing a little bit later

01:31:47.520 | and then we had on here the great josh waitskin who was the subject of the movie the search for bobby

01:31:52.400 | fisher and um his whole strategy in chess that he learned in washington square park of creating chaos

01:31:59.040 | on the chessboard this game that everyone considers very very linear and very very constrained and his

01:32:04.400 | he liked to create chaos because washington square park especially in the 80s and 90s chaos you know

01:32:10.640 | drug dealers and crime and there's people uh doing it pretty much every activity there um and and and on

01:32:18.240 | and on right you know i think that when people are just being themselves this is what you're saying

01:32:23.040 | and this is what rick has said over and over you know that that essence piece is so magnificent

01:32:30.720 | and um not just to see but it it evolves humankind it really does and um so when you work with an athlete

01:32:40.800 | or for the listener who's trying to figure out well like who am i does it work in reverse meaning

01:32:46.080 | and i believe that movement can actually teach us who we are in addition to allow us to express who we

01:32:54.880 | are and i'm not going to say that skipping is the only way to do that but it was very interesting yesterday

01:33:03.120 | to notice the transitions in my state of mind as i got permission from you uh to you know go bigger

01:33:10.800 | get bigger stride bigger yeah and we were the adults on the kids playground in my mind behaving like

01:33:17.920 | kids but it it is transformative i think to move differently makes you feel different and when those

01:33:26.560 | things line up i think is what you're talking about yeah i think it's a brilliant question i really do think it's

01:33:32.000 | it's it's everything in sport but i think as you said just when you zoom out it's not just sport it's all

01:33:40.480 | everything and i feel like so so often in sport specifically people like me steal the essence away from

01:33:50.400 | the athletes because we have our own preconceived ideas of what this that what you should be doing

01:33:58.080 | should look like and it's my idea but it's not your essence and it's not your idea and i always feel

01:34:04.800 | like we should be coaching towards what the athlete's best solution is not what our best solution is i've

01:34:12.880 | got i've got an athlete i'm working with right now who's super gifted she's a two-time olympian she's

01:34:17.920 | got olympic gold medal on the relay and she's been coached for a long time to move in a way that does

01:34:24.560 | not align with her essence it does not align with what she is good at and what what will that do to

01:34:31.280 | you over the course of time it's obviously going to negatively affect your confidence it definitely

01:34:37.200 | negatively affects your the way you move because you're in a move you're moving in a way that just

01:34:42.000 | doesn't align with you whether that's psychologically emotionally or physically biomechanically

01:34:47.440 | so this is a tall elastic expressive sprinter who's been taught to be really small and compact and

01:34:56.000 | accelerate with really short choppy steps and she's lost the ability to even understand who she is anymore

01:35:02.240 | in this sport so my objective now is try to reintroduce herself to herself what was it that got you into this

01:35:12.720 | how did you move why were you really really good at this let's reconnect with that and the challenging

01:35:20.480 | piece with that is how do you understand what that is especially years if you've been being taught a

01:35:26.960 | certain way that is not in alignment with who you are whether that is sport or anything else it's really

01:35:33.680 | difficult to reconnect with it if you don't have a really good guide because so often those guides and

01:35:39.440 | it's that's that's whether it's a coach or a music producer will screw them up not not purposefully

01:35:47.200 | you know they're coming at this from a very optimistic standpoint a positive standpoint i'm

01:35:52.240 | trying to help you andrew this is but this is what i think these are my experiences this is my

01:35:57.760 | subjective view this is how i see you doing the thing that you're doing and that's based on my history

01:36:05.120 | rather than where it should be and that's based on your history and that's that's the difference

01:36:09.360 | between a rick rubin and many other producers and it's the difference between elite coaches and sub elite

01:36:14.880 | coaches you always start with the person what is the unique ability that you have what is it that you

01:36:21.760 | have that makes you better than everyone else what is it you have that that really that you want to

01:36:26.880 | show everyone let's connect with that let's show that let's just let's build all of our training around

01:36:34.720 | that let's have all of our conversations around that i'm remembering the example from that documentary

01:36:41.200 | last the last dance about michael jordan um some of the description of the chicago bulls coach

01:36:48.800 | encouraging dennis rodman who in the 90s was 80s 90s like first of all very few people had that many

01:36:57.520 | tattoos who weren't in prison or um in a niche music community right dennis had a ton of tattoos he had

01:37:06.560 | earrings he dyed his hair he loved to party he was wild and his coach understood that it was part of his

01:37:14.080 | reset mechanism and you you don't put um a bulldog in a race with a bunch of greyhounds and you don't

01:37:21.520 | have greyhounds tug a rope with a kettlebell on the end i know this as a bulldog owner who loves all

01:37:27.040 | breeds of dogs so he gave dennis permission to party yeah what no professional coach would probably do

01:37:34.080 | and it brought out his ability to play brilliant um you know incredible rebounder incredible player all

01:37:39.920 | around but you know famous for his rebound uh stats so this thing of of who am i how do i express

01:37:48.880 | myself i think the the authenticity piece is so key like if you're a nice person being a jerk in your

01:37:54.640 | sport is probably not going to work um but if you enjoy competition and you're a nice person then it

01:37:59.440 | seems like there's a place for that and i wonder whether or not a big component of all of this and

01:38:05.600 | discovering it for for people that are going to try plyometric skipping and these sorts of things to

01:38:10.800 | try and better understand themselves and express themselves which i think would be a wonderful

01:38:15.360 | thing to come from this discussion is the trying to shut down the self-conscious part this the the self

01:38:24.400 | critic do you think the best sprinters are also not thinking about anyone else they're just enjoying

01:38:30.480 | themselves or at least are they feeling the sprint more than they're paying attention to their form

01:38:37.600 | as a like how does this look so i'm thinking about it i'm on the track with you i'm gonna i'm gonna run

01:38:43.680 | or skip and i can either just feel where it's more expressive or i can try and show you that it's more

01:38:51.600 | expressive two different very different things one that's a there's a self-conscious awareness piece the

01:38:58.000 | showing you i'm going to show you this as opposed to just doing it for the feel of it yeah is that

01:39:03.280 | the distinction yeah that's a really good way to put it um one really good example of this in the sprints

01:39:10.000 | world and i think you were there for this is 2022 world championships in oregon yeah i was there and uh

01:39:16.240 | noah lyle's won the 200 in an american record 1931. and that was for me

01:39:23.840 | like that's the epitome of just being so lost in what you're doing that you have no idea what you're

01:39:30.720 | looking like and he's just maximally expressing his everything that he's got and he he bounds across

01:39:37.680 | the line i said man that was beautiful like i've never seen that like it was so beautiful like totally

01:39:44.480 | lost in flow and that it doesn't happen as often as many who don't work in sport think it does not every

01:39:52.160 | single performance is a flow performance but if you're lucky you'll get one or two of those in

01:39:56.880 | your career where you just lose connection with everything that you're doing and you just wow what

01:40:03.040 | happened and in fact every time that a sprinter sets a personal best i ask him what was that feeling like i

01:40:14.160 | don't know no idea i don't know i don't know how that felt i just ran so all of these things that we

01:40:21.840 | we talked about all of these incredible coaching cues that i gave you to think about when you were doing

01:40:27.120 | this you forgot them all so i just ran i just ran and almost always that is the answer to that i just ran

01:40:34.960 | and i just connected with it and something in the background you know we were able to one of the

01:40:41.120 | ways and i'll i'll bring this um home a little bit more maybe practically so we train 20 to 25 hours a

01:40:49.520 | week and my goal each day is not to say a lot like i want the athlete to kind of find a way through

01:40:55.920 | things and i will encourage them and guide them and sort of facilitate this discovery but often we'll talk

01:41:01.440 | about different things and if they're having if they're struggling with something i'll give them a

01:41:05.280 | a specific cue and over the course of time we build you know this library of different things that the

01:41:11.680 | athlete thinks about or the different cues and then my objective coming into more of a competitive season

01:41:18.480 | is to try to align these cues with an emotion what i call what are called mood words so for example

01:41:28.240 | when an athlete is accelerating they're on the ground for a little bit longer than when they

01:41:32.560 | are upright because they need to actually propel themselves forward they need horizontal force they

01:41:37.120 | need the ground to push themselves forward so they push and they push or they drive so cues could be

01:41:42.320 | drive it could be push it could be power it could be pull your thighs forward it could be all of these

01:41:48.240 | different things that are around power but for me the mood word that really expresses this better than

01:41:54.640 | not anything is pressure i want you to feel like you're applying as much pressure through the first

01:42:01.360 | half of this race as you possibly can and the second half of the race is the exact opposite of that so we

01:42:07.760 | talk about things that we do technically knees up thighs up step off the ground be vertical be be

01:42:13.760 | expressive be tall all of these different cues but really what we're trying to get to is freedom or peace

01:42:21.840 | so that's what a hundred meter sprint is it's 50 meters of pressure and 50 meters of peace

01:42:27.040 | so i try to align these mood words with these coaching instructions and then all the athletes

01:42:34.960 | need to think about is this emotion or this mood word and all the instructions come along for the ride

01:42:39.680 | that is the goal and that is you know going back to it something we talked about quite a while ago now

01:42:46.320 | probably one of the things that i love the most around 100 meters is this dichotomous relationship

01:42:53.360 | between pressure and peace or power and fluidity or violence and rhythm all of these things that are the

01:43:03.440 | opposing ends of the spectrum that every single elite athlete regardless of the sport can come together

01:43:10.800 | perfectly if you can have the power but if you don't have the peace good luck you can have the peace but

01:43:17.600 | if you don't have the power good luck no chance it's always both simultaneously so it's um yeah that's that's

01:43:24.560 | the that's the massive challenge in in this sport and going back to uh to noah in 2022 that world

01:43:32.480 | championship uh final in the 200. incredible i said that's maybe the best example of that i've ever seen

01:43:38.560 | yeah amazing amazing race really was really feel blessed to have been there and by the way folks

01:43:45.760 | if you have never been to a track meet it's for for many reasons it's one of the most wonderful things

01:43:52.480 | first of all it will give you an example of what real coordination is all about and i'm not talking about

01:43:59.520 | physical coordination although that too you'll be watching the pole vault and then you'll shift your

01:44:06.400 | eyes to the right and there'll be another event starting right as the pole vault ends and then

01:44:10.160 | another one it's a it's a beautifully orchestrated event done properly as they do in eugene and elsewhere

01:44:16.960 | the other piece is that um nobody goes to track meets unless they love track although hopefully a few

01:44:24.160 | people uh who are not familiar with track will try it and so every the the amount of spirit there is

01:44:30.160 | incredible um and there's also i don't know that there's a lot of identification with individuals

01:44:38.160 | there that even if you've never seen them run or anything you you pick up on the different um

01:44:43.200 | on the different personalities of of the the runners and the jumpers and the throwers and um

01:44:49.040 | it's really special check out a track meet if you can you won't be disappointed absolutely you won't

01:44:53.280 | be disappointed and i don't work for usa track and you know people are like do you work for big track no

01:44:58.240 | actually i don't i buy a ticket like everybody else um this notion of pressure and peace

01:45:06.560 | you know it brings me back to this thing about these transition activities like for songwriters even you

01:45:12.560 | know who are so skilled joanie mitchell or you know i was referring to earlier you know tim armstrong you

01:45:17.920 | know having these transition activities you know trying to um to get into one's craft and and the the

01:45:24.880 | pressure and then it kind of opens up into peace and um i feel like anytime rick is talking about

01:45:30.800 | working with musicians and i was like how'd it go you know he's in the studio and it's like they work

01:45:36.000 | super hard they work extremely hard and then it's always the story i always hear is oh yeah in the last

01:45:42.240 | two days it all came together yeah right because they set real deadlines right and i think this is

01:45:47.600 | why deadlines are important this is why um writers and artists who have no deadlines oftentimes don't

01:45:54.080 | do as well and maybe athletes as well that the pressure piece of getting everything organized around

01:45:59.680 | an activity and then the nervous system just kind of takes it yeah the commonalities here are are

01:46:05.520 | fascinating uh to me maybe we all could approach our exercise that way too that it's okay to be rigid rigidly

01:46:13.360 | attached to to detail at the beginning but the goal is peace in the final minutes of it right yeah i think

01:46:19.760 | that's a good way of looking at it yeah i think you know more than that if we zoom out i feel like

01:46:26.320 | you know society or the way in which we think about exercise now has become detached from why why we

01:46:38.320 | actually started doing the things to begin with movement right we fall in love with finding our way

01:46:44.160 | around the world through moving our bodies in space and time doing whatever whether that's hiking or

01:46:49.120 | playing a sport or whatever and then we finish school and we get a job and now we don't really move anymore

01:46:55.920 | that becomes exercise and we go to the gym and we exercise and i feel like that's so many degrees

01:47:03.760 | removed from why we actually do the thing i feel like we don't ask ourselves is this what is really

01:47:11.360 | serving me or is this what everyone else is doing so i'm just going to go along with it and for me

01:47:17.200 | like i lift weights i go to the weight room i do that four or five days a week i skip every single

01:47:23.840 | day i run like three or four days a week i do some boxing i move my body i play i do as many different

01:47:28.960 | things i can i can do includes hiking and i feel like that's what we should be doing i'm asking myself

01:47:35.200 | what is it that i want to get out of this practice is it i want to go to the gym for 45 45 minutes a day

01:47:43.360 | and get as strong as i can or as big as i can whatever and if that if that is it great but i need

01:47:48.480 | to ask myself that question i don't feel like many of us are asking that question and for me we've

01:47:54.320 | alluded to this a couple times now is you know what's important about moving as we're aging and being

01:48:01.360 | connected with that and having the ability to continue to be able to you know express ourselves

01:48:07.600 | maximally over the course of our lifetimes that isn't developed in a weight room that's developed by doing

01:48:13.840 | those things you know you you might appreciate this like if you were looking if you were looking for

01:48:19.600 | good movement would you go to a weight room or a skate park definitely to escape park 100 yeah

01:48:28.880 | because the movers are so much better like the movement there is wow this is incredible don't you

01:48:34.400 | want to be able to do that rather than do a squat there's some made-up exercise that somebody's told you

01:48:39.920 | that is going to be you know do this and this and this for you or do a deadlift or do a bench press

01:48:43.840 | all these made-up things and as i said those things can be good can be fun can be interesting can be

01:48:49.680 | important but what really is most important is can you still move your body can you express yourself

01:48:55.440 | maximally for as long into your lifetime as you possibly can and people i feel like they have to ask

01:49:00.880 | the question whether the thing that they're doing is exercise is it actually leading to that

01:49:07.680 | and in most cases i think it's not i came up in part through skateboarding that was my main focus

01:49:13.680 | in high school up until about mid-high school and i got into other things um skateboarding everything

01:49:19.440 | you're saying is especially true the personality matches the way they skateboard uh level of aggression

01:49:27.520 | level of technicality personality i mean sometimes there's a mismatch like there's a the every vert

01:49:35.200 | skateboarder big ramp skateboarder now will attest i mean everyone from tony hawk because i've heard

01:49:38.720 | him say it um uh to everyone i know that there's a there's a kid um named jimmy wilkins um who

01:49:45.520 | does everything faster bigger with more technical ability than anybody's ever seen he's a absolutely

01:49:53.600 | remarkable um addition to the sport and a super nice kid his mom's a ballerina oh yeah amazing and he's got

01:50:02.000 | very um loose hip joints he actually guides the board with his knee back knee like so he can do a

01:50:08.880 | lot of things hands with no hands that most people have to grab to do and his dad is uh an orchestra

01:50:15.440 | conductor so if you were to like make up a story about a highly technical powerful precise you know

01:50:21.920 | 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

01:50:28.240 | and so much fun to watch so skateboarding it's very apparent um but then i was trying to think of some

01:50:34.400 | daily activities that so getting away from sport and exercise for a moment and i was just thinking in my own

01:50:38.800 | life like if you wanted to understand um my mom you just have to see her gardening the way she moves about her

01:50:48.880 | garden the way she tends to it she loves gardening it's like her greatest i don't know if it's her

01:50:54.800 | greatest joy it's one of her great joys and so if you if you could just see her gardening for

01:50:59.760 | 10 minutes you would understand her as a person uh completely amazing it's it's amazing and and i think

01:51:06.640 | she's a very good gardener but it's not that the garden isn't the point it's how she moves about the

01:51:10.000 | garden yep um and i think that's true for certain people how they cook certain people how they dance

01:51:15.440 | and i was going to say you know if you want to understand people at a wedding or a party

01:51:19.200 | just when the music comes on you get a lot of insight into people's personality and the best is always

01:51:24.480 | that like older guy or or gal or couple that look like they're just kind of sitting there like turtles

01:51:30.160 | and then they get up and you're like oh my goodness they can really dance yeah or they're just enjoying

01:51:34.000 | or just enjoying it completely even if they're not great dancers yeah so let's talk about music and

01:51:39.440 | dance for a second i think we can't avoid this any longer um your instagram handle was maybe still is

01:51:49.040 | finger mash correct i thought that had something to do with sprinting but i learned right before we sat down

01:51:54.720 | that you're you you're a reggae dj uh-huh and you grew up around that yeah and sprinting has a lot of

01:52:01.760 | jamaicans in it yeah what's the deal educate us um how much of how you understand athletes and how they

01:52:09.760 | move and people generally in the general population how they move um relates to your understanding kind

01:52:15.200 | of music and rhythm because this pressure piece right i mean like that's a great song that's a great

01:52:19.600 | concert that's a great album so you know i don't think i explicitly truly understood the connection

01:52:27.120 | until in hindsight you know because when you're doing it you're just doing it you're just living

01:52:32.320 | your life and you're not really thinking about it i'm doing these things they have creative

01:52:36.560 | probably similarities but i'm not really understanding those you know i'm not thinking about them you know

01:52:42.960 | i started uh i started djing in 1984 so i've been 15 and i stopped djing in 2010 i had a radio show in

01:52:50.640 | calgary for 20 years called level the vibes shout out level the vibes it still goes on to this day level

01:52:55.760 | of vibes level the vibes level the vibes level the vibes with my old dj partner tulla yeah and uh it's

01:53:01.600 | yeah absolutely like it's i was an artist as well so when i was in school everyone figured i would just be

01:53:08.480 | the artist like i was an okay athlete but not great i wasn't good enough to go into professional

01:53:13.120 | sport and make money it was just art that was it i went to art school and i figured out you know this

01:53:20.400 | just isn't serving me anymore but the entire time i'm doing this music thing and i'm doing this sport

01:53:25.040 | thing and i think all of these creative outlets are just all coming together i've always been sort of a

01:53:30.880 | creative coach and i think like this is how i actually got into sprinting is i was a soccer player

01:53:36.880 | most of my most of my friends were sprinters most of them most of those sprinters because i was based in calgary

01:53:42.800 | there's a big jamaican population there so most of them were jamaican and i just got into sprinting through that

01:53:48.720 | so is uh i feel like as as i said it's it wasn't an explicit connection that i understood at the time

01:53:55.840 | but in hindsight i could say okay me being a a dj an understanding rhythm and putting things together

01:54:05.120 | and how putting these things together influenced other things less than maybe the people that i'm

01:54:12.320 | playing the music for that really served my coaching ability 100 100 as did my art

01:54:22.800 | it's really interesting in hindsight to to look at those things and look at those as you say these

01:54:27.680 | call them the transition events and these other things the other skills that you know masters in

01:54:32.960 | some of the domains have what athletes nowadays um which athletes are you excited about because they

01:54:39.440 | seem to have this essence we don't want to make them self-conscious but um that you're like wow like

01:54:44.880 | there's really something there yeah yeah who are you excited about in track specifically yeah or

01:54:50.720 | well any sport sure it's i mean i honestly i'm not a massive sports fan like i don't watch a lot

01:54:58.560 | of team sports in fact i watch no team sports other than soccer and i watch soccer because you know

01:55:03.840 | that's the game i played that's the game my father plays your team uh manchester city and so who's the

01:55:08.720 | greatest soccer player in the world in your mind for you like the one that not necessarily the one that

01:55:12.960 | everyone agrees is the best but oh no messi is the best player and i think most people would agree that

01:55:17.840 | leon messi is now playing for inter inter miami is maybe even still at the age of 35 or 36 the best

01:55:24.800 | player on the planet because of his expressiveness just the the way in which he plays his game and

01:55:29.280 | expresses himself is just perfect and in fact this is a really good uh analogy to to discuss what you're

01:55:36.080 | talking about here because there's there's in the goat debate the greatest of all time debate there's

01:55:41.680 | two players that come up in soccer cristiano ronaldo and leonel messi maradona is no longer in the next

01:55:47.600 | 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

01:55:53.360 | is 36 and i'd say probably if you took a poll of all of the millions of people that have an opinion on

01:55:59.520 | this 45 of them or so would say cristiano ronaldo and 55 it's that close 55 would say messi but both

01:56:07.440 | of them are so authentically themselves it's crazy like cristiano ronaldo is perfect like he is the

01:56:16.000 | perfect greek god he's 40 years old he's about five percent body fat he's big muscular powerful fast it's

01:56:22.960 | always load shot he's shining he shines he literally he gleams he does yeah and he plays that way right

01:56:29.760 | and he's he's just got a certain personality that he brings to the field and messi's just like this

01:56:34.880 | you know just glides around and just elusive and you can't see him and oh there he's over there and

01:56:40.400 | just the things that he can do with his feet and the ball and the interaction between his feet and the

01:56:45.280 | ball it's just oh that's incredible and for me i align with more of the messy you know i just love

01:56:52.160 | the creativity that's a player like that has or uh or in you know a little bit more um up to date maybe

01:56:58.720 | you know uh steph steph curry like change the game of basketball totally be wild or through being

01:57:05.840 | authentically himself he's totally changed the league he's changed how everybody plays basketball and

01:57:12.080 | how and everybody will play basketball forevermore so it's yeah it's it's i really really appreciate

01:57:18.240 | incredibly beautiful and authentic movers i don't like sport but i love the the movement part of it

01:57:26.320 | yeah it's the son of an argentine you know my dad's first generation immigrant to the united states i i um

01:57:33.360 | i really put myself to shame by not being a huge soccer fan but i've got cousins that you'll listen and

01:57:41.840 | watch at the dinner table and you couldn't distract them if an atom bomb went off you know it's and

01:57:46.560 | his kids you know um such a such an interesting sport because of the this notion that different

01:57:52.720 | teams and different players play it differently right like the brazilians like the rhythm to their game

01:57:58.640 | versus the you know argentines are considered a little bit more uh traditionally more rigid among

01:58:04.160 | south americans as a culture more rigid and a little bit more aggressive as well more stiff upper lip

01:58:08.960 | absolutely yeah yeah absolutely they take them argentines take themselves very seriously i can

01:58:12.800 | say that as a half of argentine yeah we're taught to take ourselves seriously as people

01:58:16.560 | and um at the same time to enjoy life but to take ourselves seriously yeah i think there's a

01:58:21.120 | lesson in that too right brazil has been the most successful national soccer team of all time

01:58:27.280 | and you know like you just said you're not a soccer fan but you know how brazil plays soccer

01:58:32.000 | everyone knows how brazil plays soccer they dance and they play and it's just this thing you know

01:58:36.400 | it's a party it's a party yeah and that's how they play and everyone kind of knows how argentina

01:58:40.880 | plays as well you just said that you're not a soccer fan but you know that nobody knows how england

01:58:45.520 | plays england haven't won a world cup since 1966 they haven't won a major title since 1966 even

01:58:52.960 | though this is where the sport originated from everyone knows how germany plays and how germany has always

01:58:59.360 | played there's a way there's a german way of playing football there's a brazilian way of playing

01:59:03.680 | football there's an argentinian way of playing football there is no british way anymore

01:59:07.680 | so i think there's something in that right like if there's a connection where every single person

01:59:12.960 | that comes up from the age of four years old they know that the way in which everybody in this country

01:59:17.200 | plays oh okay i get that and we're all on the same team and all contributing to the same system in the

01:59:23.360 | same way where in the uk it's so disparate that no one understands it anymore

01:59:27.520 | i'm just soaking this in because my mind immediately goes to like like art

01:59:33.600 | one of my favorite movies is the movie basquiat by jump about john michelle basquiat not the documentary

01:59:40.640 | i mean the cast is like gary oldman david bowie i mean it's in dennis hopper christopher walk and it's

01:59:46.240 | just in an unbelievable cast um and the fact that basquiat was part haitian he was in you know new

01:59:54.160 | york in a time when new york was pretty gritty and like brought that together in his art it was like

01:59:59.120 | one part graffiti modern art and had this kind of tribal component that people made more of than they

02:00:04.320 | probably should have and and you could say the same thing about you know um andy warhol or about

02:00:10.480 | chuck close or you know when people are just being themselves but they're also taking their ancestry

02:00:15.840 | and they're taking their personal history which includes their ancestry and they're putting it into

02:00:20.320 | their art or their sport spectacular things happen so along those lines this is a somewhat controversial

02:00:28.160 | topic but i'm just gonna go right into it because i think everyone wonders about this

02:00:32.320 | i'll say this directly why are there fewer white strength and speed champion athletes in fact if you

02:00:44.080 | hang around track and field long enough you'll hear that's the third fastest white woman that's the

02:00:49.920 | second fastest white guy um people are using very specific language but we could put it differently

02:00:58.640 | get a lot of fast jamaicans um what's the deal is it um genetic contribution to fiber type

02:01:06.960 | um let's also talk about calf belly length which turns out to not be about calf belly length at all

02:01:14.720 | um what i'm saying there is people with quote unquote small calves tend to be fast runners

02:01:19.520 | what's the deal and i realize why this is a controversial topic but it's like so obvious because that

02:01:28.560 | it's almost silly to avoid at this point how can you not have the conversation yeah let's have a

02:01:32.400 | conversation about it it's it's it's obvious so what's the deal well as in all things when we're

02:01:38.480 | having discussions around topics like this it's both nature and nurture sure it's primarily in this case

02:01:45.600 | nature if you don't have the genetic capacity to run fast you won't run fast sorry you just don't you

02:01:52.400 | don't have enough type 2 fibers whatever it is proportion of type 2 it could be limb length it

02:01:57.120 | could be joint structure uh typically faster people have tighter smaller joints typically faster people

02:02:03.360 | have longer tendons and smaller muscle bellies typically faster people have more type 2x fibers

02:02:08.560 | typically faster people are slightly taller so all of these contributing genetic factors if you do not have

02:02:15.760 | those things and then that's not even talking about some of the hormonal factors some of the endocrinological

02:02:20.880 | factors some of the neural factors that we may not even understand yet there's all of these genetic

02:02:26.160 | determinants that play a part in what you are able to do so first and foremost we have to yes that is a fact

02:02:35.200 | that almost every single statistically almost every single human being that's ever ran sub 10 seconds

02:02:44.320 | is a black athlete from you know evolutionarily from maybe say west africa let me ask you uh sorry

02:02:54.560 | for interrupting but i think has a white person ever broken the 10 second mark in the 100 meters

02:03:00.240 | there's been a few so it was first uh christophe lemaitre i believe in either 2017 or 2018

02:03:06.160 | was the first white athlete to break 10 seconds and then there's been uh i feel like it's probably five

02:03:14.160 | maybe six asians now who have broken 10 seconds everybody else and that's

02:03:19.920 | close to 200 are are black and of course there's the nature component too which is if you come from a

02:03:29.920 | country where sprinting yes is a popular sport um or soccer is a popular sport or um you know distance

02:03:38.400 | running is a popular sport then there's gonna be a selection bias 100 yeah so we're taking those into that is

02:03:43.840 | that i would say that the gen if you don't have the genetics good luck you're not even in the room

02:03:48.320 | the genetics will get you in the room once you do in that room whether what that nature is what that

02:03:52.640 | upbringing is what that environment is that is going to determine what you know what you do with your

02:03:56.640 | genetics so for example a massive percentage and i don't know what this is but it's big a massive

02:04:03.440 | percentage of the athletes the male athletes who have ran sub 210 in a marathon come from the same little

02:04:10.640 | district in kenya like it's very very high percentage and part of that is not only their genetics but the

02:04:17.920 | environment which they're growing up in every single person that they know is a marathoner every single

02:04:24.480 | person they know are running in excess of 100 miles a week every single person they know uh you know this

02:04:31.120 | these are all of the things that that we need to do to be this right so they're seeing that from the

02:04:36.720 | day that they're born so for sure environment really matters what you do with that nature really really

02:04:42.560 | matters but if you don't have the genetic capacity to begin with you just as i said you don't have any

02:04:46.800 | chance at all and as you said like jamaica sprinting is massive in jamaica like it's really really important

02:04:53.120 | if i i would encourage you to do one thing go to champs at one point if you like track meets this

02:04:58.720 | is the best track meet in the world champs is the jamaican high school national championships and it's

02:05:04.640 | in kingston and it is incredible absolutely incredible the stands are packed so there's 45 50 000 people

02:05:12.880 | it's loud it's noisy it's boisterous and kids are just killing themselves trying to beat each other it's

02:05:20.320 | just an amazing event over the course of three or four days go to the last couple days of champs and

02:05:25.200 | just watch that and you just see ah i understand why jamaicans are so fast this is the environment

02:05:31.440 | in which many of them are operating within as they come up and this is like this is you know i i talked

02:05:37.360 | to uh so i'm a good friends with donovan bailey donovan bailey was a 1996 olympic champion he was

02:05:41.440 | a world record holder in 100 meters for a while he's of jamaican descent uh grew up in jamaica until he

02:05:47.360 | was 12. he moved to canada in 1981 which is the same year that i moved to canada so we've talked

02:05:52.480 | about this a lot and he said if you know if you do well at champs you're set you're going to do really

02:05:59.280 | well as a professional sprinter because there's nothing that has more pressure in it than actually

02:06:05.120 | competing well at jamaican high school national championships so understand what that environment

02:06:12.560 | does for the ability for your typical jamaican athlete to succeed at higher levels and all of

02:06:18.800 | those pockets you know pockets like this exist all over the world whether it's in in russia or whether

02:06:23.920 | it's in kenya whether it's in west africa or whether it's in you know right now we're seeing

02:06:28.160 | some interesting things in norway and some of the endurance sports right so it's for sure nurture is

02:06:33.280 | really really important genetics gets you in the room what you do in it within that room that's that's

02:06:37.520 | up to you and your environment that you create it's so interesting how these different cultures shape

02:06:41.760 | the the future of a sport or an endeavor in china kids are highly incentivized to learn a lot and test

02:06:51.200 | a lot in the math and sciences and they're really big on neuroscience in china i think these nature

02:06:56.720 | nurture questions are super interesting it sounds like jamaica is still churning out a lot of excellent

02:07:02.320 | sprinters because of the huge numbers that are fed fed to the sport and and can be you know essentially

02:07:10.080 | grow up their nervous systems are shaped around sprinting yeah couple that with any number of

02:07:15.040 | different um features and we were talking about you talk about short calf bellies right this is the um

02:07:20.400 | this is the fear of every uh uh bodybuilder right they they want long calf bellies but short calf bellies

02:07:29.120 | make people faster and better jumpers not because the calf is short but because because the tendon is long

02:07:34.560 | okay essentially we've got you know each muscle is really a muscle tendon unit

02:07:40.560 | and if you've got a longer tendon relative to your muscle effectively you're a little bit more

02:07:45.760 | plyometric you can store and release energy a little bit more effectively than somebody who has a shorter

02:07:49.920 | tendon and a longer or bigger fatter thicker muscle so we want really if you want to be fast you want

02:07:56.320 | long skinny tendons and small little muscle bellies so you know so what uh serves aesthetics sometimes

02:08:05.680 | doesn't necessarily serve the sport and and vice versa so if you had to pick one you'd want to be able to

02:08:10.560 | jump and run faster would you sure i mean i don't i don't i'm not yeah i mean i suppose that having

02:08:16.720 | very short calves would be weird but who wouldn't want to run faster or jump higher you know uh for all

02:08:23.040 | sorts of reasons just be so much fun yeah absolutely yeah i i don't have a lot of hops but um

02:08:28.480 | this is actually a time to talk about knees over toes guy ben patrick yeah he um uh fought a lot

02:08:36.640 | of adversity to like encourage people um including a lot of exercise physiologists and the people who do

02:08:43.200 | rehab from various um aspects that you know putting your knees out over your toes is okay

02:08:48.800 | um caught a lot of heat but i think the fact that he's so skilled at jumping and dunking and backbent

02:08:55.840 | and landing and backbends and things that sort puts them all to shame frankly i think most people

02:08:59.520 | understand now that ben is really on to something with this um one of the things that he's a big

02:09:04.880 | proponent of is um a lot of eccentric loading um but also not being afraid to get that knee way out

02:09:12.480 | over the toe what what is the deal with uh running form as it were is the idea that if you can get

02:09:19.200 | your knee higher you can stride further and then when we talk about um knee back toward butt how far

02:09:26.800 | back are we supposed to like kick our own glutes when we when we stride i mean what is a proper running

02:09:32.480 | stride or is it going to vary by by structure well that's uh that's a big question yeah like like explain

02:09:38.480 | that in five seconds i'm just kidding but you know for those of us who want to run a bit

02:09:42.320 | faster do some some um stride work yeah should i be reaching with my front leg and pulling myself

02:09:48.240 | forward on the ground 100 percent not please do not do that right and i shouldn't be just quickening

02:09:53.040 | my uh my turnover of a jogging stride so that's part of it yeah first of all let's start at the start

02:09:59.920 | and understand the way you move is going to be governed by the things that you are moving

02:10:06.960 | so how you move is governed by the stuff that you've got so you cannot move in a way in which

02:10:11.440 | your body will not allow so if you have a certain structure of your joints or a certain mobility

02:10:17.200 | structure or senate or a certain genetic makeup or a certain stiffness or a certain muscle fiber type

02:10:24.800 | all of those things come together together they all coalesce to sort of govern your motor strategy

02:10:31.440 | so the lat the last thing that i would want you to do andrew is to copy usain bolt's sprinting stride

02:10:39.440 | because usain bolt is six foot five 215 pounds he's a little bit more dynamic than you

02:10:46.640 | he's probably got slightly longer achilles tendons than you he's probably got tighter smaller joints

02:10:52.080 | than you he's probably a lot more elastic than you are he's probably a little bit more coordinated than

02:10:57.520 | you are so why would i want you to try to copy that so my job first and foremost is to understand how you

02:11:05.200 | should or how you could move based upon the constraints that you have based upon what are known as your

02:11:11.600 | action capabilities so your force capacity your mobility capacity all of these things that make

02:11:17.200 | up who you are your height your weight your joint length your joint ratios all of these different

02:11:22.400 | things your your limb limb ratios so first it's understanding that we are governed by the stuff that

02:11:28.000 | we have so it's we should never be trying to copy someone else first and foremost number two

02:11:36.080 | is then we should have some sort of understanding of what is the common way to do a thing and we can

02:11:44.240 | probably simplify this we kind of know a little bit about how we what a model looks like for a back

02:11:51.680 | squat or for a deadlift or for you choose your exercise we kind of have a model for that whether

02:11:58.080 | that's a mathematical model or whether that model was based upon the average of a bunch of elite movers

02:12:03.600 | we kind of okay we can understand what quote unquote optimal is mathematically but we also have to

02:12:11.040 | understand that we are not math we are biological beings that will all move in slightly varying ways

02:12:18.640 | depending upon the stuff that we are moving so yes we look at that model but we also look at what we've

02:12:24.000 | got and we try to find somewhere in the middle that serves us so in sprinting and in probably in most

02:12:31.680 | most activities we try to identify like what are the non-negotiables what are the rules here like in

02:12:39.120 | squatting we know what the rules are right we don't want to bend to one side we don't want to overly flex

02:12:43.520 | our our spine we don't want to anteriorly rotate our shoulders we don't want to have knee valgus where our

02:12:49.840 | knees come in and touch each other we don't want to have super wide feet we don't want to have internally

02:12:55.280 | rotated feet when we're when we're squatting all of these things that we know that we don't do they

02:13:00.640 | govern the things that we can do so in sprinting we have something similar we don't know as much about

02:13:05.440 | sprinting as we do in some of the more uh or maybe the less complex movements more discrete movements

02:13:13.040 | like a squat like a deadlift like a power clean the sprinting is coordinative it continues it's rhythmic

02:13:18.960 | so it's a little bit harder for us to actually study but we do know that as you said uh one of the

02:13:24.240 | things you said was high knees and most of the elite sprinters converge upon similar positions when

02:13:31.040 | their knee is super high and that knee gets up to about waist height like just almost belly button height

02:13:36.880 | when they're running as fast as they can so we know if we want to be fast we've got to kind of try and

02:13:41.280 | bring our knees up and we talked about that before too right the difference between striding and

02:13:45.680 | sprinting and sprinting and jogging and running where jogging and running happens behind the center

02:13:50.080 | mass and striding and sprinting is in front of the center mass so maybe first and foremost we think

02:13:54.880 | about bringing the knee up knees got to be a little bit higher you have to think about being in front

02:13:59.360 | we know that for sure every elite sprinter sets up a very stiff spring on the ground by being very very

02:14:09.520 | strong and stiff and rigid through the foot ankle complex so you have to be stiff on impact so think

02:14:16.640 | about the analogy that i give all the time is if you think about you're a boxer or you're boxing and

02:14:23.760 | you're hitting a heavy bag what would you do with your wrists and your fist you'd squeeze it and hold it

02:14:28.240 | rigidly because if you didn't it would really hurt and if you're trying to hit it as hard as you can you

02:14:33.680 | want it to be you have to be squeezed it's the same thing with sprinting because the forces by the way

02:14:39.360 | are pretty similar an elite boxer hits a heavy bag and somewhere in excess of five times their body

02:14:45.200 | weight in less than three hundredths of a second it's exactly the same as sprinting and elite sprinting

02:14:51.280 | is in excess of five times their body weight in less than three hundredths of a second time to peak

02:14:55.680 | force on ground ground contact so knees are up and we're very stiff on the ground and the third thing

02:15:02.080 | is if you do not have an effective hip extension pattern you just can't move well never mind run

02:15:10.640 | fast you have to have the the ability for your knee to come behind your butt now that's a hard thing to

02:15:18.480 | define it's a hard thing to quantify people ask me all the time like what do you mean like what is a good

02:15:24.240 | pattern if i talk about the hip extension pattern and the importance of that it's not just range of

02:15:29.920 | motion so that's the one that you alluded to is you know how far behind well the further the knee gets

02:15:35.440 | behind the center mass the more the range of motion it's not just that because in sprinting when you're

02:15:39.520 | upright especially you want to almost limit the amount of time that the knee travels behind the butt

02:15:46.160 | because the longer that the knee travels behind the butt the longer you're on the ground the slower you

02:15:51.120 | are so range of motion for you or for me or for rob or for anyone listening for running is going to be

02:15:59.120 | very different from a noah lyles or an andre degrasse or usain bald but this the qualitative aspect

02:16:07.280 | of all of those things is still really important and the way in which i judge the quality of a pattern

02:16:12.800 | is kind of five five fold do you have the force capacity to be able to extend your hip are you strong

02:16:18.480 | enough can you actually get your knee behind the hip and many people just can't do that because

02:16:23.280 | they're not strong enough do you have the velocity capacity can you actually move your limb fast enough

02:16:28.400 | to get it behind do you have the range of motion and most team sport athletes you know if i'm going in

02:16:34.000 | and talking to to coaches who work in team sports that's the big that's the low-hanging fruit that they

02:16:39.040 | just don't have the range so number three is the range number four is the control and if you're a kid if

02:16:44.800 | you're a 14 year old you probably don't have the control of that pattern and five is can you do it

02:16:49.920 | over and over again can you actually repeat it so when we're looking at the judging of a pattern

02:16:55.040 | it's force velocity uh repeatability control and range of motion is those those five things so that's

02:17:02.000 | you know that's a long answer to what i could talk about for for literally days is what are the things

02:17:08.800 | that we're looking at for sprinting the ability to get the thigh out high the ability to contact the

02:17:13.440 | ground really aggressively and the the ability to get the thigh or the knee behind the hip

02:17:18.640 | with high quality what are your thoughts on skipping rope yeah i think the ability to coordinate flexion

02:17:27.280 | extension at the ankle knee and hip is really important so you're coordinating the movement pattern

02:17:32.080 | both the or at the ankle at the knee and the hip and coordinating all of those in space and time

02:17:37.520 | and the ability to do that as we've talked about is one of the things that we lose as we age

02:17:41.360 | so skipping is one of those things that can quite simply work on that coordinate of aspect what i see

02:17:47.840 | too often though is people skipping incorrectly and skipping only through their ankles and not really

02:17:52.720 | doing a lot through the knees and the hip and they just sort of plantar flex or dorsiflex plantar flex

02:17:56.480 | dorsiflex so they just push up on their toes and they come off where we need to understand that plantar

02:18:01.280 | flexion or going up onto your toes is in dynamic movements a reflexive movement it's not a volitional

02:18:09.120 | movement it's not a movement that we should be thinking about or trying to control all we should be

02:18:13.600 | thinking about is just bouncing as if we're bouncing on a trampoline just bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce

02:18:19.200 | bounce bounce and actually keeping our foot as stiff as we can just like skipping for me i just

02:18:25.680 | equate it to hitting a heavy bag over and over and over again pop pop pop pop pop pop you can't do

02:18:30.720 | that if you're on your toes you want to be on the balls of your feet like right on the base of your

02:18:35.840 | of your toes like and just then it's a lot easier to just bounce think about it bouncing so i think it's a

02:18:41.520 | great activity from that perspective is sort of just teaching how to coordinate the the uh what's called

02:18:49.200 | the amortization of all of the joints of the lower body and then as far as how to do it what to do

02:18:54.880 | it i just feel just do it yeah you know what i mean like just do it with heavy ropes do it do the

02:18:58.800 | light ropes have fun with it i think there's there's probably too many times that we're constrained by

02:19:03.760 | what people like me say to do what is right just have fun man just just just you know find a way in

02:19:10.080 | which to express yourself and enjoy the movement if you love jumping rope or hopping rope go do that

02:19:15.120 | just make sure that you try to understand what doing it well looks like or feels like so you can do it well

02:19:22.000 | i like to put on an album and skip for the album and then somehow just let the the music when i feel

02:19:29.440 | moved to skip different faster or high knees or something like that dictate yeah because then there's

02:19:34.480 | like this external coach slash rhythm it's something i like i'm not thinking about too much

02:19:39.680 | and then next thing i know i've got you know 35 minutes of quote-unquote cardio done um with a

02:19:45.840 | piece of plastic i don't know something very satisfying about doing that i don't know why

02:19:49.920 | um no i love it it's a yeah i i as you can probably tell i'm getting more and more interested in things

02:19:54.960 | that um drawn more aspects of the nervous system mind and body for exercise because i i while i love

02:20:04.880 | the gym i think it's it can be too linear and too rigid yeah and i think it leads to rigidity in one's

02:20:10.880 | thinking yeah um and that might come as a surprise to a lot of people think oh you know it's all you

02:20:15.200 | know all these protocols have to be done you know there's a fundamentally correct way to do most things

02:20:21.040 | like get morning sunlight in your eyes but if it's five minutes or seven minutes it depends on how bright

02:20:25.840 | it is and that what time of year i mean you know i feel like the biology is flexible yeah um and learning to go by

02:20:36.240 | feel can be very very helpful yeah i think we lose that too right we got to remember you know principles

02:20:41.120 | are few and methods are many there's many ways to do different things as long as they align with

02:20:44.720 | the principles just think about what the principles are and then just be creative in choosing the methods

02:20:49.200 | that work for you yeah this is where peer-reviewed science unfortunately can't measure every variable

02:20:56.320 | yeah you know people say well like what have there been a study comparing you know 5 10 15 20

02:21:01.200 | minutes or 30 minutes of morning sunlight no yeah because you're lucky if you get 100 subjects

02:21:06.880 | you got to pay those subjects you got to get them to come in you're tracking sleep you're you use 10 000

02:21:11.440 | lux in one group and you know you know control light in another i mean you just don't have the option to

02:21:16.720 | work through every variable in anything even a dose response study of a drug you can't account for nutrition

02:21:25.360 | and the drug and then people go well then how can we trust any of this as a you know standard science

02:21:30.560 | as it were a reduction of science is just one lens through these things yeah that doesn't mean that

02:21:36.800 | people's experience is necessarily smarter than data it just means that data have to mesh with experience

02:21:42.480 | and and experience with data yeah i think data data can inform the decisions we make but they are not the

02:21:48.960 | decisions that we make you know we use that data but what's you know it's it's um what's most important

02:21:54.960 | is how all of these data points all this information comes together you know it's the it's the relationships

02:22:01.680 | and the interactions between the component parts which is more important than the individual component

02:22:05.840 | parts themselves so we have to understand what those relationships are that's the thing we need to focus a

02:22:11.440 | little bit more on i'd like to talk about weight training what do sprinters do for their weight training

02:22:17.760 | and if somebody like me is interested in becoming a faster runner doing maybe even sprinting someday

02:22:24.240 | besides just doing skips and strides what are some ways of doing exercises in the gym that can

02:22:31.040 | potentially facilitate our ability to move better outside of the gym first let's look at the kinetics

02:22:36.960 | of sprinting sprinting is only really truly about four things how much force you apply in the ground

02:22:44.080 | how fast can you apply it the direction in which you apply it and how heavy you are and it's just those four things

02:22:50.560 | four things how much force how fast which direction what is your mass so we need to yeah force is

02:22:58.480 | important we have to be able to apply a certain level of force but there's a threshold to this everyone

02:23:03.760 | says there's a big question and has been for a long time how much strength quote unquote is enough in

02:23:10.000 | sprinting well enough is it's the same question that we ask we should ask in every task there's a rate of

02:23:16.960 | diminishing returns on all of these capacities that we need that we require is spending an extra few

02:23:23.920 | years trying to get an extra five kilos to your power clean or an extra 25 pounds to your back squat as

02:23:32.400 | effective as a means to get faster than it would be if you say you start skipping maybe do some more

02:23:38.400 | explosive work actually start sprinting a little bit more so there's always this um from a programming

02:23:44.320 | perspective is understanding where the athlete is what they require what they've got where they are in

02:23:50.080 | the rate of diminishing returns on each of those capacities so first we have to understand that um

02:23:54.880 | let me zoom out just a little bit i coach andre andre degrasse as we talked about andre when i started

02:24:01.200 | coaching him in 2015 could barely squat his body weight eight months later he's three-time olympic

02:24:07.280 | medalist eight months later he was one and a half years into his sprinting career he'd sprinted for 18

02:24:15.280 | months he had three olympic medals in the sprints the 100 the 200 and the four by one he could barely squat

02:24:22.160 | his body weight he could clean 60 kilos so 135 pounds he definitely couldn't bench a plate and a half

02:24:30.880 | he might have had 145 pound plate uh bench yeah maybe super weak but on the other end of the spectrum

02:24:39.040 | this is the example that everyone gives you've got ben johnson famously ben johnson did this 600

02:24:46.640 | pound squat a couple of days prior to winning in the tokyo olympics in 1988 running 979 obviously that

02:24:55.360 | was thereafter taken away after he tested positive so you've gone on one end of the spectrum somebody

02:25:01.040 | like ben johnson who applies incredibly incredible amounts of force and on the other end you've got

02:25:08.240 | somebody like andre degrasse who doesn't apply relatively any force but does it really really fast

02:25:15.680 | so this gives you like an understanding of the spectrum of capacities and abilities that humans

02:25:21.600 | have to do a task in an almost infinite number of ways so to get to your question it depends on who you

02:25:29.760 | are and what you're good at and why you're good at it there's not one way when you've got a ben johnson

02:25:35.600 | who can apply incredible amounts of forces and that's one of the reasons why he's fast on the other end

02:25:39.680 | of the spectrum you've got andre degrasse who's weaker than most high school girls who's incredible fat

02:25:44.960 | incredibly fast where does that leave us that just tells us okay there's many different ways to do

02:25:49.920 | this which is great it's cool that gives us again some freedom to better ask the questions about what

02:25:56.160 | it is that makes you andrew really good like you apply a lot of force okay let's lean into that let's

02:26:02.000 | try to improve your speed by try to maximize your force but what are you limited by okay you're having

02:26:08.960 | trouble getting off the ground you're not super reactive or reflexive so we have to work some

02:26:13.920 | things into your program that's going to make you a little bit more reactive or reflexive so maybe we'll

02:26:19.280 | do some jump squats maybe we'll do some hurdle hops maybe we'll do some more skipping maybe maybe we feel

02:26:24.640 | like okay you've reached the rate of diminishing returns on your force capacity you don't need to squat

02:26:30.800 | four plates if you squat 385. is going from 385 to 405 going to make you any faster no not at all so

02:26:37.840 | let's keep you at 385 and we'll just do some other things so first and foremost it's respecting the

02:26:43.360 | individuality of all things and understanding that there's not one way in which i can tell you do this

02:26:50.400 | 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

02:26:56.720 | non-negotiables and there's rules to things so sprinting is how you transmit that force into the

02:27:04.800 | track in a really fast period of time in the right direction so the transmission of force is typically

02:27:11.440 | more important than the magnitude of the force at least at the elite end at least at the adult end

02:27:19.600 | so transmission of force means how the the amount of force that you put into the ground how do you

02:27:26.320 | use it to propel yourself forward so what are the types of exercises that maybe what would you think

02:27:31.760 | about if i said this is a force transmission exercise rather than say a force magnitude exercise

02:27:38.480 | is that something that appeals to you yeah jump squat comes to mind you know um jump squat comes to mind

02:27:47.920 | any kind of uh like push clap push-ups yeah um you know the ability to like

02:27:53.840 | yep double clap or you know or more um yes that's what comes to mind i think that's pretty accurate

02:28:00.960 | olympic lifts is one is one that where a lot of people would say yes olympic lift that's kind of what

02:28:05.040 | we're doing with like a clean you're kind of yeah i'm not i don't do olympic lifts but from what i

02:28:09.920 | understand i you know that they're they're pushing off the ground to get get the bar up yeah it's it's

02:28:14.800 | essentially can we apply high forces fast over a long period of time so that's kind of we do we

02:28:23.760 | spend a lot of time looking at those types of exercises sled work uh we don't do any sled work

02:28:28.720 | we could get back to that if you know sled work for elite sprinters we don't we do resisted acceleration

02:28:34.320 | work so we'll sprint we'll do some specific strength work where we're pulling uh you know

02:28:41.040 | probably in excess of 10 to 15 kilos you know so 20 to 30 pounds ish do you use the parachute that

02:28:47.280 | was a big thing a few years back remember that yeah like the parachute i used the parachute 20 years ago

02:28:51.600 | absolutely we don't know we we uh we actually have a we have a piece of equipment called the power

02:28:56.320 | cord we use that i use yes that's really good spring-loaded and the 1080 sprint which is this

02:29:01.600 | incredible piece of equipment that we use that we can really dial in the resistance down to like

02:29:06.320 | you know a half a kilo that's it's beautiful so we use that but that's for different reasons so the you

02:29:11.920 | talked about the weight room in in the in the um the population of athletes i work with

02:29:18.720 | maximum strength is at the rate of diminishing returns already we don't spend almost any time

02:29:25.440 | working on that at a lower level of population maybe if you're high school kid or if you're in

02:29:31.360 | your 20s when you're not super or if you're super weak just by increasing your force capacity so your

02:29:37.280 | ability to apply force you will get faster because remember what the calculation is amount of force

02:29:43.520 | how fast direction and body mass so it is important it just becomes less and less and less important

02:29:50.640 | the faster you get so it's and then it becomes when it's less important when the ability to produce a

02:29:57.280 | high magnitude of force isn't important what is important so then we're starting looking at plyometric

02:30:02.160 | things and probably most specifically i'm looking at specific isometric stuff in the weight room so let's

02:30:10.240 | look at the position in which we're applying in excess of five times our body weight and that's

02:30:17.120 | when the foot is directly underneath the center mass the foot is flat on the ground there's about a 15

02:30:23.760 | degree knee bend and there's about a 5 to 10 degree hip bend so can you think of think about that position

02:30:32.240 | so we're pushing up against an immovable bar or holding a very very heavy bar on one leg

02:30:38.800 | with as heavy as we can or as hard as we can for somewhere between three to five seconds times

02:30:45.680 | three to four repetitions and we'll do like three sets of that that's alex notero's work he's one of the

02:30:51.440 | the premier researchers in what's called run specific isometric strength training so it's getting strong

02:30:57.280 | in really specific positions to the task that you're trying to be come better at so that's that's the

02:31:05.040 | primary one for me is that position where the foot is directly underneath the center mass there's a

02:31:09.680 | little bit of a knee bend there's a little bit of a hip bend and we do a lot of isometric work right

02:31:14.080 | there that's that's and then i and this is my bias i do nothing bilateral at all you mean parallel stance

02:31:23.600 | parallel stance nothing except occasionally if it is an issue you know with neural drive or whatever i'll do some

02:31:32.560 | uh trap bar deadlifts so some parallel stance trap bar deadlifts because i think it's a great exercise

02:31:37.920 | i think that's difficult to do with a staggered stance it's very difficult to do with a a single

02:31:43.520 | leg stance but you can load up some pretty good weight on a parallel stance trap bar deadlift and

02:31:49.840 | yeah i feel pretty good and you get a good feeling out of that it's not necessarily to be um be able to

02:31:56.480 | apply or generate more force it's more about sort of neural drive than it is for anything else everything

02:32:02.320 | every single other thing that we do is in a staggered stance heel to toe or kickstand which is kind of the

02:32:07.760 | same same sort of thing just a different terminology or split stance or a stance where the front foot is

02:32:13.600 | elevated or the rear foot is elevated so we'll do as as we as we've talked about quite a bit now find

02:32:19.760 | opportunities to get the knee behind the butt that's a really important position can we get stronger

02:32:25.440 | faster more control more repeatability and more range at that position one of the things i learned from you

02:32:30.880 | yesterday is um well let's i'll double click first on this um the staggered stance so this is one foot

02:32:37.520 | slightly in front of the other um i've been doing this with various lifts in the gym for a long time

02:32:42.560 | i would say the exception would be if i'm belt squatting or hack squatting i don't do that

02:32:47.600 | but for everything else overhead presses um anything where my feet are in contact with the ground that is

02:32:54.480 | uh not on pull-ups and dips of course but um curls tricep extensions and i make sure to vary

02:33:00.400 | the stance so one foot is in front for one set one is in front for the other sometimes even in the

02:33:04.480 | middle of the set i'll i'll switch them up after um and i found that to be tremendously helpful for

02:33:11.360 | building core stability and a number of other things uh and it sounds like it might help running

02:33:16.400 | gate as well the other thing that you said yesterday that i think is really important i've not thought of

02:33:21.440 | before but now i'm doing is anytime you have a a foot elevated in the gym to get onto the toe front

02:33:27.120 | foot can be flat yeah i think the ability to get off your first ray so for the big toe to bend and flex

02:33:33.840 | is really important so for me if i if that's important i'm going to search for opportunities

02:33:39.440 | 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

02:33:46.000 | to flex the big toe now if you can't and many athletes cannot you know there's a lot of athletes

02:33:51.600 | that just cannot extend to that big toe or some athletes have bunions and just can't get over it

02:33:56.320 | and that's okay we can go on to the top of the foot which is not the not the end of the world

02:34:00.080 | but i look for opportunities like that like i look for opportunities to extend the hip

02:34:04.240 | how can i work hip extension exercises into everything i do how do i look at or do i look for

02:34:11.680 | full full chain or full body force transmission exercises as much as i possibly can ideally from

02:34:20.720 | the left foot to the right hand and the right foot to the left hand so cross body so i'm looking for these

02:34:25.360 | long fascial chains so like ways in which i can bring some function to the work that i'm doing in

02:34:32.480 | the weight room some level of transferability between the things that i do in the weight room and the

02:34:37.280 | things that we do on the track because frankly most of the things that we do in the weight room don't

02:34:41.840 | transfer to the track a squat doesn't really transfer it's a totally different exercise performed a

02:34:46.720 | totally different way at a totally different time totally different weights so the transference is

02:34:52.080 | very very far it's very it's not very nebulous so i'm looking for ways in which we can find a way to

02:34:58.560 | transfer the capacities that we are building in the weight room directly to the track and with respect to

02:35:04.720 | stretching i'm thinking again of yoga because this is where the probably the first time i've done this

02:35:08.320 | where one would lunge so front foot planted flat rear foot up on the big toe if possible the knee back

02:35:17.040 | of that rear foot um or rear leg excuse me back behind the butt and then the opposite arm raised above

02:35:24.080 | that's that fascial um sling that cuts across from and you know in anatomy nomenclature contralateral

02:35:31.760 | across the midline um and then essentially trying to learn to feel that um line that goes all the way

02:35:39.920 | from one's big toe that's planting back across up the leg across the the pelvis up the body and shoulder

02:35:45.600 | to the opposite tips of finger 100 and it's it's if uh if i can add to that stretch um this is something

02:35:53.520 | 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

02:36:01.920 | there is a way to do this but then it's up to you to find out a better way for you specifically so

02:36:07.040 | you've done a great job of outlining what the stretch looks like now what can i do with my body

02:36:11.600 | to actually make this better do i rotate to one side do i side bend to one side do i flex the hand

02:36:17.760 | as well as as well as doing this so because this will be a better stretch than that so palm parallel to

02:36:23.600 | the to the ceiling 100 of the raised hand correct if i push the knee back and try to push the heel

02:36:29.600 | on the ground and actually contract if i rotate my pelvis underneath me posteriorly like you know

02:36:35.440 | do a a pelvic tilt underneath me well will that increase it so it's always this explore exploratory

02:36:41.600 | process there is a right way to do things but you are an individual we're all unique snowflakes right

02:36:47.280 | we're all moving different ways and it's up to us to explore all of our uniqueness distant topic from

02:36:54.080 | the one that we're on but one that i and i think a number of people are curious about is drugs in

02:37:00.400 | sports um performance enhancing drugs there's a new um potentially new sports league track league

02:37:10.880 | which is the enhanced games who knows if that will go through um but right now using performance

02:37:17.120 | enhancing drugs most performance enhancing drugs is banned in track but because of the ben johnson thing

02:37:25.200 | that was 88 olympics where he was like jaundiced at the eyes and you know it turned out he was taking

02:37:30.400 | winstraw and he was stripped of his metal um and then the discussion is they're all using it some just

02:37:37.280 | get caught this kind of thing or they're using in the off season how common is um people usually say

02:37:44.480 | steroid use but androgen enhancement right because performance enhancing drugs could be drugs to lower

02:37:50.240 | the heart rate for the biathletes they do that too right keep your heart rate lower you know there's all

02:37:55.200 | sorts of drugs that are banned that are not androgen increasing but yeah but things like um

02:38:01.840 | testosterone derivatives yeah in the men and women how common is it yeah um uh now not common at all

02:38:10.720 | in fact i don't know of any elite sprinter that i could um definitely point to say that person is dirty

02:38:20.560 | none it was common 60s and 70s extremely common 80s very very common 90s when testing started

02:38:28.160 | becoming a bit better much less common 2000s 2010s and 20s i just don't know how much of it is getting

02:38:35.600 | done now or being done across the board there are pockets so we obviously know about russia and what's

02:38:42.320 | going on with the eastern block and all of the drugs that they've taken that's been state sponsored

02:38:46.320 | all of that is out there we know that for sure if you were an elite russian athlete almost certainly

02:38:52.560 | you were taking drugs you didn't have a choice you didn't have a choice no one really knows now

02:38:57.920 | because russia has been banned from all sports so you don't see russian athletes almost anywhere

02:39:01.600 | um i think there's a few few sports that you do but most of them now you don't see russian athletes

02:39:07.440 | but it's so hard like that's a part of the culture and has been part of the culture for

02:39:13.200 | you know since the 50s that's what we do because everyone else is cheating so this is what we do so

02:39:18.000 | it's a state-sponsored system and i feel like there's you know there's 150 or 160 something like

02:39:26.000 | that positive drug cases come out of kenya over the course of the last decade so you think okay there's

02:39:32.720 | something going on with in with kenyans is that distance running distance running and there i should

02:39:37.520 | say because some people might not be uh familiar with this um with distance running or cycling

02:39:43.360 | triathlon it's probably not increasing androgens like testosterone dihydrotestosterone etc it's

02:39:49.360 | probably um things that increase red blood cell count right ability to deliver more oxygen and fuel

02:39:55.920 | sources to the cells this kind of blood uh epo these and things like that yeah but but and and this one in

02:40:01.760 | kenya like i understand it i understand the russian thing as well like if you're a kenyan kid you're 18

02:40:07.680 | years old you've got some talent an agent comes to you and says i'm going to give you fifty thousand

02:40:13.040 | dollars and i'm going to support you for the first two years of your career and this is what everyone

02:40:18.400 | does anyway and you know we'll take the risk a little bit but we can you know you can actually make

02:40:24.000 | something of yourself become a star get a house feed your family do this do that that's a hard

02:40:30.320 | calculation for a kid to make as it was in the steroid era in baseball it's almost logical to take

02:40:36.560 | drugs at that point right these guys aren't testing me at all so why wouldn't i why wouldn't barry bonds

02:40:42.160 | take drugs now that's a different calculation for most of the rest of the world where there isn't these

02:40:49.280 | practices going on in kenya with a lot of a lot of shady people to be honest with you and and i honestly

02:40:56.640 | i do not see drugs at all in the sport anymore there will be pockets of people like for sure there will

02:41:01.760 | be some dirt there'll be a few dirty coaches there'll be a few dirty managers there'll be a few people

02:41:06.080 | doing some dirty things but i'm very very confident that the top people in all of the events are doing

02:41:13.120 | it clean very confident it's great to hear it and i i would not know the first like i've been in the

02:41:19.840 | sport for a long time i would know what to do what to take who to get it from so when i look at you know

02:41:25.840 | i look at uh you know choose your athlete i won't name any names and you look at their who they're

02:41:29.920 | surrounded by i know those people well how would they do it i had no idea like no one really knows

02:41:35.360 | right because i mean the drug testing is pretty stringent now it's really it's hard it's really really

02:41:42.240 | hard that's um encouraging to hear um especially for young people who are watching olympics and you

02:41:48.880 | know it's a terrible thing that if they were to think oh you know they're all they're all using um

02:41:54.320 | and i think one good trend in the last few years is there's a lot more openness now in the kind of

02:42:00.800 | fitness world because when i was growing up of course those like veiny bodybuilder people were

02:42:05.280 | they were all juiced to the gills and they'd say they weren't but they absolutely were and nowadays you

02:42:10.480 | know if people are doing trt or something they say it right you know i've talked about it microdose every

02:42:16.960 | other day since i was 45 never before then but i've relied on other things to keep testosterone in

02:42:22.960 | range and i take hcg maintain fertility that's all checked out but i'm very clear about exactly how

02:42:28.320 | much the internet has it wrong it's 25 milligrams every other day by the way i'm staggered with 600

02:42:33.040 | i use of hcg every other day i said that early on because i was like i'm not a competitive athlete i got

02:42:38.000 | nothing to hide right and i'll say that was it trt i'll say not really because my testosterone was in

02:42:43.920 | mid-sevens but i was getting fatigued a lot and bumping it up a little bit higher which is what this

02:42:48.880 | has done has been great for me but it's the people that lie like the liverking situation where he looked at

02:42:56.640 | the camera unfortunately and filmed himself saying i i that he doesn't and then he gets caught it's like

02:43:02.480 | blah and then you've got people that are juicing really hard and um and it's tricky in sports

02:43:08.400 | because or in movies right like when an actor suddenly is like big and shredded and you're just

02:43:14.160 | like oh you know the telltale signs it's probably not testosterone it's probably oxandrolone or something

02:43:19.040 | a little bit quote-unquote lighter but there's not nothing light about oxandrolone on your liver or

02:43:23.360 | your hairline folks so um but this is a bigger discussion but i think it's important to just be

02:43:29.280 | open about it yeah you know because um we want to see people run faster than ever before we want to see

02:43:37.440 | people jump higher than ever before we want to see people run marathons faster than ever before

02:43:42.320 | and it sucks when we find out that they were enhanced and that was breaking the rules what what

02:43:49.520 | sucks more is the reputational damage that those things do for the people who are actually doing

02:43:56.400 | this well and clean right the 99.9 percent of the people who are trying to do this the right way

02:44:01.680 | that are being colored with the same brush right and that's what really frustrates me it was really

02:44:06.720 | frustrated i've coached one athlete in my career who tested positive 2001 olympic trials and bobsled his

02:44:14.080 | name was pavly jovanovic he was um at the time the best bobsledder on the planet

02:44:20.080 | so tested positive for nandrolone so deca duravolone um later it was shown that it came from his

02:44:36.080 | supplement so if you remember this was 2001. oh yeah you could you could buy ghb late 90s at gnc at

02:44:44.640 | that time correct late 90s up until the the early 2000s there were supplement companies purposefully

02:44:52.240 | lacing their protein with steroids to try to sell more supplements goodness gracious and there's studies

02:44:58.560 | that showed this and they ended up there was a group of athletes that all tested positive that sued this one

02:45:04.400 | company that uh and you know the company ended up just you know declaring bankruptcy and nobody got a

02:45:10.640 | cent and long story short ruined his career ruined his reputation ended up taking his own life

02:45:17.280 | so i've seen and this is you know this is just people from the outside just look at that and say

02:45:23.360 | oh just another druggie bobsetter just another druggie football player just another druggie sprinter

02:45:29.760 | they're all on drugs and they're not they're not 99.9 of people trying to do this right like they're

02:45:36.960 | good people not making any money in this sport especially in track and field it's a different

02:45:42.160 | calculation as you said in hollywood or in the nfl or in baseball where the testing is significantly

02:45:49.120 | more relaxed than it is in track and field or significantly more relaxed than what it is in

02:45:53.440 | almost all amateur sports amateur sports is almost impossible to be dirty these days it really is and

02:45:59.600 | if you just think about this trayvon bromell ran 997 as a high school kid he was five foot seven 135 pounds

02:46:08.800 | think that kid was taking drugs of course he wasn't so if you can run 997

02:46:16.160 | as a 17 year old at that age why can't you run nine seven six seven eight years later after actually

02:46:25.120 | training and being an elite program of course you can yusain bolt ran 1984 when he was 18 years old

02:46:30.080 | he ran sub 10 when he was 19 years old world class just a kid just a kid yeah like these these you know

02:46:37.840 | you're seeing high school kids now running ridiculously fast times in the mile as well in in every single

02:46:43.600 | event right every event across and they're not assisted this is one thing where i hear we're

02:46:48.240 | cutting between sport and we're talking about fitness and you know i the reason i mentioned the

02:46:52.560 | age when i started trt is that a um never never occurred to me didn't need it i felt like i got great

02:47:00.560 | results uh until then um and i think the biggest thing is recovery i think it helps i do think it helps

02:47:06.640 | you recover uh better no question actually um but a real shame nowadays is that because of instagram

02:47:16.560 | and people showing their bodies and this desire for people to get results more quickly a lot of guys

02:47:21.600 | in their teens 20s and 30s are taking testosterone when they don't need it it does shut down sperm

02:47:30.160 | production unless they're offsetting that with hcg or something like that and um they may think they

02:47:36.160 | don't want kids now but they may want them later and some permanent damage can be done in addition

02:47:40.720 | to that i mean puberty is a very protracted thing for a lot of people it's not like oh yeah you know

02:47:44.720 | you start puberty at 14 it ends at 16 your brain's still developing so we we don't really understand how

02:47:49.680 | all that works not this olympics but prior to that one there was a female athlete who tested positive for

02:47:56.960 | deca um the deca burrito she blamed it on a burrito meat and i remember hearing that and i sort of

02:48:03.360 | facetiously said and i'll say it again not facetiously like if she got caught for deca i hope she took deca

02:48:12.480 | because to knowingly take a banned substance and get caught and then banned from the sport is one thing

02:48:20.240 | but to inadvertently take a banned substance as did this bobsledder and then get banned from your sport

02:48:28.400 | that's a real tragedy for multiple reasons and that's what happened dreadful it is it's absolutely

02:48:35.520 | dreadful she just she just started competing again like last month rob and i were actually talking about

02:48:40.480 | this yesterday at the track she's she's made the world indoor team for us atf uh starting next week

02:48:47.680 | i think it definitely happens you know we we look at that and there's yeah they're blaming the burrito

02:48:52.960 | they're blaming meat or whatever but 100 why would you you run 5k why are you taking deca why are you

02:48:59.600 | taking natural it doesn't make sense no it makes zero sense you're not doing that yeah like that is from the

02:49:04.480 | meat well i get contacted a lot um probably not as much as other people do uh by athletes at different

02:49:12.720 | levels professional amateur etc asking about ways to improve testosterone etc i got great results all

02:49:18.560 | through my um mid-30s until mid-40s and and still with like tonga ali freeing some testosterone up my

02:49:25.760 | blood charts told me that worked for me may not work for everybody great fedogia things like that

02:49:31.120 | things like that subtle effects but meaningful subtle but meaningful um and then athletes will

02:49:36.720 | ask me well is it allowed i said you have to check with your organization you just can't take something

02:49:41.360 | you have to check with your organization the thing i am well aware of now is all the peptide use

02:49:46.480 | right peptides are really really big and they're in use in the general population more and more and

02:49:52.640 | it'll be interesting to see how those impact sport i'm not aware of any athletes at least none have come

02:49:56.560 | to me saying they take these peptides but um it's gonna be interesting to see how that shapes sport i

02:50:03.040 | think people over estimate how much these drugs contribute to success at the elite level yeah i i because

02:50:12.720 | i mean what you're talking about with these athletes you work with are just the you know hundreds and

02:50:18.160 | hundreds of hours of work to get a one percent improvement in some metric or point one percent

02:50:26.400 | point one percent it's just you know i think people really overestimate it sure if people just want to

02:50:31.520 | be big with a bunch of acne yeah you can do that big acne sterile like there you know that you can get

02:50:38.720 | 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

02:50:45.760 | your time it's no drugs drug is thousands of hours of work right it is sleeping really well it's eating

02:50:53.600 | really well it's having a good proper life you know it's there's no shortcut to that there really isn't

02:51:01.040 | you've got to get really really fast to be fast and this is even back in the drug era you didn't take

02:51:09.520 | drugs to be fast you got fast first and then you took drugs and that made you faster that's how

02:51:15.760 | people 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

02:51:21.040 | 10 2 to 9 8 it doesn't happen that way so it's now it's it's for me it's like the most important

02:51:27.200 | one for me is are you training well is it organized properly are you sleeping well are you eating well are

02:51:33.440 | you taking whatever the the good clean supplements that you can take and we take very very few by the

02:51:40.480 | way and do you have a good social life and then all of these things come together and interact in a way

02:51:46.800 | that feeds your purpose of running fast you know that's that's it honestly it says as i said with with

02:51:53.200 | andre i spoke i started working with andre in 2015. he could not squat his body weight basically you know

02:52:00.960 | three olympic medals 18 months after starting the sport it can be done which shows yeah okay this is

02:52:06.560 | being done that's awesome and it it points to the fact that more muscle isn't always the solution no

02:52:13.680 | the things that keep coming to mind are the ability to put away uh self-consciousness to use the body to

02:52:21.840 | express to find oneself yeah um and it's so interesting because i thought we were gonna sit down and talk about

02:52:28.480 | running yeah me too but i think these are much larger and if i may uh more important themes although

02:52:37.200 | people should definitely skip and stride and uh dupli metrics i'd be interested to hear your thoughts

02:52:47.600 | i asked you this question earlier like do you feel like there is a single metric that is a better

02:52:53.360 | determinant for overall health or vitality than the ability to maximally sprint now not be fast but to

02:53:03.120 | go out and actually sprint maximally think about all of the things that come along with the ride with

02:53:10.400 | that think about vo2 max like vo2 max in and of itself isn't important it's a proxy for all of these other

02:53:16.800 | things that are important the ability to sprint maximally isn't necessarily important but it's a

02:53:21.680 | proxy for everything else i can't think of anything else and you're talking to somebody who's now working

02:53:28.080 | on grip strength uh because i was challenged publicly by paul saladino um the carnivore md who now talks about

02:53:36.000 | animal diet and people are starting to take him more seriously by the way because at first it was all meat

02:53:41.760 | then it was meat and fruit there's meat fruit and some dairy yeah um i do this and i also eat

02:53:47.120 | vegetables the guy has salad in his name for god's sake uh he's a friend i'm friends with him i'm friends

02:53:53.280 | with lane i'm friends with the t i i get along with all those guys but some of them don't get along with

02:53:57.200 | each other i'll tell you that um but he challenged me to a grip strength contest which actually was not

02:54:04.640 | grip strength and he said this is the marker of longevity um and he hello bastard hung from a bar

02:54:12.560 | switching hands yeah for 12 plus minutes yeah in the rain now he had someone toweling off the bar

02:54:19.920 | but that is a very impressive grip strength slash endurance score sure um as long as we're on this i

02:54:26.800 | mean this has become like kind of an online thing people want to um challenge each other with here are my

02:54:31.200 | biometrics you asked what are the markers of longevity brian johnson is big on these are my

02:54:34.960 | markers those have become controversial lately because it's unclear the markers were all collected

02:54:39.600 | at the same date uh you know there's questions about uh for instance um it's weird that testosterone

02:54:47.280 | will be elevated but not showing lh means you're probably enhanced and if he is cool but people need

02:54:52.320 | to be very open the nice thing about what paul showed is he showed the full length video right

02:54:57.280 | you have to show the full length video folks brian i'm calling you out specifically you can't post vo2

02:55:04.640 | max and not show the actual ride and the read off the off the the you have to show video people don't

02:55:11.360 | trust it anymore and so the point here is is grip strength is it vo2 max is it your testosterone

02:55:17.600 | relative to free testosterone it's all these things like you said if i were to step back and say is there a single

02:55:24.880 | physical metric i i think you got me i think that the ability to run fast without blowing a gasket

02:55:31.760 | or injuring yourself in some way um run fast for you it would be it and and i did not think about that

02:55:41.680 | or and i certainly wouldn't have said that at the beginning of uh this conversation so i think it's a

02:55:46.640 | very important insight and that's if nothing else should motivate everybody to get better at it great and

02:55:51.760 | they can check out the video that we did what you said earlier has become to me and will remain my goal

02:55:58.480 | i think that well-being physical well-being mental well-being is the ability to

02:56:04.320 | exert express pressure mentally and physically like sit down like you know to actually generate pressure

02:56:13.040 | around doing something hard that's you know takes an organization of mind and body it could be a physical

02:56:17.760 | pursuit and then to feel peace from the better expression of that cognitive or physical or creative

02:56:27.280 | endeavor i think this um this pressure peace thing is is more than non-trivial i think i think it's the

02:56:34.320 | essence of what i've been seeking my whole life the ability to exert pressure and to create things

02:56:40.720 | that are meaningful and then the ability to feel peace uh i think is um well it's it's yours you

02:56:47.440 | came up with it i'm just yeah but i was applying it to specifically a task a hundred meter sprint test

02:56:52.880 | and you've taken it and yeah that makes a lot of sense i love that because you got to sleep at night

02:56:57.280 | you gotta train hard 100 you gotta do your if you're me you know formal education and then you gotta also

02:57:03.920 | relax and have a good time and can you do them all at the same time that's the that's the key yeah can

02:57:09.200 | you structure your days in a way where the first two-thirds is just pure pressure and be okay with

02:57:13.520 | that because you know there's peace coming yeah because of some of the things that you pressured

02:57:17.600 | upon yourself love it well i love it and it's all it's all yours stu and um i have to say i it's been

02:57:24.480 | years i've been wanting to sit down and talk with you for a very long time we run into each other at track

02:57:29.520 | meets we do and um it's a real honor and pleasure you've taught us so much and there's much more so

02:57:35.200 | i hope you'll come back at some point and we'll um talk about other things as things evolve but talk

02:57:40.560 | about sprinting talk about sprinting and um i'll do a dangerous thing uh which is to say if folks want

02:57:46.960 | to go to a track meet i'll be at the track meets um and i'll probably be letting people know when i'll be

02:57:53.200 | at track meets i go as a fan um i'm not looking for uh attention there i'm actually there to just

02:57:59.440 | enjoy the the incredible expression of the athletes both physical and emotional expression it's it's a

02:58:05.600 | real it's a real beautiful thing it really is no i appreciate you i appreciate you showing up to those

02:58:09.680 | meets and talking about those meets it's important for our our uh possibly dying sport so it's uh it's

02:58:16.960 | important that we get more people out to these meets and and support track and field the the foundation

02:58:22.160 | of human movement well you're a legend as everyone says in the sport and outside of it too thank you

02:58:29.360 | so much for your time it's been it's been a real pleasure and an honor thanks andrew appreciate you

02:58:33.920 | thank you for joining me for today's discussion with stew mcmillan to learn more about his work

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

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