Stuart McMillan
ALTIS CEO
Streamlining Warm-Ups for Faster Acceleration
In last week's article I shared how I use the hip extension [or "knees behind butt"] pattern to structure my daily training sessions. The theme of that session was "initial acceleration"-the first 4-6 steps of the run-and the objective was to "project the center of mass as far and as fast as possible in a horizontal direction." Throughout the entire...
How to Coach Hip Extension for Speed
This week, I'm going to continue from where I left off in my last article, and write about how I apply the "knees behind butt" concept in practice-specifically, how does this pattern impact my coaching? First, let's look at how I structure each session. I organize it into six components: theme, objective, pattern, strategies, details, and any additional notes or...
rethinking hip extension for athletic performance
Did you read Monday's How We Move email? I put it up on the ALTIS site, in case you missed it. I wrote about movement patterns - and what I believe is the one true "fundamental" one - the "knee behind butt" pattern [coined by my friend Kelly Starrett], which of course is the hip extension pattern. In today's post,...
The Most Fundamental of Movement Patterns
By now, many in strength and sports conditioning circles have come across the "knees over toes" [KOT] concept. Ben Patrick, known as the 'Knees Over Toes Guy,' popularized it on social media, challenging the old idea that knees should never pass the toes during movement. While this approach has spurred valuable discussion, it's not without criticism. A Sportsmith article from...
Why Su Bingtian has the best acceleration in history, and how it was done.
In last week's post, I left you with a question about how you might use a Whole Body Motor Strategy System to inform your coaching or therapy. Did you give this some thought? Any ideas? Here are mine, if you're interested: Inform sprinting mechanics Aid in training prescription Help predict injuries Monitor return to performance programs Establish cohort-specific norms Let's...
A Whole-Body Approach in Pro Sports [New insights into sprint biomechanics]
In last week's article, we talked about a holistic way of looking at sprint biomechanics - what's been called a whole-body approach, and I shared Dr. James Wild's initial forays into this from over a decade ago. In this work, he developed a dual-axis framework which determined the motor strategy of athletes based upon their relative step rate - step...
what the heck’s a whole-body strategy? [a big-picture look into sprint biomechanics]
In sprint biomechanics, we can quite easily get caught up in the minutia. Ground contact time, flight time, step length, step frequency, stiffness, momentum, acceleration, peak velocity, average velocity, thigh angular velocity, toe-off angle, touchdown distance … the list goes on. It can quickly become overwhelming - so I totally understand the nature of many of your questions as they...
Why Sprinting Biomechanics Matter – with the exception of technique
In this article, I'm going to talk about all the reasons why sprinting biomechanics matter - with the exception of technique! Coaches often view sprint technique in team sports through the same lens as in track and field, but they are very different. In track and field, biomechanical analyses of sprinting have a long history. In team sports, the role...
The Motion-IQ Braking-COD Report
The Motion-IQ COD-Braking Report is finally here! Today, we're introducing our new COD-Braking Report - developed with agility expert Rich Clarke. We've had a ton of requests for this over the last 6 months, and so it's with great excitement that we can finally share it with you. Page 1 of The Report is an overview of the most-important COD...
Fascia: A historical Perspective
INTRODUCTION In our centuries-long quest to comprehend the complexities of the human body, we have often adopted a reductionist approach - dissecting systems into their constituent parts to study and understand each element in isolation. While this has led to significant advancements in medical science, it has also imposed limitations, as such a method rarely tells us how those...