Stuart McMillan
Fluid and Ferocious: The paradox at the heart of elite sprinting
Sprinters are often told to relax. Don't tighten up. Run free. It's not wrong. But it's only half the story. Bud Winter was writing about it in the 1940s, his ideas eventually published as Relax and Win in 1981. Tom Tellez built it into his work with Carl Lewis and others through the 1980s and 90s. The word has been...
The Nested System of Sense-Making
Over the last fifteen years, I have organized my own sense-making around what I call HAMs — heuristics, aphorisms, and models. Small world strategies to make better sense of big world problems. Across the last couple of weeks in Australia and New Zealand, speaking with coaches, sport scientists, and therapists, I shared eight different HAMs I've stolen, developed, or co-created...
Movement, Novelty, and Exploration: Unlocking Performance Through Neuroplasticity
This guest article is written by Sophie Dowson, a neuroscientist and UK national Pole Vault medalist whose work sits at the intersection of brain science and human performance. With a background spanning psychology, neuroscience, and applied performance environments, Sophie brings a rare ability to translate complex research into practical insight for coaches and athletes. In this piece, she explores how...
Pep’s Blind Spot
Man City will not win the Premier League this season, and it is Pep Guardiola’s fault. He may be the most influential tactician in modern coaching, someone who has changed how the game is played from youth levels through to the top professional tiers in every corner of the globe, but he has a weak spot — one that I...
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...
Coordination as a Generalizable Quality: Why Kids Aren’t as Coordinated as They Used to Be —and What Coaches Can Do About It
Last week in Cayman, during our Team Speed event, someone asked why it seems that young athletes today aren't as coordinated as they used to be - and what we can do to help them. It's a fair question. We see it everywhere. Movement looks a little more rigid, less fluid, less connected than it once did. The answer to...
The Pebble and the Sprint: Why Complexity Lives in the Eye of the Beholder
Walking down the street, you notice a pebble. To most of us, it’s a simple thing. You can pick it up, throw it, rub it against the ground to smooth it out. Beyond that, there isn’t much more to do with it. A pebble seems like a very simple system. But place that same pebble in the hands of a...
“Stop Doing A-Drills” — The Full Context Behind Stu McMillan’s Comment
Well… that escalated quickly. Yesterday, we shared a short clip from Stu McMillan's Speed Summit session. In it, he said: "If anything you take from this - just please stop doing A-drills and wall drills… You're wasting your time." Within hours, the comments were busy; curious coaches weighing in from every angle. Some applauded it. Others strongly disagreed. Many wanted...
Embodied Skill: A Philosophical Guide to Moving from Rules to Coordination
When we teach or learn any complex movement, we usually begin with a reductionist approach. We break the action into parts and teach clear rules for each one. In sprinting, that might mean cues like “drive the thigh,” “dorsiflex the foot,” or “push the ground away.” In driving a stick shift, it’s “clutch in, shift gear, clutch out.” When learning...
4 Simple Tests That Elevate Your Return-to-Performance Strategy
Over the past few years, Les Spellman has touched on Return to Performance from so many different angles - and let's be real, it's such a deep topic, promising to touch it all in an email would do it a major disservice. But today, we want to focus on one area Les and his team have refined over the years:...