ALTIS

📽️ FREE 30-MINUTE VIDEO TUTORIAL

🥇🥈🥉 Stuart McMillan has coached over 70 Olympians at 7 Olympic Games, over 30 of whom have won medals.

🤝 Join him in a FREE 30 minute video, where he takes Dr. John Berardi - a Masters Athlete - through two staples of our programming:

▶️ The Dribbles Series
▶️ The MJ Rudiment Series

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How hard should training be?

It's a simple question.

The answer isn't.

During Live Call 6 of our Team Speed Coach Certification, the conversation turned to an idea many coaches wrestle with:

Should every athlete be pushed to their limit?

Or should training reflect the athlete in front of you?

An experienced veteran with years of training behind them may thrive on brutal gym sessions.

A rookie preparing for their first professional season may need something completely different.

The objective isn't to prove how hard your programme is.

The objective is to prepare the athlete for the demands they're about to face.

As Team Speed host - Meg Young puts it in this clip:

"Who cares if someone thinks it's 'soft' if it's right?"

That's one of the hardest parts of coaching—having the confidence to program for the athlete, rather than for the opinions of others.

This discussion came from Live Call 6 of our Team Speed Coach Certification.

Cohort 2 opens for registration soon and begins in October 2026.

➡️ Register your interest: https://loom.ly/cZIwGjA

Drills.

Few topics generate more debate among coaches.

But perhaps the problem isn't drills themselves. It's how we use them.

Coach Stu McMillan often says that instead of starting with the parts of a system—chasing every new drill or exercise—we should first understand the adaptation we're trying to create, then choose the tools that best serve that purpose.

In other words, don't start with the drill. Start with the outcome.

A drill without a clear purpose is just movement.

A drill designed to solve a specific problem becomes a valuable coaching tool.

Take sprinting.

Stu describes sprinting as being built around three broad coordination patterns:

• Hip extension
• Hip flexion
• Foot-to-ground interaction

Of those three, which do you think makes up the majority of sprint drills?

Hip flexion.

The familiar A-drills have been a staple of coaching for decades. They're easy to teach, easy to improve, and they give both coaches and athletes a visible sense of progress.

But the greatest differentiators in sprinting lie elsewhere.

Hip extension is where athletes generate and direct force. How much force can you apply? How quickly can you apply it? And in what direction?

Foot-to-ground interaction may be even more important—and it's considerably harder to coach.

This pattern begins as the thigh blocks and continues until the foot passes beneath the centre of mass. It includes terminal swing and braking, demands high levels of posterior chain force, precise timing, and coordination, and it's the phase in which many hamstring injuries occur.

Of course, these patterns don't exist in isolation. As Stu often points out, they are interdependent. The effectiveness of hip extension influences hip flexion, which in turn influences foot-to-ground interaction. Sprinting is always a coordinated whole.

But if we're going to isolate parts of the movement for training, it makes sense to spend more time on the patterns that are both the most important and the most difficult to develop.

That's where the right tools matter.

For decades at ALTIS we've used dribbles and dribble progressions to improve foot-to-ground interaction. For many athletes they're highly effective. Others—particularly team sport athletes—often need additional support to develop the coordination required.

That's where the Activator Belt comes in.

Originally developed by Randy Huntington in 1996, the Activator Belt provides dynamic resistance while helping athletes better coordinate hip extension with foot strike. The result is improved timing, more efficient force transfer, and better coordination through one of the most demanding phases of sprinting.

The point isn't that every coach needs an Activator Belt.

The point is that every drill should earn its place.

Start with the adaptation. Then choose the tool that helps create it.

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