US track and field standout Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is expecting her first child, with a due date in July. The athlete shared that she has scaled back her training, emphasizing that her baby’s health is now her top priority.
Since childhood, James McMillian has learned the value of slowly getting stronger.
McMillian said he was diagnosed with asthma when he was born, and doctors advised his parents against letting him play sports like youth tackle football. “It made me tell myself that I need to train harder,” McMillian told Business Insider.
Before and after practice, McMillian recalled running up the stadium steps six times. He’d also run to practice or run home with his sports equipment. Even though his asthma wasn’t induced by sports, he noticed that the extra training kept him from being as winded.
McMillian is now the president and a trainer at Tone House, a strength training and conditioning-focused training facility deemed by Business Insider as “the hardest workout in New York City.” He applies that same mentality from his upbringing to Tone House workouts that he coaches.
James McMillian
“You’re going to be exposed for your weaknesses, but then you should always turn your weaknesses into your strengths,” he said.
McMillian believes progressively overloading — slowly adding weight, reps, or intensity — is the best way to build strength.
“I always tell people, ‘If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it,” he said, particularly since we lose muscle mass as we age. “You’re going to want to pick up your kid. You’re going to want to hold those groceries. You’re going to want to hold your Louis Vuitton bag a little bit longer at an event. You have to be strong to do that.”
McMillian shared a few of his favorite quick movements to build muscle, whether you’re a complete beginner, pressed for time at the gym, or wanting to speed up your progress.
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McMillian’s favorite movement for beginners is the goblet squat, or squatting while holding a heavy kettlebell or dumbbell.
“When you’re going into that squat, as you allow those knees to go out, you’re working that lower body, your glutes, your hamstrings,” he said. At the same time, you’re also engaging your lats, triceps, forearms, and upper back from holding the weight.
To make the goblet squat more challenging, he said, you can elevate your heels to focus on building quad strength. McMillian also said it’s easy to start with a lighter weight, say 10 pounds, and gradually work your way up.
James McMillian
Some of the best time-savers are compound exercises, which target multiple parts of the body at once and “allow you to shorten your time at the gym,” McMillian said.
A favorite of McMillian’s is transitioning from a squat to an overhead press, thus targeting both the upper and lower body.
He also likes to string together multiple consecutive movements. He opts for two rounds of 20 shoulder presses, 20 hammer curls, and 20 bent-over rows, all right after each other to activate different parts of his upper body.
“It’s intense, it burns, but it’s something that people can do with a single dumbbell,” he said, thus also saving time on swapping out equipment.
It’s also customizable, he said: You can use lighter weights and do fewer reps, but increase the number of rounds, for example.
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Explosive exercises — deliberately slowing down your tempo and “exploding” at the end of the movement — are also great for improving your strength, McMillian said.
He’s a fan of slowing down his back squats: lowering slowly for five seconds, pausing for another five at the bottom, and then quickly pushing up.
“When you do things a little bit slower, controlled, it builds strength,” he said, noting there’s more than one way to challenge yourself.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sarah Canzano, the mother of Gavin Canzano. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I’m the mom of an elite teenage athlete. My husband was a downhill skier as a teenager, and he taught our boys, Gavin and Deacon, to ski when they were about two or three. I don’t ski at all.
Gavin was a shy and reserved kid, but he was a different kid on the mountain. He was so confident. We used to say that skiing was like oxygen to him. It’s where he is at his best.
Gavin began skiing with the Bristol Mountain Freestyle team when he was around 8 years old. It’s a feeder into the US Ski Team. It was apparent quickly that he was very good in the air. In 2024, when he was 14, he was invited to Lake Placid, N.Y., to participate in the US Ski Team’s Project Gold, an aerial camp. He was all in on aerial skiing after that.
Courtesy of Sarah Canzano
Now 15, he is part of the US Ski Team’s national development program for aerials. He trains with his national teammates at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid. He also travels for competitions.
He’s a 15-year-old boy. He makes mistakes. But as long as he’s working hard, and doing the best he can at school and being a good human, we will continue to make sacrifices for him.
We have also had conversations with Gavin about the sacrifices that he would have to make on this path. That means school is going to be harder, because he’s going to miss a lot of school. He won’t be able to see his school friends that much when he’s competing and traveling. But, we’ve always told him, “We will work hard for you as long as you are working hard for yourself.”
Courtesy of Sarah Canzano
He loves what he does, which makes it easy for us to support him. If he ever got to the point where he didn’t want to do it anymore, we would never make him. It sounds insane considering the investment we’ve made, but it’s his body, his life. We are also teaching him to advocate for himself because we won’t always be with him.
I’m a travel agent, and we like to travel as a family. Before, we’d be off to an island somewhere every break, but now I’m spending that time standing on a mountain. We’ve definitely had to change our plans several times for him, but we never put that burden on him. This is our family’s choice.
My husband and I divide and conquer a lot. A lot of times, just my husband or just me will travel with Gavin, so that Deacon can be home, in school, and with his friends, pursuing his hobbies. Pat and I are apart a lot, but we also try to take advantage of that one-on-one time with our kids, and the moments we have together with them.
Deacon is the real hero here; he is such a supportive little brother. He goes along for the ride with minimal complaints and is Gavin’s biggest fan. He’s so proud of him.
We want him to have fun. He had me write “have fun” on his skis, so if he’s having a bad day or a couple of bad jumps, he can remind himself that this is fun.
Courtesy of Sarah Canzano
But it’s also serious. We might consider looking for financial sponsors soon, as we try to get him to where he needs to be. We will cross those bridges as they come. The goal is the US Ski Team for the 2034 Olympics. That sometimes feels overwhelming — it’s almost a decade away.
My job as his mom is balance. I have to let go of some control, but I also need to remember that he’s 15 and still needs a lot of guidance from us. I am confident in his abilities, and I’m now able to watch him jump without closing my eyes anymore.
