How To Sprint Faster: Key Aspects, Best Exercises & Routine

Everyone desires to lift big, but do you need to run fast? It’s best to. Sprinting is probably the most basic display of human performance and athletic ability, making it an important training variable.

You do not necessarily have to train for the Olympics, but improving your sprinting speed will improve your overall fitness and health. But how must you train to sprint faster? This text will show you.

Learn easy methods to get faster at sprinting and elevate your training.

What Is Sprinting Exactly?

We will sometimes use casual language to misdescribe things. For instance, we are going to often say we’re going for a “run” when, in point of fact, we’re going for a jog.

Even this includes some nuance, as there is not any set difference.

Nevertheless, a jog is a “slow run,” often described at a pace of 5mph or slower. This makes a run quicker than that. Biomechanically, a jog is performed when one foot stays planted on the bottom. Then again, running includes transient periods of going airborne.

Cool. But what’s sprinting?

Sprinting is running at maximal speed. This is essential, though, as every race technically runs at a maximum pace for a certain distance.

Sprinting stands out because you might be reaching your maximum speeds. That is comparable to the difference between your 10 rep and 1 rep max.

Sprinting is like your 1 rep max run.

Because of this, sprint races are short in duration. The longest official sprint distance is 400m or ¼ miles.

How To Sprint Faster: 8 Key Aspects

Though sprinting is a “natural” movement, if you need to sprint faster, it’s essential to specifically train to sprint faster.

This follows the principle of specificity in strength and conditioning, which states that your body will adapt to the stimulus you place on it. Due to this fact, it’s essential to improve the things that’ll make you quicker.

As you will see, there are a lot of ways to sprint faster besides running drills.

1. Improve Form

Proper sprinting is a distinct beast than simply running fast, because it’s a technical movement. Learning and improving the right biomechanics goes to make a huge effect in your overall sprint performance.

This is very true for beginners. Comparing this to weight training, it will be like attempting to perform the snatch without learning the movement.

It could actually at all times be higher even in case you think you have got good form.

Breaking down proper sprinting form reveals 4 parts that require specific training.

Phase 1: Starting — You possibly can sprint from either the blocks or a stationary position. This begins in a crouched stance, feet staggered and fingers touching the bottom. Firing off this position is where developing explosive power is crucial.

Phase 2: Acceleration — Use short strides that step by step lengthen, ensuring firm and early ground contact, and increase arm movement to construct the facility needed to achieve top speed. At this point, the body needs to be leaning forward, step by step coming up from the lower position throughout the start.

Phase 3: Top Speed—As you gain speed, your strides will step by step lengthen, and your torso will turn into more upright. Your goal here is to reduce ground contact together with your foot and strike the bottom together with your foot directly beneath your center of mass.

Phase 4: Braking—Yes. Learning to stop safely is an important a part of sprinting. You’re bringing your body to top speeds and must decelerate without causing injury. Improving braking ability will lessen the stress placed in your body and joints. Learn to decelerate step by step, avoid contact with the bottom in front of your body, avoid braking together with your heels, and keep your knees from locking.

It will be clever to rent a correct sprinting coach to optimize your form. If that is not an option, find one online or not less than some good videos.

2. Improving Power Increases Sprint Speed

Sprinting is commonly related to strength, and there’s a correlation. Nevertheless, power production is just as if no more essential.

Power is the flexibility to provide high amounts of force as fast as possible. Returning to sprinting form means you have to find a way to provide force to propel your body farther throughout the short time your foot is planted on the bottom.

Research has shown that the flexibility to enhance power, specifically horizontal power, leads to the flexibility to sprint faster.¹

3. Improve Lower Body Strength

Along with improving power, lower body strength can improve your top sprint speed.

At the identical time, there does appear to be an upper limit where increasing strength can have no effect.²

Due to this fact, this is very essential for beginners who start with a weaker strength base.

For comparison, elite sprinters often show higher relative levels of strength and power in comparison with other athletes.³ A goal of hitting a squat of two.0 times body weight seems to supply probably the most advantages.

The timing of strength training can even affect sprint performance. In the event you compete, you must perform most strength-specific training outside of the pre-season.

Nevertheless, strength training may even improve your joint and bone health, making you less prone to injury.

4. Improve Body Composition

Notice that we mentioned sprinters have great relative strength above. It is vital to maintain your body weight low, as every extra pound in your body will amplify the quantity of labor you have to perform to sprint.

Because of this an elite sprinter won’t just placed on mass for aesthetic purposes. In some unspecified time in the future, that mass will begin to weigh you down and offer no profit.

While deciding the proper amount of muscle will be tricky, your fat just isn’t. Fat offers no profit in sprinting, so you need to keep your body fat all the way down to as little as reasonably possible.

For comparison, elite sprinters have lower than 10% body fat. This doesn’t suggest it’s essential to hit single digits, but knowing that you simply are losing fat is a sure technique to run faster, even when all other variables remain the identical.

5. Improve Core Stability

The core is commonly ignored in sprinting ability, which is a mistake. One reason is that folks associate a powerful core with sit-ups.

In point of fact, the core’s primary function is to stabilize the torso and maintain ridges. Consequently, it may resist forces. Core stability training is completely obligatory if you need to sprint faster.

During sprinting, a stronger core allows an individual to sprint while maintaining level hips.⁴ As well as, you’ll be able to generate more force with stronger arm pumps.

6. Pay Special Attention To Your Glutes And Hamstrings

Sprinting requires a fast and powerful transition between hip flexion (driving the knees up) and hip extension (pulling the leg back once planted).

Nevertheless, hip extension is accountable for increasing speed because it pulls your body forward. As your foot is planted on the bottom, it extends, pulling your body forward.

At the identical time, this also makes hamstring injuries more common in sprinting, making it an area of particular concern.

7. Lengthen Stride

Two things determine your overall speed:

1. Stride length
2. Stride rate

We’ll discuss stride length here. This simply means how much ground you cover with one step.

Let’s pretend you were running a 400-meter sprint. Now, as an example your stride length is 1m. This is able to mean you’d have to make 400 strides to achieve 400m.

To illustrate your stride is 2m. You’d only have to make 200 strides.

This takes time as you improve your form and ultimately requires you to enhance the flexibleness and mobility of your hips (flexors and extensors).

7. Improve Stride Rate: Minimize Ground Contact & Increasing Force

As mentioned, along with improving your stride length for top speed. You may also need to extend the stride rate. That is the quantity of steps they take per minute.

Take into consideration in case your stride rate was 1.5 meters. For the sake of math, as an example you’ll run a 150-meter race. This implies you would want to take 100 strides to get there. It doesn’t matter how briskly you run; it would at all times take you 100 strides. Due to this fact, having the ability to perform 100 strides will get you there faster.

Depending in your body, the perfect relationship between stride length and stride rate can differ.

8. Include Unilateral Training

Although sprinting uses each legs, it may be considered a unilateral movement. Do not forget that sprinting occurs with just one leg planted at a time to tug the body forward.

Due to this fact, your strength and power training should include unilateral training. For instance:

Initially, these will train the legs in a more specific technique to sprinting.

But that is not all. Unilateral training will:

• Improve balance
• Improve stabilization
• Strengthen knee and hip joints

That is crucial to runners of all disciplines. For instance, there is a condition often known as Trendelenburg gait. This condition reveals itself in runners as their hips sag during their gait while walking or running.

Probably the most common issue is weak hip abductor muscles, specifically the gluteus medius. Due to this fact, strengthening hip abductors is critical to a faster sprint. 

It is vital to take into accout that the research on unilateral training’s superiority for transferring to performance is mixed.

Some research shows that unilateral training improves unilateral movement patterns to a better degree than bilateral training.⁵ Then again, some studies show that bilateral and unilateral training offers the identical amount of profit.⁶

But additionally, do not forget the advantage of joint stability from unilateral training, which can assist prevent injury.

Due to this fact, be sure you use each.

6 Kinds of Exercises To Sprint Faster

Now that you have got the fundamental parts of sprinting faster let’s take a look at some exercises to aid you sprint faster. These consult with resistance training exercises that needs to be used along with improving form and sprint drills.

Before we start, you must understand that you have to determine what’s most vital to you. It’s pretty common knowledge that endurance training can interfere with strength training, and while you’ll be able to include each, you must concentrate on one and prioritize it.

1. Back Squat

As mentioned above, lower leg strength is essential for a sprinter, and the back squat is the perfect technique to achieve it.

When training, you must primarily use a strength protocol. This includes heavy loads (85-95% 1RM), low reps (1-5), and long rests (2:00+). Keep it easy and use progressive overload.

Again, elite sprinters have a back squat of two.0 times body weight. That ought to keep you motivated.

2. Resisted Sprinting

Resisted sprinting: See a trainer use a sled or parachute attached to their hips as they run as hard as possible. Ultimately, this may increase a lifter’s horizontal strength and power.

Studies have shown that this training style will improve sprint performance, specifically throughout the acceleration phase.⁷ Some studies suggest that a load of 20% body weight provides probably the most profit throughout the initial acceleration from the beginning.

Take note that some coaches warn against overusing and resist sprinting for long durations. While it may help improve power production off the blocks, it would ultimately decelerate your mechanics overall. This might potentially lead to muscle memory having longer ground contact. Due to this fact, doing an excessive amount of could negatively affect form, so use it with a well-rounded training program.

3. Squat Jumps

Jump squats are one other lower body power movement that produces explosive speed.

Further, it tends to be the popular power exercise to enhance sprinter performance.⁸

You need to use various implements, but we just like the trap bar. The trap bar permits you to hold a load all the way down to your side, bringing the load towards your center of gravity and all the way down to your side, making it safer and easier to handle loads.

4. Lower Body Plyometrics And Ballistics

Plyometrics and ballistic exercises are just like power movements.

Plyometric exercises concentrate on improving your stretch-shortening cycle (SSC). The SSC occurs when a joint is opened quickly, stretching the muscle and ligaments. Similar to a rubber band, this quick stretch stores energy, which is then released. Consider pulling back before a punch.

Compared, ballistic exercises aim to provide maximal amounts of force throughout your entire concentric contraction. Generally, that is related to throwing movements equivalent to a box jump.

Regardless, performing each of those will improve power production in barely alternative ways. More importantly, they’ll help improve your running economy.⁹

This happens as your muscles can be trained to fireside quicker and more powerfully.

Ballistic movement will help with overall force production, especially throughout the start of an acceleration phase, while plyometrics will improve the flexibility to extend foot turnover during maximal speeds.

Some good movements for sprinters include:

• Countermovement jumps
• Broad jump
• Depth jump
• Single-leg horizontal jumps
• Skips
• Bounds

These will be included with or without ladders or hurdles.

5. Nordic Curls

Nordic curls are the most effective hamstring exercises to enhance strength and protect against injury.

They consist of getting in your knees and anchoring your ankles. Starting with an erect torso, you then lower your body slowly so far as you’ll be able to.

These are intense, making them so effective in strengthening your hamstring for higher sprint performance.

In truth, a 2018 study produced some awesome results using two groups of trainees. One group followed their “as usual” training, while the opposite included Nordic curls.

The Nordic curl group not only saw a greater increase in sprint performance after the training program but retained this advantage after a 3-week detraining period.¹⁰

6. Lunges, Split Squats, Single Leg RDLs

As mentioned above, unilateral training should definitely be a component of your training. This will include:

• Split squats
• Lunges
• Single Leg RDLs

Sprint Faster Workout Routine

Here’s a sample workout routine to aid you sprint faster. 

You’ll complete two workouts every week plus 2 sprint training days. Before each workout you must perform a 5-10 minute dynamic warm up. 

Be sure that you have got a rest day in between the workouts and sprint training days.

Workout A:

Sprint Workout:

Be sure that to finish a dynamic warm up plus 5-10 minutes of jogging before attempting your sprints. 

Workout B:

Sprint Workout:

Be sure that to finish a dynamic warm up plus 5-10 minutes of jogging before attempting your sprints. 

How Often Should You Train For Sprinting?

It’s crucial to do not forget that sprinting is a high-intensity activity. Again, it’s similar to performing a one-rep max deadlift or squat.

Sprinting at maximal speeds repeatedly demands high levels of labor, which ends up in a build-up of fatigue and stress. Due to this fact, the overall population shouldn’t repeat maximum sprints often.

The precise amount can vary greatly depending in your personal aspects. This might include:

• Body Weight
• Body composition
• Training Level
• Experience with sprinting
• Goals for sprinting (primary sport or an adjunct to training)

With that said, the overall suggestion is to perform maximal sprints once every two or three days. As well as, the entire distance sprinted is mostly around 1,000m weekly on your general athlete.

Again, this could go up dramatically for skilled or elite sprinters. Then again, it could go all the way down to just a number of 100m for beginners.

In the event you do not know where to start out, your first and best options are to search out a correct coach or discover a training plan online.

Aside from that, the principle of progressive overload applies similarly to lifting. Begin slowly with a number of 10m sprints every week, then construct up slowly.

Final Comments On Sprinting

Whether you are a bodybuilder, a powerlifter, a strongman, or take part in track and field, sprinting needs to be a part of your training to some extent.

Getting faster is similar as getting stronger– it would only profit you. At the identical time, the identical basic principles apply no matter where you might be in relation to level. Proceed to concentrate on the variables in this text and step by step increase over time.

References

1. Haugen, Thomas A., et al. “Sprint Mechanical Variables in Elite Athletes: Are Force-Velocity Profiles Sport Specific or Individual?” PLOS ONE, vol. 14, no. 7, 24 July 2019, p. e0215551, journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0215551, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.021555
2. Nuñez, Javier, et al. “Strength Training in Skilled Soccer: Effects on Short-Sprint and Jump Performance.” International Journal of Sports Medicine, 24 Sept. 2021, https://doi.org/10.1055/a-1653-7350.
3. Loturco, Irineu, et al. “Performance and Reference Data within the Jump Squat at Different Relative Loads in Elite Sprinters, Rugby Players, and Soccer Players.” Biology of Sport, vol. 38, no. 2, 2021, https://doi.org/10.5114/biolsport.2020.98452.
4. Afandi, Mohamed Azizul Mohamed, et al. “The Relationship between Core Strength Performance with Sprint Acceleration.” Journal of Physics: Conference Series, vol. 1793, no. 1, 1 Feb. 2021, p. 012056, https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1793/1/012056.
5. Zhang, Wenfeng, et al. “Effect of Unilateral Training and Bilateral Training on Physical Performance: A Meta-Evaluation.” Frontiers in Physiology, vol. 14, 13 Apr. 2023, https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2023.1128250.
6. Moran, Jason, et al. “Effects of Bilateral and Unilateral Resistance Training on Horizontally Orientated Movement Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Evaluation.” Sports Medicine, vol. 51, no. 2, 26 Oct. 2020, pp. 225–242, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-020-01367-9.
7. Bachero-Mena, Beatriz, and Juan José González-Badillo. “Effects of Resisted Sprint Training on Acceleration with Three Different Loads Accounting for five, 12.5, and 20% of Body Mass.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, vol. 28, no. 10, Oct. 2014, pp. 2954–2960, https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0000000000000492.
8. Loturco, Irineu, et al. “Squat and Countermovement Jump Performance across a Range of Loads: A Comparison between Smith Machine and Free Weight Execution Modes in Elite Sprinters.” Biology of Sport, 2022, https://doi.org/10.5114/biolsport.2022.112085.
9. Berryman, Nicolas, et al. “Effect of Plyometric vs. Dynamic Weight Training on the Energy Cost of Running.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, vol. 24, no. 7, July 2010, pp. 1818–1825, https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0b013e3181def1f5.
10. Siddle, James, et al. “Acute Adaptations and Subsequent Preservation of Strength and Speed Measures Following a Nordic Hamstring Curl Intervention: A Randomised Controlled Trial.” Journal of Sports Sciences, vol. 37, no. 8, 27 Oct. 2018, pp. 911–920, https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2018.1535786.