I posit that question as an entrée into the topic of sprinting, as many would ask, “Why should I sprint or add sprinting to my training program?”

There are many reasons why sprinting is worthwhile addition to anyone’s program, whether they’re an athlete, someone aspiring to be more athletic, or just someone who wants to get leaner.

Sprinting is the ultimate expression of power, coordination and athleticism. If you sprint well, you are by definition athletic. There is no question that the ability to run fast is almost universally appealing. It starts when we are kids and there is no event that draws more attention in the Olympics than the 100-meter sprint final which crowns the world’s fastest man and woman.

Sprinting can improve speed and power or be used as a conditioning tool, so it has versatility in application, but you must be clear as to what your goals are when sprinting. If you want to improve speed and power, then you efforts should be north of 80 percent and recovery should be virtually complete, i.e. three to five minutes minimum, depending on distance that was sprinted. The emphasis is on technique, high effort and complete recovery, which means lower volume (I would suggest 750 meters of total volume or less). More is not better in this case.

On the other hand, if you are using sprinting as a conditioning tool, then you will do more reps/repeats with less than complete recovery. Heart rate is a good way to monitor recovery, so when your heart rate returns to a certain level, you then do your next repeat. Personally, I use 120 beats per minute (BPM) as my target recovery heart rate, but this is dependent on your fitness level and training goals. Again, more volume isn’t necessarily better if technique falls apart and your form is crap. You can make the training effect more “intense” by increasing the effort, decreasing the rest interval, or making the target heart rate recovery level higher.

Sprinting improves hormonal profiles by increasing levels of testosterone, HGH and other anabolic hormones. This has the obvious benefit of improving body composition and lean body mass i.e. more muscle, less fat. And this in turn has implications for a variety of health factors like basal metabolism, as well as lifestyle diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease, among others.

Sprinting will improve sports performance in any sport where speed is a factor in success. In addition to endurance sports like cross country, that means virtually every field/court sport that we play, from baseball and basketball to tennis and lacrosse. The ability to create separation or close that gap is a function of speed and quickness, and you have to train fast in order to optimize your speed. Even as valuable and important as work in the weight room is in this equation, sprinting is a skill and like any skill, it must be practiced and honed to maximize your speed.

Sprinting will improve connective tissue strength, as the overload placed on the tendons and ligaments by sprinting forces them to adapt and get stronger to handle the stressors placed on them. This means that you have created a larger margin for error or safety margin for these connective tissues from your other hobbies and recreational activities and the activities of daily living. In other words, it serves like an insurance policy against possible injury to these tissues.

In addition, bone mineral density will improve more with sprinting than with either middle distance running or long distance running, as revealed by a recent study. The forces involved are greater in sprinting than in other forms of running, and it appears this has the effect of strengthening the bones even more than other forms of running where the forces are not as great.

In my opinion, sprinting is one of the cornerstones of a good, comprehensive training program, with the others being strength training, mobility work and power work. Today it is common for people to fall prey to “The Program” that promises to solve all of their physical woes and cure cancer at the same time. There are no magical programs that will do everything for you in short order, and the simple truth is that there are no secrets, magic pills or formulas. A good training program should be comprehensive in nature and incorporate strength and power work, mobility exercises, and metabolic/fitness work as its cornerstones. And sprinting can work in either the power part of a program or the conditioning part as well.

Sprinting is the essence of full body, compound movement, as every joint and muscle from your toes to your fingertips is involved in sprinting. Good coaches/trainers know to stress compound, multi-joint exercises as the foundation of their training programs, and there is no exercise that meets that criterion better than sprinting. It is because of this explosive, compound nature that sprinting confers all of the benefits that it does from better hormonal profiles to stronger bones.

Sprinting is fundamental, primal movement. We do it a lot and with abandon as kids (or at least we should), but for some reason it stops for most of us after adolescence. Ask yourself, why is that? Why is jogging socially acceptable for adults but sprinting is frowned upon? Go outside the norm; don’t be part of the flock like mentality and return to your roots as a kid.

Sprinting is the ultimate, most fundamental tool of power development. One of its beauties is that it is the essence of simplicity in execution and equipment needs. When Dr. Greg Rose, one of the co- founders of Titleist Performance Institute, is asked by parents of aspiring young golfers what is the best activity for power development, his answer is simple: sprinting. Dr. Rose can’t say enough about the benefits of sprinting, yes even for golfers,

Anecdotally, all one has to do is look at elite level sprinters to see the type of physiques sprinting helps develop. Now obviously there are other factors at play here, but form follows function.

Finally, let’s not deny that sprinting is fun! It represents freedom, release and an expression of who you are, as everyone’s sprinting style is uniquely their own. You loved to do it as a kid (hopefully) and with some training, common sense and practice you can likely revive your sprinting skills, or at least some reasonable facsimile of it!

Despite all of these great reasons to add sprinting to your training, some caution is in order. Sprinting is a skill, and like any skill that hasn’t been honed/used in a while, it will take some practice to get some of those abilities back to some semblance of where they once were. If you haven’t sprinted in a while then you would be wise to make sure your strength levels are up to snuff, and that you have good functional, ranges of motion, very solid pillar strength and some good power.

You would also be well advised to not be nursing any serious orthopedic injuries, as those will only be magnified when you start sprinting. Sprinting will expose any weak links in the system, be they strength, power, coordination, mobility or pillar strength.

In other words, make sure you have a sound foundation built before starting a sprint program, no matter how good you were “back in the day.” Bravado before common sense will likely lead to injury.

Along those lines, you will have to start slow to eventually run fast. And by that I mean that if you haven’t sprinted in a while it may surprise you as to how challenging it is. You will discover muscles you had forgotten and for a while DOMS will be your friend.

If your dynamic range of motion has been dictated by the cross-trainer or jogging, you will be rudely awakened when you first try to sprint. I have been a coach/trainer for nearly 30 years, and seeing middle age people try to sprint after a lengthy hiatus is often a humbling experience for them. They don’t have the dynamic range of motion they once had, nor the strength and power to properly apply force into the ground and their pillar strength is such that it further hinders good force application.

I am saying this not to discourage you from sprinting but to instill in you the confidence and patience to hang in there and take the long-term view.

Here are a couple of sprint training templates for both speed and conditioning. Use them according to your training goals. Remember, there’s no rule that says you can’t do both on different training days if you are just looking for a more comprehensive approach to the use of sprinting.

Speed Training Sprint Program

After a comprehensive, total body dynamic warm up (at least 10-15 minutes):

• 5-6 x 6 sec. @ 75-80% of max. effort
• Recovery is 2-3 minutes between each rep. That is a work to rest ratio of 20+/1.
• Every two weeks, add a rep up to 10 reps. That will take you out to two months or so. Technique and quality are paramount here, not merely reps for the sake of reps.

Sprint Conditioning Program

Again, 10-15 minute dynamic warm up before commencing the training session:

• Sprint ladder: 10-20-30-40-50-50. The ladder works like this-sprint 10 yards, walk 40, sprint 20, walk 30; sprint 30, walk 20; sprint 40, walk 10. Sprint 50, turn around sprint 50.
• Your target time should start somewhere around 2 minutes to complete the six sprints, including the walks between reps. The walking should be brisk as you will see to meet the target time. Rest for two to three, minutes then repeat once.
• This program can be progressed in several ways. You can reduce the target time, for one. My college and high school athletes have target times of 1:30, for example and take one to two minutes to recover between sprint ladder sets.
• For beginners, one sprint ladder will likely suffice. Those with a little more training experience can do two sets. Because the sprints get longer/harder and the recover between sets gets progressively shorter, these sprint ladders are no joke. You will know what I mean when you do them.
• Advanced athletes/clients can do three sets. After that point, the law of diminishing returns kicks in as quality will likely fall off so dramatically that you won’t really be sprinting anymore.

Basic Sprint Technique

This is not intended to be a coaching manual on sprint technique but rather a primer on some key tips to help your sprinting technique. If you want or need more help, I would suggest finding a local USATF (US Track & Field) Level 2 Sprints coach.

• When accelerating, your foot strike will be behind your center of mass (COM). You want to think of aggressively pushing the ground away from you. And don’t make the mistake of thinking small, quick steps are the key to starting well. You should be covering as much ground as possible without over-striding.
• At all times, an aggressive arm action is necessary for optimal sprinting. Think of eye socket to hip pocket when it comes to your hands. And the arm action is coming from the shoulders, not the elbows. Don’t do the T-Rex thing…. you know what I mean!
• Don’t make the mistake of consciously “lifting” your knees. Your knee action is a reaction to the action of putting force into the ground. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And Michael Johnson seemed to do all right with a relatively low knee action!
• Once you are at top speed, your foot strike should be almost directly under your hips/COM. Too much further in front of your hips and you are essentially braking yourself on every foot strike.
• Though it seems contrary to every instinct, you have to learn to “relax” while sprinting. Bud Winters, the late, great sprint coach of Tommie Smith and John Carlos (amongst others), used to coach his sprinters to run so relaxed that their jaws “flapped.” No clenching of teeth then, folks!
• In all phases of sprinting, whether accelerating or at top speed, your body alignment should be such that you could drop a plumb line from your ears through your shoulders, hips, knees and ankles (at foot strike). If it is less than that, then there are “power leakages” occurring, which means you aren’t applying forces optimally. Thus you see why pillar/core strength is so important to good sprinting!

So there is my little manifesto on sprinting. I believe sprinting can improve anyone’s fitness or training program. So if you haven’t already been sprinting think of adding it to your program. Run fast and run hard!