Posted on August 28, 2014 by Jenny Cromack

Sprinting is one of the best cardiovascular and muscle building exercises, it is the basis of high intensity interval training and will help you develop lean and powerful muscles. Sprint training consumes a huge amount of energy and is critical to the development of a tight core. Those wishing to become faster more agile athletes typically integrate sprinting and other explosive interval training techniques into their regimen. Sprint training coupled with plyometrics and an effective weight lifting program is the best way to burn fat, get ripped and improve your running speed.

Many people who enter running races such as 10ks are determined to beat their personal best time. Many believe that in order knock critical seconds and minutes off their time practice makes perfect and get stuck in a rut of just running as many practice runs as possible but this is not the best way to knock vital seconds off. Sprinting is one of the best cardiovascular and muscle building exercises and will help develop lean and powerful muscles. Those willing to become faster and more agile runners integrate sprinting and other explosive interval training techniques into their regime.

There are a number of running protocols that can be introduced into your training to help develop speed and strength in running.

Interval Training

Intervals should be performed just below your VO2 Max with light jogging in between intervals. You should work in intervals between 3 & 5 minutes and the rest intervals should equal the work period so a ratio of Work:Rest =1:1. These intervals are designed for you to train at intensities closer to your VO2 max for longer periods than any other training method.
Frequency: Only 1-2 Training sessions a week due to high stresses placed on body
Duration: The total session should be about an hour

Types of Intervals

Pyramid Intervals
Pyramids are a great way of building up interval distances as well as preventing boredom running the same intervals repeatedly. Pyramid intervals involve gradually increasing interval distances for example 100m, 200m, 400m, 600m, and then gradually bringing them back down so 600m, 400m, 200m, 100m. Timing your sprint intervals can be a really good alternative to distance if you don’t have access to measured distances. For example, 30s 45s 60s and 60s, 45s, 30s, etc
Parloof Intervals
Parloofs are great to do with a training partner. If you have access to a running track that isideal if not a park will do just fine. Runner A runs 300m (to where runner B is stood) Runner B then runs 300m as fast as possible. Whilst runner A runs 100m recovery the opposite way. Runner A and B will then meet up again. The cycle will then repeat with runner B running the recovery leg and runner A the effort. This combination should be repeated 8-12 times in a session

Hill Sprints

Hill sprints are fantastic for improving muscle recruitment which will help increase your 10k time. During hill sprint sessions over a season ensure that you use a number of different gradients to maximise muscle activation they are fantastic to help improve speed, endurance and strength as well as preventing injury and They also increase the power and efficiency of the stride, enabling the runner to cover more ground with each stride with less energy in race circumstances. These are significant benefits from a training method that takes very little time and is fun to do.

It’s important to not neglect speed training, in order to improve your speed you need to ensure you are including 1-2 sprinting sessions per week in your training.