The Many Health Benefits of Including Sprints in Your Cardio Fitness Training

Working sprints into your training week can help you develop capabilities that are easily lost as we age out of sports and competitions. For middle-age adults, sprinting can be considered the fountain of youth as it helps to reverse the clock, boosting testosterone and human growth hormone. These enhance muscle growth, bone density, fat loss, metabolism and heart function. Today's workout of the week features a solid warm-up and fast running. (Study on sprinting/high-intensity effort)

If you haven't sprinted in a while, avoid going 100% for a few weeks after adding faster-than-normal running to your training. Build up with each set from 50%, 60%, 70% and 80%, and keep pushing if you feel good. If you feel like a wheel is about to fall off, do not push harder; typical injuries such as hamstring pulls, Achilles' tears or groin muscle pain can occur when you are not fully ready or warmed up for sprinting.

Warm up with squats/toe touch and run pyramid 1-10: Stop at 10, with 100-meter jogs in-between, then jog or bike for 5-10 minutes to continue the warm-up. It looks like this:

Do one squat and toe touch, jog 100 meters. Do two squats and toe touches, jog 100 meters. Keep going up the ladder to Level 10. You can add faster jogs to the warm-up sets as you warm up. Dynamic stretches for some of the 100-meter distances also can be added as desired.

Sprints with Active Rest (Calisthenics)

The following workout combines adding faster runs (or bike rides) to leg workouts. If you like the active rest option, add the following exercises after sprinting or rest fully before the next sprint set. Your ability and goals will help determine how you want to recover from each sprint.

Repeat 10 times.

• Sprint 100 meters (or 30 seconds full speed on the bike)
• Squats 10 (odd sets)
• Lunges 5/leg (even sets)
• Walk for one minute. Stretch as needed.

When putting in this level of effort, it is important to cool down and avoid abruptly stopping the workout. You can do more cardio at a moderate to slow pace if you prefer or do the warm-up in reverse:

Cooldown with squat/toe touch/run reverse pyramid 10-1: Stop at Level 1 with 100-meter jogs in-between, then stretch or foam-roll for 5-10 minutes. Add light static stretches if you wish or feel tightness. Otherwise, self-massage and foam-roll as needed to continue cooling down.

Adding sprinting of any type to your week has many benefits. The biggest is that the required time is much less than for longer, slower and less intense workouts. The other benefits range from a leaner torso, butt and legs to improve health screening numbers, balance and overall mental resilience.

Sprinting does not have to be running, but it should be a higher effort in whatever you do. Get your heart rate up high, rest to catch your breath and repeat. The benefits of this higher-intensity training will be astounding.

Additional references:

• Dr. John Rusin -- Speed Builds Muscle
• Poliquin Performance -- Benefits of Sprinting

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