Yes, Sprinting Builds Muscle, Not Just Aerobic Capability

Although parts of those answers could also be true—yes, sprinters and elite athletes in sports that require quick burst runs are naturally going to focus more on sprinting, and yes, there are cardiovascular health advantages—sprinting can be immensely helpful to anyone trying to construct their health and fitness. Actually, sprinting is a key piece of any comprehensive strength training program because sprinting builds muscle.

To grasp why, let’s first take a step back to understand the essence of strength training. Physiotherapist and strength coach Brian Kinslow, PT, DPT, explains the rationale behind strength training as “exposing the muscle to a stimulus that forces it to work and get stronger.”

Sprinting aligns very closely with that principle. Certain muscles and body regions during sprinting undergo much higher levels of exertion and stress than more traditional strength training, e.g. resistance bands and weight lifting.

For instance, a study comparing hamstring activation between strength training exercises and sprinting (using electromyography aka emg) found that—at most—strength training could only get to around 75 percent activation in comparison with sprinting. Further, that 75 percent was just for one specific muscle (the hamstrings is a bunch of three muscles) while the opposite two max activations were 60 percent and 40 percent of sprinting, respectively.

In other words, sprinting exposes the hamstrings to a level of resistance that strength training has a tough time doing. “Sprinting adds one other tier to strength training due to stress it puts on a few of your muscles,” says Dr. Kinslow. “Since one in all the important thing principles of strength training is ‘progressive overload,’ meaning step by step and methodically exposing the muscle to higher levels of stress, an appropriate sprinting program is an excellent tool to hit that next level.”

Therein, the framework on sprinting as completely separate to strength work is misguided. It’s one other key tool to construct strength and could be a welcome (and fun!) change out of your usual strength programming. Humans are built for locomotion in spite of everything.

How does sprinting compare to regular state running?

Sprinting is sort of different from regular state running for varied reasons. Firstly, as we touched on before, sprinting involves high-level muscular force and exertion. That isn’t the case for regular state running. Secondly, the cardiovascular effect of sprinting—which tends to be shorter and for higher effort levels—is different from regular state running which tends to be longer and for lower effort levels, relative to sprinting.

Running coach (and ultra runner) Christopher Kokotajlo explained in additional detail: “The body has three different energy systems,” he says. “I won’t get into the main points, but one is for short-burst, high-intensity activity; one is for medium intensity and medium distances; and the last is for lower intensity, longer distances. Sprinting tends to exist on one side of the spectrum while steady-state running exists on the opposite.”

Lastly, sprinting also involves a major acceleration and deceleration component, which presents much different challenges in comparison with regular state running, especially when it comes to the load in your muscles.

The excellent news is that, similar to sprinting and strength training, regular state running and sprinting also complement one another, working different parts of the cardiovascular system.

Sprinting builds muscle, but can it replace strength training?

To place it simply, no. That’s because although sprinting builds strength, it’s just one component of an efficient, well balanced strength training program.

If sprinting is the one strength training you’re doing, there can be many neglected muscles and body regions together with a high risk for overtraining because sprinting has the next intensity and workload than most strength training.

There’s no single exercise or style of training that checks all of the boxes for effective strength training; sprint training isn’t any exception to that rule.

What’s an efficient, protected strategy to start sprinting?

The identical principles that apply to every other style of training, apply for sprinting: Start small and step by step construct up. Ideally, this can be on flat ground and never on a treadmill so that you get the total acceleration to high speed to deceleration experience.

With sprinting, the important thing variables are going to be distance/time, intensity, and reps. My suggestion is to carry the space/time constant after which progress by increasing reps and intensity. Here’s a basic example of a sprint progression:

• Week 1: one sprint for 15 seconds, 5/10 intensity. Complete once per week.
• Week 2: two sprints for 15 seconds, 5/10 intensity, rest one minute in between each. Complete once per week.

If you might have no issues, progress until you hit five sprints. At that time, increase the intensity to a 7–8/10, drop back right down to one sprint and back up the ladder until you hit five sprints. On the subsequent cycle, up the intensity to 10/10. At that time, increase the time/distance and restart at 5/10 intensity and one sprint.