Here at MSC, we always try to recommend adding sprinting into your training, whether your’e a professional athlete, regular gym goer, or someone looking to prepare for the zombie apocalypse. Sprinting develops explosive power, rate of force development, recruitment of high-threshold motor units, tolerance of high forces, and is essential for building speed and overall athleticism. Plus, anyone who’s ever been really fast at sprinting always looks great, right?
Whether you’re adding sprinting in your training for the first time, or re-introducing it before a new sporting season starts, how do we add this into your programme without injuring ourselves?
- Start with ‘drills’ to build tissue tolerance, as well as skill and efficiency. This includes exercises such as pogo hops, a-skips and power skips. This will get the body used to the forces it is to undertake with quicker work and establish good form and minimising foot contact time.
- Start off with small distances. The longer the distance we sprint for, the greater the chance of injury. This is due to the fact that the faster we go, the more forces that are going through the muscles, joints and tendons. We need to build up technical efficiency, strength, and even endurance before we get to that stage. Get your form right over 5m or 10m first (well before you reach top speed), before you move onto longer and faster sprints.
- Add resistance. This is for the same reasons as starting with small distances. The resistance may be a slight hill, or a light sledge or a partner holding a band for you. This will stop you from going too fast to begin with and stop you from over striding and therefore putting the hamstrings under enormous stress.
- Get strong. Supplementing your sprinting with strength training is essential. The best way to get better at sprinting, and to build tolerance to sprinting, is unsurprisingly, sprinting! However, strength work will help massively. The stronger the body, the more tolerant it is to absorbing the high forces that are involved with sprinting. (There is a reason all the top sprinters in the world are jacked!!). Use a full body approach, with particular care and attention to lower body, posterior chain work. Think hamstrings, calfs and glutes! (also ensure you are working the hamstring from both the knee and the hip, e.g RDL and Nordic/hamstring curls).
- Don’t neglect the aerobic work. I’ll let you into a secret, towards the end of my rugby career, I tore my hamstring really badly. I 100% believe that this was due to a lack of aerobic fitness at the time that was necessary for the level I was playing at. I’ve always been pretty fit aerobically, however after a double broken arm a year earlier, looking back now, I don’t think I ever got my base aerobic level back to where it was. Therefore, a minute before half time, and therefore 39mins of repeated high intensity efforts, due to fatigue and over striding when sprinting, my hamstring gave way. I believe if I had focused more on rebuilding the aerobic side of things when I was recovering from the broken arm, rather than just the strength and specific rehab work, I would have been able to tolerate those repeated sprints. Because I was less fit than usual after a long lay-off, I never actually got back to full fitness and my body couldn’t take the intensity. So…..make sure you’re fit enough to handle the volume 🙂
As always, hit me up if you’ve got any questions.
Mark.