The Benefits of Sprinting

What Are The Main Benefits of Sprinting?

The weather is getting nicer with spring in full bloom and summer rapidly approaching.  That means getting outside and being active hopefully will be a main form of exercise for you.  Living in Seattle we have to take the nice days when we get them.  So in the summer is when I usually ramp up my sprinting routine only one day a week.  The benefits of sprinting are well documented and I will show you those in this post.  I have come to love my sprinting workouts in the summer.  It is the purest for of high intensity interval training and only after 10 or sprints with minimal rest it takes it out of you.  In this post I am going to provide three different references on the benefits of sprinting for you so keep on reading.

Sprinting, a simple form of speed training exercise, offers more than just calorie burning. Certain enzymes become abundant within the body each time sprinting occurs. These enzymes, along with normal cell functions, help the body store more calories and energy within the muscle tissue rather than the fat storages within the body. Through this process, the body steadily depletes all of its fat storages that normally account for weight gain.

Sprinting also increases the amount of impact training involved in a workout regimen. The high level of impact involved in sprinting increases bone strength and density. Impact exercises also aid the building of new muscle tissue around the bones and throughout the rest of the body.

Sprinting naturally increases the body’s endurance strength, making longer cardio and muscle strengthening training sessions easier to complete. Through sprinting and speed training exercises, the body increases its ability to store oxygen, which helps the muscles function in all forms of exercise.

Another benefit directly related to sprinting involves the increase in mitochondria size. These cell parts store the energy consumed through food sources, then release the energy to the parts of the body that require and endure work or repair. In other words, working muscles receive more energy, because cells become better suited to store and release energy in an efficient manner, ultimately increasing growth….More at The Benefits of Sprinting and Speed Training / Fitness / Cardio

Thought I would add in a little inspiration

Here Is Another Snippet of An Article I Found On The Benefits of Sprinting

• Enchanced Maximal Sprint-Peak Power-Harmer et al. demonstrated that seven weeks of sprint training (3 sessions per/week) enhanced maximal sprint-peak power, lengthened time to exhaustion at maximal sprint-exertion, lowered blood-pressure, and increased incremental VO2 peak during exertion in healthy male subjects as a result of increased glycolytic and oxidative enzyme activity¹¹.
• Augmented Glycogen Storage Potential-Sprint-training directly augments full-body glycogen storage-potential via cellular and enzymatic mechanisms while increasing GLUT4 translocation (and subsequently insulin-stimulated glucose transport) in large systems of both lower and upper-body skeletal muscle^12,13.In addition, repeated bouts of sprint-like exertion will generate higher levels of nuclear respiratory factor-1 (NRF-1) synthesis in muscle too¹⁴.All told, sprint-training literally makes you more carb-sensitive in regard to your daily glucose intake, ensuring that more of carbs will be partitioned and stored in your muscles.
• NRF-1 Binding Activity Increased-Sprinting is likely the single most effective form of exercise in terms of increasing NRF-1 binding activity in skeletal muscle ^{5, 6, 14, and 15}. What’s so great about NRF-1 (or maybe it’s just “what the hell is NRF-1″)? Allow me to explain then. Essentially, NRF-1 is a transcription factor protein that acts on nuclear genes by encoding respiratory subunits and creating components of the cellular machinery that actually transcribe and replicate mitochondria^{14, 15}.NRF-1, in conjunction with NRF-2 and peroxisome proliferator activated receptor co-activator 1alpha (PCG-1) basically work together to provide your muscles with the stimuli for adaptive cellular overhauls in response to exercise by promoting mitochondrial biogenesis so that your skeletal muscle contains not only more mitochondria, but also larger mitochondria¹⁶.This obviously has tremendous ramifications for nutrient partitioning. First and foremost is the fact that larger mitochondrial surface area means more CPT availability. Another is that increased PCG-1 activity means that PPAR activation in the peroxisomes is also being positively augmented¹⁷.
• Fat Oxidation-Hopefully, even those of you with no intellectual ambitions when it comes to cellular biology can see from the above that sprint-training has tremendously positive ramifications for fat-burning, both directly and indirectly.For one, AMPk activation promotes fatty-acid oxidation by inhibiting acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) levels which is a key enzymatic player when it comes to synthesizing malonyl-CoA, the coenzyme which deactivates CPT in the mitochondria^18,19,20. So through sprint-training, we basically create a metabolic scenario allowing us to “run the gamut” on fat-oxidation.We activate AMPk to reduce ACC activity in order to naturally optimize CPT-assisted mitochondrial FFA-oxidation as best we can, while simultaneously stimulating mitochondrial biogenesis, which gives us more mitochondria with more CPT to work with, allowing for an even greater rate of FFA-oxidation. But wait, it gets even better.As I just mentioned, sprinting also provides us with that spike in PCG-1 activity which “although relatively transient” will further potentiate glucose and FFA oxidation in the peroxisomes^17...More at  Sprinting: The Purest, Most Powerful Physique-Shaper In An Athlete’s Arsenal: Part 1 

Closing Thoughts On The Benefits of Sprinting

I took a different approach with this post on the benefits of sprinting.  Usually I take the time to research each post then write my opinion.  However with this post on the benefits of sprinting there was great information already available that I really didn’t want to alter.  You don’t need to be a fast sprinter.  You just need to move your body as fast as you possibly can for a specific length.  For me its roughly 20-40 yards.  What I do for my sprinting routines is sprint down 30-40 yards, sprint back, then take a 10-20 second rest and do it again.  I will do this 5 or 6 times totally 10 or 12 full out sprints.  Take a few minutes rest then repeat one final time.  Very basic, but highly effective.  There is much more information out there on the benefits of sprinting, but I thought I would give you a nice sampling.