Getting Started With Sprinting
Sprinting is about moving as fast as possible and
getting the heart rate high quickly. It’s more about
effort than speed. And it’s not about running end-
less wind sprints until you fall down from exhaus-
tion. That kind of high intensity work might have
its place in some extreme sports training, but it
doesn’t get you all the benefits of a real sprint
session. The key, then, becomes simply avoiding
failure. Maintaining maximum effort is basically as
simple as running (or biking, or rowing, etc) as fast
as you can and then stopping when you note a
drop off. I suppose you could get overly technical
with it, maybe hook up a few sensors and have a
doctor monitor your vital signs, but I like to keep
it simple. When you feel yourself starting to slow
down, stop. That’s it. That’s the sprint. Then you
rest a bit and do it again.
For beginners, your first few sprint “work intervals”
might only be ten or fifteen seconds and your rest
interval two minutes. That’s fine. It’s better that you
ease into this than go overboard and get injured or
burned out in your first few sessions. In fact, if you
haven’t gone all-out in anything physical for years,
or if you are concerned about overdoing it, just
go 80 or 85 percent those first few sessions until
you are comfortable. As your fitness, speed and
strength improve, you might increase that time to
20 or 30 seconds per work interval and decrease
the rest interval to a minute or a minute and fifteen
seconds. Then, you can add additional work inter-
vals to your workout, so instead of only doing four
this week, you do five, and then six next week.
Within a few weeks, you’ll improve dramatically.Sprinting, clearly, is about quality over quantity.
Even as you progress with your fitness, you don’t
ever have to go longer than 30 seconds for a
single interval, and no more than six repetitions of
this duration. Alternatively, you could max out with
8–10 repetitions of 15-second intervals. Workouts
like these are plenty for most everyone to hit that
95% of genetic potential marker. Hence, you can
measure your progress in sprinting by going faster
during your efforts. Of course, you can play around
with your speed and endurance by entering a 5k
once in a while or doing a timed mile on the track
for fun. Many of the WOWs at Mark’s Daily Apple
will offer a chance to apply your new fitness to
other real-world experiences.63