Ultimate Guide to Sprinting: 20 Benefits, Workouts, & Tips

Health & Performance Benefits of Sprinting

It’s no secret that sprinting is one of the most beneficial and time-efficient forms of exercise.

You get the general health benefits of traditional cardiovascular exercise, but also burn visceral fat and build power and strength. You get the feel-good mental and emotional buzz too.

To summarize the health and performance benefits, sprinting improves:

• Fat burning
• Aerobic capacity
• Endurance
• Running pace
• Muscle building
• Metabolism
• Heart health
• Protein synthesis
• Hormonal balance
• Mindset
• Longevity

Many of the other effects are harder to quantify.

Now, I will break down some of the many benefits of high-intensity sprinting.

General athletic performance

Sprinting improves general athletic performance. Making you a better sprinter, but also a better athlete across most sports.

This form of exercise uniquely benefits most biomotor abilities required for sports: speed, explosive power, aerobic capacity, and endurance. It translates into just about all activities. Sprinting is also easy to incorporate into training programs and accessible virtually anywhere, at any time.

Making it a great way to stay in peak shape.

Explosive power

Sprinting increases your Type II fast-twitch muscle fibers, the ones responsible for generating speed, power, and explosiveness.

Exercisers performing intense bursts of power must recruit more Type II fibers to meet the energetic (metabolic) demands of the body. With proper rest and recovery afterward, Type II muscle fibers increase to help you excel in future situations.

Indeed, next time you’ll be able to better perform the same activity. And, the new adaptations apply to other abilities too. You’ll run faster, bike faster, jump higher, and improve your gym strength.

Aerobic capacity & endurance

The traditional approach to increasing aerobic capacity and endurance is to do more of the chosen activity. Bikers, bike. Runners, run. Swimmers swim. But as it turns out, sprinting is great for endurance capacity.

You’ll see many of the top endurance coaches doing two seemingly strange things. First, they rarely let long-distance athletes train the full event. Second, they often add a form of high-intensity training (like sprinting or HIIT) into their athletes’ routines.

Sprinting makes us more efficient at using oxygen. Better oxygen utilization also leads to greater training results and higher event performance. One particular 2018 study of advanced trail runners found that sprinting improved multiple parameters of performance, including 3,000-meter run, time to exhaustion, and power output.

Other research shows that sprinting, often called sprint interval training (SIT), increases max oxygen consumption ability (VO2 max) better than endurance training.

Speed

Intuitively, sprinting increases your running speed. Especially your max speed. In fact, sprint interval training is one of the top ways to become a faster runner.

Sprints are comprised of three stages: acceleration (<30m), maximum speed (30-60m), and speed endurance (60-300m).

Practice teaches you optimal cadence and how to alter your stride to match your desired speed. Overall it’s effective to improve speed.

Lose weight & burn fat

When people think about exercise for fat loss, it’s generally steady-state chronic cardio like jogging. But there’s actually a much better way. A way that’s both supported by research and also visually. Sprinters actually have lower body fat than runners of other distances. You can compare a career marathoner with a sprinter and most people would choose the sprinter’s body immediately.

Sprinting is also excellent for weight loss. On top of the obvious fat loss during exercise (you’ll burn several hundred calories), sprinting dramatically increases your metabolism for many hours afterward. Meaning you passively burn more calories regardless of what you’re doing throughout the day.

Plus, sprinting optimizes your hormones, creating the perfect conditions for muscle-building and fat burning.

A 2018 study confirmed this, dethroning HIIT training as the ultimate fat-burning exercise modality. Even when weight doesn’t change, participants do lose the most unhealthy kind of fat (visceral).

Jogging and running don’t do these.

If you’re looking to burn body fat, especially the most unhealthy kind, sprinting is an essential tool.

Muscle growth & strength

Sprinting is an excellent way to build full-body muscle and strength.

When you sprint, your muscles contract forcefully and repeatedly. Stimulating the neuromuscular system, which helps improve muscle fiber recruitment and synchronization. As a result, the muscles become more efficient at generating force.

This translates to greater strength and power. Particularly in the lower body, including the quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes. Done properly, sprints also build a strong core.

Fatiguing these large muscle groups is key to general strength.

Secondly, unlike moderate-intensity chronic cardio, sprinting also stimulates the release of anabolic growth hormones. Including human growth hormone and testosterone. Sprinting increases mTOR signaling for several hours after training. Growth hormone stimulates the production of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which directly grows muscle tissue (hypertrophy). Testosterone is also essential for muscle growth, as it promotes protein synthesis and helps regulate muscle mass. All promote strength, fat loss, and recovery.

Post high-intensity exercise session, hormone levels improve. As a result, sprinting can help you build muscle and strength while also improving your overall fitness and athleticism.

Optimizes anabolic growth hormones

On the same page as the last benefit, sprint therapy improves hormonal balance. Most of us live in a predominantly stress-hormone (cortisol and epinephrine) dominant state.

While sprinting further heightens our total allostatic load (our “bucket of stress”), it’s transient. This is the way humans historically experienced stress. Quick bursts followed by abundant rest and recovery.

As mentioned previously, the right amount of sprinting improves:

• Human growth hormone & IGF-1
• Insulin sensitivity
• AMPK & mTOR pathway signaling
• Testosterone

Basically, it optimizes the entire endocrine system. But here’s the thing…

Running does not.

Running lacks the energetic output and intensity required for a powerful anabolic growth response.

In fact, in 2021 RunRepeat performed a meta-analysis of 70+ studies on sprinting compared to other forms of training and found that sprinting (emphasis mine):

• “[Sprinting] resulted in a 91.83% higher reduction in body fat percentage than [running]”
• “Workouts for [sprinting] were 60.12% shorter than [running] workouts.”

A large part of this is due to the (comparatively) reduced stress and improved hormonal response post-exercise.

Resiliency

Immediately, sprinting places a massive stress burden on the body. It’s so physically and mentally taxing, that athletes learn to adapt. To master the dramatic and sudden drain that accompanies all-out efforts.

So when another massive stressor hits them, they parry it with ease. They effectively biohack stress. Whether athletically, occupationally, relationally, or otherwise. All stressors electromagnetobiochemically affect humans similarly.

Sprinting is one of the key ways to build human resiliency.

The better you get at recovering post-sprint sessions, the better you handle all of life’s many stressors.

This is a secret to long-term max human performance. All great leaders possess this ability (though I’m not sure they’re equally adept sprinters).

Sprinting turns you into an anti-fragile, resilient, equanimous human.

Mental health & mood

Since 2020, mental health has become an increasingly hot topic. One of the core reasons non-athletes cite exercising is for the profound mental health benefits.

Providing symptom relief that rivals the most powerful medications available. Yet instead of side effects, with exercise, you enjoy side benefits. A lot of them too.

First and foremost, sprinting requires you to leave the house. Exposing you to natural sunlight, fresh air, social interaction, and all kinds of other beneficial factors.

Sprinting itself boosts circulation (the “pump”) and delivers more oxygen and nutrients to the brain. Improving how well your brain functions overall. Like running, sprinting also elevates levels of feel-good endorphins in the brain. Radically uplifting mood and inducing feelings of contentedness. Leading to the “runner’s high”.

It also calms the brain and body after the session as the stress hormones plummet back down. You emerge feeling accomplished. Unstoppable. The psychological benefits are enormous.

Cognition

One of the lesser-discussed benefits of sprinting is its ability to improve cognition and brainpower. Surprisingly, there hasn’t been as much research as I’d like on the subject. That said, however, we know it does so via several mechanisms.

First, sprinting increases blood flow to the brain. During exercise, blood flow to the brain increases, which delivers more oxygen and nutrients to the brain cells. This alone enhances brain function and improves cognitive performance.

It also increases the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), sometimes dubbed “Miracle-Gro for the brain”. BDNF is a protein that supports the growth and survival of neurons. It plays a critical role in learning, memory, and cognitive function. Ample animal and human research show that sprinting increases the production of BDNF, boosting cognitive abilities and also protecting the brain from age-related decline.

During the activity, sprinting engages the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the body’s “fight, flight, or freeze” response. This releases stress hormones, which increase alertness and attention. These benefits persist for hours after the activity ends.

Finally, the brain works best when protected against damage. Stress is a low-level chronic insult. Sprinting helps by dramatically spiking stress, which activates the body’s built-in defense measures. Then reducing stress and anxiety over the long term. As mentioned previously, sprinting is excellent at boosting resiliency, elevating mood, and offsetting stress.

Sprinting is excellent to maintain cognitive sharpness and resiliency against future disease.

Metabolic health

Glucose control is one of the three primary goals of diet. The others are to minimize intake of toxic and rancid compounds (like inflammatory industrial seed oils) and to consume adequate nutrients to optimize all bodily processes.

Most of us unknowingly struggle with all three. As any users of modern technology like continuous glucose monitors will attest, controlling blood sugar is more difficult than expected. This is largely because our cells have lost sensitivity to insulin. Insulin allows glucose to enter cells where it can be used. With less sensitivity, sugar accumulates in the bloodstream.

This process is called insulin resistance, and it’s highly correlated with most degenerative diseases. It’s also one of the hallmarks of metabolic disorders. As well as inversely correlated with quality of life. All else equal, the less sensitive to insulin, the worse your life.

Luckily, sprinting is well-researched to improve metabolic health.

When you sprint, you burn the glucose naturally stored within muscle. After sprinting, when you consume a food that would otherwise cause issues with blood sugar and insulin, instead it fills up muscle stores. Sprinting improves insulin sensitivity.

This also means athletes better use it for workout fuel.

For a high-performing bioharmonized metabolism, you need some high-intensity movement like sprinting.

Heart health

Cardiovascular health is one of the other primary rationales for exercising. To avoid heart disease and other complications.

That’s the basis of “aerobic” training and “doing cardio”.

We’ve all learned that running promotes peak cardiovascular health. But does it really? The above cardiologist I interviewed thinks otherwise. His research and patient experience led him to believe that traditional cardio puts too much stress on the heart and sets the stage for later damage. Instead, he prefers brief high-intensity exercise.

I too, believe medium-intensity running is risky and should only comprise a small part of any training program.

Sprinting can improve many parameters of heart health:

• Improves heart rate variability (HRV)
• Reduces blood pressure
• Lowers resting heart rate (RHR)
• Strengthens the heart muscle (without imbalances)
• Improves cholesterol panels (increases HDL, decreases LDL & triglyceride)
• Increases restorative deep sleep

Instead of running, I prefer the easier Super Walking and KAATSU blood flow restriction training to get all the cardiovascular benefits without the downsides.

Longevity & anti-aging

Scientists are hard at work, studying the latest designer molecules hoped to reverse the biological aging process. Yet there’s a more important anti-aging hack right in front of us all… sprints.

The longevity crowd often forgets that frailty is the number one detractor from healthspan and quality of life as we age.

Sprinting’s pleiotropic effects are unparalleled:

• Improved metabolism
• Increased fast-twitch muscle fibers
• Reduced frailty and sarcopenia
• Naturally improves hormones
• Improved longevity pathways

Just one single sprint can improve favorably improve AMP/ATP ratio by as much as 21X.

Unlike new supplements and drugs, sprinting doesn’t have obscure off-target effects that damage the body in ways currently unknown for future decades. It also optimizes growth hormone, affectionately referred to as “the hormonal fountain of youth”. And unlike exogenous injections, naturally produced GH and anabolic IGF-1 have little risk.

Rather, sprinting is an ability hardwired into our genome. My own biological age testing showed a large improvement when I reintroduced sprinting into my regimen.

Time saver

Exercise can consume a ton of time. I used to spend around two hours every day in the gym. But it doesn’t have to.

You can get 80% of the results of an intensive training program with just sprints, rucking/ walking, and occasional KAATSU.

The very nature of sprinting limits the maximum possible session duration. You simply won’t have the energy for a two hour sprint workout. And each individual effort will be under 30 seconds (or it’s not really a sprint).

Most people overdo sprinting.

You only need 2-8 sets of <30 second sprints to progress. That’ll save you tons of time compared to traditional programs.

Fun

Some forms of exercise are more fun than others. Some feel like monotonous chores.

For example, I quickly lose interest in treadmills. You’ll never catch me completing an hour-long treadmill workout.

Sprinting is dynamic.

You must warm up. You alter your workout based on how you feel (this is KEY). You cool down. You can sprint up hills, on a bike, on a rowing machine, and you can sprint backward (with practice). The weather impacts your training too. You’re constantly switching up the routine.

It’s quite difficult but fun and exciting. I look forward to my sprinting sessions.

Sleep

Sprinting improves sleep quality and quantity in many ways.

First, the explosive bursts of energy and effort release endorphins, which are natural painkillers that quiet the mind. They also promote calmness, relaxation, and decreased levels of stress. Even hours later, helping lessen insomnia and racing thoughts.

Sprinting also helps regulate the circadian rhythm, which is the body’s internal clock system that regulates sleep-wake cycles. Especially when done outdoors in the natural morning light, sprinting can strengthen the circadian rhythm, making it easier to fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning.

Additionally, sprinting improves the production of hormones involved in sleep regulation, leading to higher sleep quality.

Of course, you’re also doing something difficult and expending a massive amount of energy, which causes the body to respond with increased deep sleep and faster sleep onset.

Posture and back health

Many forms of exercise compress the spine and can cause injuries for unprepared exercisers. This can include running and improper resistance training.

Done right, sprinting with good form can improve gait, posture, and back strength. Sprinting requires a significant amount of core stability, which is essential for maintaining good posture and reducing back pain. Sprinting involves the rapid contraction and relaxation of the muscles in the lower back and hips, so it strengthens these muscles that support the spine. This movement also reduces the risk of back injury.

Furthermore, sprinting can also help to increase the flexibility and mobility of the spine. Sprinting involves a rapid extension and flexion of the back muscles, which can help to loosen up tight muscles and improve the range of motion in the spine.

It should also be combined with active release techniques for the best results.

By improving musculature in the back and core, proper sprinting can improve gait, posture, and some pains.

Bone health

When it comes to strong bones, most people think of milk and calcium. But here’s the thing… neither of those builds significant bone density. At least, not compared to weight-bearing exercises.

Weight lifting has long been considered the king of bone-building exercises. Running, on the other hand, can exacerbate osteoporosis and weaken bones. Luckily, sprinting impacts bone similarly to weight lifting.

Several studies show that sprinting improves bone density and that runners that also sprint have denser bones than those that don’t.

This logically follows if we consider the biomechanics of sprinting.

The harder we strike the ground, the more force, the more strength (density) our bones need to resist the force. The key difference between sprinting and running, however, lies in the hormonal environment post-workout.

Anabolic hormones increased by sprinting (growth hormones, IGF-1, testosterone, etc) contribute to bone density. Catabolic hormones increased by running destroy the bone.

Mitochondrial biogenesis

Mitochondrial optimization is one of the frontiers of future healthcare. You simply cannot stay healthy long-term with sub-optimal mitochondria. Mitochondria are the little energy factories housed within cells.

One of their jobs is to convert inputs (food, water, light, oxygen) into cellular energy. Unfortunately, they also generate waste in the process. When they’re not functioning optimally, however, they don’t produce enough energy and the body must choose which processes to slow down. These biochemical processes are a delicate orchestra. You can’t afford for any to slow.

You have two options to generate more cellular energy:

• Increase the efficiency of mitochondria
• Increase the number of mitochondria

Sprinting improves both. In the right doses, sprinting promotes the recycling of mitochondrial parts via a process called mitophagy. Making mitochondria more efficient. It also increases mitochondrial biogenesis, the process of creating new mitochondria.

The literature is clear, sprinting is great for mitochondrial health & function.

Immunity

Sprinting, when not sick, can improve immune system function in a number of ways.

The main two are increasing levels of two key parts of the immune system: white blood cells and T-cells. It also helps the body mount an appropriate inflammatory response.

Sprinting increases the production of immune cells and antibodies. Since it triggers the release of stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, it stimulates the production of white blood cells.

Remember, chronic stress suppresses the immune system, but acute stress boosts it. Aiding the fight against infections and diseases.

During a sprinting session, your heart rate and blood flow increase. Delivering more oxygen and nutrients to the cells and tissues of the body. This increased circulation helps to flush out toxins and waste products, improving overall immune function.

Sprinting has one other key immunity benefit.

It stimulates the lymphatic system, helping remove waste and toxins from the body. Better debris clearance further supports optimal immune function.