Sprinting Is One of the Best Exercises You Can Do After 30, This Is How You Can Get Started

Today we're talking about sprinting, why you should be doing it if you're over 30, and how to do it without getting hurt.Read time approx: 6min 10sec

If you don't do something about it, you'll consistently lose strength, power, coordination, and balance as you age. But you CAN do something about it. You can build muscle, you can develop power, and you can improve your coordination and balance at ANY AGE.It doesn't matter if you're 5 or 95; if you train your body, it will adapt. Things might take a little longer, and you might not be able to handle quite as much later in life, but you CAN improve your body and, by extension, your life experience at any age. I suspect if you're reading this, you're not 20 years old with hours and hours to train every single day dialing in your body. You want the best bang for your buck exercises because you have a lot on your plate. Enter sprinting.

Sprinting

Sprinting is the original power and strength-building exercise. It's primal and built into our DNA.If you could not sprint, you did not survive. Is it any wonder that sprinting works so effectively to counteract the effects of aging?Muscle growth/hormonal responseSprinting has more in common with weight training than it does with running. Yes, it looks like running, and yes, it requires the same movement patterns but the outcomes of sprinting vs. running in a training context are almost polar opposites.Running longer durations (greater than ~90 seconds) produces primarily cardiovascular adaptations, meaning it focuses on your heart and moving blood through your body, which is incredibly important.One person in the US dies every 6 seconds due to cardiovascular disease, so that's nothing to scoff at.Sprinting, on the other hand, provides similar adaptations to strength training.Sprinting is a powerful stimulus for growth hormone, which is obviously important for muscle growth but also recovery, and as we age, we produce less, so we get a two-for-one deal in the hormone department. If you want a maximal hormonal response to sprinting, the research suggests 30-second sprint durations.As a side note, women have greater growth hormone responses than men to sprint training. That is an important consideration because growth hormone is the primary muscle-building hormone in the female body. So maintaining growth hormone is extra important for women trying to preserve muscle mass.Balance

Balance is one of the aspects of physical fitness that decreases the most dramatically as we age. In fact, it's one of the leading contributors to falls in the elderly. There are some expected changes in relation to balance and age, but the main driver of poor balance is lack of use. If you've been following me for any length of time, you know I can't go more than a day or two without saying, "Use it or lose it." The same applies to balance. If you're not stressing your body to deal with balance-oriented activities, it will lose the capacity to do so. The sensory equipment in your nervous system and muscles will lose their fine-tuning, and your balance will suffer. Sprinting is a safe AND effective way to stress your balance system. It requires you to both apply and absorb force while maintaining balance. If you throw in some change of direction work, you get an even bigger boost of balance training. PowerWe lose about 10% of our muscle mass after 40. Power, or the ability to create force, decreases at a rate 2-4x faster than we lose muscle. Loss of muscular power ultimately leads to disability and loss of independence.

I've already written about that, though, so we won't rehash it here. If you'd like to read the article on power and explosive strength training, you can check that out below.

In short sprinting is one of the most efficient ways to build, express, and maintain power. If you want to build maximal power from sprinting your sprint durations should be 10 seconds or less at an exertion of 9/10.

Injury Free Sprinting Guide

Now that we've covered the basics of why sprinting is important, let's talk about how to actually do it. It's one thing to know a certain mode of training is important/valuable; it's another thing entirely to know how to do it effectively without getting injured. Why do people get injured while sprinting?The main reason anyone gets injured while sprinting, regardless of age, is inactivity. Previous injury and previous inactivity are the strongest predictors of injury for any sport, including sprinting. What happens is someone decides they want to go play a pick-up basketball game or something similar after not exercising for months OR not exercising in a way that supports playing that sport. Next thing they know, they're hobbling off the court with a pulled hamstring. It works the same way for sprinting. If you haven't been doing powerful unilateral (one side at a time) repetitive exercise, the likelihood of you getting injured is EXTREMELY HIGH if you don't have a plan.Your planInstead of giving you a cookie-cutter plan that ends up working for 5 people who read this and injuring everyone else who tries it, I'm going to give you the principles you need to keep yourself safe, no matter what your current experience or fitness level is. Warm-upYour warm-up doesn't have to be anything fancy. The goal with any power-oriented training warm-up isn't to try and get flexible and bendy before the workout. Doing so actually hurts performance. Instead, the goal is to increase blood flow and core body temperature, so you're literally warming yourself up.Things like high knees, butt kickers, walking lunges, etc., are great, coupled with a few minutes of brisk walking and gradually increasing speed into a light run. BaselineIf you want to stay safe as you sprint, you need to know your current baseline capacity/intensity. You're not going to figure this out by sprinting and seeing how it feels. What you need to do is sit down and determine how much sprinting/running you've done over the past week. Let's say person #1 ran 20 minutes over the past week, and 2 minutes of that running was near sprinting speed or 9/10 for effort That means their current baseline is 2 minutes of sprinting.Person #2 hasn't been running or sprinting at all, so the baseline is 0 minutes.It doesn't matter where you start from the important thing is that you're honest about your baseline, or else you will get hurt. Let's say these two individuals want to sprint twice a week.How do they progress it?The key is to not increase the new exercise volume by more than 50% per week. Here's what that looks like for person #1 (If your situation looks more like person #2 skip to that example below)Week #1Monday: 4x15sec sprints at 9/10 for effortThursday: 4x15sec sprints at 9/10 for effortTotal volume= 2 minutes of sprinting at 9/10 effort (notice that this is the same as the baseline)Week #2To stay safe, this person can increase volume up to 50%; however, I recommend increasing it by 10-15%, which would look like this.

Monday: 5x15sec sprints at 9/10 for effortThursday: 4x15sec sprints at 9/10 for effortTotal volume= 2:15 of sprinting at 9/10 effort This pattern continues by adding 10-15% per week until the desired volume is reached.Here's the third week so that you can see how it plays out.Week #3 Monday: 5x15sec sprints at 9/10 for effort

Thursday: 4x15sec sprints at 9/10 for effortTotal volume= 2:30 of sprinting at 9/10 effort

Here's what that looks like for person #2

What if you haven't been sprinting at all, and you're starting from scratch?No worries, we just have to build a foundation. To do that, you're not going to sprint. Instead, you're going to find a pace that you can comfortably and confidently maintain for 1 minute and determine what the effort level is for you at that speed.

Let's say it's a 6/10 for effort. That is your baseline.Week #1

Monday 1x1min at 6/10 effortThursday 1x15-30sec at 6/10 effortTotal volume=1:15-1:30 running at 6/10 effort (Remember you can increase from 10-50% each week. Because this baseline isn't based upon maximal exertion, it's ok to be closer to the top end of the "safe progression parameters" for most ppl. that being said, listen to your body, not your ego.)Week #2

Monday 1x1min at 6/10 effortThursday 1x30-60 sec at 6/10 effort

Total volume=1:30-2:00 running at 6/10 effortAfter week 4, start the progression over and do the same exact process but at an exertion of 7/10. Repeat the same process until you get to an exertion of 9/10.

Simple Summary

• Determine your baseline

• Progress each week by increasing your workload by 10-15% if you've been sprinting already

• If you haven't been sprinting you will need to progress both volume and effort.

• For maximum power production keep sprint durations at 10 sec or less

• For maximum hormonal response sprints should be ~30 sec

• The examples given deal with running but these principles can be applied to any modality sprinting (rowing, cycling, etc.)

These principles will get you started and help you avoid injury before you get the ball rolling. That doesn't mean the risk of injury is ZERO or that this is a comprehensive program; it's simply a starting point. If you enjoyed this issue of Vitality on Tap, please share it with your friends and family or anyone you believe will find value in learning about BDNF and improving their brain health as they age. You can do so that easily by sending them THIS LINK