Sprinting Benefits

Have you wondered how to shed those extra pounds that’s hard to lose? Well, try adding sprints to your workout regimen. Sprinting helps boost your metabolism and can regulate your fat burning hormones. It also helps trigger a mass release of endorphins, the feel-good hormones. Many forms of exercise have a similar effect, but sprinting, due to its high-level intensity, tops the list. Endorphins help reduce stress and depression by making you feel happy, and can also reduce pain and inflammation in the brain. Sprint training also supports mental toughness and can be somewhat therapeutic at the same time.

Sprinting does not only help you burn fat, but actually helps you develop muscle. Have you ever seen an obese sprinter? My guess would be that you haven’t. Sprinting can enhance protein synthesis pathways, which helps break down protein, by as much as 230 percent. With the right nutrition and recovery, sprinting can actually promote muscle building, allowing your body to become leaner.

Sprinting is not just about weight loss, but also comes with cardiovascular benefits. It can help lower your blood pressure. The fast-twitch muscles (type II muscles) that you are building while you sprint helps improve your heart function. When you do sprints, you are performing a max effort on all involved muscles. This makes your heart pump harder, which improves overall blood circulation. As a result, your heart becomes healthy and stronger which reduces your chances of heart disease.

Sprinting is not an easy exercise and requires a lot of strength and dedication, but the excellent results it leads to can provide the best motivation. The best way to apply sprint training would be intervals. Try to start with 10-30s sprints and take 1-2 minute rest breaks. As you adapt to sprinting you could increase your sprint times and reduce the rest. If you would like to learn more about sprint training please contact us.