Running is a type of resistance training that often gets overlooked in the typical workout program. The style of running that qualifies as resistance training is sprinting—all-out running for brief periods of time. Jogging is aerobic; sprinting is anaerobic.

It turns out that there are a host of factors that make sprinting an attractive option for building and shaping your legs as well as increasing speed and strength. Sprinting provides a terrific leg workout. In fact, sprinting is one of the top ways to work all of the leg muscles, especially the hamstrings. The next time you’re channel surfing with your TV remote in hand, stop when you see some sort of track meet and check out the hams on those sprinters. The glutes get a great workout as well.

When it comes to the benefits of sprinting, consider this: When was the last time you saw a fat sprinter? Yeah, stair climbing, power walking and stationary biking all burn the fat off—eventually. Sprinting gets it off fast. Even though it’s largely an anaerobic event, sprinting helps shed the extra pounds because resting metabolic rates are really boosted by hardcore sprinting. The body changes shape according to the demands put upon it, and sprinting and fat are not compatible. Once you start sprinting, your body will start to change shape—fast.

Where do you sprint? If your only training haunt has been the local gym, you’ll have to extend your borders. Fortunately you can do it for free—the best sprinting venue is the local track. Check your neighborhood for a middle school, junior high, high school or college. The track affords a few distinct advantages. You’ll know how far you are running (the football field inside the track is usually marked off in 10-yard increments), and you will have a surface with some give to it.

Sprinting should be approached in the same manner as weight training: Begin by stretching and warming up before moving on to the main course. Former collegiate sprinter Mark Young points out, “If a person has done no substantial running in the recent past, then he or she needs to build a good base. The key is to always start out very gradually, and slowly work your way up to full sprinting speed over several weeks or months. Starting out too quickly is where you run into injuries. Log some miles on the road three times a week for three weeks or so [before starting the sprinting workouts].”

Once you have that base of endurance built up a bit, start your first sprinting session by jogging a half mile—two laps around the track—before moving on to the faster stuff.  “I always suggest a person jog very slowly for about one-half mile or so to warm up,” Young continues. “This gets the heart pumping, and, by the way, the heart is a muscle and also needs to be stretched. Then do a good stretch routine. Then a little more jogging to completely loosen up.”

Begin the sprinting with easy swing sprints—100-yard runs at about 50 percent of maximum effort, keeping your knees pumping fairly high and focusing on relaxing throughout the full run. Perform a couple of these, and then it is time to go a little harder.

For your initial workout perform three sprints of 40 yards at approximately 65 percent of your estimated maximum effort, and then call it a day. It’s important to ease into sprinting, so gradually increase the difficulty of the workout from that base beginning session. Build up by increasing the number of sprints you perform, the distance and the effort you put into them. Over the course of the next two to three months aim at getting to the point where you are performing several sprints in the 50-to-100-yard range at intensity levels varying from 70 percent up to 100 percent at each workout.

From that point you can move on to longer sprints. Young points out that the first forays into the range of 50-to-200 yards “should not be done anywhere close to full speed. When beginning, they should be done at half speed at most. The speed can be increased as strength increases and fitness improves.”  Young recommends working up to sprints of 2x50 meters, 3x100 meters and 3x200 meters.

How often should you sprint? One session a week will work great, especially if you’re weight training and also doing some cardiovascular, or aerobic, training. A session a week will work the legs thoroughly and keep the glutes and hams tight, as well as leave room for the growth and repair necessary from your weight workouts.

Sprinting is a great way to take your legs to the next level, trim fat off your physique and tighten up your glutes to boot. If you’re looking for some hot new exercise, don’t overlook the potential powerhouse results you can get from sprinting.

Incremental Workouts

Sprinting should be performed incrementally.  The increment is a time of rest between sprints equal to or greater than the time spent sprinting. A good rule of thumb is to take twice as long for the rest period as the sprint time. For instance, if your sprint took 10 seconds, you would rest for 20 seconds before you perform the next sprint. Active rest is best, like walking back to the original starting line before the next sprint is performed. The intensity of the sprints is also increased incrementally as your body becomes accustomed to the workout. 

Neil Gresham at PlanetFear.com points out the process of using intervals: “During a training session, no sprinter or middle-distance runners in their right mind would ever dream of running every repetition of a distance at their absolute maximum. They decide on a set pace, a set number of work intervals, a set recovery time (or rest interval), and they aim to complete all the work, but only just!—or perhaps to burn out only on the very last one. By definition, this means that the first few work intervals will feel relatively easy; but as the session progresses, you will start to feel under increasing pressure by the stopwatch, until, at the end, it will be all you can do to squeeze out that final interval. Hence there is progression within the session, which ultimately reaches an intensity climax.”