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Improve Your Sprint Speed – Fitness Epsom
Sprinting Epsom – There is no permanent open sprint facility in Epsom bar Epsom Harriers which has specific open track times. The closest one that is open as a centre is Sutton Arena.
Let's start with the benefits
Benefits of sprinting
1. Improves body composition
– Sprinting not only helps to burn fat but also encourages muscles to grow… how does it do this? we’ll,
sprinting sends a signal to cells all over the body to toughen up and adapt to the new physical activity requirements, improving oxidative capacity and metabolic control during subsequent exercise, leaving you leaner
2. Fires up fast twitch fibres
– Sprinting is an excellent exercise for those who want to build speed and power. The more you train the fast-twitch muscle fibres in your legs, the faster you’ll be able to run and the higher you’ll jump.
3. Research in the Journal of Sports Science Medicine suggests that HIIT training has many advantages for cardiovascular fitness over traditional “steady state” training (such as jogging for five miles). Researchers found that, compared to controls, students who engaged in HIIT training saw significant improvements in their VO2 max (a measure of oxygen use) and peak power output, two important markers for cardiovascular fitness
Let's Get Sprinting!
How do we improve sprint speed?
First, start sprinting…Seriously, I had a client who approached me in the gym to ask me how do I get faster sprinting?
My first question was well what are you doing to improve your sprint speed, to which the response was everything but sprinting!
Get yourself on a run, you don’t need an athletics track, just set yourself targets on your normal run, and if you don’t run, then start!
Sprinting on the road
Use MapMyRun – Start running for 10minutes at a slow pace, then add some short sprints into your session, sprint to a lamp post, walk to the next one, then sprint to the next lamp post then jog to the next one, then sprint to the next lamp post and walk…etc Try and accumulate 10 sprints, this is an introduction to what running fast will be like on the athletics track.
Sprinting on the track
Speed on the track is my favourite, because of the surface and steady gradient to build up efficiently focusing more on the technique of the run to improve those few seconds.
Here are some sessions written up in the archive you can try:
Session 1
| 5min jog |
| 10min leg swings/stretch |
| 2x 6x 400m (2mins rolling timer) |
| Run 400m at a consistent speed, however long it takes determines how much rest you have before you start running again – every two min interval you go again. |
Session 2
| 5 min jog |
| 2x 4x 40m sprints |
| 200/100 x5 (5mins recovery) |
| 200 should be at 75%, straight into the 100 at 95% |
“If you turn up worrying about how you’re going to perform you’ve already lost”