Three Effective Sprinting Workouts

Sprinting is one the simplest, most natural and most primal ways to work out. When performed correctly a good sprint session will work your core, your shoulders, your quadriceps, your hamstrings, your calves.well it'll work just about everything. It will also massively challenge your central nervous system to coordinate all that work into an efficient movement. To get the most out of your training, though, you'll need an effective selection of workouts designed to develop each aspect of your sprint. Lucky for you, this article does just that.

Workout One: Explosive acceleration This workout focuses on the first twenty to thirty meters of your race and is all about firing off the line with as much force as possible. To get the most out of these exercises try using a countdown timer to improve your reaction time.

-warm up for five to ten minutes

. Forty Yard Dash (36.6 metres) Nothing complex here, sprint forty yards as fast as possible, focusing on keeping your head down as you accelerate and just about gaining a fully upright posture near the end of the dash.

. Lying starts: Simply lie on the floor, preferably facing the direction you want to travel. When the buzzer sounds you pick yourself up as fast as you can as sprint twenty meters.

. Knee Starts: At an angle of ninety degrees (perpendicular) to the start line, place your closest knee to the line down on the floor. Your other leg should be bent as if in a lunge, with your foot still firmly planted on the floor. To start you need to explosively push off with this foot whilst twisting and driving forward with your arms. Keep your head down and run about thirty meters.

Workout Two: Technical movements: Ideally these movements would be performed under the supervision of a coach, but you can still get plenty of benefit from them operating solo. The repetitions will be kept low as the movements are extremely demanding of your central nervous system.

-Warm up for five to ten minutes

. High Knees: Performed with a slight forward lean and hopping very lightly on one leg whilst bringing the other leg up. The focus here is one keeping your core engaged and your arms pumping whilst you explosively bring those knees upwards

. Bum kicks: With your knees forwards use your heels to kick backwards, you should feel this movement in your hamstrings. Aim for a good contraction and build up the speed, landing on your toes each time.

. Stride length runs: Run fifty to seventy five meters focusing on stride length. The key here is to think about extending your hips rather than just your legs. As with all your drills you should be aiming to keep your core nicely engaged and above your body.

. Quick foot runs: Run fifty to seventy five metres focusing on quickly getting your feet back in contact with the floor. The key here is to focus on the cycling movement of your legs and to aim to speed that up.

Workout Three: The Anaerobic Pyramid

This workout is the speed section of your training. It is in this session that you'll cover the most distance and focus on putting together all the separate technical and explosive elements of your training. As you perform each sprint try to actively think about one element of your technical training to include. Change the element you think about with each repetition and after a few weeks you'll be implementing them naturally.

-Warm up for five to ten minutes

1) Fifty percent speed one hundred meters. Two reps with sixty seconds rest

2) Max effort one hundred meters. Three reps with two minutes rest.

3) Max effort two hundred meters. Two reps with two minutes rest

4) Seventy five percent speed one hundred meters. Two reps with ninety seconds rest.

5) Fifty percent speed one hundred metres. One rep. Finished and begin cool down.

After each session you'll need to use whatever energy you have left to do a good set of stretches.

There you have it then, three different workouts each designed to specifically improve one section of your sprint. Start training with them today, track your times and watch yourself improve. Good luck.