Sprinting is one of the best exercises you can do for your body for athletic performance, health, and aesthetics. This makes sprints one of the most valuable exercises available.
The three primary compound lifts are the bench, squat, and deadlift. We believe there are two more compound movements, the sprint and the ab wheel–both train a high number of muscle groups at once providing a high return on time invested.
Sprinting is an advanced movement that should not be performed by those who have not earned the right to do them through disciplined pursuits of body mastery.
Depending on your physical mastery, you should consider less intensive training to build up to sprints like walking, jogging, or other cardio pursuits. You must determine if you are ready for sprinting.
If you have not exercised for a long period, are significantly overweight, injured, or other unlisted barrier, you should consider the pursuit of other training modalities.
Benefits of sprints
When you look at the bodies of sprinters compared to endurance runners, you tend to see explosive, healthy musculature from the sprinters, while the endurance runners appear to be sickly and weak. This trend has been upended a bit by ultra-marathon runners like Cameron Hanes and David Goggins, who both happen to have excellent self-narrated audiobooks. However, both men are “hybrid athletes” that are not solely focused on marathon running, outliers in the long-distance running path to mastery.
- Endure: How to Work Hard, Outlast, and Keep Hammering | Cameron Hanes
- Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds | David Goggins
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Sprinting makes you stronger, faster, healthier, more athletic, more conditioned, and more powerful in all things, including mind and spirit.
Fighters benefit from sprints, which is why George Saint Pierre (GSP) includes them in his post-championship continual pursuit of body mastery.
Sprints are high-value training because of the lack of sophisticated equipment to train them. You can sprint barefoot if the terrain is suitable.
Sprints require a long runway with full visibility that lacks hazards entering the runway. This can make finding a sprint spot a difficult endeavor.
Suitable locations for sprinting have:
- Limited or no traffic in real/imaginary sprinting lanes
- Limited or no hazards on the terrain of the real/imaginary lanes
- Land that is not used at the moment
- Significant visibility of your lane
You can sprint on cardio equipment like treadmills, ellipticals, and Air Bikes, which are fine, but here we are specifically talking about sprinting with runways that allow a sprinter to slow their speed after reaching top speed.
Below are good and bad locations for training sprints.
Good Locations for Running Sprints
Public university track
A public university with an outdoor track is a good place to train because it’s unlikely you will have to pay admission, and the only times the track will be used is in official capacities by the university’s sports teams, or during physical education classes.
Even if you aren’t a current student at a public state school, or weren’t a student in the past, a state school is a public school and you are part of the public so you can use that public space. Even when the football team is training, you may be able to use the track for sprints or use an unused field.
Public school after-hours
A public elementary, middle, or high school can be a good place to run sprints after hours. This can be good for evenings and weekends.
Some campuses may be closed or may be strict, or unsure about having strangers use the campus. However, if you’re respectful of the property and use the space after hours, even if a school official or a police question you about being there, you are unlikely to face any trouble and may be asked to leave at worst, but may not be interacted with at all.
The beach
You can train sprints on the beach. You get the benefit of being barefoot so your feet can be strengthened from the removal of the shoe, which the shoe acts like a caste for the foot, preventing the foot from being strengthened. If you’re sitting at your desk, you can strengthen your feet with toe separators.
You can sprint on wet sand or firm sand. For an added layer of difficulty, you can sprint in loose sand. The beach is an ideal place for sprints because you have a wide view to be aware of any obstacles that may be headed your way.
If you are near a beach with dunes, you can run soft sand hill sprints for increased difficulty.
Consider going in the early morning and avoid tourist beaches.
Public land
Public land is land for the public. That means you.
Public land includes public parks. Public parks tend to have many open fields which can be used for sprints. Public parks are the easiest public land to train your sprints on. All the fields where the children play soccer are viable for sprints when the children are not playing soccer.
If you have public land nearby, like a non-maintained field, it may be a good place to run sprints. Before you run sprints on unknown land, you must investigate the lane you are sprinting down for obstacles that will trip you up like large rocks, holes, sprinklers, changes in ground density, domestic or wild animals, irritating plants, and other unlisted hazards.
Public land is good for sprints but you may need to groom the land you plan to sprint on if the land is not maintained.
The desert often has public land available for sprints. However, there is heat risk during high-temperature months which is just not worth the risk.
The desert could work during winter months, but even so deserves extra precaution, including bringing double the water you think you need as being under the sun while not working out at all requires significant hydration. If you are sprinting in the desert, bringing an electrolyte drink like Liquid IV isn’t a bad idea.
Public land is a gift from Teddy Roosevelt who created the conservation movement, establishing national parks, and other protected lands.
Trails
Trails can be a good place to run sprints, but they can be negative depending on visibility and the number of human and non-human hazards.
Running sprints on trails can expose you to uneven, ungroomed grounds which can result in you tripping and falling, or twisting an ankle when the terrain inevitably changes.
If you do not have good forward visibility, human hazards can enter your sprint lane without you, or them, noticing. You will not be able to slow down enough to avoid a collision.
You may also have to deal with dogs that are off-leash and compelled to chase a running human. You could run into a wild animal, but wild animals tend to stay away from areas humans frequently traffic–but not always.
A trail with limited terrain chaos, full visibility, and seclusion from traffic of all kinds can provide a fulfilling space to run sprints.
Bad Locations For Running Sprints
The street
The street is hard, and there is traffic where you are the nail and the car is the hammer. There is also street traffic not pertaining to vehicles. What about a dumb child rolling down a driveway on a bicycle without looking? In that circumstance you are the hammer and the child, pet, or other oblivious entity is the nail.
You can’t slow your speed to a stop effectively while sprinting, making you a meat missile that will collide and destroy or be destroyed by whatever object you impact with depending on its mass and velocity.
Weak people will be spiritually threatened by your sprinting as you will be a reminder to their inactivity, which they cannot allow to exist in their minds, as it reminds them of their lack of pursuit, and they will seek to stop that reminder. You may be yelled at, questioned, someone may call the cops, ask you to leave, etc.
Empty parking lots
Empty parking lots might appear to be a good location for sprints, but they aren’t for the following reasons. A parking lot is owned by someone or some organization, meaning a greater likelihood of police presence.
The very nature of a parking lot is a location to organize vehicles, and vehicles are extreme hazards to your meat vehicle. Even if an empty parking lot is completely empty or mostly empty, any driver will not expect sprinting to occur in a parking lot and will be oblivious to you.
Consider the danger if you are sprinting in a parking lot with headphones in while a driver enters the parking lot who also has headphones in.
People in the streets seeing you full-sprinting may think you are running from something like a natural disaster, or threat of punishment for a crime which may result in police interference.
Running on hard surfaces isn’t great for your body in general.
Public school during school/practice hours
You do not want to sprint at a public school when class is in session. A stranger sprinting during recess will attract attention and will be asked to remove themselves from the space by a school official or police.
An individual who positions themselves amongst groups of minors in an unofficial capacity is unsettling.
If a team is practicing it may be okay, but you should ask beforehand or inform their leader so your intentions are known and your threat potential is dismissed.
The gym
Most commercial gyms are not equipped for sprints. This precludes stationary equipment sprints, but these should be rejected in favor of actual sprints when available. If a commercial gym has a designated place outdoors or indoors for sprints, consider it a blessing and utilize this space for as long as you can.
If a commercial gym has a strip of turf, understand you could sprint there, but that is not recommended because obstacles are guaranteed to enter your space and an accident will happen at some point.
Your backyard
The backyard is likely not a good space unless you have a massive yard or live in the country, for the basic reasons we already laid out.
You need a long enough runway to get full speed, which a small or enclosed yard isn’t suitable for. You may also have hazards in your yard or hazards that will enter your yard, especially if you have pets or children. The backyard terrain may be less suitable for sprinting, given that yard-terrain tends to be softer through manicuring maintenance as opposed to the dry ground of a field.
Summarizing
Sprints are a powerful compound exercise that can be trained with no equipment. They should be added to an individual’s training program where it fits their goals and physical capability.
Consider using sprints as a tool for strength, speed, agility, and aesthetics.
