Fitness Benefits Of Sprinting

By Author: Zino Ferlando
Total Articles: 5
Comment this article

Sprinting is running as fast as you can over a short duration of time. The fitness benefits of sprinting are more than just increased speeds. For years bodybuilders have performed long duration low intensity cardio to help burn body fat. However, they have found that sprinting is more effective at promoting fat loss than jogging, cycling, anaerobic exercise or swimming.

A Sprint is a short fast run that lasts for less than a minute. Sprinting is not just running faster than a jog. Sprint means to run or race at full speed. A sprint is followed by an equal recovery period. The most important benefit is that sprinting helps in weight loss.

Here are some of the health and fitness benefits of Sprinting.

1) Fat Burning: Studies have shown that sprint workouts burn fat 9 times faster than a slow cardio workout even when you incorporate easy active rest sets or short sets of sprinting followed by a walk to recover. Sprinting raises your metabolism rate which results in fat burn even when you are at rest.

2) Good for Heart: Sprinting benefits the cardiovascular system especially ...
... your heart. Long and slow cardio cause stress on the heart whereas bursts of maximum cardio cause less stress on your heart. This increases your body endurance and also enables you to make even longer sets of sprint manageable.

3) Less Exercise Time: You burn more calories when you involve sprints in your cardio workout as compared to the regular long slow cardio and that too in less time. By sprinting you get your workout done in about 15 to 20 minutes. You can add sprints to your outdoor running easily. For example running one telephone pole and then walking for next too and so on or by sprinting for specific amount of time and then recovering by walking for certain time.

4) Fast Results: Sprint workouts bring faster results than you would get by working for months in the gym doing low intensity cardio. Because sprints are combined with recovery as well in form of walking, it activates both fast and slow twitch muscles fibers, thus toning the muscles. Your metabolism rate stays up even after you are done with the sprint workout.

5) Excessive Post Exercise Consumption (EPOC): During sprinting the body uses glucose and stored ATP as the main energy source, but this high intensity exercise creates an oxygen deficit. Due to which body has to raise heart and breathing rate to provide oxygen to the body cells. This is called Excessive Post Exercise Consumption (EPOC) where the body burns high number of calories after heavy exercise. This is why you breathe heavily and your body temperature rises after heavy exercise.

These are some of the health benefits of sprinting. So, include sprinting in your workout regime as sprinting helps in weight loss and fat burning and helps you achieve your weight loss goals in less amount of time.