Welcome to part 2 of the ultimate guide to sprinting—the quintessential Primal workout.

In part 1 we talked about the benefits that come from this amazing practice and in part 2, I take you through a step-by-step of how to approach conducting a proper sprint workout. You will learn what happens to your body when you do a sprint workout, and not just how to sprint, but most importantly, when to sprint, as the timing of your sprinting is integral to its effectiveness. 

TIMESTAMPS:

Sprinting is the ultimate primal workout. How should we conduct a proper sprint workout and enjoy the benefits? [00:58]

You want to be fully rested and energized before you attempt to have a sprint workout.  [02:48]

Sprinting creates a communication between the central nervous system and the muscles. [04:54]

The workout template is four to 10 sprints lasting between 10 and 20 seconds, no longer than 20 seconds. [08:55]

You want to strive for a six to one ratio of rest to work effort. [11:58]

There’s great research showing that sprints as short as six seconds will deliver a reliable boost in serum testosterone levels. [16:14]

When you burn through your stored creatine phosphate, and try to sustain maximum effort beyond eight seconds, you prompt an exponential increase in cellular destruction. [19:28]

By depleting your cellular energy, by frying yourself and doing all this metabolic extreme destructive damage, you feel a sense of euphoria for a while. [24:38]

The brain cells are particularly sensitive to ammonia toxicity, so after many hours of grueling workouts, you may experience symptoms of brain fog, fatigue, and mood disturbances. [29:52]

Much of the information out there on the internet about training logs could be misinterpreted and misappropriated because it’s coming from an elite athlete. [32:10]

There are many steps in performing an effective sprint workout. The first is to engage in plenty of complimentary workouts and lifestyle behaviors to prepare you to be an effective sprinter. [35:08]

At the start of the workout, we want to have a cardio vascular warmup session. It’s the opposite of the cool down. [38:09]

Dynamic stretching is next as you prepare for your sprinting. [40:03]

Proper running form includes straight posture rather than over-striding. [42:00]

Wind Sprints are short accelerations where you get up to near full speed and then take it down. [44:22]

There are many ways to trash yourself by conducting a sprint workout inappropriately. Reject that struggle and suffer mentality and check in and make sure that we’re optimally excited and uninhibited before each successive rep. [47:14]

After the sprint, you want a gentle aerobic cool down maybe by walking rather than jogging. [53:51]

Positional parasympathetic breathing is kind of a mini nap resting period lying down and breathing through your nose after workout. [56:52]

Next you need to replenish by consuming healthy, nutritious, easy to digest fuel to get your body started on the recovery process. [59:16]

It will take about 48 hours for your body to recover from a high-impact sprint session so you make sure you are fully recovered before introducing another sprint workout. [01:01:06]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• Brad’s Shopping page
• Brad’s Sprinting warmup technique
• Brad’s Sprinting technique
• Brad’s video how fast you sprint
• Periodization for Sports
• HIIT vs. HIRT article
• Wayde Van Niekerk
• Brad Kearns’s Morning Routine
• Dynamic Stretching video
• Brad’s Running Technique video
• Parasympathetic breathing podcast
• Oxygen Advantage
• The Health Fix
• Chari Hawkins Instagram
• Brad’s Cold Exposure

LISTEN: 

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B.Rad Podcast:

Brad (00:00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad Podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three, world ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype hacks, shortcuts, and sciencey talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.

Brad (00:00:58):
Welcome to part two of the Ultimate Guide to Sprinting, talking about all the benefits in part one. And now we’re gonna get to a step by step how to approach, to conduct a proper sprint workout and enjoy all the amazing benefits that we covered in part one. To remind you that sprinting is the ultimate primal workout, the quintessential expression of the homo sapiens, genetically hardwired fight or flight response. We often neglect this aspect of a total fitness experience these days, especially among the devoted fitness community who are putting in lots of miles and building their endurance, building their aerobic capacity. That’s wonderful. That’s better than staying on the couch. It’s also fantastic to be in the strength training, resistance training environment and building up those great benefits.Same with performing high intensity interval training sessions, although those are often performed, uh, inappropriately leading to burnout and breakdown, but true sprinting where you are delivering a near maximum effort for a short duration period of time, delivering maximum explosiveness and power that is the centerpiece of the fitness experience, the human genetic expectations for health and the amazing hormonal and anti-aging benefits that you accrue and that we talked about in detail on the first show, especially the compare and contrast to the popular HIIT training protocol, H I I T, which entails hard efforts, but, so many of them with minimal rest between them that they aren’t really characterized as explosive maximum power.

Brad (00:02:48):
And it’s a different training stimulus when done appropriately. And occasionally it can have great fitness benefits, but I’m gonna put that in a different category than true sprinting. So I encourage you to go back and listen to part one and part two, we’re gonna focus on, uh, I’m gonna call it 13 steps to conducting a proper Sprint workout. So I want to take you through, uh, nice and gracefully all the preparation that’s necessary to conduct the appropriate sprint workout. And the main one to understand and to recalibrate your mentality is that this is a maximum effort for the central nervous system as well as the relevant muscles, joints, connective tissue. And so you want to be fully rested and energized before you attempt to sprint workout. This is not the same as going out there day in, day out and putting in the miles in pursuit of aerobic fitness or pursuit of daunting endurance goals.

Brad (00:03:48):
So sprinting is a wonderful, uh, maximum return on investment style of workout for very short duration. However, you have to do it carefully and appropriately and be rested and a hundred percent energized before you attempt to sprint workout. So it’s when you’re feeling great, that’s when you consider a sprint workout. And guess what? If you’re scheduling one for Tuesday, but you don’t feel that great on Tuesday, you postpone the workout until you have good signs of, uh, full energy, alertness, motivation, enthusiasm at rest, thinking about the workout, pondering the workout, and then going through the preparatory steps, the warmup drills and things like that, and feeling great at, uh, all these, uh, checkpoints. So what’s happening when you sprint is you are forcing billions of neurons in your central nervous system to process messages and motor responses faster and more accurately. Information signals are transferred from muscle to brain to muscle by moving what’s called receptor cells to effector cells throughout the central nervous system.

Brad (00:04:54):
So the important point here is that it’s a communication between the central nervous system and the muscles. We wanna envision that rather than just thinking, sprinting is about pumping our legs really hard on the bicycle or down the running track. So it’s a graceful interaction between the brain telling your muscles to fire with quickness and explosiveness. That’s why we wanna feel alert, energized, rested, and you might hear bodybuilders and, uh, people in the strength and fitness community talk about how the central nervous system becomes fatigued from lifting heavy weights. It’s a very similar dynamic here where the brain is one of the elements that gets fatigued from sprinting along with that hamstring, that quad and so forth. So we gotta think of the big picture here and the graceful interaction between central nervous system and muscles to move the body as fast as possible when sprinting the speed of the signal itself also needs to be super fast in order to recruit the optimal amount of fast twitch muscle fibers to do the job.

Brad (00:05:58):
The athletes receptors and effectors, remember we talked about receptor cells and effector cells, they need to be primed for action. The late Tudor Bompa, Dr. Tudor Bompa, a highly regarded coach and scientist author of periodization training for sports, describes this readiness state as quote, being optimally excited and uninhibited. So when you see these athletes jumping up and down in front of the starting blocks before the a hundred meter sprint, you see them jumping in the air or perhaps screaming like the great Norwegian world record hurdler, Carsten Warhol. He will pound his chest and scream and yell as he’s preparing to enter the blocks. This is not just posturing, this is actually priming the brain, the central nervous system and the muscles in the example of those explosive jumps to get ready and be optimally excited and uninhibited. That’s why warmup correct warmup and preparatory drills are so important to ensure an effective sprint performance sprint workout.

Brad (00:07:01):
So again, to emphasize, you do not want a sprint in this pre fatigued state. So if you’ve been doing a hard basketball practice for two hours, and then the tradition at the end is the line drill where they line up the athletes and they have to quickly go back and forth to the various lines on the court and that finishes the workout, hey, that might be you know, advancing the goal of mental resilience and hanging in there tough at the end of practice, but it’s not going to make you a better sprinter to try and sprint when you’re fatigued. In fact, when you try and sprint, when you are fatigued, central nervous system fatigue or, and or muscular fatigue, you are training these neural pathways to fire more slowly. If that doesn’t scare you away from skipping a workout, I don’t know what will.

Brad (00:07:54):
So it’s better to skip the workout rather than persevere when you’re not a hundred percent, because you’re going to teach yourself to sprint slower if you insist upon sprinting. Now, um, this requires a major change in mentality for many endurance athletes because we’ve been programmed and trained and socialized that a workout is about enduring and suffering and sucking it up. And of course, you’re gonna feel crappy from mile 20 to mile 26 on the marathon course, but you can’t give up and you have to think positive thoughts and you can do it and you’re strong and carry on, carry on, carry on. But in sprinting, you have to be highly attuned to the condition of your central nervous system and the muscles. And when you start to notice a decline in explosiveness in any way during a workout or perhaps during your preparatory drills, that is a time to turn off the motor and finish the session or skip the session if the case may be.

Brad (00:08:55):
So it’s a different mentality than enduring and suffering and sucking it up. Now, this is the big take home from the entire presentation here. So if you’re taking notes, please write down. This is the ideal sprint workout template for just about every fitness enthusiast and competitive athlete out there. Of course, if you are training for the Olympics in a certain event like the a hundred meter hurdles or the 400 meters or what have you, you’re gonna have specially designed workouts preparing you for those goals. But in general, to become competent as a sprinter, the workout template is four to 10 sprints lasting between 10 and 20 seconds, no longer than 20 seconds. If that’s a revelation to you, and you’re used to sprinting 30 seconds at a time during your peloton workout or your group exercise session, you have to realize that when you sprint, when you attempt to sprint for longer than 20 seconds, it is no longer truly defined as a sprint because the body is incapable of delivering a near maximum effort for longer than actually longer than seven seconds, technically speaking the creatine phosphate pathway.

Brad (00:10:12):
But when you go between, let’s say seven seconds and 20 seconds, you are able to generate a ton of explosive energy and get very near maximum effort, but you indeed are slowing down by the time you are losing performance by the time you get to 20 seconds. So we look at Usain Bolt, speaking of 20 seconds world record in the 200 meters 19 point, is it 19 I believe is, uh, continues to be the world record. So he’s going all out half a lap, 200 meter sprint, 19 seconds, but during that effort, he is slowing down, his power output is slowing down because your incapable of sustaining truly maximum output for more than round seven seconds. Yes, the a hundred meter sprinters are even decelerating or losing power output by the end of the a hundred meter race. And you can see sometimes how some athletes are behind and they advance to the front.

Brad (00:11:09):
And the true perspective there when you’re watching a hundred meter sprint is the guy who is slowing down the least often appears to be catching and passing people in the latter stages of the a hundred meters. But for our training purposes, for the general fitness enthusiasts, we want to pick that sweet spot between 10 and 20 seconds for the ideal duration of sprint efforts, you’re gonna do between four and 10 of them based on your conditioning level, your goals, and the venue that you’re choosing, whether it’s running, uh, high impact sprints on flat ground or doing things that are lower or no impact, where you can get away with perhaps a longer duration sprint or more repetitions of the sprint. Now here’s the other key factor.

Brad (00:11:58):
So there’s three key factors. There’s how many sprints you’re doing, there’s the duration of the sprint, and then the rest period in between efforts. And you wanna strive for a six to one ratio of rest to work efforts. That’s an incredibly long recovery period. And what this does is ensure that you are going to deliver a maximum effort of consistent quality on each successive sprint. So if you’re doing four or you’re doing six, or you’re doing eight, each of those sprints are going to be consistent in the quality of effort. And what I mean by that is two things. First of all, the performance result. So if you’re sprinting 80 meters down the football field and each one is taking you 10 seconds, you wanna stick around that finishing time for each one indicating a consistent quality of effort. Secondly, it’s the perceived exertion. So if you’re running along at an 85 out of a hundred perceived exertion and delivering that ten second effort, and then because of fatigue, because of central nervous system or muscular fatigue on your seventh or eighth rep, you have to dig deeper and get to 95 out of a hundred, which we’ve been socialized to think is badass and representative of a good workout.

Brad (00:13:15):
That’s not what we wanna do with sprinting. We want to have a similar perceived exertion and a similar performance result. We don’t want to ask you to dig deep and try harder to continue to deliver that ten second effort. So you may notice during your sprint sequence when you’re on rep number four, number five, number six is that perhaps your time will get slower or you’ll have to try harder to hit the same time, and that’s an indication that you’ve reached your optimal frequency of sprints and time to end the workout. That’s what consistent quality of effort means. So what the six to one ratio you’re going to do pretty well on your fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth rep. That’s a lot different than let’s say you’re at a bootcamp class or a group cycling class, and they’re asking you to do 30 second sprints with 30 seconds rest, 30 second sprints, 30 seconds, rest 10 times or whatever they’re asking you to do.

Brad (00:14:12):
You’re absolutely going to get fatigued and depleted as you near the end of that high intensity interval training set. So the critical distinction here is that sprinting is shorter duration, longer rest periods than a classic interval workout, which again, is training for peak performance goals and delivering fitness adaptations. But those are higher risk workouts, especially when you do them frequently because they are exhausting and depleting when you do a sprint workout correctly. In contrast, you’re only going out there for four to 10 reps, you’re going for 10 to 20 seconds, which doesn’t seem like much for a lot of fitness enthusiasts accustomed to these more grueling high intensity interval training sessions. And you’re resting. For example, if you’re doing ten second sprints, you’re resting for a complete minute before you do the next rep. Or if you’re doing a 20 second sprint, you’re resting for two full minutes between reps.

Brad (00:15:10):
So what’s happening during that rest period is your respiration is recalibrating. Your central nervous system is recalibrating to allow you to get optimally excited and uninhibited again for the next rep. And finally, you are replenishing a bit of the creatine phosphate pathways in the cell, which is the fuel system that generates maximum explosive efforts. It takes, uh, I believe three to five minutes the research says to fully replenish creatine phosphate. That’s why you might see a power lifter in the gym doing a single rep, uh, maximum effort on the bench press or the squat or the deadlift. And then they will rest a ridiculous five minutes before they try again. They know what they’re doing, believe me, and that is replenishing that cellular energy for the absolute maximum energy output. So we want that six to one rest ratio. So your notes should say four to 10 sprints, 10 to 20 seconds, six to one work, rest to work ratio.

Brad (00:16:14):
Now, as far as where you land on that template, that can vary based on your performance goals. So if you are a devoted endurance athlete, like a competitive triathlete or ultra runner or marathon runner, long distance bike rider, you favor the long stuff. You can drift up to the high end of those ranges. So let’s say a long distance triathlete is gonna integrate sprinting at certain times of the year. I talk all about how to integrate high intensity exercise properly on the Primal Endurance Podcast. So you can listen to some great shows there. But for our purposes here, let’s say you’re gonna do a sprint workout that’s 10 sprints lasting for 20 seconds, and of course that’s not gonna be as explosive as someone doing four sprints lasting 10 seconds. But that type of athlete might have really high explosive high power peak performance goals.

Brad (00:17:09):
So, for example, a power lifter who’s getting measured by doing a single rep of how much weight they can lift if they want to integrate sprinting into their protocol, which will help tremendously with those peak performance goals, they might do fewer sprints, shorter duration. Okay, great research, uh, cited by Ben Greenfield on his show covering, testosterone optimization. There’s great research showing that sprints as short as six seconds will deliver a reliable boost in serum testosterone levels. So this is why these workouts are so important to do correctly and so important to integrate into your fitness experience that you can get the ultimate hormone optimization benefits from doing brief explosive efforts and perhaps or very likely toning down your fascination with these grueling, exhausting, depleting high intensity interval training sessions. And again, don’t get me wrong, I will do interval workouts at times because my goals are competing in track and field events like the a hundred, 200, 400 meters.

Brad (00:18:19):
So I have to prepare for those competitive goals. But a true sprint has a special place in my heart and my training program. And when you do it correctly, you want to leave the track or the stationary bike if that’s the thing that you’re doing. You wanna walk away feeling a nice little bounce in your step. Of course you’ve worked hard and you’re pleasantly fatigued, but you don’t want that feeling of depletion, exhaustion, extreme sugar cravings that sometimes happens in the aftermath of the popular high intensity interval training session protocol. So there’s a full show that I recorded on the distinction between HIIT and HIRT, that’s Dr. Craig Marker’s. Wonderful take on the subject HIRT stands for high intensity repeat training with the emphasis on repeating a similarly impressive peak performance explosive effort on each interval on each, work effort as opposed to the high intensity interval training where you are getting, uh, uh, uh, slower, more tired as the workout goes on.

Brad (00:19:28):
And he talks on detail on his wonderful article published on breaking muscle called HIIT versus HIRT. When you burn through your stored creatine phosphate, the ATP creatine phosphate energy system, and try to sustain maximum effort beyond eight seconds, you prompt an exponential increase in cellular destruction to get the job done. A super important concept to understand and appreciate. So I talked about how the body is only capable of delivering a truly maximum explosive effort for around seven or eight seconds. That’s the maximum capability of the ATP creatine phosphate system. So that’s energy that’s sitting inside the cell ready to blast. So you can, for example, lift up the heaviest bar you’ve ever lifted or run down the track or pedal your bicycle at full, full power for around eight seconds. Once you’re done, you’ve burned through that stored creatine phosphate in the cell, and now you need to go find additional energy sources.

Brad (00:20:38):
I talk about this in detail on the primal fitness certification coach material, but as we transition into different phases of effort, zero to eight seconds is creatine phosphate. Eight to 30 seconds is the lactate pathway. So you’ve heard of lactic acid, that’s a byproduct of lactate energy production in the cell, but lactate is a great energy source for, uh, explosive peak performance efforts last in between eight and 30 seconds. And then when you ask your body to perform at high effort for longer than 30 seconds, that’s when you start going into the glycolytic energy system. So you’re burning up glucose and you get up to around two minutes. And when you try to perform at, uh, maximum capability for longer than two minutes, you begin to transition into a graceful blend of glucose and fatty acids. And of course, the fatty acids will kick in when you’re going for two hours, four hours, eight hours, 24 hour ultra marathon run where you’re burning mostly are almost entirely fatty acids and a little bit of glucose.

Brad (00:21:45):
The fat-burning system, of course, can keep you going for longer and longer and longer and is efficient with its, uh, dispensation of manufacturing ATP to allow you to go for a hundred miles. But when we’re talking about the short stuff, it’s nice to have a brief basic understanding of the energy systems and use for periods of time of maximum effort. So we got that zero to eight seconds creatine phosphate, eight to 30 seconds as the lactate pathways. 30 seconds to two minutes is when we transition into glucose burning the glycolytic energy system. And then think about a track race going longer than two minutes, like the mile. The mile exercise physiology research reports that, um, it’s actually more aerobic than anaerobic, even though they’re going at a tremendous speed. The world records three minutes, 43 seconds for the mile.

Brad (00:22:36):
It’s pretty amazing to think that there’s a lot of fat burning going on even when they’re flying down the track and seemingly a very anaerobic activity. So, the relative energy systems and use, and back to the comments about what’s going on when you’re trying to go maximum longer than that eight seconds. Now you are breaking down the cellular material. It’s kind of like throwing watting up newspapers and throwing them into the fire to keep the flame burning at high level to get you around the track for the 200 meter race or the 400 meter race or the mile race or whatever. You’ll realize this, uh, exponential increase in cellular destruction is happening when you experience the familiar burn of acid accumulation in the muscles. This is an indication that you cannot produce enough ATP to continue at your desired maximum speed.

Brad (00:23:31):
However, the lactate by lactate byproduct can be used for fuels I described, allowing you to deliver a really high quality effort for up to 20 seconds and spur profound fitness and metabolic adaptations. So when you work on your lactic acid tolerance, as they often describe it, or you work on your lactate pathways, this entails doing some pretty impressive efforts going up to around 20 seconds. Now, you get up to 20 seconds with minimal breakdown. There’s still a bit of cellular breakdown when you feel that las lactic acid burn, it’s gonna take you a little while to recover maybe 24, 48, 72 hours, depending on your age and your fitness level I guess. So, uh, that is why Dr. Marker contends that sweet spot between 10 and 20 seconds. For sprinting, obviously less than 10 is great too. The research showing six seconds. But for a lot of fitness conditioning and workout benefits, um, going at least 10 seconds is not too much to ask to stimulate these fitness adaptations.

Brad (00:24:38):
Going up to 20 seconds is not too much to ask because you’re getting tremendous fitness benefits, profound fitness and metabolic adaptations, quoting Dr. Marker. Now here’s what happens when you start to creep above 20 and are asked to sprint or go all out for 30 seconds or 40 seconds, it’s exponential. Remember what that term actually means from math class? That means the damage, the destruction to your cellular material in order to fuel that performance is exponential. So, uh, 30 second sprints are a huge difference. From 20 second sprints, they’re going to cook you far more. Same with going for 40, or think about going for a minute. And the crazy workouts that we used to do in high school and collegiate running where we’d run repeats of a quarter mile around the trap, which take around 60 seconds, and they were brutal cuz we were going near all out.

Brad (00:25:36):
And then not recovering that six to one ratio, but perhaps less even jogging half the lap to do the next one with probably a one to one recovery ratio. This was more of a HIIT session that was extremely exhausting and depleting. And in the analogy here, you are basically, uh, burning down your the a frames of your cellular structure. So, if you are wadding up the newspaper to throw into the fireplace, now you’re taking the cushions off the sofa and your personal belongings, your t-shirts, all this stuff is going into the fire, and you are gonna be left with a mess afterward when you overextend yourself on a sprint workout. Back to the scientific discussion of what I’m trying to say with the t-shirts throwing in there and, uh, that the sofa cushions burning through your stage two rocket fuel of the ATP lactate pathway, that’s the fuel used for efforts of eight to 30 seconds, triggers the cellular process of dissembling and deamination in order to supply more a ATP for maximum energy output.

Brad (00:26:48):
Dr. Marker describes this dissembling and deamanation process as breaking down the A frames of your cells. The vaunted benefit of mitochondrial biogenesis that you get from doing a proper sprint workout gets put on hold because your cells have been trashed to the extent that they can’t, uh, rebuild and become stronger. Guess what else happens? Ammonia builds up in the bloodstream to toxic levels, a byproduct of the dissembling and deamanation of cellular material. Basically what you are doing is you are frying your cells. And that is true in literal terms because of the electrical circuitry that happens when the central nervous system is telling the muscles to fire. You are depleting the sodium potassium pumps to the extent that the electrical circuitry is compromised. And you are fried just like when you fry a circuit, when you plug that space heater into a plug that can’t handle it because it’s already got other things going on that power strip.

Brad (00:27:49):
So you are frying your cells to get to that distant finish line. Hmm. You also get this profound spike in fight or flight hormones. Obviously, when you ask your body to perform a maximum effort, like doing six to eight quarters all out like we did in high school and college, what have you. And with that profound surge in fight or flight hormones, what happens after the workout? You get the endorphin rush, you get a tremendous sense of accomplishment. You’re high fiving the person next to you in the exercise class because you just completed that set of 10 sprints of 30 seconds on the bike with only 30 seconds rest between them. So by depleting your cellular energy, by frying yourself and doing all this metabolic extreme destructive damage, you feel a sense of euphoria for a while. That’s what the endorphins system, the fight or flight system is all about.

Brad (00:28:52):
Remember from the evolutionary anthropology that the endorphins flood into the bloodstream to keep us going so we don’t die. We don’t give up when we’re getting chased and lie down and allow ourselves to get eaten, uh, or whatever, the primal analogy you wanna make. And so they are encouraging us by giving this artificial high and this artificial scent of wellbeing. And the profound pain killing effects of endorphins feels great. It’s nice to high five somebody. It’s nice to get off the couch at 6:00 AM and complete that grueling spinning workout, but you pay a severe price. So what this show is all about is trying to get you the optimal cellular, hormonal, metabolic, anti-aging genetic expression, benefits from sprinting without all this cellular destruction and extended recovery time and peripheral damage.

Brad (00:29:52):
Remember when I talked about ammonia toxicity gets which cells in the body are particularly sensitive to ammonia toxicity. That’s right, your brain cells, they need the cleanest fuel sources possible. And 18 hours, 24 hours, 36 hours after that grueling uh, inappropriately conducted sprint workout or high intensity interval training session, you may experience symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, mood disturbances, uh, crankiness. And over time, especially if you’re doing these workouts frequently that are too grueling, you are going to have suppressed immune function due to the continued calling upon of fight or flight resources. One of my favorite podcast guests, Dr. Tommy Wood calls it liquidating your assets in order to finish these grueling workouts on a regular basis. So yes, you just bought that beautiful new boat to cruise around the lake, but you maxed out four credit cards in order to pay for the boat. <laugh> You’re smiling, you’re waving in the boat, everyone’s having a good time, and you pay the price later.

Brad (00:31:03):
You’re also gonna have muscle weakness breakdown, more sensitivity and vulnerability to injury in the muscles, joints, connective tissue. So we wanna stick to that 20 seconds, even though it feels great, and you’re gonna get that payoff and those endorphins when you do workouts that ask for longer maximum duration efforts and go for that consistent quality of effort where you’re delivering an explosive nice result each time. If you experience anything such as, uh, compromised form, a breakdown in technique, a new sense of soreness in the lower back or the hamstrings after your fifth sprint, after your sixth sprint, this is all time to pull the plug and congratulate yourself for a sensible and highly productive workout that’s gonna help build your fitness level over time without those prolonged interruptions that occur when you push yourself too hard. Oh, if you’re feeling frustrated, like, Hey, but wait, my favorite track workout is six to eight times 400 meters where it takes me a minute or a minute, 10, and I jog a half a lap and I feel so good, and that’s when I race the best.

Brad (00:32:10):
So listen, if you have distinct competitive goals, like I wanted to make the state championships in the mile in high school, so I was willing to torture myself on the track and do long runs in the hills on the weekend and do all these things needed that we see the great elite endurance runners of the planet and endurance athletes pushing themselves with an assortment of challenging workouts. Of course, that’s what it takes to reach the elite level and also your competitive potential in whatever event. But these workouts have to be conducted very carefully and sparingly. And I think one big mistake we make, especially now with this amazing access to information where we can study Eliud Kipchoge’s training log posted on the internet, the greatest marathon runner of all time. We know how the Tour de France guys train with their wattage output and their lactate results.

Brad (00:33:02):
And so we can gather all this information and say, oh, okay, I’m gonna design my cycling protocol just like the Tour de France champ. And so Tuesday that means short sprints and Thursday that means longer hill repeats. And of course, Saturday is gonna be the long ride. All that stuff is possibly misinterpreted and misappropriated because it’s coming from an elite athlete who has dedicated his or her life to competitive peak performance, performing, recovering, performing, and recovering without interference from an assortment other every day life stressors. On top of that, they have the extreme genetic gifts that have allowed them to arise to the highest level of elite sport. So it’s probably not a good idea for me, for example, to compare my training to Wayde van Niekerk the great South African who broke the world record in the 400 meters in the Rio Olympics, running 43:03 for one lap around the track.

Brad (00:34:02):
It was a human breakthrough experience to watch because he basically sprinted. I’m telling you on the show, and the scientists are saying the human can’t sprint for longer than 20 seconds without really slowing down. And what he did was he basically sprinted around that entire track for 43 seconds. You can look it up on YouTube, I’ll put it in the show notes, Wayde van Niekerk, real Olympics, 400 meters world record. So the greats are doing things that are, you know, astonishing and beyond belief and probably should not be attempted to simulate the training patterns that they engage in the highest level of training instead being really sensible with our stress rest balance at all times. And when it comes to sprint workouts, super important to integrate them, but also with a minimal stress and maximum fitness benefit. Now, with that long prelude, that’s going to get me to the many, many steps of performing, uh, an effective sprint workout.

Brad (00:35:08):
And what do we have? 13 We have? Yeah, something like that. Don’t worry, it’s gonna flow beautifully and it’ll really make a lot of sense. But this is how I want you to envision integrating sprinting into your training protocol. So step one or item number one on the list of, uh, ways to conduct a proper sprint workout and, uh, sprint training in your protocol is to, uh, engage in plenty of complimentary workouts and lifestyle behaviors to prepare you to be an effective sprinter. I look no further than my morning exercise routine. Of course, I’ve done entire show on that topic how life changing it has been for me to wake up every single day and launch into this template protocol, a sequence of exercises that I do that help me feel alert and energized. But the original motivation to start my morning exercise routine was I wanted to prepare my body better for the occasional sprint workouts that I did, perhaps once every seven to 10 days in my historical pattern.

Brad (00:36:19):
But what would happen is I’d go and do these awesome sprint workouts, I’d feel great, and then for the next three or four days, I’d be extremely sore, especially my calves, often my hamstrings, often my glutes. And I realized that because sprinting is so strenuous, I didn’t really do a lot of exercises on a day-to-day basis that prepared my body for what I would face on the day that I went to the track and pushed it hard. So I designed the morning sequence with the idea of challenging my hamstrings a bit with some mobility challenges, some flexibility, some strengthening. Same with my glutes, same with my lower back, just getting in better condition overall so that whatever formal workouts I would conduct were launched from a higher baseline platform. And that has been incredibly successful for me. So that’s one of the main benefits of my morning exercise routine is that elevates my fitness platform from which I launch all formal workouts.

Brad (00:37:20):
And for the most part, my formal workouts come right after I finish my 40-minute morning exercise routine. So once I do that, then I head to the track, I’m already in a sense optimally excited and uninhibited and ready to sprint. And if I hadn’t done that, of course, I would spend a lot of time getting ready at the track whatever venue I’m doing before launching into the maximum effort sprint. So, this can include a variety of different things when I want you to be, uh, performing complimentary workouts and lifestyle behaviors, getting enough sleep, eating the right foods conducting micro workouts throughout the day. I’ve done a whole show on that topic as well. But we wanna be a relatively fit person before we aspire to go in and perform some, uh, uh, ambitious sprint workouts.

Brad (00:38:09):
Number two is at the start of the workout, we want to have, of course, a cardiovascular warmup session. And ideally it’s the same activity that you’re going to be sprinting with. So I’m often talking about sprinting in terms of doing high impact running sprints on flat ground. But if you’re gonna be sprinting on the stationary bike or the rowing machine, or doing uphill sprints such as in the stadium stairs, you can do a light cardiovascular warmup, jogging, pedaling, light rowing, whatever it is. And the purpose here is to gracefully engage your sympathetic nervous system function, raise heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, get the blood flowing into the extremities and ready to perform. And we don’t wanna do this in a sudden manner, same with the cool down. We don’t wanna just stop sprinting and then jump into a car and drive for 15 minutes. We want to gracefully and gradually return blood from the extremities to the core and all those things.

Brad (00:39:09):
Get the body temperature down lower, get the respiration rate down toward normal, get the heart rate down toward normal. So the warmup is the opposite. We’re gonna gradually elevate that heart rate, body temperature especially. So the, uh, the way you know you’ve done a correct warmup is you feel warmer, maybe breaking on light sweat and you’re breathing harder, your heart rate’s beating. If you have a monitor, you can see that it’s up there into the aerobic training zone. Another aspect of warmup is that mental focus. So whatever you are thinking about doing preoccupied with before you get to the track or before you jump a stride, the stationary bike, you wanna let that stuff go and start thinking and preparing for a nice focused high intensity workout effort. So during that warmup is when you leave your cares behind and get ready to be a, a powerful athlete for the short duration session.

Brad (00:40:03):
Then we want to engage in a sequences of dynamic stretching. And so dynamic stretching. Of course the definition being that you are getting a stretch while moving your body, your relevant muscles, joints through a range of motion that is in contrast to static stretching, where you’re standing still and touching your toes or doing a hurdler stretch, putting your leg on a surface and leaning down over the hamstring muscle or standing and pulling your arm across your body. Those are static stretches and those generally speaking, are not recommended before exercise because they can weaken the muscle for up to 30 minutes. When you ask the muscle to stretch, you are actually telling it to weaken because what you’re doing during the sprint workout is demanding that your muscles contract powerfully the opposite of stretching them. So with dynamic stretching, you’re simply going through exaggerated range of motion for what you’re about to do in the workout.

Brad (00:41:06):
So, as you can see on my many YouTube videos about stretching, there’s one called dynamic stretching pre-workout. And I’m doing things like marching. I’m pulling my knee to my chest and then allowing the foot to drop down to take another stride, knee to chest, another stride, knee to chest, another stride, pulling my foot behind me and then landing for a stride. I’m circling my hips in a manner and then stepping the leg down for another stride. I’m doing the familiar lunge walking forward. So I’m kind of taking a lower step than normal. There’s all kinds of things that you can do for a good dynamic stretch sequence, and I think the video shows you a nice basic protocol Frankenstein, where you’re striding forward without bending your knees. So you’re getting that hamstring engagement. Each of these stretches are, again, exaggerating the range of motion that you’re going to ask your body to be put through. And thereby, getting those muscles ready to explode with power.

Brad (00:42:00):
After that, this is especially important for running and perhaps mostly relevant to running. So item number four on the list of effective sprint workout is to do technique drills. Now as cycling, you’re pedaling in a circle. It’s not a huge premium on technique, same for rowing, but in running, you really wanna reinforce the important aspects of correct sprinting technique through performing technique drills right before you sprint powerfully. And there’s another great video on that. It is viral YouTube video got a couple million views and growing, so it was very well received. And it’s called Brad Kearns Running Technique Instruction, something to that effect. We’ll have the link in the show notes, but I talk about how the drills ring late to proper technique and things like the important goal of maintaining a straight and elongated spine throughout the stride pattern landing with a balanced center of gravity.

Brad (00:43:07):
So you wanna land right underneath that straight and elongated spine rather than, for example, overstriding and causing a breaking effect with each sprinting stride that you take. So the technique drills that I like to do, things like high knees, high heel, high toe, the A Skips, B skips, and C skips, which are certainly the centerpiece of track and field athletes preparation drills. Skipping just the general act of skipping, as you remember from the childhood playground, this asks your body to fire the muscles powerfully and strike the ground in a powerful manner that has a direct association with correct sprinting technique. So if you think about just, uh, a heading down down the road or down the track doing a basic skip, you are in fact cementing excellent technique protocol for actual running sprinting. And so we have dynamic stretching, we have the technique drills, then, very important right before the main set, the actual workout, when I talk about doing four to 10 with the time duration of 10 to 20 seconds and the long rest periods before that, you want to engage in a handful of what’s called wind sprints.

Brad (00:44:22):
Wind sprints are short accelerations where you get up to near full speed and then immediately take it down. So you’re kind of like revving the engine for the sprint workout that you’re about to perform when you do these wind sprints. And the important thing about wind sprints, they’re not that strenuous, right? Cuz you’re just starting, you’re accelerating, you get up to a little speed and then you gracefully take it down. And if you look at the infield, before any trackmate, you’ll see a bunch of athletes engaging in these wind sprints obsessively. They all do it before all races. It’s so important. It’s just getting that body ready, getting that brain nervous system ready to fire in the, uh, the the formal set. And the important thing about wind sprints is you wanna feel really great on these wind sprints. So if you’re dealing with a calf soreness, a foot injury, an interesting lower back situation, everything wants to feel warm and fluid and dynamic and powerful during the wind sprint.

Brad (00:45:25):
But if there’s anything nagging or holding you back from perfect technique and maximum explosiveness during those wind sprints, guess what? You are going to call it a day after the wind sprints and turn off the faucet and skip the main set. So the wind sprints, you need a mandatory thumbs up, a plus or a minus score before stepping into that main set of four to 10 efforts of consistent quality sprints. And you’re gonna find a spot somewhere in that sequence, most likely where you experience a breakdown in technique or a reduction in your quality of effort, whether it’s your time or your perceived exertion. So if you’re dead set on performing eight like you did last week, please put away that endurance athlete mentality, leave it on the sideline, and be open and intuitive to adjusting the specs of your workout on the fly.

Brad (00:46:23):
I know that’s gonna be hard for a lot of you with the peak performance, high-driven type A mindset where you wanna stick to a good protocol and push yourself and make sure that you get all eight of the reps done. But that’s very different in sprinting than it is in that endurance mentality where, yeah, to get from mile 20 to mile 26 on the marathon’s gonna take some good old-fashioned perseverance in sprinting. We have to be careful with the dispensation of that competitive intensity in order to progress. And I talked in detail about the cellular destruction that occurs when you extend your body past your current resources. So the main set is a very high quality, consistent quality of effort, four to 10 reps, that happens to be number six on the list.

Brad (00:47:14):
And then we go to number seven is cool down, number eight is static stretching. And we’re gonna go number 9, 10, 11. Some final tips, but I want to talk a little bit more about the suffer mentality. So there are many ways to trash yourself by conducting a sprint workout inappropriately. You can sprint for too long a duration when you’re fooling around with stuff that’s beyond 20 seconds. You can sprint with not quite enough recovery between efforts or you can do too many sprints. So, if you kind of check in with yourself before you begin each rep and ask yourself if you feel refreshed and energized and focused optimally excited and uninhibited for that next rep, that is going to be really helpful. It’s a kind of a nuance. It might take some experience, but I feel like if you notice your mind start to wander or you notice your attitude is becoming a bit negative and you might be complaining about how <laugh> difficult the reps are becoming, that’s when you know that you are losing your edge.

Brad (00:48:31):
You are losing your explosiveness. And again, as I talked about at the outset, you are training your central nervous system to fire explosively. So if you start training it to perform under fatigue, you are gonna train yourself to become a slower sprinter. So please respect that idea and put it at center stage that we wanna reject that struggle and suffer mentality and, uh, check in and make sure that we’re optimally excited and uninhibited before each successive rep. So what do I do during that six to one ratio, that one minute to two minute recovery period is I’m walking around slowly, I’m catching my breath. I’m trying to smile and think about how the workout’s going, really check in with my body, making sure that that last, that last rep was uh, satisfactory. And if I am working on some, uh, technique improvements, I might be thinking about my arm swing or how I can throw my arms back more powerfully on the successive rep to kind of fine tune some of the technique attributes that I’m working on.

Brad (00:49:36):
So you’re totally engaged, you’re totally focused, you’re not thinking about the hot fudge sundae between rep number six and rep number seven. Otherwise we have a problem in the, uh, manner that we’re conducting this workout. Um, oh, here’s what I was talking about before off my head, but research suggests that it can take around three minutes to replenish ATP by 85%. So if you rest for as long as three minutes, you are going to get almost fully replenished on that energy source for maximum explosive output for, again, efforts between zero and eight seconds. The other research shows that it can take up to 10 minutes to completely replenish ATP after even a single seven second explosive effort. And this is where the fascinating research comes from. The great East German training machine from the sixties, seventies and eighties that dominated Olympic competition in sprinting and, uh, exported a lot of that knowledge around the world in the ensuing years.

Brad (00:50:43):
The great Charlie Francis, the late Canadian sprint coach, who was highly influenced by the East German training system. He reports in his awesome book how these athletes, these were the top Olympic sprinters in the would perform. Check out this workout protocol you’re not gonna believe. They do four times 30 meter sprints, with seven minutes of rest between efforts, 30 meter sprint. And again, this is a World-class Olympic athlete with tremendous fitness, tremendous conditioning, but they would take seven minutes of screwing around who knows what they were doing. A lot of gibber jabber and talking at the track. Seven minutes rest between each of those 30 meter sprints, which only take them, uh, what, four seconds or something like that. Then after a 15 minute break after their fourth one, they would sprint 80 meters. And again, this is near all out.

Brad (00:51:45):
So this is near world record level performers, 80 meter sprint, take a 20 minute break, then a hundred meter sprint, then a 25 minute break, then 120 meter sprint, then a 30 minute break, and another 120 meter sprint. Finally, a 35 minute break and 150 meter sprint. This is 10 days before a major championship such as the Olympic Games. And they would pretty much rest in those final 10 days just doing, you know basic efforts that weren’t very strenuous for them. So I don’t know how long that workout lasts a couple, few hours. I know that for most of us, it’s not relevant to go spend three hours of your day at the running track delivering a near maximum effort and then, uh, hanging around for 25 minutes before you do another one. But I want to impress upon you, the importance of that maximum rest period and that full cellular energy regeneration even for the most elite athletes and certainly for us who are trying to just gain some basic level of competency and not trash ourselves and not experience that mild ammonia toxicity in the 18, 24, 36 hours after a sprint workout.

Brad (00:52:58):
And I’m gonna volunteer. That was my major mistake. I’ve been sprinting for so many years, but because of my endurance athlete background and mentality and really high level of endurance conditioning, I could go to the track and do what I would typically do for many years was 100 meter sprints and I would only rest 15 or 20 seconds. I’d get on the starting line, I’d slam another one, I’d rest for a very short time. And because I was so <laugh> tough and focused and could endure a great workout, I’d get in my six or eight sprints. I’d feel great at the time, remember because of the endorphin rush and the fight or fight stimulation. So I’d think I was doing myself a solid and having a great training session to become a better sprinter. Then I would learn over the ensuing three or four days how much <laugh>, how much I had trashed my calf muscles.

Brad (00:53:51):
And, uh, giving that brain fog and those other symptoms of feeling trashed after a sprint workout. That is not the ideal way to improve as an athlete. It’s just high risk and a lot of fallout with minimal return on investment. I certainly have benefited tremendously from taking much longer rest periods in recent years. Okay, so number six on the list was doing the main set. Number seven is a cool down. We always talk about or typically talk about jogging to cool down after the sprint workout, but interestingly, I talked to a collegiate track coach, uh, recently, and he has his sprinters in particular walk instead of jog to cool down because he does not want the central nervous system to get confused to now have to work to tell the muscles to fire in a gentle or non-explosive manner.

Brad (00:54:48):
So that was a really interesting one to think about. Certainly referencing science for ideas like this. But in general, it might be something that would appeal to you or to realize that you don’t have to, certainly don’t have to do anything of significance after your sprint set except to keep moving gently. And of course your heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, fight or flight hormones are all going to recalibrate gracefully if you simply walk a couple laps around the track rather than jog. And this one’s really meaningful to me because I remember being so psyched up after a great race or a great workout that I would go on quote unquote a recovery jog or a recovery pedal from the race venue at the triathlon back to the hotel six miles or whatever. And you’re so filled with fight or fight hormones that you end up pedaling 19 miles an hour during your nice gentle recovery session back to the hotel.

Brad (00:55:49):
So it’s more fight or fight stimulation. It just doesn’t feel, um, that strenuous because you’re all jacked up on stress hormones. So you wanna take care of yourself after a workout and gently bring things back to a restful state. Um, so think about that, just a gentle aerobic cool down. Then if you have the need or the expert recommendation to engage in static stretching to address, for example, muscle weakness, muscle imbalance or injury, that is the best time to do it. It after the sprint workout is concluded. So I’m putting that item in here onto the list. If you have the desire to stretch your calves and push them against the wall and get the soleus and the gas rock stretched much better to do static stretching after the workout rather than before. And you can do some good basic ones like just holding a squat position, the yoga seal position where you clasp your hands behind your back and reach them over your head.

Brad (00:56:52):
Uh, so I like to do a bit of static stretching in the aftermath of the workout, but certainly not placing a major emphasis on that, especially when your muscles are fatigued. You don’t want to go into your favorite yoga poses in the downward dog and the cobra after you’ve just slammed out a bunch of sprints. Now, another wonderful addition on number nine on the list here is what Dr. Jannine Krause taught me her protocol that she calls positional parasympathetic breathing. So listen to our show on the B.rad podcast. Go check out her show called The Health Fix. And what this is is kind of a mini nap resting session as soon as possible after your highly stimulatory fight or flight experience of the workout. So you lay on the ground, you elevate your feet above your heart, and you engage in a devoted period of nasal diaphragmatic breathing.

Brad (00:57:49):
I like to do the minimized breathing that I talked about on my breathing show inspired by the great book from Patrick McKeown the Oxygen Advantage. So I’m going to breathe through my nose only. I’m going to take deep diaphragmatic breaths and gauging my entire diaphragm as I lie on the ground and inflate my stomach with each inhalation and then gently relax for the exhale. But I’m going to try to minimize my breathing and bring down my stress response and instead kick into gear, activate parasympathetic functions. Parasympathetic is nickname the rest in digest branch of the autonomic nervous system. While the sympathetic is nicknamed the fight or flight. And certainly fight or flight was desirably dominant during your workout, you want to kick into fight or flight hormones to get the job done and kick some butt and get inflamed and pumped up and increase heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, everything.

Brad (00:58:44):
Then you want to get back to homeostasis as quickly and gracefully as possible after the workout. And so that’s this positional parasympathetic breathing is all about. If you can devote five minutes, that’s great. 10 minutes even better. And I really find that to be highly effective in just helping me get on with my busy, hectic day that I have planned after the sprint workout is to take that little break and allow your body to come down off the energy and the endorphin high from the workout.

Brad (00:59:16):
Then we go to number 10, which would be replenish. So, uh, I’ve talked about this a lot frequently, recently, where the pairing of fasting with intense exercise might arguably be too stressful for most of us. And I’m gonna say especially after the workout is a great time to consume healthy, nutritious, easy to digest fuel sources to get your body started on the recovery process. Of course, protein being the most important to start getting the, uh, uh, the anabolic repair processes going after you’ve done challenged your muscles. But also carbohydrate energy stores to help replenish depleted muscle glycogen. So, going out, doing a sprint workout and then fasting for hours afterward, which I experimented with, especially in the research and implementation of, uh, ketogenic diet. I felt like that was too many stress factors happening stacked on top of each other. So take that time, number 10, to replenish yourself as soon as possible after the workout. And I hear from a lot of athletes fitness enthusiasts saying they don’t feel like eating before the workout because the digestive system is gonna be challenged by the, uh, the high intensity nature of your exercise. So you can certainly perform a sprint workout in a fasted state. Um, you’re not burning up a ton of calories anyway because the workout doesn’t last that long.

Brad (01:00:45):
You should have no problem, whatever if you wanna sip a beverage with some calories in it before you start your workout. But we’re not needing to worry about our pre-workout fueling, but instead focusing on replenishment as soon as possible after the workout to minimize the stress impact of the workout and promote recovery.

Brad (01:01:06):
And then, last on the list would be being sure that you fully recover before introducing another sprint workout. It’s gonna take at least 48 hours for the, uh, the body to recover from a high impact sprint session and perhaps less for a low or no impact session like running uphill or pedaling on a bicycle or rowing the rower. But, uh, twice a week is plenty for just about everybody when it comes to performing a proper sprint workout as I described. So now I’m gonna wrap it up with a really quick recap of the looks the 13 items on this list for how to conduct a proper sprint workout and sprint training protocol into your fitness regimen.

Brad (01:01:55):
Number one is to conduct these complimentary workouts like the morning exercise routine, and also doing micro workouts. And I should also mention that, uh, although I don’t sprint very frequently, I do the preparatory technique trails just about every day when I’m out there, perhaps doing an easy jog, but I will always throw in these drills. And so I’m drilling, drilling, drilling constantly. This helps me refine good technique and also has a great conditioning effect because the drills are quite strenuous as you can see on those YouTube videos. Uh, number two is to check in and ask yourself if you are ready and you wanna be 100% rested and energized for a peak performance effort every time you sprint and ask yourself throughout the duration of the workout, are you ready for your next effort? Are you focused? Are you feeling alert? Are your, is your mind wandering?

Brad (01:02:49):
Do you have new aches and pains? So you’re constantly asking, ready for the next one, ready for the next one? So I put that as number two on the list. Um, number three is you wanna choose the appropriate activity, whether it’s high impact or no or low impact. And I didn’t really talk about that much during the show, but a lot of people, their entry point into the wonderful world of sprinting is gonna come with low or no impact options. But it’s a nice idea for all of us to strive to think about one day building the competency on the bike, building the competency on the rower or in the swimming pool to one day perform high impact running sprints on flat ground. Those have the best benefit for bone density, for anti-aging, for prevention against falling and other popular sources of demise for the elderly and also for fat reduction benefits because the genetic signaling for fat reduction is profound when you are performing high impact all out sprints because the penalty for carrying excess body fat is so severe, you cannot very well sprint down the track at full speed with a bunch of excess body fat on board.

Brad (01:04:06):
In contrast, you can shuffle along for six hours of the marathon course with a bunch of excess body fat because there’s not that premium on explosiveness. So that’s why sprinting works so well for fat reduction. So choosing the right activity and making sure that you’re building your competency slowly and carefully, and that might mean a long time of sprinting on the bike or the rower before you start to attempt running sprints. And then starting with, uh, uphill running sprints and transitioning over to someday two flat sprints. Ideally, again, if you can’t and that’s never in the cards, that’s great. You become a great sprinter on the bicycle or on the rower and experience a lot of those hormonal and metabolic benefits, as well. So then we go to the warmup. We talked about conducting that light aerobic exercise. And as far as heart rate, it’s in the 180 minus age in beats per minute or below during your warmup period.

Brad (01:05:01):
So very gentle, graceful, aerobic warmup. Then we go into a sequence of dynamic stretches. This is mostly relevant to running because of the impact trauma. So you wanna make sure that your muscles are ready by doing some exercises that exaggerate the range of motion. Then you go into the preparatory technique drills. This is where you increase your focus because you wanna execute these drills precisely and slap that foot onto the ground with great explosiveness when you’re doing a skip. And I thought I was great at these. I have all my YouTube videos and my physical therapist who’s helping me rehab from my foot surgery, he’s watching me saying, no more explosive, more explosive. You gotta slap that foot on the ground, get that foot on the ground and off the ground quicker this time. And then I go down for the next stretch of drills and sure enough, I had more potential to reach by exploding more quickly off the ground.

Brad (01:05:53):
And that translates directly into better sprinting performance. So you really want to concentrate on your technique when you’re doing these drills and crush them. My former podcast guest, Chari Hawkins, the elite international heptathlete for United States of America. She has great content on Instagram, so please follow her C H A R I Hawkins and she will teach you how to do many of these nice skipping drills with great technique. So we have the complimentary workouts. Are you ready? Choose the right activity, warm up dynamic stretching the technique drills is number seven, the wind sprints. Remember how important those are before you do the main set. Number eight is the main set. What are we gonna do? Remember, remember four to 10 reps of 10 to 20 second sprints with a six to one recovery to work ratio. Then we’re gonna cool down with e easy cardiovascular exercise.

Brad (01:06:50):
That could mean walking, that’s just fine. But we want to keep moving and also keep moving throughout the day, because the worst way to recover is to sit on the couch. And that’s a big mistake I made back in my day as a triathlete where I would pair a hard, long, grueling training day with a day of very little movement, a lot of eating, and a lot of television viewing time. I would’ve been, I would’ve been better served to do very, very light movements such as walking around and just making an effort in that 24, 36, 48 hours after your sprint workout to be more generally active. But of course, nothing strenuous. So that brings us to number 10, if necessary, you will conduct your static stretches after the sprint workout when your body and joints are all warmed up. Then the Dr. Krause’s recommendation for that positional parasympathetic breathing session.

Brad (01:07:47):
Take five to 10 minutes to relax, close your eyes. Breathe deep diaphragmatic breaths with your feet elevated above your heart, and that’ll help you recalibrate back to homeostasis. I should also put it in a plug here for taking a cold plunge after your sprint session, especially if you have performed in a high temperature setting. So if your body temperature is elevated, your body’s gonna work really hard over the ensuing hours to bring that body temperature back down to normal. The same with your muscle temperature and the trauma and the inflammation that’s going on in the muscles. So if you can get into the cold tub after the workout, that’s going to help speed recovery and minimize muscle soreness in the ensuing day. So I’m really enjoying going into my plunge tub after a sprint workout in particular, and that I believe helps me recalibrate more quickly to homeostasis, especially getting my body temperature down.

Brad (01:08:49):
Then over the general the ensuing 24, 48, 72 hours, you wanna make a concerted effort to con increase all general forms of activity and movement. So you’re walking the dog a couple times. You might go and do some kind of light workout if you did a low or no impact sprint. So you might pedal the bicycle for, uh, 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes here the next day, the day after, but keeping active in the hours after a high intensity sprint workout. And then finally, make sure that you’re recovered completely before you conduct another high intensity sprint workout. I know that’s a lot to absorb, but those are all super important and they flow together so nicely. So I think you can remember them or listen to the show over and over, but it’s time to get sprinted people. It has been such a wonderful, fun experience for me to emphasize the high intensity exercises in the second chapter of my life getting beyond the endurance phase. And it’s so much fun to try to get better and better. You feel great afterwards. It does not take a lot of time. It’s not a huge ask to include sprinting in your overall exercise program, and the benefits are tremendous. So thank you so much for listening and let me know how things are working for you. You can email podcast brad ventures.com, love to hear from you and cover some of your question concerns, feedback in a future Q and A show. Thank you very much. Ready go.

Brad (01:10:19):
Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email podcast@bradventures.com and visit bradkearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.

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