How often to sprint per week? page

[Nethru]

I'm starting out my new workout routine and added sprinting once a week to it but is this enough or should I do more than 1 day a week of sprinting? Right now I do 1 day sprint, 2 days full body, 1 day HIIT and 1 day yoga and rest 2 days.

Thanks.

[coach81]

I was a big chronic cardio guy until I read Mark's book.. now I do a lot less "hard" cardio.. I make sure to walk / jog / bike ride several hours per day.. and I do my sprints every Friday.. I'm having good results so far as I close in on my first 30 days.. I think Mark says two days of sprints are fine, but try not to do much more than that..

[arthurb999]

Looks good to me.

[Tee]

Can swinging rope routines, as seen below, be used in place of sprinting?

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/swinging-rope-training/

[DianeThePurple]

I think anything that gets your heart pumping will do it. I'm doing jumping jacks to exhaustion for mine, because my yard is too small for actually running.

Good luck! I hope this helps.

[Molecular Grokologist]

Yeah, what you're looking for is maximum intensity and glycogen depletion while reaching your body's VO2max and lactic acid threshold. If you don't curse Dr. Tataba's name and all his descendent's by the end, you're not doing them right.

[Diana Renata]

So I've been wondering... is running the best way to "sprint?" Or doesn't it really matter that much what you do? I mean running does seem ideal but I have a hard time pushing myself over the top without having somebody to race, or something chasing me.

[Molecular Grokologist]

Not necessarily the best, but it's a natural movement so there may be benefits which we haven't discovered yet.

My secret to pushing myself really hard is getting mad. I imagine that I'm charging toward someone and I'm going to tear them limb from limb. This could be a... personal issue, though.

[bruce.b]

I do sprint intervals twice a week. I do some sprints almost every day for fun. I think sprinting is the single best exercise you can do. It's the most functional exercise and may save your life someday. You don't have to sprint longer or do more intervals (once you're good at it), you just go faster and shorten the rest periods. Do uphill sprints sometime if you want to kill yourself quickly. I vary the length, number of intervals and run both flats and uphills. I also do them sometimes on very uneven ground in the woods off the trails. There's infinite variety with sprinting, you want to mix it up to keep your body guessing and also to have fun with it. Don't do 20/10 Tabata intervals, in general they are terrible for sprinting, too long to fully sprint with too short of a rest. For the most part you want a shorter run period and a longer rest as most sprints should be a max speed effort. Think of it like resistance training, max effort for low reps. You want every rep to be pretty much full speed with perhaps slight fading at the end of your workout. They should be really hard! You shouldn't be slowing way down at any point. Occasionally break all the rules I just listed..... seriously.

Sprinting is my favorite workout of the week and I'm pretty good at it.

bruce b.