Sprint Training: Run Fast, Jump High

Written by Jack Woodrup for VerticalJumping.com

Most people don't readily associate sprint training with improving your vertical leap. After all, sprinting is done along the ground whilst jumping is about getting off it. However, anyone who has seen an elite sprinter explode out of the blocks and along the track would know about the incredible muscular power they generate.

Given this power that sprint training can produce it should also come as no surprise to know that incorporating some speed work into your vertical program can have a highly positive impact on not just your jumping, but your overall athletic performance.

Why Sprinting Helps You Jump Higher

The physiological demands of sprint training are actually very similar to that required for a maximum vertical leap. The main differences are that the 100 meter race runs for around 10 seconds on a horizontal plane, and a vertical leap lasts less than 1 second over the vertical plane. Whilst they may seem like pretty big differences, if you break it down further, they are not.

Both jumping and sprinting require great muscular power generated form the whole body. Body activities are also full body activities. Both are in the anaerobic training zone in that duration of each is only for short bursts. Both require highly trained central nervous systems. Both activities are enhanced by lower body fat.

In fact, It probably wouldn't surprise too many vertical jumping athletes to know that if you examine the training protocols for a sprinter, and compared them to that of vertical jumping, you see an awful lot of similarities.

Figure 1: Looking at the lean and muscular Carl Lewis that he was very fast and could jump. He is after all a multiple Olympic gold medallist in the 100m and the long jump.

Looking at how sprinters train, they focus on short duration, high intensity, high velocity, explosive activities. In the weight room for example, you will find most sprinters are doing the exact same movements such as squats and dead lifts as vertical jumpers. They will also be doing them in the same explosive manner as vertical jumpers.

You will also find that most sprinters are incorporating a lot of plyometric jumping activities into their actual sprint training such as bounding and skipping, and even to a certain extent, exercises such as depth jumps. The reason they do this is because these types of exercises are the best for building explosive muscular power in the leg muscles.

A sprinters speed comes from two factors. The first is how quickly they can move their legs, and the second is how much force they can apply to the ground per stride. The power lifting works on the force element by building up the muscles, and the plyometrics works on the speed side of things by training the CNS.

Why You Should Do Some Sprint Work

This should be obvious to anyone who has seen a sprinter jump. Most sprinters also have terrific verticals. Think about the act of sprinting for a second. It entails primarily contracting your leg muscles with maximum speed and force to propel the body forward. Vertical leaping involves contracting primarily the leg muscles to propel the body upwards.

Each running stride transfers force to the ground to kick the athlete away and forward as quickly and as explosively as possible. When you plant yourself for a maximum vertical effort you are transferring force from your legs to the ground to propel yourself upwards as quickly and explosively as possible.

Due to the way sprint training encourages you to develop your leg speed and force transfer capabilities, it is therefore an excellent activity to incorporate into your vertical leap training.

However, and not to sound too much like an infomercial, the benefits of sprint training for vertical leap gains don?t end there. Sprinting is also a terrific way to burn body fat. The less body fat you carry, the higher your power to weight ratio (fat doesn?t produce any power but definitely adds weight). In other words, the less body fat you have, the higher you can jump.

Sprinting helps develop speed, power, AND burns body fat! What more could you ask for.

How To Use Sprinting In Your Jump Program

To incorporate sprint training into your vertical leap sessions you don?t need to necessarily run 100 meters. Anywhere between 20 and 50 meters is ideal for developing your speed and power for jumping. It should take between 3-8 seconds to do one interval (One interval is one sprint. So, if you are doing 40 meter sprints, one interval is the act of sprinting for 40 meters).

The obvious and best way to perform interval sprints is to sprint over the desired distance, walk back to where you started from, turn around, and do another sprint. Repeat until desired number of intervals has been completed. You could start by doing 5 intervals and working your way up.

Always remember this rule though: The longer you sprint for, the fewer intervals you should do. Sprinting is great for improving your speed and power, but despite their similarities and mutual benefits, you are training to jump higher, not run faster

As with most forms of training there are also number of things you can do to improve the quality and intensity of your sprinting. Some of these methods include over-speed running and resisted running.

Overspeed sprint training involves performing your sprint training down a slightly sloped hill, or with wind assistance. The idea behind over-speed training is that it trains your body and brain to improve leg speed. If you run with a higher cadence down hill or with the wind, you will more easily adapt to moving your legs quicker and therefore running faster, than you would otherwise been able to by training on a flat surface alone.

Another great way to raise the intensity is through the use of resistance. This can be readily achieved by wearing a sprinting parachute. Doing 5 -10 sprint intervals in a parachute, then removing it and doing a few more is a form of CNS wave loading. The feeling you get from your sprint training after you remove the parachute is simply amazing. When you take it off you fly along as if you are floating on air.

Better versions of the sprint parachutes are those that have a quick release handle. These allow you to remove the parachute mid sprint which incorporates the benefits of both resisted running and over speed running. When you pull the rip cord and release the parachute in the middle of an interval, it feels like you are being fired out of a cannon. One minute, you are running hard and going reasonably fast, the next minute, you are zooming along feeling like the Flash. They are an extremely effective training tool.

Conclusion

Sprinting, like vertical jumping, is an awesome expression of athletic power. Adding high quality intervals to your vertical jump training sessions will see you develop terrific muscular power in ways in which you might otherwise have missed out on. If you are playing a sport that requires both running and jumping, then sprint training is a brilliant choice for improving both these activities.