Why do sprinters have big muscles

That's why you can hit the 'runners high' during an aerobic workout where you feel like you can keep going forever and you get the 'muscle burn' from doing anaerobic workouts. Basically, do short hard bursts for of activity like sprinting for a few minutes followed by recovery periods to allow your body to recover from the anaerobic stress.

The rule is, the harder you push, the harder you will be able to push. Second, here's where distinguishing between marathon runners and sprinters will start to make sense.

HIIT training including sprinting uses your whole body. Make no mistake, high impact, high intensity exercises work your core and upper body as well as your lower body.

Unlike endurance running, it's actually beneficial to focus on all muscle groups as long as you're not just putting on unnecessary bulk. Third, Type II muscle burns lots of energy and I mean a lot. Not only do sprinters have a lot of Type II mass from head to toe, they also have highly optimized circulatory systems.

The high energy burn and increased blood flow lead to a very low body fat percentage giving a very defined 'cut' look. In conclusion, Type II muscle mass and upper body strength is bad for an endurance runner because it adds weight and unnecessarily consumes more energy. But, for a sprinter Type II upper body mass is generally a result of working out and also a good counter to balance the force being exerted by the lower body.

Despite the technical verbiage above, OP is correct to be questioning why a sprinter should have such pronounced upper body musculature. Not only would you naturally have to perform regular and intense hypertrophic exercise to develop such muscles, not the best use of energy for a sprinter, but the intense regime and diet of an Olympic athlete should really reduce any gains. As soon as you go down to that sort of body fat level you will be losing unused muscle faster than fat. The human body evolved to be efficient, not look good on a beach.

It is hard to argue that biceps stabilise the upper body, as they serve only to flex the arm and turn the wrist - and sprinters don't do this dynamically, they hold their arms in place. It seems to me that the only way that a sprinter could gain and maintain such great and, as you point out, counter-productive upper arm mass is if they are cycling some kind of anabolic steroid, insulin, growth hormone, or other form of doping agent.

Steroids are proven to actually stimulate muscle growth without any stimulation i. HIIT is not going to create such anabolic stimulus on its own. We like to believe that doping is not widespread in sport, but don't forget that sport is entertainment, underneath it all.

Audiences pay a lot of money for their subscriptions, athletes get paid to win. If one lumberjack uses a chainsaw, soon every lumberjack will be swapping their axe for a chainsaw. Sprinting causes natural increases in growth hormone produced. Ideal sprinting for this effect is about minutes of short 30 seconds sprints. With adequate rest between sprints. It's weird, but basically short extremely intense exercise, will just naturally develop a better physique.

In a word, anabolic steroids. Sprinters engage in anaerobic work to increase raw leg strength because this is what sprinting partly is- a measure of anaerobic leg strength- raw power. That leads to them to the weightlifting gym. For serious professional athletes and others , that leads to steroids and steroids don't differentiate between your arm muscles and your thigh muscles.

Just giving someone steroids increases muscle mass irrespective of whether they work out or not. This is a large part of the reason why boys are boys and girls are girls in terms of strength the rest is strictly genetic. Steroids were introduced to the public immediately after WWII as a way for concentration camp survivors to regain loss body mass.

If you look at athletes from BEFORE that era, the 's or 's say you'll notice their upper bodies while defined and muscular look nothing like today's sprinter's upper bodies. That's not because they didn't train hard; that is an across the board gross morphological change in the musculature and size of the athletes. That's steroids.

Anyone telling you anything different is either naive, lying or in denial. I looked trough a few videos of Usain Bolt doing strength training. Also tall athletes may be a disadvantage when it comes to acceleration.

In other words, the shorter athlete or player will be better able to accelerate and control their own body weight compared to a taller individual. We can also see practical support for this in Gymnastics where the athletes are relatively small compared to the field sports and court sports players. Certainly, where sports such as basketball and volleyball are concerned then stature is an important physical characteristic. Also, when it comes to flying or top speed, taller athletes may have an advantage.

So when it comes to looking at the stature of sprint athletes in an Olympic m final, do not be surprised that the athletes lining up at the start might very well be tall, medium and short in stature.

A bigger athlete in terms of overall size and body mass or weight will have advantages in several physical areas over a lighter smaller one. For example, large athletes are commonly found in the throwing events. The ability to accelerate an external object is proportional to height squared. In general, the heaviest weightlifters lift the most weight and this is simply because they have so much mass, and consequently strength, that they can effectively overcome the inertia the tendency of a body to stay at rest of the load.

This is why we see so many small but powerful and mobile gymnasts. In other sports though, it is not that simple. Being tall facilitates a higher reach height at take off and this is a distinct advantage for the pole-vaulter. When it comes to heat dissipation, small stature individuals tend to be better at off loading heat due to the smaller body surface area.

This is actually an advantage in endurance events where the cardiac output is preserved as heat is unloaded easier. In contrast there is better heat conservation in large individuals. This is obviously an advantage in activities where cold is a problem.

We have already highlighted the key structural differences in terms of muscle fibre type between the endurance athlete and the sprinter. As you will recall, the sprinter is the one endowed with a dominance of the fast-twitch fibre. The accompanying table compares some of the key physiological differences between slow and fast twitch fibres. Understanding these differences, believe it or not, does help us in choosing and designing training for the sprint and endurance athlete.

Table 1 identifies some key functional characteristics that are indeed giving the sprinter an advantage in terms of speed. The speed of contraction is greater in the fast twitch muscle, the relaxation time is faster as well and the capacity to generate force is also higher than in the endurance fibre profile. We can test the athlete to determine if he or she has a predominant fast or slow twitch profile. The Counter Movement Jump and the Squat Jump may be used to estimate the dominance of fibre type [3].

However, if you do not have access to such testing equipment, simply completing a wall reach vertical jump will tell you if you are lucky enough to be endowed with explosive qualities. The changes are small, but they come on fast.

Sean Orlando defines a sprint as anything less than meters , although he admits that these days it can also be anything less than Sean recommends 5—10 of these short sprints per workout, with 2—3 minutes of rest in between. If you have trouble staying motivated or getting started with your running, consider trying out some of the best running apps.

Many of them are focused on distance running, but the iPhone-only app iSmoothRun is excellent for interval training. You can do this slowly, starting with the sprinting exercises outlined above but on the low end:. Once you feel comfortable doing five sets with three minutes of rest between them, cut that three minutes down to two and master that.

Add difficulty, add sets, decrease rest, and mix up your workouts for the best results. With each extra push, you build that endurance you have just a little bit more, pushing your body beyond its current limits so you can expand what those limits really are. In other words, work on your 6 rep max for big compound movements like the bench press, squat, or deadlift.

Work in a higher rep range like or more for exercises like bicep curls, rope pushdowns, leg extensions, etc. Need some ideas to get started? Here are some exercises of the accessory variety that can help you increase muscular endurance and muscle size to develop that sprinter physique.

HIIT workouts consist of short periods of intense effort followed by quick recoveries. A 10—30 minute HIIT session is excellent depending on how much time you have and what you can endure.

You can also increase the length of the session as your stamina grows. There are lots of running pros and cons and weight loss is one of the pros. You should also be eating lots of protein as it helps build muscle and aids in workout recovery.