9 Week Sprinting Program for Functional Fitness [with PDF]

If you’re like me you started functional fitness because you aren’t particularly good at running, nor particularly fast. The allure of getting into killer shape without having to jog endlessly is always appealing. This program is designed to be an add on to whatever current program you are doing and it is going to fix several of the worst issues that many athletes have. By the end of it you will have built one killer engine in less than 2 hours a week.

As I alluded to above, this program is designed to be very short, and that should worry you. It is going to be very intense. My experience with the athletes I coach is that most athletes really don’t run at max effort.

They tend to treat the run portion of a WOD like it’s the thing between lifting, instead of treating it like something they can excel at. This attitude is understandable, but I promise it is holding you back, just like it has held me back in my functional fitness career.

Let’s review the primary goals of this program, so you can determine if this is something that you need to be doing.

Sprinting Program Goals

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1. Increase running speed in the 10 second to 7 min time domain
2. Decrease fat mass, and increase lean body mass
3. Increase aerobic and anaerobic energy systems capacity

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These goals seem ambitious, but they are totally attainable. I do need to point out that this isn’t some sort of magical “hack” that will increase your fitness for no additional effort. There will be effort I promise you that. There might even be vomit if you play your cards wrong.

Before we get into the details of the 9 Week Sprinting Program for athletes, we need to cover some of the science behind sprinting. It’s crucial to help your understanding as an athlete, but more importantly it will motivate you to push through those hard intervals because the pay off can be very big if you understand why you are doing it.

Interval Training and Sprint Research

I started this program like I do with most of my programs by asking a question, “What is the best way to increase running speed and work capacity?”

I then started to review all my favorite websites and research portals, and determined that it is, in fact, the shake weight. Just kidding, but seriously.

Actually it is sprinting, either on a piece of equipment, or running.

There are literally thousands of research studies covering the specifics of sprint programming and the best protocols. Yours truly has dug through all that data to distill down the key bits for the functional fitness community.

Why Not Jog?

This is a pretty common question. Most running programs tend toward the easy variety, with tons of miles. The types of intervals they recommend are maybe 70-80% of your max speed at best.

Unfortunately the research shows a dramatic trend toward favoring sprint interval training for achieving both overall running improvements, and for helping athletes lose fat and gain muscle mass.

This meta-analysis (research review of dozens of relevant studies) highlights the fact that on average participants in sprint training programs lost 28% more body fat on average than those who just jogged, or participated in less demanding programming.

How Much Do We Need to Sprint?

This question is quite counterintuitive for most functional fitness athletes because the data pretty clearly shows that more is not better. In fact less seems to be better in most cases.

Study 1: Half the Volume, Equal Results

This study split their participants into two groups. One group completed 15 sec sprints with a 2 min rest, twice per week for 9 weeks. The other groups did 30 sec sprints with 4 min rest, twice per week for the same total duration.

The group that did 15 sec sprints achieved nearly the exact same results as the group that did the 30 sec sprints. Here the authors are quoted.

This study demonstrated that while the changes in cardiorespiratory function plateau within several weeks with sprint interval training, endurance capacity (Time to Exhaustion) is more sensitive to such training over a longer time frame in moderately-trained individuals. Furthermore, a 50% reduction in sprint duration does not diminish overall training adaptations over 9 weeks.

Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2017 Dec;27(12):1662-1672. doi: 10.1111/sms.12831. Epub 2017 Jan 26.

There are numerous other examples of this, but suffice it say that when we are speaking of sprinting, quality is much more important than quantity.

Do We Have to Use Sleds, Parachutes, etc?

The short answer is no you don’t have to, but you might want to consider it, especially if you want to develop your top end speed. This program does not require the use of any specialty equipment, but you can pick up a sprinting chute for less than $30 and it can be a great benefit.

You could use this instead of the hill day if you happen to live in a flat area and don’t have access to a treadmill.

I will briefly cover the benefits to sleds and chutes. They are primarily used to overload the same muscle (quads, hips, and glutes) that are used to run. When used correctly they allow a sprinter to practice running the same way they normally do against more resistance, thus strengthening these key muscles.

This study highlighted the fact that heavy resistance for sleds and chutes is best used to develop acceleration for 20m and under, where as lighter resistance (12.5% of bodweight or less) helps develop top end speed.

Remember none of this is a requirement, but it could be very beneficial for those athletes who need top end speed for other sports. If you are a tactical athlete (police, military, fire/ems) then you will likely need the ability to sprint, and it would be very beneficial to sprint against resistance.

The same goes for those who participate in other sports such as: football, rugby, soccer, lacrosse. If running is needed, then you should be able to run fast. This leads us to our last question.

How Much Fat Can I Lose?

This study examined the sex differences in men and women as they completed a 12 week sprinting program. They found some fairly significant difference for both sexes.

Overall men were able to lose more body fat, but the women improved their energy system development with only 4 min of total sprint time per week or 36 min total in 12 weeks.

Fat mass decreased by 1.0 kg, although men lost statistically significantly more fat than women both when expressed in Kg and as % body fat. VO₂max increased by around 9%, but women improved VO₂max significantly more than men. FATmax (rate of fat oxidation) improved by around 13%

BMJ Open Sport Exerc Med. 2016; 2(1): e000056.
Published online 2016 Mar 4. doi: 10.1136/bmjsem-2015-000056

It’s fairly common to lose fat mass and gain muscle mass when completing these types of programs, with no change in diet or activity level apart from the running. For functional fitness, I would expect this trend to continue with the caveat that the more well trained you already are the less change you will see to your body composition. New athletes always get all the gainz!

Now that some of you are debating throwing your computer out of the window we can finally get to the the program!

The 9 Week Sprinting Program for Functional Fitness

I chose the length of this program because programs in the 9-12 week range showed the greatest adaptation to fatigue resistance, which is something we really need for functional fitness. The good news is that several programs showed pronounced results in only 2-3 weeks.

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Here is the PDF download for the 9 Week Sprinting Program for Functional Fitness.

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Week 1

This program is designed to be three days per week. Here it says Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but you can adjust it to fit your schedule. It is also designed to be added onto any program you are currently doing. Here are a couple of tips I recommend to help integrate it effectively into your current plan.

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1. If you squat two days per week, replace one squat session with a sprint workout.
2. Replace the WOD you are best at each week with a running WOD.
3. If you can do two a days one day per week try to do so.

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Week 2

There is no change from the overall structure, just an increase in volume. It’s important to realize that these intervals should be done with max intensity when specified. The rest periods are simply active recovery. Don’t push it there.

If you want to learn how to put together your own functional fitness program the right way, then check this out.

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Week 3

This is the highest volume week, but you should still be able to finish each session in 30-40 min at the outside. Most research indicates that you should be starting to feel a difference in your running ability, particularly in your ability to maintain speed across intervals.

Week 4

This week is our deload and we are back to our first week levels of volume. This should feel like a vacation compared to previous weeks. I would recommend aligning your program so that your deloads on your functional fitness specific program line up with the running deloads. It just makes sense.

Week 5

This is our second cycle of the program. You can see we have increased the running interval length somewhat. They are still within the research recommendations but these longer intervals will really help build your engine for WODs.

Week 6

As we saw last cycle the overall structure is maintained, but we have increased the volume here. You will probably find that these feel fairly difficult but your WOD performance should be noticeably better.

Week 7

This will be our highest volume week for the whole program. You should be well adjusted to running fast by now, and I’d imagine you’ve already knocked down quite a few PR’s.

Week 8

This is our last deload, and training week. We are back to week 5 volume, and this is our chance to rest and recover for week 9 where we will be smashing some PRs.

Week 9

This is PR time. I’ve chosen the 1 mile distance because you haven’t been running anywhere near this long for your intervals, but the research shows that you will mostly like increase your running speed around 7-9% from your previous best.

I also like the 200m distance because I find that it’s a great test of speed, but it also can test your fatigue resistance at these very high power outputs. Don’t forget to show those PR’s off in the comments.

Additional Resources

This program is going to be challenging but you can all totally crush it. You will get the most out of this program if you pay attention to your recovery, as well as your nutrition. Check out this article which covers scientifically validated recovery practices. Now you know why I write those cool downs the way I do.

This article will provide you with a spreadsheet that will calculate your total energy expenditure, and recommend your macros. This is a great starting point, but you might find that you have to bump up the expenditure 200-300 calories to cover extra running workouts. If you simply replaced a WOD with a run then you probably don’t need to adjust so much.

As always if you have any questions or comments put them below where I can respond to them the quickest. Now get out there and start training!

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