Assisted Sprints: What, Why, and When?

Seldom utilized and complex to say the least, assisted sprints may just be the one thing to take a speed athlete to the next level. In this post, let's break down what an assisted sprint is and get into the nitty-gritty on where they stand as a tool in sports performance.

An assisted sprint is essential a sprint over a given distance, where the athlete is being pulled by a resistance band or gravity, and forced to move their limbs faster than they typically would to accomodate the force assisting them to move forward. Think of a slingshot that is shooting the athlete forward as they are running. Assisted sprints are most often in the form of elastic cord assistance (Fig 1.) or downhill running where gravity is assisting the runner.

Fig. 1 Elastic Cord Assisted sprinting: the athlete has a belt comfortably around their waste, attached to the built is an elastic band with tension on and the anchor point in front of the athlete. When the athlete begins the sprint, tension is slowly reduced until their is none pulling on the athlete's waist.

Assisted sprinting is utilized in order to push the athlete to increase their stride length and stride frequency past what their bodies would normally be capable of, essentially forcing them to sprint with a high velocity. The logic behind training this way is that this type of training, overtime, may cause neuromuscular adaptations that allow concentric and eccentrics muscle actions involved in running, to happen at a faster rate. If your muscles are trained to withstand a faster stretch-shortening cycle than what the body can naturally produce, then when we take away that assistance device, the stretch shortening-cycle is now conditioned to withstand that rapid muscular change without casuing muscular damage (ie. pulled muscles)

Due to the technical nature of this sprinting exercise, and the potential dangers of it, it is important to understand that this exercise may not be appropriate for everyone. In fact, it is widely recommended that assisted sprinting is only performed by someone considered an elite-level athlete. If an athlete is inexperienced, and their running form unassisted is flawed, then running while being pulled, or running downhill, could lead to the athlete tripping or losing their coordination and tripping, suffering from contusions, scraping, friction burns, or worse. If an athlete is taught proper mechanics and supervised, assisted sprints could prove a valuable tool.

In summary, wherever there is a hill, assisted sprints may be performed. When doing this exercise note slope of the hill should never exceed a 5 degree or 8% graded slope. Note that proper footwear must be worn, running surfaces must be dry, and never combine elastic assisted sprints with down hill running. (Although elastic assisted sprints in combination with uphill running may be appropriate for more advanced athletes and simulates flat-land running but with forced knee drives and tweaked body mechanics) Overall, this drill is an excellent one to train the stretch-shortening cycle in the quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, and glutes in elite-levle sprinters.