Yes, Romanian deadlifts can make you faster. They strengthen the exact muscles responsible for driving you forward during a sprint: your hamstrings and glutes. These muscles produce the horizontal force that accelerates your body, and RDLs are one of the most effective exercises for training them. The speed gains are most pronounced during acceleration, the first 10 to 20 meters of a sprint, rather than at top speed.
Why Your Hamstrings Drive Sprint Speed
Sprinting is fundamentally a hip extension movement. Every time your foot strikes the ground, your hamstrings and glutes contract to push your body forward. Electromyography studies, which measure electrical activity in muscles during movement, show that the hamstrings are active longer than any other hip extensor during sprinting. They’re the primary engine for horizontal propulsion.
This is why exercises targeting the posterior chain (the muscles along the back of your body) have such a strong relationship to sprint performance. Research has found very large correlations between lower body strength and sprint times, with correlation coefficients above 0.9 for both velocity and acceleration. In plain terms, stronger posterior chain muscles almost always mean faster sprints.
What Makes the RDL Effective for Speed
When researchers compared muscle activation across four common hamstring exercises, including leg curls, good mornings, glute-ham raises, and RDLs, the RDL and glute-ham raise produced the highest hamstring activation. Both were tested at 85% of each participant’s one-rep max. The RDL’s advantage is that it also loads the glutes heavily through a full hip hinge, training the two most important muscle groups for sprinting in a single movement.
The RDL also has an eccentric component that closely mimics what happens during high-speed running. As you lower the weight, your hamstrings lengthen under tension, building the kind of eccentric strength your muscles need when they decelerate your leg during the late swing phase of each stride. This is the exact moment when hamstring strains happen, so the RDL builds both speed and resilience at the same time.
RDLs Help Acceleration More Than Top Speed
A review of weight training methods and their effects on sprint performance found that maximal strength training (working at 85 to 100% of your one-rep max) produced the largest improvements in 10-meter acceleration, averaging a 4.23% improvement with a large effect size of 1.48. Several of the studies included in that review used programs featuring Romanian deadlifts alongside squats and Olympic lifting variations.
The same review found that heavy weight training had a much smaller effect on flying-start sprints (the portion of a sprint after you’ve already reached high speed), with only 0.91% improvement on average. The reason comes down to physics. Acceleration demands high force production at relatively low speeds, which is exactly what heavy strength training develops. As you approach top speed, each stride requires less force but faster muscle contractions, a quality better trained through plyometrics and sprint practice itself.
If your sport involves repeated short bursts (cutting, chasing, breaking away from a defender), the RDL’s contribution to acceleration is exactly what you need.
How RDLs Reduce Hamstring Injury Risk
Faster athletes face a paradox: the faster you run, the more strain your hamstrings absorb, and the higher your risk of a hamstring pull. RDLs address this directly. Eccentric hamstring training increases both muscle strength and muscle fiber length, two factors that protect against strains during high-speed running.
The single-leg RDL variation is particularly useful here. It generates high activation in both the hamstrings and the glute max. Research on soccer players found that those who suffered hamstring injuries during the season had less glute activation during sprinting than those who stayed healthy. The single-leg RDL builds that glute activation pattern. There’s even evidence that performing single-leg RDLs during a warm-up can prevent the decline in hamstring strength that normally occurs after repeated sprints, keeping your muscles primed and protective throughout a game or practice.
Programming RDLs for Speed
For speed development, you don’t need to go excessively heavy on RDLs. The exercise places significant demand on the lower back and hamstrings, and poor form under heavy loads is a common source of injury. A practical approach for athletes focused on getting faster: train RDLs twice per week for a six-week block, starting with one set of 10 reps in the first week and adding a set each week. This gradual buildup lets your connective tissue adapt alongside your muscles.
For maximal strength development (which the research ties most closely to acceleration gains), you can work with heavier loads in the 4 to 6 rep range once you’ve built a solid base. Pair RDLs with actual sprint work for the best results. One study found that a standardized program including RDLs, squats, and Olympic lifting derivatives, combined with either additional sprint training or Nordic hamstring exercises, produced significant improvements in 10-meter and 20-meter sprint times over just seven weeks.
RDLs Alone Won’t Make You Fast
RDLs build the raw force production capacity your muscles need to accelerate. But sprinting is a skill, and strength only transfers to speed when your nervous system learns to apply that force at high velocities and in the right direction. The most effective programs combine heavy posterior chain work like RDLs with sprint-specific training: short sprints, resisted sprints, or plyometrics that teach your body to use its new strength explosively.
Think of it this way: the RDL builds a bigger engine, but you still need to learn how to drive it. Athletes who combine both approaches consistently see the fastest improvements in sprint times, while those who only lift heavy see smaller, slower transfers to actual running speed.