Moving faster comes down to two things: how much force you put into the ground and how quickly you can apply it. Whether you want to sprint faster, accelerate more explosively in a sport, or simply feel quicker on your feet, the path involves training your muscles to produce more force in less time, refining your movement mechanics, and building the right kind of strength. Here’s how each piece fits together.
How Your Body Creates Speed
Running speed is the product of two variables: stride length (how far each step covers) and stride frequency (how many steps you take per second). At slower and moderate speeds, your body gets faster mainly by lengthening each stride. As you approach your top speed, stride length plateaus and further gains come almost entirely from increasing how fast your legs cycle. This means training for speed isn’t just about taking bigger steps or pumping your legs wildly. It’s about developing both qualities and knowing which one limits you.
The rate at which your muscles generate force matters enormously. Your nervous system has roughly 200 milliseconds during each ground contact to produce the push that propels you forward. The faster you can ramp up force in that tiny window, the more powerful each step becomes. This quality, sometimes called explosive strength, is trainable. Heavy resistance training has been shown to increase it significantly, which is one reason lifting weights makes people faster even though sprinting and squatting look nothing alike.
Build Relative Strength First
One of the most reliable predictors of short sprint speed is how strong you are relative to your body weight. In a study of professional soccer players, increasing their squat strength from about 1.66 times body weight to 1.96 times body weight produced measurable improvements in 5-meter, 10-meter, and 20-meter sprint times. The 5-meter sprint improved the most, dropping from 1.11 seconds to 1.05 seconds, which reflects how important raw force production is during the acceleration phase when you’re pushing hardest against the ground.
If you’re not already strength training, this is probably the single biggest lever you can pull. Squats, deadlifts, hip thrusts, and lunges all build the posterior chain muscles (glutes, hamstrings, and calves) that drive sprinting. You don’t need to become a powerlifter, but working toward squatting 1.5 to 2.0 times your body weight gives your legs the raw horsepower that technique alone can’t replace. Train heavy (3 to 6 reps) to maximize force production rather than muscle size.
Use Plyometrics to Get Explosive
Strength alone isn’t enough. You also need to convert that strength into speed, and plyometric training is the bridge. Plyometrics work by exploiting your muscles’ stretch-shortening cycle: when a muscle is rapidly stretched (like when your foot hits the ground), it stores elastic energy in the muscle and tendon, then releases it during the following push-off. Think of it like pulling back a rubber band before letting it snap.
Effective plyometric training improves elastic energy storage, increases the contribution of reflexive muscle activation, and enhances neuromuscular recruitment. In practical terms, this means each ground contact becomes springier and more powerful with less energy wasted. The result is greater propulsive force at any given speed and reduced metabolic cost, so you move faster while burning less fuel.
Start with basic exercises: box jumps, broad jumps, bounding, and drop jumps. Keep volumes low (3 to 5 sets of 3 to 6 reps) and prioritize the quality of each rep over quantity. Rest fully between sets. The goal is maximum intent on every jump. As you progress, single-leg hops, depth jumps from higher boxes, and sprinted bounds add further challenge.
Fix Your Arm Drive
Your arms do more than just swing along for the ride. They counterbalance the rotational forces your legs create, keeping your torso stable so energy goes forward instead of being lost to wobble. Research in sprint biomechanics has found that arm drive serves two purposes: it increases both stride rate and ground reaction forces, and it improves balance by countering the rotation initiated by the pelvis. The arms also play a particularly important role during the start and early acceleration phase of a sprint, when forward lean is greatest and balance is most precarious.
A few cues that help: drive your elbows straight back rather than letting your hands cross your midline. Keep your hands relaxed (clenched fists create tension that travels up through the shoulders). Match the vigor of your arm swing to the speed of your legs. If your arms move lazily, your legs will follow.
Train Your Fast-Twitch Muscle Fibers
Your muscles contain different fiber types. Slow-twitch fibers are fatigue-resistant and power endurance activities. Fast-twitch fibers (particularly the fastest subtype) produce the highest force at the greatest speed but fatigue quickly. A higher proportion of fast-twitch fibers is predictive of success in high-velocity, short-duration events like sprinting and jumping.
While your baseline fiber composition is largely genetic, you can shift the balance toward faster fibers and improve recruitment of the ones you already have. The key is training with high velocity and high intent. Sprint at full effort over short distances (10 to 60 meters), perform explosive lifts like power cleans and jump squats, and avoid excessive slow endurance work that can push fiber composition in the opposite direction. Rest periods should be long enough (2 to 5 minutes) that each rep stays genuinely fast.
Improve Your Reaction and First Step
Total speed isn’t just about top-end velocity. In most sports, the ability to read a stimulus and move instantly separates fast players from slow ones. Reaction drills train you to identify a cue (a coach’s hand signal, a ball dropping, a whistle) and translate it into explosive movement with minimal delay.
Practical drills include ball drops (a partner holds a tennis ball at shoulder height and releases it; you sprint to catch it before the second bounce), wave drills (reacting to visual signals by sprinting, shuffling, or backpedaling), and reactive sprint-and-backpedal drills that force rapid acceleration and deceleration. These drills integrate auditory, visual, and sensory cues and build what coaches call “first-step quickness,” the ability to go from still to moving in the shortest possible time. Once your technique is solid, incorporate them 2 to 3 times per week as part of a warm-up or dedicated speed session.
Sprint More Often
This sounds obvious, but many people trying to get faster spend too much time jogging and not enough time actually sprinting. Sprinting is a skill, and like any skill it improves with specific practice. Short sprints (20 to 60 meters) at 90 to 100 percent effort, with full recovery between reps, teach your nervous system to coordinate the complex sequence of muscle activations that produce top speed.
A simple starting protocol: after a thorough warm-up, run 4 to 6 sprints of 30 to 40 meters with 2 to 3 minutes of walking rest between each one. Do this 2 to 3 times per week. Focus on smooth, powerful execution rather than straining. Over weeks, you can increase the distance, add hill sprints for extra resistance, or work on flying sprints (building to top speed over 20 meters, then holding it for another 20 to 30).
Support Speed With Nutrition and Recovery
Your muscles rely on a specific energy molecule called phosphocreatine for the first 10 to 15 seconds of all-out effort. When phosphocreatine runs out, power drops sharply. Creatine monohydrate is one of the most well-studied supplements for speed and power, with research showing 1 to 5 percent improvements in single-effort sprint performance and 5 to 15 percent improvements in maximal power, anaerobic capacity, and repeated sprint performance. These gains can appear after as little as one to two weeks of supplementation. A standard dose is 3 to 5 grams daily.
Beyond supplementation, sleep and recovery between training sessions determine how well your body adapts. Sprint and power training create significant stress on the nervous system. If you’re consistently under-recovered, your movement speed will decrease rather than improve. Prioritize 7 to 9 hours of sleep, eat enough protein to support muscle repair (roughly 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight daily), and don’t stack hard sprint sessions on consecutive days.
Putting It All Together
A well-structured week for building speed might include 2 sprint sessions, 2 to 3 strength training sessions focused on compound lifts, and plyometrics worked in before lifting or as part of your sprint warm-up. Reaction drills slot in easily at the start of any session when you’re fresh. The common mistake is doing too much volume at moderate intensity rather than less volume at high intensity with real recovery. Speed is built when you’re fresh, not when you’re grinding through fatigue.
Progress takes patience. Meaningful changes in sprint times typically emerge over 6 to 12 weeks of consistent training. Strength gains come first, followed by improvements in power and coordination as your nervous system learns to use that strength at high speeds. Track your times over set distances to measure progress objectively rather than relying on feel alone.