There were a fair amount of comments on Instapundit about it. Many were cynical, some argumentative, but some were positive. And, some folks just used the link to talk about some other diet or exercise regimen they swore by while they had no experience with the article linked. And, many wrote that they might be interested in trying but did not think it feasible due to some health issue. Bad knees seemed to lead the list.
I have been doing some form of this my entire life and I really, really like it and feel it contributes to my seeming good health*. The topic of exercise, running, etc. has come up many times during my life with friends, family, co-workers, strangers. It’s a popular topic. One will be at a dinner and someone mentions some article he or she read (just as I’m doing now) and an interesting conversation follows. Over the years I’ve explained my sprinting regimen to many people, and told them how great I feel when I do it. Yet, I don’t think I’ve ever convinced anyone else to try it.
Most all of us sprinted a lot as children. A simple game of tag at recess involved dozens of quick sprints; basketball, football, kickball, baseball, soccer, tennis, bombardment, hide and seek… Simply walking to and from school everyday, or going to the store for my mother, or going to a friend’s house. I’d see how long I could keep up with the city buses or trains. Most everyone who is in decent health as a child sprints a lot. Yet, it seems like most all of us lose the drive or desire to sprint as we age. Somehow I never grew out of it***.
In other words, this seems to work for me, but your mileage (pun intended, of course) may vary. Somewhere in my mid to late 30s I noticed I could no longer string together 100 meter or 200 meter sprints without soon tweaking a hamstring or gastrocnemius. In one of many efforts to recover from a minor hamstring pull I tried sprinting uphill and found that was the trick I needed. For decades since I’ve been doing uphill windsprints and rarely get injured. My theory is the slope slows me down just enough that my leg turnover speed is not fast enough to cause injury. Then, somewhere around age 60 I discovered nature (aka “aging”) had slowed my leg turnover speed enough that I can now “sprint” on flat ground again**.
Also, I’ve done a fair amount of slower, longer running and cycling. For decades I very much enjoyed jogging (although my pace was typically more aggressive), but I never felt it was healthy. I did it because I had to do it; I simply love to run. But running miles, day after day seemed, to me, likely to carry potential for bad health outcomes. Yet sprinting never feels like it is harming my joints. There are a lot of different bodies and body types among homo sapiens. I definitely don’t think exercise (or diet) is a one size fits all paradigm, but I won’t be surprised to learn that pushing oneself to near total exhaustion in short bursts produces better outcomes for most people than a 70% – 80% effort for long intervals.
If you are in OK shape and don’t have a heart condition, and are curious, I recommend giving it a try. Start in a field or stretch of sidewalk with a slight slope, mark off 30 or 40 yards and jog up it to get your joints ready. Walk the first few steps, then work up to a jog. Walk back to your starting point and almost immediately set yourself and this time jog the entire distance. Walk back to the starting point and repeat, but maybe with an 80% effort. 3 is probably a good place to start. 2 or 3 days later go back and start the first one in a full jog. Then #2 is maybe 80%. Then try close to full speed for 1 or 2 and finish with an 80%. If you like it, work your way up to 5 near or at top speed then start increasing your distance. I find 65 to 75 yards feels about right for me on a decent slope with 5 to 10 reps, depending on how I feel.
* At least my Dr. likes my vitals and bloodwork, but I’ve never run the control experiment to see if they would change if I didn’t do this. Could just be genetics, or some other lifestyle choice(s) I follow? I recently had my regularly scheduled colonoscopy and in recovery the nurse anesthetist said she had to keep calming everyone when the pulse rate monitor beeped an alarm. She said, “I had to keep telling them, no, his normal pulse really is that low.”
** 2 summers ago I decided to add “ladders” a few times a week (50, 100, 200, 400, 200, 100, 50) and time the sprints (I rarely do) to see if I could improve my 400m time. After getting used to the longer sprint (after decades of not timing myself in a 400m) my times were similar to my 400m splits in a 5k race. Relatively very slow to my youth! My 50m and 100m times aren’t bad, and I can hold it together decently for about 200m, although there is a drop off compared to the 2, shorter distances. But I find it impossible at my age to “sprint” for more than about 200m. And I’m very curious why that is? Lung capacity? Fewer red blood cells? Leg muscles being much less efficient? BMI skewed? I’m carrying about 30 more pounds than when I ran 5ks at that pace and more of those pounds are fat than muscle now, but why do I fall off a cliff, pace-wise, if I’m going much further than ~180m? Any geriatric physiologists in the crowd?
*** Maybe I’m just very immature!
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The buck stops somewhere else: A look at Trump’s tendency to avoid blame when things go awry
Enough said…
Instapundit linked to this article: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-minutes-sprinting-bigger-impact-moderate.html
There were a fair amount of comments on Instapundit about it. Many were cynical, some argumentative, but some were positive. And, some folks just used the link to talk about some other diet or exercise regimen they swore by while they had no experience with the article linked. And, many wrote that they might be interested in trying but did not think it feasible due to some health issue. Bad knees seemed to lead the list.
I have been doing some form of this my entire life and I really, really like it and feel it contributes to my seeming good health*. The topic of exercise, running, etc. has come up many times during my life with friends, family, co-workers, strangers. It’s a popular topic. One will be at a dinner and someone mentions some article he or she read (just as I’m doing now) and an interesting conversation follows. Over the years I’ve explained my sprinting regimen to many people, and told them how great I feel when I do it. Yet, I don’t think I’ve ever convinced anyone else to try it.
Most all of us sprinted a lot as children. A simple game of tag at recess involved dozens of quick sprints; basketball, football, kickball, baseball, soccer, tennis, bombardment, hide and seek… Simply walking to and from school everyday, or going to the store for my mother, or going to a friend’s house. I’d see how long I could keep up with the city buses or trains. Most everyone who is in decent health as a child sprints a lot. Yet, it seems like most all of us lose the drive or desire to sprint as we age. Somehow I never grew out of it***.
In other words, this seems to work for me, but your mileage (pun intended, of course) may vary. Somewhere in my mid to late 30s I noticed I could no longer string together 100 meter or 200 meter sprints without soon tweaking a hamstring or gastrocnemius. In one of many efforts to recover from a minor hamstring pull I tried sprinting uphill and found that was the trick I needed. For decades since I’ve been doing uphill windsprints and rarely get injured. My theory is the slope slows me down just enough that my leg turnover speed is not fast enough to cause injury. Then, somewhere around age 60 I discovered nature (aka “aging”) had slowed my leg turnover speed enough that I can now “sprint” on flat ground again**.
Also, I’ve done a fair amount of slower, longer running and cycling. For decades I very much enjoyed jogging (although my pace was typically more aggressive), but I never felt it was healthy. I did it because I had to do it; I simply love to run. But running miles, day after day seemed, to me, likely to carry potential for bad health outcomes. Yet sprinting never feels like it is harming my joints. There are a lot of different bodies and body types among homo sapiens. I definitely don’t think exercise (or diet) is a one size fits all paradigm, but I won’t be surprised to learn that pushing oneself to near total exhaustion in short bursts produces better outcomes for most people than a 70% – 80% effort for long intervals.
If you are in OK shape and don’t have a heart condition, and are curious, I recommend giving it a try. Start in a field or stretch of sidewalk with a slight slope, mark off 30 or 40 yards and jog up it to get your joints ready. Walk the first few steps, then work up to a jog. Walk back to your starting point and almost immediately set yourself and this time jog the entire distance. Walk back to the starting point and repeat, but maybe with an 80% effort. 3 is probably a good place to start. 2 or 3 days later go back and start the first one in a full jog. Then #2 is maybe 80%. Then try close to full speed for 1 or 2 and finish with an 80%. If you like it, work your way up to 5 near or at top speed then start increasing your distance. I find 65 to 75 yards feels about right for me on a decent slope with 5 to 10 reps, depending on how I feel.
* At least my Dr. likes my vitals and bloodwork, but I’ve never run the control experiment to see if they would change if I didn’t do this. Could just be genetics, or some other lifestyle choice(s) I follow? I recently had my regularly scheduled colonoscopy and in recovery the nurse anesthetist said she had to keep calming everyone when the pulse rate monitor beeped an alarm. She said, “I had to keep telling them, no, his normal pulse really is that low.”
** 2 summers ago I decided to add “ladders” a few times a week (50, 100, 200, 400, 200, 100, 50) and time the sprints (I rarely do) to see if I could improve my 400m time. After getting used to the longer sprint (after decades of not timing myself in a 400m) my times were similar to my 400m splits in a 5k race. Relatively very slow to my youth! My 50m and 100m times aren’t bad, and I can hold it together decently for about 200m, although there is a drop off compared to the 2, shorter distances. But I find it impossible at my age to “sprint” for more than about 200m. And I’m very curious why that is? Lung capacity? Fewer red blood cells? Leg muscles being much less efficient? BMI skewed? I’m carrying about 30 more pounds than when I ran 5ks at that pace and more of those pounds are fat than muscle now, but why do I fall off a cliff, pace-wise, if I’m going much further than ~180m? Any geriatric physiologists in the crowd?
*** Maybe I’m just very immature!