How to run faster

Speeding up your running now and then can have huge health benefits. Here’s how to achieve your personal best

Despite our hardwired ability to run fast, many people saunter through midlife without ever picking up pace. Indeed, one figure making the rounds on social media suggests that after the age of 35, 95 per cent of people never sprint again. But what is well-documented are the health benefits of regular short bursts of dynamic exercise, including sprints, which include improved cardio-vascular function, better strength and weight loss.  
Last year, 6.2 million people in the UK engaged in running for exercise, according to Statista. And for those who feel the need for speed, there are tools and techniques that can be utilised to increase velocity. 
Colin Harris is a professional athlete trainer, a former international GB athlete and the founder of Sprintingspeed. He says the best place to start to develop speed is in the slow lane.
“If you jog poorly, you run poorly,” he explains. “If you don’t have great technique, you lose power, pace, performance and productivity.”
So how do you get your Parkrun personal best and leave the other recreational plodders in your dust?
The first step, according to the experts, is to assess your strengths and weaknesses.
Jonas Dodoo is a speed coach and the founder of Speedworks. He says: “It is important to know who you are as a runner, and what you are capable of. Can you produce force at your key joints which are ankles, knees and hips. Are those joints stable?”
A good test of explosive power ability is the ease and height at which you can do plyometric box jumps (more of which later), as the same muscles are used for jumping and accelerated running. Plyometric exercises are short, fast movements that allow muscles to reach maximum force quickly.  
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Danny Mackey coaches Team GB 1,500m runner Josh Kerr and is head coach of Brooks Beasts. He explains: “A vertical jump test (simply standing on the spot and seeing how high you can jump) is a marker of speed because the force you generate when you’re jumping is similar to the force that you generate when you accelerate.”
Mackey also advises timing your best 100m speed with a stopwatch to give you a baseline.
Positioning is everything and serious runners debate endlessly about optimal form for speed running. 
Harris explains: “When your foot hits the ground underneath your body, you have the force to push. If the foot hits the ground in front of you, you’ve got to pull yourself forward before you can use that force to push back. Leaning your hips slightly forward will help.”
When the front foot lands the back foot should be at a 45-degree angle. From a side view this will position it slightly higher than the back of the knee.
A good arm swing will help you balance and help propel you forward more quickly. 
“Your arm swings are 14 per cent of your body weight,” says Harris. “The smaller the arm swings, the smaller the stride, the bigger the arm swings, the bigger the strides.”
Videoing yourself and playing the footage back in slow motion will give you a better understanding of your running form and help identify strengths, weaknesses, imbalances and opportunities for improvement.
How your foot lands, or foot strike, makes a significant difference to speed.
There are three types. 
“A good way to get an idea of what a good sprint footstrike looks like is to watch an Olympic hundred metre final and see where their feet hit the ground,” says Mackey.
Warming up properly, post-run stretching, yoga and Pilates will all help improve flexibility.
Core strength is also vital.
“Sprinters need to engage their stomach core to compress 26 muscles into one big muscle to maximise strength for the short distances of 100m, 200m and 400m,” says Harris.
To develop the fast-twitch muscles needed for explosive speed he advises: “Set yourself a distance and try to reduce the number of steps it takes to complete that distance. Then try the same with single leg hops and finally with bunny jumps.”
Run drills over 15m to 20m (after warm-up):
Weekly sprint session:
There are a range of apps and software that can be used to measure speed, form and effort level.
What exercises can I do apart from running to increase speed?
Skipping while swinging arms back and forth is an overlooked functional, fluid movement. “It is important. It gets all the body parts moving in sync,” says Harris.
Mackey recommends lunges, box step ups (stepping up on a box or platform typically 1-2ft high) and double leg box jumps (jumping onto a platform).
Fraser Smith, a personal trainer and the founder of London’s Vive Fitness says: “Drills that increase your mechanics for sprinting should work on dynamic flexibility and mobility to ensure there are no physical restrictions, in turn maximising your running technique. 
“Jumping exercises will help increase strength, power and counter movement force. If you are training for straight line running, you can focus on classic gym exercises such as lunges and step-ups.
“And it sounds obvious, but you need to regularly try and run as fast as you can to test your muscles’ ability to generate power. A lot of people do not sprint and if you don’t use it, you lose it.”
Is there a secret to running faster?
Harris says: “There is no secret. Hard work, energy and time. Find a qualified or experienced athletics coach. Be dedicated and patient.”
How should you breathe when running?
Regulate breathing to create a rhythm in time with foot fall and try not to gasp or gargle.
Harris advises: “Try to time your inhalation and exhalation over a few strides. Start by walking and establishing a rhythm, then jog and gradually increase speed while maintaining the breath pattern to match your feet contact. This will relax the shoulders, hips and legs.”
Videos by John Lawrence for The Telegraph