How Can l Run Faster?

Trying to run faster without the gym.  Kidding yourself?

After a couple of years of running you can run at a 5 minute per kilometre pace for 10 kms. In the next 18 months you want to run that under a 4 min/km pace. You usually run between 8 and 10 km a couple of times a week and have had a couple of small niggles along your running journey, but nothing major. You figure you will just progress your running speed gradually by throwing in some interval work and keeping up with a home exercise programme to strengthen your glutes and calves. Will it work ?

To answer this question we need to think about what actually happens when your body improves at running and your times get faster.  But first, bare with me while I   go through some jargon.   Suffice to say,  If your improved speed is just down to improved aerobic endurance and not improvements in strength or power then this could be a limiting factor for you.

JARGON OF TRAINING

Aerobic endurance is a measure of your bodies ability to take oxygen from the atmosphere and use it to help power your muscles. Your maximum oxygen consumption is your VO2 max and is a common measure of fitness. Another measure is the lactate threshold. This is a measure of the point that lactate starts to accumulate because your body can’t remove it faster than it generates it, leading to other byproducts culminating in muscle fatigue.  Lactate is a byproduct of using glycogen (from the sugars you eat) to generate energy.  You can improve your lactate threshold and V02 max with exercise (2).

Strength is the amount of force you can apply to an object or the ground (1).  When you run, the muscles act within very short ranges of motion and transfer high amount of force to the tendons to propel you forward.

Power relates to the work done to move your body and relates to the rate you can generate force when moving a given load – the ‘rate of force development’ (3). This is essential to acceleration and running speed. Faster runners have longer strides, shorter ground contact times and more effective turnover, helping them get to that next stride quicker, while maintaining a full stride length.  They also maintain soft landings, effectively decelerating and absorbing forces in multiple directions, rather than the heavy landings which have been associated with overuse injuries (4).

When thinking about power, we need to also think about the stretch shortening cycle (SSC) which relates to the interplay between the muscle, tendon and connective tissue around it. When you strike the ground during running the muscles of the leg contract, while the leg stays mostly stiff (particularly the quads, gastroc and soleus). This causes a lengthening of the corresponding tendons, and if timed correctly, a spring like recoil effect. There is a complex co-ordination and if there is too much force to control, or conversely too little, you might not get the spring.  Activities which are slow SSC involve ground contact times of over 250 milliseconds, fast SCC is anything faster than that. Sprinting ground contact can be as low as 80-100 milliseconds in athletes (3,5,6).

Plyometric training and jump training are types of power training which focus on developing stiffer and more springy tendons. We will get to that soon.

TRAINING OPTIONS

To improve your running speeds over 10 km we are looking at improving your overall running efficiency- which is a combination of all the factors noted above. Running in itself will help you develop strength and rate of force development to a limited extent. How close you will get to that 4 min goal before you need gym work will vary significantly between individuals.  You are aiming to average 15 km an hour over 10 kilometre’s, here are a few ideas to consider on your journey-

• Work on any running technique issues, if not sure, talk to a running coach.
• You can change up your running workouts, adding hills and sprint intervals. Adding in some longer runs will also help, particularly from an aerobic training perspective. There are many variations out there.
• Work on your range of motion. Particularly hip extension as this enables a nice fluid full stride.
• Improving your maximum strength can improve your rate of force development. It seems the slower runners might get more benefit from training focussing on this.
• Intensity of your exercises is important.   A set of a given weight which produces fatigue within 8-12 repetitions is a good start for beginners when focussing on strength gains.  As you become more experienced in your training, lower rep ranges will help more.
• Pick an exercise that you can work harder on. If you are not sure what I mean, then see a trainer or your Physio. As an example, it is easier for beginners to push yourself to their max on a leg press then a squat. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to do squats though.
• As you get much more advanced you can add some acceleration to your strength training movements through the addition of bands on machines or barbells.  And if you are up to it you could add in some Olympic lifting movements which use short ranges of movement.
• You can improve your rate of force development through plyometric training.  Whatever exercises you do, you need to make sure that your ground contact times are short enough for what you are trying to do.  For simplicity, if your heels are hitting the ground or you sound like a baby elephant you might need to change up the exercise.
• Train jumps of differing ground contact times to get different effects (note the chart).

SIMPLE JUMP PROGRESSION  (Flanagan & Comyns, 2008)

1. 1^st phase is mastering the landing. Quiet landings.
2. Springy jumps like skipping, focussing on leg stiffness. Legs stiff like springs, staying on balls of feet.
3. Next start adding hurdles or a height element. Jump high, Jump fast.
4. Lastly, when ready, adding depth jumps. Jumping from a height and then using the elastic energy in landing to recoil into a higher jump. You need to make sure that you are ready for this phase.  Progressing too early through any of these phases will mean slower improvements.

Take your time with this sort of programme.  The literature suggests at-least 10 weeks for a strength training programme to improve your rate of force development.  However, some adaptation in plyometrics will take more than 4 months to achieve (1). It isn’t just muscles adapting, it is the tendon and the other connective tissue. Additionally, if you are really serious, you may need to reduce the volume of your running training for a period of time. It is known that concurrent training of strength and endurance can negatively impact on strength gains (2).

In general you need to consider the Stretch shortening cycle (SSC) duration of the activity you are training for. However, there are benefits of including different duration movements in your programme.  Here are some examples to illustrate.

Additional Physio tips

• Firstly, master the co-ordination of every exercise that you train with load. Get feedback and use video analysis to regularly review your technique.
• You need to rehab any old injuries or deal with any current pain issues, because it will impact on how much force you can generate when you are trying to push yourself harder.
• Orthotics might help in some cases. You also need to make sure that your footwear is right for you and the surface you are running on.
• If you have hypermobility of your joints, you are at a bit of a disadvantage- turns out that rate of force development is lower in this population (2).  If this is you, you just have more work to do.
• You need to consider your overall training volume when adding additional exercise onto a running programme.  Apart from injury, your muscles might be too fatigued at the start of a workout, so you won’t be able to push to high enough intensities to get the benefit you are looking for. Asking a professional to write a programme up might help best.
• Make sure your nutrition is right.  You need the right fuel before and after your exercise.

A FINAL THOUGHT

Given there is only so much time in a day, why waste your effort doing ineffective exercises. If your Physio reckons you can do more in the gym, then this is also a quicker way to finish your rehab and get back to doing what you want to do or get around the track a bit faster.

Christopher Bentley is an experienced physiotherapist who works at our Melbourne CBD clinic and Diamond Creek clinics.

• Eihara, Y., Takao, K., Sugiyama, T., Maeo, S., Terada, M., Kanehisa, H., & Isaka, T. (2022). Heavy resistance training versus plyometric training for improving running economy and running time trial performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Medicine – Open, 8, 138. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-022-00511-1 [sportsmedi…eropen.com]
• Hughes, D. C., Ellefsen, S., & Baar, K. (2018). Adaptations to endurance and strength training. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine, 8(6), a029769. https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a029769 [europepmc.org]
• Maffiuletti, N. A., Aagaard, P., Blazevich, A. J., Folland, J., Tillin, N., & Duchateau, J. (2016). Rate of force development: Physiological and methodological considerations. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 116(6), 1091–1116. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-016-3346-6 [link.springer.com]
• Yousefian Molla, R., Fatahi, A., Khezri, D., Ceylan, H. I., & Nobari, H. (2023). Relationship between impulse and kinetic variables during jumping and landing in volleyball players. BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, 24, 619. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12891-023-06757-4 [bmcmusculo…entral.com]
• Flanagan, E. P., & Comyns, T. M. (2008). The use of contact time and the reactive strength index to optimize fast stretch-shortening cycle training. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 30(5), 32–38. https://doi.org/10.1519/SSC.0b013e318187e25b [journals.lww.com]
• Walker, O. (2025, March 17). Stretch-shortening cycle (SSC). Science for Sport. https://www.scienceforsport.com/stretch-shortening-cycle/ [scienceforsport.com]
• Walker, O. (2025, March 17). Rate of force development (RFD). Science for Sport. https://www.scienceforsport.com/rate-of-force-development-rfd-2/ [scienceforsport.com]