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Sprint For Gains

Everybody wants to build muscle; it looks good, it burns fat, it makes your body more durable. However, when it comes to building muscle, people have a tendency to neglect their lower body.

What are fast twitch muscles?
One thing anyone that wants to maximize their fitness should know is that people have two types of muscle fibers: Fast Twitch muscle fibers and slow twitch muscle fibers. Both are used for different types of activities.

Also: Heather Marsh’s Killer Plyometric Track Workout

When it comes to slow twitch muscles, they are primarily used for long endurance feats like marathons and long distance runs. On the other hand, fast twitch muscles are for those quick bursts of power like long jumps and sprinting.

Fast Twitch muscle fibers are also the largest and most powerful muscles in your body. So training them can do wonders for boosting your muscle mass and strength in your lower body.

Now that we know what fast twitch muscles are and how they work, let’s get into how you can target them to build muscle in your lower body.

Sprints
Sprinting is a great exercise to train your fast twitch muscle fibers because it’s explosive. Your legs are dense with fast twitch muscle fibers. They are the thing that allows your legs to contract quickly and make fast changes of direction and burst of speed.

And as I stated earlier, explosive exercises are how you target your fast twitch muscle fibers. So sprinting should definitely be a part of your workout regimen.

Here is an example of a sprinting routine that will do wonders for engaging your fast twitch muscle fibers and building your muscles in your lower body:

Sprint at top speed for 200 meters. Then walk for 200 meters. Alternate for 5 or 6 rounds. You will no doubt feel the burn from this routine! As your endurance increases over the following days and weeks, increase your reps in proportion.

Go heavy with squats
Your body will recruit more muscle fibers depending on how much power your lifts demand. If the power requirements aren’t maximized, you’ll use more slow twitch muscle fibers. So it’s clear when you’re squatting you want to maximize the amount you’re lifting. The more intensity, the more strenuous, the more you’ll use your fast twitch muscle fibers.

Fatigue is where the magic happens
Intensity isn’t the only thing you’re looking for when you’re aiming to target your fast twitch muscle fibers. You’re also looking for fatigue. This is because your body will first recruit your slow twitch muscle fibers in many cases, but once those are fatigued it will have no choice but to recruit those fast twitch muscle fibers. Fatigue is your friend.

Conclusion
When it comes to building muscles in the lower body training your fast twitch muscles is a definite way to achieve this. Besides just sprints and max weight squats other great exercises to train the fast twitch muscle fibers in your lower body are lateral jumps, jumping lunges, and broad jumps.

Just make sure you use quick, explosive bursts!

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