The Complete Guide to Nervous System Training for Sprinters
- John
- 6 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Your nervous system is the hidden MVP of speed. It controls how fast, how hard, and how efficiently your muscles fire. Yet most sprinters spend years chasing better workouts without ever learning how to upgrade their internal wiring.
Here’s the kicker: Average athletes fire either too weak, or too slowly.
They can’t send a strong enough signal to activate all the muscles they already have. Or they can’t send that signal fast enough to matter on the track. Sometimes both.
What if you could change that?
Why This Guide Matters
This article breaks down the real reason elite sprinters fire differently: their nervous system hits harder and faster than yours.
The good news? That’s trainable.
You’ll learn:
How to build a stronger signal (max strength and max iso contractions)
How to fire it faster and cleaner (rate of force development & relaxation)
How to transfer that power onto the track (plyometrics & technique)
You’ll also see why more reps isn’t always the answer—and how to progress in building explosiveness without burning out.
By the end, you’ll have a complete roadmap to turn your body into a faster, sharper, more powerful machine.
Let’s plug in.
Section 1: How to Build a Stronger Signal (Max Strength & Max Iso CONTRACTIONS)
When you think about building speed, you probably think about sprint workouts, drills, or plyometrics. While that is true, jets begin in the weight room—specifically, how strong of a signal your nervous system can send to your muscles.
Why Strength is Key for Speed
To put it simply, you can't fire what you haven't built. If your body isn’t capable of producing maximum strength in the gym, it’s limited in how much force it can generate during a sprint.
Your brain is the emitter of a signal that tells your muscles to fire, and it does so based on your motor complex output potential.
“Not strong” in this context means sending a weak electrical current through a wire—you just won’t lift the weight. If you could send a stronger signal, you would lift it.
Max Strength: The Foundation
Max strength training focuses on improving your ability to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible, particularly those fast-twitch fibers that are essential for explosive movements like sprinting.
How to Train for Max Strength:
Rep Range: 1-5 reps
Sets: 3-5 working sets per exercise
Rest Period: 5+ minutes (this gives your nervous system time to reset)
Exercises to Include: Squats, deadlifts, bench presses. These compound movements involve multiple muscle groups, which will help you recruit and fire more muscle fibers. Ask powerlifters how they do it!
The goal here is to lift as heavy as possible with proper form—no ego-lifting, just solid effort. Think about these sessions as ways to recruit your maximum force. This is where you're laying the foundation to produce the strongest neural signals for sprinting.
Max Iso Contractions: Firing at Full Intensity
Once you’ve established the ability to lift heavy, the next step is training your body to fire at true 100% intensity—and there’s no better way to do this than max isometric contractions.
An isometric contraction is a position where you contract for a short period against an immovable object. When you perform max isometric contractions, you’re forcing your nervous system to fire every single fiber of a muscle at full capacity.
It’s a brutal but essential exercise to get your nervous system firing at full intensity.
How to Train with Max Iso Contractions:
Duration: Build up the max effort with 3 reps of 2-4 seconds while each consequent one is more and more powerful.
Rest Period: 5+ minutes (again, to allow your nervous system to fully recover).
Key Exercises:
Max Squat Contraction: Do the various positions of a squat (try also single leg variations)
Deadlift: Load the bar with a weight you can’t lift (try split variations)
Calves: Do both variations - bent and straight knee raise
Max iso holds are about maximal contraction—not just “holding a position” but dialing in on all the muscles that support the movement. It’s a brutal but precious exercise to get your nervous system firing at full intensity.
Progressive Overload for Neural Growth
To build strength and improve your signal over time, you need to progressively overload—not in terms of reps, but in terms of difficulty.
If you’re lifting the same weight week after week, your body won’t be forced to adapt. The goal isn’t to add more reps (as we discussed earlier) but to increase the effort level.
Section 2: How to Fire It Faster and Cleaner (Rate of Force Development & Relaxation)
Okay, so you’ve built a stronger signal—your nervous system can now fire hard. But here’s the next level: how fast can it fire that signal—and how cleanly can it switch it off?
This is the realm of Rate of Force Development (RFD) and muscle relaxation. And it’s a game-changer for sprinters.
Why Speed of Signal Matters
In sprinting, milliseconds decide everything. It’s not just about how much force you can produce—it's about how fast you can produce it.
That’s what Rate of Force Development (RFD) is all about: going from zero to max output ASAP.
But here’s what most athletes miss: being fast isn’t just about contracting muscles. It’s also about how quickly you can relax them.
If your antagonists (like your hamstrings when your quads are firing) can’t shut off in time, they act like brakes. And brakes don’t just slow you down—they get you hurt. A sluggish relaxation can be the reason behind that sudden hamstring pull.
And when your nervous system is off—whether you’re sore, fatigued, under-slept, or emotionally off (full of rage)—your ability to relax cleanly and fire explosively tanks.
Elite sprinters don’t just hit hard—they hit precisely, efficiently, and on cue.
Their nervous system knows when to turn on, and just as importantly, when to let go.
Training Rate of Force Development (RFD)
RFD training is about power output. You’re training the nervous system to fire explosively, without fatiguing.
Key Guidelines:
Reps: 1-5 max
Rest: Full recovery between sets (5+ min)
Intent: 100% effort on every rep. If it’s not explosive, stop.
Focus: Power of movement (weight and speed combined)
Example Exercises:
Jumps (light weight or bodyweight)
Medicine ball slams or throws
Olympic lift variations (if technique is solid)
These exercises train your system to produce peak force quickly—perfect for sprinters who need explosive starts and high stride frequency.
Training Relaxation: The Missing Piece
This part gets overlooked, but it’s crucial: the faster you can relax a muscle, the faster you can fire the next one.
Too much tension = inefficiency.
You’re not a bodybuilder—you don’t want constant contraction. You want pulses. Turn on, turn off. Rapidly.
Think of sprinting like snapping a towel: whip, whip, whip. It’s not rigid—it’s rhythmic.
How to Train Relaxation:
Sprint Drills with Intent: A-skips, B-skips, dribble runs—focus on loose, snappy movement
Cue "fast arms, relaxed face" during max sprints
Rhythmic bounding and hops – not stiff, but springy
Relaxation-focused sprints: Sprint at 90–95% effort, focusing on smooth, fluid movement
Also, cue yourself during training: “Snap and relax,” “fast off the ground,” or “whip the leg.”
The goal is to build a nervous system that fires hard and fast, but also knows when to get out of the way. That’s elite-level coordination.
Why Explosivity Alone Isn’t Enough (The Ground Contact Time Problem)
Here’s the problem: even if you train your rate of force development like a maniac, you’re still working against time.
Think about it—how long does it take you to generate peak force in the gym? Maybe a second? Two?
In sprinting, you don’t have that kind of luxury.
Ground contact time for elite sprinters: ~100ms
Ground contact for average athletes: still not 2 seconds…
That’s barely enough time to blink, let alone ramp up to full power.
If you try to muscle your way through every stride, you're too slow by default.
This is where tendons come in.
You need to store force before you hit the ground—and then release it instantly, like a spring. Your muscles load the force, your tendons unload it.
And that’s the real secret to sprint speed: not just creating force, but recycling it efficiently through the tendons.
In other words, the nervous system needs help. That’s why the next section is all about:
Turning raw power into elastic, lightning-fast movement.
Let’s talk plyos.
Section 3: Plyometrics & Technique
So you’re strong. You’re explosive. You can hit hard and relax quick.
But sprinting isn’t just about how much power you can create. It’s about how much power you can recycle.
Every step on the track is a micro-explosion—but you don’t have time to generate force from scratch. You need to preload it, store it, and snap it back out—all in under few milliseconds.
That’s where plyometrics come in.
Plyos train the stretch-shortening cycle—your body’s built-in spring system. When done right, they teach your tendons to act like rubber bands:
Load with control (eccentric)
Store elastic energy (isometric)
Release instantly (concentric)
This turns your force production from a heavy engine into a high-speed slingshot.
But here’s the key: the plyos only work if the base is there.
Think of it like this:
Strength is the raw power.
RFD and relaxation are the neural controls.
Plyos are the transfer mechanism—putting that power into the ground.
Technique is putting that power in most efficiently.
And just like strength or RFD, plyometrics need progression. It’s not about doing more reps—it’s about doing harder, faster, more explosive versions with perfect timing.
Start with small hops. Progress to drop jumps.
When done right, you’re not just building bouncy legs. You’re rewiring your whole system to hit hard, fast, and keep the rhythm going.
Technique: Speed Is a Skill
A lot of sprinters treat technique like a checklist—"arms at 90 degrees," "knees up," "toe up." But real speed comes when movement becomes automatic—when the right firing pattern happens without conscious effort.
And this is 100% a nervous system skill.
As a pianist, I get it. If you want to play a fast song cleanly, you don’t start by smashing the keys at full speed. You slow it down. You play it clean. You repeat it without errors—until the nervous system learns the correct sequence.
Then you speed it up.
Sprint technique is the same.
Every rep you take with perfect form etches that pattern deeper into your brain and spinal cord.
IMPORTANT: Everything counts. Even when you don't count it. Every sloppy stride teaches you the wrong technique. Your brain is always learning. Make it learn the right thing.
High-intensity training can interfere with technical learning. When you're chasing maximum effort, it’s easy to fall into compensation—reverting to messy patterns just to survive the rep.
That’s why technical drills, sprint buildups, and even submax sprints have their place in a serious sprinter’s plan. They give the nervous system room to learn without chaos.
So remember:
When you're training for max intensity, chase quality over volume.
When you're training technique, chase precision over intensity or speed.
And when the two combine—explosive movement, executed cleanly—you’re done. Real speed.
Want Help Wiring It All Together?
I don’t just write about this—I coach it.
If you’re serious about getting faster, staying injury-free, and finally unlocking your potential, I offer personalized training plans, 1-on-1 consults, and access to our private Discord community where athletes share progress, ask questions, and stay sharp together.
Whether you’re a DIYer looking to dial in your programming or a competitor chasing PRs— I’ve got your back.
Let’s get you faster. For real this time.
Comments