Does sprinting really increase your height? And if so, how much can you grow taller from sprinting?
What are the different forms of sprinting?
I used to do sprints with many different people and what I have found is that not everyone understands the same thing. From my experience, there are three basic understandings of sprinting:
- Running a short distance really fast, but only once.
- Running a short distance really fast, taking a longer break of 5 to 10 minutes, and then doing it again.
- Doing interval training.
In other words, when I would ask a friend if he wants to go sprinting with me he would assume one of the above three variations. To me personally, sprinting is variation number two. It's sort of like weight training where you perform highly intensive sets and repeat them over and over again to increase performance.
Important for you to know is that variation number two is also the type of sprinting where you benefit the most for increasing height. If you can perform exercise number two from the list above several times a week, then sprinting really can help you grow taller.
Why does sprinting increase height?
Obviously, don't just take my word for it when I say sprinting increases your height. Hence, let me give you a short explanation of the science behind all of this. In order for you grow taller after puberty, you need to achieve the following things:
- Lengthening your limbs, either your legs or your spinal column (preferably both).
- Stimulating your body to naturally release more growth hormones.
As you might have guessed, sprinting helps you with both of the above listed criteria. When sprinting, you have to push your body off the ground very hard and you also have to pull your knees quite far up in order to keep up with the speed. In other words, you are taking long strides. These long strides are a form of stretching for your legs.
At this point it's important for you to understand that there is no way to lengthen your actual leg bones after puberty. As an adult, you have solid bones that just cannot be altered unless you undergo surgery. However, between our leg bones, we do have little spaces. By stretching your legs, you can actually make use of these spaces and lengthen your legs a bit.
Finally, all types of intense exercise stimulate your body to release more growth hormones. Sprinting is a classic exercise for this purpose and can measurably increase the amount of growth hormones your pituitary gland releases into the system.
Is there something missing?
As you can see, the sprinting exercise variation number two is really the best sprinting exercise to increase height. Number one almost doesn't help at all because it is too short. And number three would help a lot with releasing more growth hormones; however, it doesn't do so well with actually stretching and thus lengthening your legs.
Most importantly though, sprinting is just part of a bigger picture: If you combine regular sprinting as described above with other stretching exercises, you can easily increase your height by 2 to 4 inches within just 2 months.
