Will Squats Make You Faster?

Whether you're a sprinter, middle-distance runner or competitive athlete of any type, getting faster can boost your performance. Rather than just sticking to jogging or short-distance sprints, lifting weights, particularly for your lower body, can increase your power, explosiveness and speed. One of the best lifting exercises for making you faster is the squat, which has many benefits for speed and can be performed in a variety ways.

  1. Muscles Worked

    • Sprinting works all the major muscles of your lower body -- your quadriceps, glutes, hip flexors and hamstrings. Squats also work these same muscles. Speed is relative to muscle mass, notes strength coach Charles Poliquin. If you have bigger, stronger leg muscles developed by squatting, those muscles will be able to exert more force, thus making you faster.

    Injury Prevention

    • Sprinting places a high degree of stress not only on your leg muscles, but also on your hip, knee and ankle joints. Squatting can strengthen the muscles, tendons and ligaments around these joints to make them tougher and more resistant to injury. Full range of motion squats, for which your knees descend lower than your hips, make your posterior chain stronger and improve knee health and longevity, according to strength coach Mark Wine. The more time you can avoid injury, the more time you can dedicate to your speed training and the faster you'll get.

    Glutes

    • The glutes are the most powerful muscles in your body and absolutely crucial in maximal speed development, according to Bret Contreras in "Advanced Techniques in Glutei Maximi Strengthening." Squats, particularly deep squats, work your glutes through a full range and increase their ability to produce force. Your glutes are most active when you first push off from the blocks in a sprint and as you reach a full range of hip extension on every stride. To fully recruit your glutes when squatting, be sure to finish every repetition by pushing your hips forward forcefully without overextending your lower back.

    Types of Squat

    • While back squats, with a barbell resting across your shoulder blades, may be the most common type of squat, Poliquin recommends performing front squats, with the bar resting across the front of your shoulders, as your best bet for increasing speed. Single-leg squats may also be of benefit, as they work each leg individually similarly to running. According to corrective exercise specialist Mike Robertson in "The Single-Leg Solution," single-leg or split squats are superior than two-legged squats in terms of injury prevention and strengthening the knee and ankle joints.