Difference between Jogging and Sprinting (not the obvious)

The first time I did sprints I did about 10 sprints each for a few seconds. I loved how sprinting felt, every sprint made me feel strong and by the end of every sprint I was dead.  In my mind sprinting was just running a lot faster than my usual jogging so I was surprised when my muscles hurt the next day. Because I loved how I felt when I did my sprints and because I loved the after effects I decided to add more sessions of sprinting to my weekly workout plan. To me it felt manageable, just replacing my runs with sprints but this plan did not go as expected. I could not keep up with sprints and my other training.

So I went back to reading about the difference in sprinting and jogging. This post is a little bit about the science of exercising and I will try to make it as interesting as I possibility can

Aerobic Exercise

Jogging or doing any exercise at a medium intensity falls under the aerobic category. Aerobic exercises are those where you have a raised heart rate but can still manage to work out for an extended period because the oxygen level required is same as our oxygen intake. The oxygen we breathe in works with glycogen stored in our body to produce energy along with carbon-dioxide and water.

This entire mechanism is very similar to our normal breathing process the only difference is our heart rate is higher so as to increase the amount of oxygen we can breathe in which is turn gives us enough energy to exercise.

Anaerobic exercise

When you do very high intensity workout your body works a little differently.  Sprinting or other very high intensity exercises can be grouped under anaerobic category.Anaerobic exercises are more difficult because your body needs energy very fast and our oxygen consumption is not enough so the glycogen is broken without using oxygen. In this process along with energy our body also produces lactic acid which causes muscles to get tired faster and energy production stops in a few seconds that’s why you can’t sprint for longer than a few seconds because the breakdown of glycogen without oxygen is not complete which in-turn effects the amount of energy produced. If you notice after any very high intensity training you will continue to take deep breath to cover up for the lost oxygen once your body gets that oxygen it will then oxidise the lactic acid build up in your muscles but if you continue to push your limits you will definitely feel the fatigue.

I hope you found this post useful. Soon I will share a post about how to balance your aerobic and anaerobic workouts (I am still doing my research on that)

 

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Tanvee