When running gets tough, it’s not uncommon to start to wish you could be flying instead. Well, there’s one running drill that can actually make you feel like you’re doing just that: strides. When you do strides right, there’s a moment when your legs just circle beneath you almost effortlessly as you float over the ground faster than you ever typically run. 

Sounds dreamy, right? What’s even better is that, if you do strides regularly and strategically, they can make you a faster, better runner overall. 

If you’ve never tried this running drill before, read on to learn what strides are in running, how to run strides, and what kinds of benefits you can expect to get out of doing them regularly. 

What Are Strides In Running? 

Strides are a drill typically done near the start or end of a run in which you accelerate towards a top pace for a short period of time, and then repeat that for a few rounds, explains Peloton instructor Joslyn Thompson Rule. These bursts of speed are shorter than what you’d do in an interval or fartlek run, and they’re less intense than a sprint. They can be done on their own as a beginner-friendly form of speed work, used as a warm-up or finisher, or to prepare for longer speed sessions. 

“I would differentiate it from sprints because we're not as focused on getting maximal acceleration like an actual track sprinter would be,” says Jacob Goodin, a professor of kinesiology at Point Loma Nazarene University. “A stride is a little bit more casual, although you can put a lot of effort and intensity into it. It’s a gradual acceleration, and then a nice, easy return to standing as you back off.” (Though sometimes, coaches will program strides with light jogging or walking recoveries instead of completely returning to standing.) 

How Running Strides Can Boost Your Performance

No matter how long you’ve been running or what your goals are, running strides can help. Focusing on good running form at speed carries over into our regular running, Joslyn says. In particular, strides teach your body to turn over your feet more quickly.  

In addition to helping you practice better running mechanics, strides can also improve your neuromuscular ability to produce force quickly. “That ability is one of the things that sets the pace that you’re capable of running in a race,” Goodin says. Even if your endurance, VO2 max, and lactate threshold are the same, a more finely-tuned neuromuscular system will get you to the finish line faster. 

What’s more, because strides are such short bursts, you can do them without wearing out your body. “It’s a low-fatiguing way to sneak in some speed work,” Goodin says. 

How to Run Strides

Here’s what a stride session might look like: 

Throughout your strides, focus on moving your feet quickly (i.e., increasing your cadence), but keeping your body relaxed with a slight forward lean. “The best strides look fast but feel smooth and fluid,” says physical therapist Lauren Glisic, co-founder of Athletic Lab Physical Therapy and Performance Training in California.

When to Do Running Strides As Part of Your Training

Because the effects are so powerful and the risks are minimal, Joslyn suggests that anyone who can run continuously for 20 to 30 minutes at a time should perform strides once or twice a week. Glisic adds that more advanced runners can add them four to six times per week (though you’ll want to back off whenever you’re dealing with an acute soft tissue injury like a hamstring strain or calf tightness, she notes).

There are a few ways runners incorporate strides into their workouts. Each strategy offers slightly different benefits. 

Strides As a Running Warm-Up

Strides can work really well as part of a warm-up for any run where you’ll want to kick into a higher gear, like intense speed work or even a race. For example, Peloton running classes often feature strides at the end of a warm-up before diving into faster intervals. “I always like to think of it as a communication with your body that we’re about to put some work in, so we need quality form at pace,” Joslyn says. 

This isn’t just a mental gimmick—it can actually change how the rest of the workout feels. By doing some strides right before your run or race, “suddenly you're turning on the neuromuscular system and making the subsequent activity feel a little easier, and you’ll actually be able to run it a little bit faster because you're priming all of your body’s systems,” Goodin says. 

Or, as Joslyn likes to put it: “It's sort of like switching all the lights on.”

Post-Run Strides

When you do strides at the end of a longer, steady-state run, the goal is not to prime your body to start to run fast—your run is nearly over, after all—but to sneak in a little speed work on tired legs. “They’re great at the end of a session to practice good form under fatigue, a really important reminder that form really carries us through when we’re tired,” Joslyn says. 

Goodin points out that, at the end of a run, you’ve typically accumulated some lactate, fatigued your motor units and muscle fibers, and used up some glycogen (the easily available energy stored in your muscles and liver). “So it’s teaching you to run fast, even on fatigued legs. There’s also a mental component of that—you want to know what that feels like to kick in quickly at the end of a race,” he says. This builds both your neuromuscular capacity and your mental toughness to speed up toward that finish line when you’re already exhausted, he adds.   

Just be sure to let yourself recover a little from the rest of your run with some gentle walking before doing strides—you shouldn’t be winded when you do them. 

Strides As a Speed Workout

In some instances, strides can also serve as their own short speed workout. “They are a great tool to ‘dose’ higher velocity running in a highly controlled, graded way,” Glisic says. Since they give runners a chance to play with faster paces without the wear and tear of full workouts, Glisic recommends them to athletes just returning from injury, postpartum recovery, or after a marathon. Older runners or those doing deload weeks can also use them to safely keep those biomechanics sharp, she adds. 

In this case, just remember to start with a warm-up first so your legs are ready, then shoot for 10 to 12 strides, she recommends. And of course, finish off with a cooldown.  

Where to Run Strides

No matter where your run takes place, you can do strides. “Theoretically, you could do a stride really anywhere,” Goodin says. “But most ideally, it would be on a flat surface.” Here’s what to keep in mind when you’re tackling strides in various running environments. 

Running Strides On a Track

A track is an ideal place to perform strides—you’ve got a flat, slightly cushioned surface without any cars to worry about. The straight sections on a standard track are about 84 meters long, which is a great length for a stride. 

Running Strides On a Road

If you want to fit in some end-of-run strides shortly before wrapping up your run, you can find a stretch in front of your home to do them on the sidewalk or a shoulder of the road. It can be helpful to measure out the distance you want to hit—whether that’s between two light poles or from one neighbor’s house to the next—so you can just run without having to pay attention to your watch. 

Running Strides at the Park

Parks can be another great spot for strides if you can find a flat, generally empty, and relatively straight stretch where roots or rocks won’t get in your way. Just like running strides on a road, it can be helpful to plot out the distance you want to cover with landmarks like benches or trees. 

Running Strides On a Football Field

On a football field, each white line is spaced about 9 meters apart, so you can run past anywhere from five and a half to 15 of them for each rep of your strides. Bonus: The soft, level grass can make for a great running surface. 

Running Strides On Hills

If you want to mix things up, you can also do strides on an incline (not unlike another running drill called hill repeats). “Uphill strides add a little variation,” Joslyn says. Goodin points out that running uphill brings the ground closer, but also forces you to lift your feet further up off the ground to move forward. “It actually decreases the impact, but it increases the effort that you have to give,” he says. However, he points out that this won’t give you exactly the same effect as strides on a flat surface, since you won’t be able to reach the same velocity. “You get more of a strength component and a little less of a speed component from that,” he says. 

Alternatively, you could do strides on a slight downhill and run even faster. But Goodin warn that the incline needs to be very slight, since downhill running increases the amount of eccentric force your body is absorbing with every foot strike. “You’re increasing the wear and tear on the athlete,” he says. 

Running Strides On a Treadmill

Treadmill strides are done a bit differently, since you can’t quickly accelerate and then decelerate your pace the same way as on a track or road. Joslyn recommends setting the incline to one percent to better mimic a flat road outside to get more of the benefits when you do strides on a treadmill. 

The Takeaway

When you first begin doing strides, they might feel completely different from any running you’ve done before. “The intention is to be fast, and you can really get cooking,” Goodin says. Your body might not be used to moving at such high speeds, which can feel thrilling. Just remember to ease into and out of it with a gradual acceleration and deceleration in each stride. “And the reason for that is so that you don’t do any sudden bursts of speed that could result in a pulled hamstring or calf or a torn Achilles tendon,” Goodin says. 

Fortunately, because strides are so short, the risk of injury is low, and the wear on your body is pretty minimal. Yet, dedicating just a few minutes to strides before a workout or race or at the end of a run can lead to major payoffs that make you a better and faster runner. 

And, they can be a heck of a lot of fun. “Once you’re just kind of flying and floating and you get that high-speed, low-effort feel in your stride, it’s really fun to modulate your pace and just give it a little bit of gas or pull off the gas and cruise for just a few strides,” Goodin says.