If you want to type faster, here's the uncomfortable instruction: type faster.
Not "type more." Not "type for longer." Type faster— past the point that feels controlled, in short bursts that make you a little messy. Almost everyone practises speed by grinding out long, comfortable sessions at the pace they can already hit, then wonders why the number sits still. Comfortable practice keeps you exactly as fast as you are. To get faster, you have to sprint.
Speed isn't endurance
Runners worked this out a century ago. You don't get a faster mile by jogging slow miles all day — that builds endurance, not speed. You get faster by running intervals: short, hard efforts above your race pace, with rest between. Typing is the same. Long steady sessions build stamina; short, all-out bursts build speed. They're different workouts, and most people only ever do the slow one.
Your two speeds, and the gap between them
You actually have two typing speeds. There's your cruising speed — the comfortable pace you hold without thinking — and your ceiling — the fastest you can go for a few seconds before it falls apart. The trick is that cruising speed always sits a fixed distance below your ceiling. Push the ceiling up in sprints, and your everyday cruising speed gets dragged up behind it.
That shaded gap is your headroom — and it stays roughly constant. So the only way to make your normal typing faster is to raise the line above it. Every sprint that nudges your ceiling up makes a slightly faster cruising pace feel normal a week later. That's the whole mechanism, and it's why brief discomfort beats long comfort.
Why twenty-five words is the perfect sprint
A good speed interval has to be short enough to go truly all-out, but long enough to register a real number. Twenty-five words is the sweet spot. It's over in a few seconds — short enough that you can abandon caution and just fly— yet long enough to measure your true peak rather than a lucky twitch. And it's instantly repeatable, which is exactly what interval training needs.
That's the Type25 sprint on the TypeLords homepage: a fixed 25-word dash you can run again and again, free, to push your ceiling. Go faster than feels safe, let the errors rise a little, rest, and go again. Then leave it — and notice, a few days on, that your ordinary typing has quietly sped up to match. When you want to confirm the gain over a longer haul, a graded test reads back your new sustainable pace.