First, I am not a fast runner. My only marathon was about 4:25 (slow, but at least I didn’t walk). I do my zone 2 runs at about 10 min/mile. My 10K is about 8 min/mile. I am currently training for my first ironman with the goal of finishing and staying healthy and un-injured through training. In the pursuit of staying un-injured, I am curious about my run form and cadence.
I use a garmin forerunner 220, which gives me a cadence number using an accelerometer in the watch (I believe that is the method, could be wrong). My first question is, is the garmin forerunner’s cadence reading decently accurate? I suppose I could test this, but I am curious what other people’s experiences are with this type of technology to measure cadence.
Today, I ran for an hour on the treadmill at 10 min per mile (according to the treadmill), and my garmin showed an average cadence of 159. The 160 range is a pretty consistent reading for me at 10 min per mile. Last Saturday, I did 3 x 10 min intervals at 8 min per mile. During the intervals, my cadence increased to 170 at 8 min/mile.
Given the numbers presented here, should I be looking to increase my run cadence? I know my numbers are below what most would target, but my paces are not all to fast either, so I wonder if these are good cadences for the paces I am running. If I should be increasing my cadence, what is the best approach to doing that?
If I should be increasing my cadence, what is the best approach to doing that?
Deliberately avoiding the “If” part: to train at a certain cadence, either use a metronome app on your computer or phone, or find some music that is paced at the correct speed. Then just follow the beat. The training is more effective if you purposely start at a slow speed, where your natural cadence might be significantly slower. It will feel like you’re running in place, but that is kind of the point - to reduce any tendency to over-stride. The other thing you might focus on is to kick up your heels so that you are more likely to do your foot-planting closer to your CG.
As with anything where you try to break long-standing habit: Don’t overdo it.
I went from 165 spm to about 184-186 currently. This took a lot of careful practice and time (started working on it in February 2015, reached the 180s consistently in October 2015).
A tool you should look into getting is an audible metronome (the 220 may have one built in? I know my Fenix 3 does). Start trying to increase your normal 10min/mile cadence by 2-4spm every two weeks. It’ll feel like you’re taking the smallest steps (and you’ll feel like you look stupid) if you try to jump from 165 to 180 immediately.
The math here is pretty simple: stride length X cadence = velocity (e.g., with a 1 meter stride length and a cadence of 160 strides per minute, your velocity is 169 meters/min or 10.140 km/hr or about 9:30 per mile). If you want to increase your cadence but run the same pace, you have to shorten your stride length. For me, increasing my cadence came pretty easily when I shortened my stride (ymmv). As to whether you should increase your cadence, I’ll leave that to the experts. In my experience, the shorter my stride, the less I heel strike, and the less I heel strike, the easier it seems on my body (or maybe I should say less hard).
A fun thing that people do on the internet is take an elite runner/triathlete, and extrapolate what you should be doing based on that. “Ryan Hall runs (supposedly) 9 minute miles for recovery, that means you should be no faster than 12.” Your stride at 10 or 8 min/mile isn’t going to be the same as youtube slow motion runner analysis when they’re doing 5 or 6 minute miles, it just isn’t.
Stride is something you should probably work on with a coach in person.
Concentrate on quickly picking up your feet. Forget speed and forget pushing off, just pick up your feet behind you. Allow the stride be as short as necessary, once you get your cadence sorted stride length just becomes a function of effort and takes care of itself. I run with a cadence of 182-190. If I’m cruising on level ground and glance at my cadence it will be 186 or 187 pretty much every time. It tends to slow a bit if I’m very fatigued, it rises a fraction if I push the pace but unless I’m actually sprinting it doesn’t alter much with speed. My stride just gets shorter or longer depending on speed.
I used to have a very low cadence. I didn’t measure it at the time so I don’t have a number but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in the 150-160 range. I injured my knee and it took several attempts at getting back into running before I managed. That’s how I got into triathlon, I took up cycling in between. Anyway, in the end I switched to minimalist shoes (Merrell Barefoot Trail Gloves) and made a particular effort to run with higher cadence and a midfoot /forefoot strike. It did feel a little odd, but not difficult or comfortable the first time I tried it. I’ve enjoyed running far more and avoided any significant injury ever since. That was about 4 years ago.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a case of gradually increasing cadence. I think it can be a sudden change if you actually change your running style as opposed to trying to tweak your existing one. If your existing style is poor it may not solve much to just increase cadence. For me minimalist shoes helped get this right and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend that approach but if you do take this route, be sure to keep the volume incredibly low at the start. Like running no more than say 400m first time out, not 3km or 5km or 10km - you might get away with that but you might hurt yourself and there’s a fair chance you’ll lose concentration and develop new bad habits too.
Whatever way you do it, just concentrate on picking your feet up behind you and forget about everything else.
I simply added cadence to a screen on my Garmin. With minimal effort I’ve upped my slow run (9:30-10:00) cadence from 150s to mid 160s. At a 9:00 pace it’s bumping into the 170s.
I’m same height; my personal take was to simply focus or not over-striding… by taking shorter steps, of course the cadence naturally picks up as an ‘output’ so I focused less on that as the main ‘input’ ~ obviously flip sides of the same coin, but seemed to require less external reinforcement that way (like a watch beeper or what have you). At least in terms of overall posture/form, when I get tired & over-stride more I tend to lean back as well, so by making a conscious effort to lean forward a little more upright it translated to running more on my toes and less on my heels, and that chain in turn produced shorter strides and increased turnover.
So, in that case higher cadence came as a package outcome from trying to focus on a more ‘forward’ posture, which really didn’t require any extra gadgets/measurement or mental ‘overhead’ etc. (obviously it could be measured later to quantify improvements in that regard, but I was satisfied enough just with time/speed improvements in general, and felt like the change in form away from more heel-striking also helped with fewer of the nagging injuries I’d had before ~ although I acknowledge it’s difficult to disentangle cause/effect).
I do notice after all this than when I’d try running with my wife on occasion, her cadence is almost the same as mine even though she’s close to a foot shorter. I’m positive if she saw a coach they’d tell her she’s way over-striding, but of course coming from me that advice is always poorly received.
to kind of tag on this thread I did a long run last night of 9.75 miles and averaged 9:17 pace and kept it pretty consistent. My cadence was 188 SPM and a stride length of .94 meters is this a good setup? I am 6’ tall. If those number are decent at all and I want to get faster am I mainly just looking at HTFU and doing more interval training or is there something that I could improve on?
Everyone’s natural cadence is different, and will vary slightly with pace (ex. I have a naturally slow turnover and a high back kick; my cadence is 154 at 7:30 and 162 at 5:45).
Your body is quite good at figuring out how to run (unlike swimming or cycling it’s a natural activity for humans). Your cadence will adapt as you get fitter/faster, but you won’t get fitter faster by changing your cadence.
Everyone’s natural cadence is different, and will vary slightly with pace (ex. I have a naturally slow turnover and a high back kick; my cadence is 154 at 7:30 and 162 at 5:45).
Your body is quite good at figuring out how to run (unlike swimming or cycling it’s a natural activity for humans). Your cadence will adapt as you get fitter/faster, but you won’t get fitter faster by changing your cadence.
I’m not entirely convinced by that argument.
While running is a natural activity for humans, it’s not so natural for people to live sedentary lifestyles for extended periods and then try to achieve fast running performances later in life. I’m sure when children grow up running and continue into adulthood they are likely to develop naturally good form, and that likely is the case for most world case athletes. However many of us, myself included, didn’t run for many years between childhood and my thirties and then, with no experience and a little extra weight I took up running. Yes, I was able to run and may in time have aquired a decent technique. But it would have taken a lot of time to evolve unconsciously and would likely have involved many injuries along the way.
Given the numbers presented here, should I be looking to increase my run cadence?
I have never worried or even payed attention to my cadence while running. As titanflexr mentioned above, the human body is made to run. Your body is not the same as mine, and because of this we have different stride lengths and cadence.
Focusing on your cadence won’t make you faster. Stop doing only long easy stuff and start throwing in some interval/fartlek runs.
You beat me to the point. Best way to improve your cadence by adding intervals and sprints that will force you to have quicker turnover. I found that running on sand helps too, because it forces you to take smaller, but choppier step.
Do not run with headphones and try to pace off of music and do not constantly look down at your watch.