Vertical oscillation is a mixed bag- you need vertical oscillation to increase momentum, but it’s whats going on at the lower body to determine if it’s good vs. bad oscillation. Good if the hip, knee, ankle, and muscles around the joint are moving as they should- very bad if they are not (i.e.- not sufficient flexion at the knee joint at initial contact). Elites have more vertical oscillation than what some realize, but while theirs is a positive oscillation, amateurs tend to have more negative oscillation. In other words- if COM started at “X,” the elite trend to net a “x+y-(y)”, while the amateur trends to have more “x-y+(y)”- basically the elite powers into their run, and the rookie “crashes” or “falls” into theirs. Body weight, strength and bodyweight:strength ratio come into play here.
For a training run, 168-172 range is perfect for cadence. Garmin’s contact time algorithm is very suspect to begin with- I wouldn’t trust it as a number to be concerned about.
On a side note, 7min/mi and low 170’s for a cadence for a “steady state” effort seems like you’re probably over striding slightly, unless you’re a sub-3 marathon kind of guy…there’s a lot that goes into that, like your definition of steady state may be different than mine, and depends on your stride length and a few other measurements though.
Hi Rob
I am not sure about Garmin’s contact time metric but I played around with Wahoo TICR ground contact time metric by verifying it on a Kistler Gaitway treadmill. It was pretty darn good. At least at jogging and running paces. I did not do any sprinting with it though.