By Mark Fulford

The last article I wrote I dedicated to good running form. Concentrating on good running form to help get you to the finish line in a more efficient manner. Sticking with the theme of efficiency, in this article I want to focus on Run Cadence, the number of times your feet hit the ground per minute.

Below is the formula that determines your running speed:

• Running Speed = Stride Length X Stride Rate or Run Cadence

Run Cadence, as mentioned above, is the number of times your foot hits the ground. An elite long distance runner typically runs with a cadence of 85-95. The length of race does not greatly alter the cadence at which these athletes run, the variable that does alter is the stride length. As the length of the race gets longer, the athletes use less of their muscle strength therefore their stride length decreases.

Stride length is determined mostly by the strength or force you apply to the ground with each step, and your Range Of Movement (ROM).

Strength is somewhat finite. The longer the event, the more it becomes a limiting factor. Take going to the gym for example. If you tire your muscles by doing a heavy weights strength workout you may not be able to do too many exercises and it may take days to recover. On the other hand if you only use Light Weights, sure you would have to do many more exercises to shift the same amount of weight, but you will probably be able to exercise for longer and more often. With running, if you need to take a large number of strides to complete your event, for example, a marathon, you need to rely less on your strength and your stride length and more on the number of steps you can do in a given time.

Often runners who are very good over shorter distances, perhaps 10kms, are comparably quite poor over the Half marathon and Marathon distance. This can be put down to their running efficiency, poor running form, or the fact that they rely on their strength to generate their speed rather than their cadence.

Two benefits to developing your ability to run at a higher cadence without any extra effort are:

• Reduced Muscular Fatigue. If you rely less on your strength, or at least try to conserve as much of your strength as possible at any given speed, you will suffer from less muscular fatigue. This in turn, should allow you to run for longer and allow you to run more often.
• Increased Run Speed. If you do maintain your stride length but increase the number of steps you take per minute you will run faster.

To improve your run cadence is not necessarily an easy thing to do. Your body remembers endurance well, but forgets speed quite quickly. Sprinters often do fast training daily so their body remembers how to go fast. To develop your cadence you need to train the central nervous system and the muscles. This needs to be done reasonably frequently, obviously the amount of time you spend on improving your cadence will depend on your event and available training time.

Stride Outs

A simple method for improving your cadence is to do a session of stride-outs.

• Make sure you are well warmed up with 10 - 20 minutes of easy running, followed by some gentle stretching and drills if you know how to do them.
• Run approximately 100 metres at about 90% effort. The key thing you are trying to do is have one of your feet striking the ground 30 times in 19 to 20 seconds. This gives a cadence of 90-95.
• After each stride-out, have a decent recovery, jog for approximately 300m or a couple of minutes between each stride-out.
  Repeat this as many times as you feel comfortable with. I would consider doing 4 - 6 stride outs in your first session, then increase the number you do by 2 per week until you are doing 10 - 12.
• Finish your session with an easy jog warm down.

Things to consider

• Do your stride-outs on a good, even, reasonably firm surface.
• Build into your session; do the first few at a decreased intensity so they become part of your warm up.
• This is not meant to be a hard session cardio-vascularly. To run good quality strides you need to be relatively fresh, so make your recovery between each stride-out very easy.
• Always run with your best form.
• It is not a strength work out, so if there is a wind, do your strides with the wind, and if there is a slight slope, do your strides down it.

Doing one session of training focusing on cadence per week is a good start. There is however ways to incorporate a little bit of cadence work into your daily routine whether it is while training or hanging around the house or office. When training, you can finish of a run with a few stride outs. Do a condensed version of the above session. You may need to wait until you are a little way into your build up before you do these however. Sometimes during a long run it can be a good loosen-up to do a stride out over a short distance mid run, but you need to be careful to not go over board especially if you are running to heart rate. Or, you can just count your steps from time to time when you are training and work on shortening your stride and increasing cadence to hold the same speed. This is easiest done in a moderate effort run, when you have your speed up a bit.

There are a number of running drills that emphasise leg speed. If you can get a coach to show you a couple, these can be done pretty much anywhere. Do them in the kitchen while you are waiting for your toast to pop at home or at work. Wait till no one is watching as you may look like a bit of a goose.

So get out there, run with good form always, and work on that cadence. It is far more efficient to tick along than power along.

Click here to return to the Articles page