Unlocking Your Running Cadence

There’s always a lot of talk of cadence, but what is it and why is it important?

Understanding Running Cadence

Running cadence refers to the number of steps taken per minute. Essentially meaning how long your foot is in contact with the ground. The faster your cadence, the less time your foot is on the ground, and the slower your cadence the more time your foot spends on the ground each step. 

Cadence can affect things such as your foot strike pattern, stride length, and biomechanics of your hips, knees, and ankles. 

Now there are a lot of factors that go into cadence, such as your experience with running, your height, and even your shoe choice. 

Maintaining an appropriate running cadence can help improve your running efficiency and optimize your performance. So let’s delve into it!

How do I find my cadence?

There’s a couple ways to do this:

1. One of the easiest is to use your smart watch if you have one. Research has shown that commercial GPS watches show good reliability for measuring running dynamics. This is exciting as we talk about ways to train your cadence

2. The other option is simply to count the number of steps you take in a minute of running. Just keep in mind that the number can be anywhere between 150-200 steps. 

Why is running cadence important?

It’s been estimated that 56% of recreational runners sustain a running-related injury each year, and that number jumps to as high as 90% of runners training for a marathon. Most commonly injuries that pop up are shin splints, Achilles tendinopathy, and knee pain.

So if there are ways that we can mitigate those numbers I’m in!

Now cadence is not the end-all-be-all to injuries, other factors like your training load, strength, and lifestyle and emotional stressors all play a role. BUT cadence is still an important tool in the puzzle of injury prevention and performance optimization. 

So…what’s a good running cadence?

This is always the question. The reality is there is no magic number.  Everyone is going to be different and that’s okay!

A study published in 2023 looked at 860 recreational runners and found the average cadence of them to be 164 steps per minute.

Again - there are a lot of factors that go into this. People with longer legs tend to have a lower cadence, more experienced runners tend to have a little higher cadence, running uphill tends to increase your cadence while running downhill tends to lower your cadence. But other factors can play a role such as muscle strength and history of injuries among others as well. 

How does changing cadence effect running performance?

I look at the body and running like a spring. When your foot lands on the ground it is absorbing impact and then springing forward.

The longer your foot is on the ground, the longer the spring is being loaded which means the longer and harder your muscles have to work to absorb and generate force. These forces cause your muscles to work harder which can lead to fatiguing faster.

A large study published in 2022 found that a change of increasing cadence can improve a lot of factors related to running injuries. Specifically, a higher cadence has the potential to lower the stress that goes through the hip, knee, and ankle when you run. Increased stress through the hip and knee has been associated with running injuries such as runner’s knee, IT band syndrome, and gluteal tendinopathy.

Speeding up cadence by 10% can result in a shorter step length and less contact time on the ground, while lowering cadence by 10% can increase contact time and create a longer stride. 

How to train cadence

There’s a couple different ways we train cadence in the clinic. It has been recommended in the research that improving cadence by 10% can create positive effects in shortening step length and lowering the contact time of your foot on the ground.

There are a few ways to change your cadence while you are running. 

1. A metronome is a simple and effective way to make changes to cadence when running. You can set the metronome to the cadence you are aiming for and then sync your stride to that beat. 

2. Another option is to create a music playlist with your favorite songs that have the cadence. Just know this will not be as consistent of a beat compared to a metronome

3. Some smart watches allow you to set a range or specific cadence goal and a way to notify you when you are outside of that range. 

Disclaimer: This does not serve as medical advice. This is a review of current research literature and is only meant for educational purposes only. You should always consult with a doctor, medical professional, or certified trainer when related to injury or performance training.