Mark: Running cadence, the number of steps you take per minute, combined with stride length,
determines how fast you run. Therefore, it's often thought that the higher the cadence, the better.
Heather: It's true to a certain extent, but it's not that simple. Today, Mark and I, are actually
going to look in more detail at how a low cadence compared to a high cadence can actually affect
the efficiency of your running gait. [music]
Mark: The number 180 is commonly thought of as the ideal. That cadence that the
long-distance pros run at. Yes, that is the average though. There are however
outliers on either side of this spectrum. Height and therefore leg length can have a significant
impact on this as it affects stride length. Heather: As you might expect, I have a higher
cadence than Mark and a shorter stride length, which makes sense if you look at our height
difference. [unintelligible 00:00:57], what's your average cadence for say a hard half-marathon
and compared to your easy run? Mark: Probably when I'm racing,
we're looking at around 170s, so maybe low 170s, but when I'm training, typically I'm actually
around the low 160s. How about yourself? Heather: I actually looked up from my first
half-marathon, that was 182 average, but then for my easy run, I'm normally around
a 170 [crosstalk]. Mark: Textbook.
Heather: [chuckles] Sadly, the stride length obviously doesn't reflect the textbook, but it
just goes to show that we know that increasing your cadence and increasing your stride length
is going to make you run faster. It sounds simple, it isn't quite that simple because you can't just
extend your stride. Maybe if you're a sprinter, but us endurance runners, that's not sustainable,
so we've got to somehow find that happy medium that's going to give us the most efficient gait.
Mark: Following that pattern, if you were to run at the same speed but reduce your cadence, you,
therefore, have to increase your stride length, so how far you go on each step in each stride. Now,
that quite often results in people heel-striking which is less economic, because, in effect,
you're almost breaking on each stride. That can lead to essentially longer ground contact time,
increased vertical oscillation, which are both things you want
to avoid if you're trying to run faster. Heather: I think we're making quite a good
case here for a higher cadence, but how high do you actually want to go? Is an exceptionally high
cadence actually going to help? It's time for Mark and I to find out and for this, we're going to do
a 1K test at our 5K pace. First of all, we're just going to run it, not looking at our watch,
not worrying about cadence, just what feels natural. Then we're going to go above our natural
cadence and below. For me, I'm going to aim to hit 190 for my higher one and then 160 for my below.
Mark: I don't think I can quite hit 190 even if I really tried, so I'm going to go 180 and 150,
which seems like a nice balance. Of course, we're going to be measuring a whole bunch of data,
heart rate, perceived effort, ground contact time, vertical oscillation, basically, everything that
helps gauge our running efficiency. 5K pace, who chose this? All right, ready? Let's go.
Heather: All right, 1K at my normal cadence 5K pace, here I go.
[music] I had
forgotten how fast 5K pace is. It's just 1K. [music]
This is the second round. This is the low cadence, which for me is going to be the hardest.
I've got to try and hit 160 while still at 5K pace. I've got the metronome to remind me of
the stridish rate of my cadence. I think I'm ready. Off we go.
[music] This feels really weird. Slightly downhill,
so it's okay. I think when I climb back up the hill, I'm going to find it really hard to keep
the pace and keep the slow cadence. Mark: Now, for the low cadence,
I've got my metronome ready on my phone. 150 steps a minute. Okay,
let's go. [music]
This feels so odd. Like out of control. Like I'm really extending to get the
stride. [music]
Okay, final one. 180 steps per minute. Here we go. Let's go.
Heather: 190 strides per minute. I'm actually quite looking forward to this one.
We ready? The final test. 1K, here we go.
[music] Mark, I don't know about you,
but that was quite psychologically and physically hard. For me, I knew the low cadence would be hard
and I was just trying so hard to get there. I couldn't quite get it down to 160. I was
closer on the high end, but how were you? Mark: To be honest, I struggled a lot more
than I expected. I'll run through my cadences very quick. My normal, I was around 168. My low,
only 161. I thought I might get lower than that. Heather: The way you were talking of like,
"Oh, I'll do more." Mark: Then the high actually,
I went 183, so higher than I expected. Heather: Yes, that's crazy.
Mark: Obviously, we were going at a 5K pace, so I guess you got to take that into account.
I've actually amazed myself. I paced them all pretty evenly. I went 3:10
per kilometer, so I was just shy of 19 kilometers an hour. I actually did
a normal cadence, low cadence, high cadence, and just for fun because I
wanted to see whether it was affected by fatigue or anything, I did another normal at the end.
Actually, the results and the numbers were exactly the same, so that was really good to see.
Did you find anything interesting here? Heather: Cadence-wise, my normal was 178,
which is quite normal for me. Low, I managed to get down to 164 and that was trying so hard,
but then the high, I only got to 188. I thought I would be able to hit 190. Yes, it felt fast,
but I felt like I could kind of do that. I quite like a high cadence. I've definitely
over the years weirdly got a higher cadence from it, so it didn't feel so uncomfortable. Pace-wise,
I held around, I wasn't quite as accurate as you, but pretty much four minutes per K,
so I didn't do my extra test at the end. The numbers, when I started to analyze afterwards,
they weren't as different as I would've expected. For example, my heart rate was slightly higher on
the low cadence, but normal and high was kind of similar. It's slightly higher on the low cadence,
which you kind of think running slow-- Mark: Exactly the same here.
Heather: Your heart rate was higher? Mark: Yes, higher.
Heather: It's weird isn't it? Mark: Only a fractionally.
Heather: It shows maybe we're working harder, but because it's so unnatural. Then
the one that did correlate, which I would've expected, which is probably the most standout
stat for me was my vertical oscillation. The low cadence, I was spending more time going up and
down by quite a bit and the high cadence was the smallest, which kind of makes sense. I don't know.
Did yours all correlate to what you expected? Mark: Mine mirrored that exactly.
Also, obviously, the same with the ground contact time, the fastest or the shortest
was on the high cadence. The bit that I found very interesting, more from a perceived
angle was that on the low cadence, I felt okay and in control, but it felt
very odd. I'm not sure I'd want to do that too often. Whereas on the high cadence,
it felt so hard. Honestly, for me, that was really fatiguing. My quads were burning by the end of it,
but I felt like if I did some training, I could probably get used to that. It was actually
something I could see myself doing, whereas the low cadence, not. I just couldn't
imagine myself running like a half marathon. Heather: I felt like I was bounding like I needed
some really bouncy shoes to be able to do it. Mark: It felt incredibly inefficient,
jarring, just like my body couldn't really do it. The interesting numbers here were the ECOR,
which is your energy cost of running, which is basically a calculation taking into account your
watts per kilo and your speed in meters per second,
and basically gives you kilojoules per kilogram per kilometer. Very geeky stuff, but that followed
suit again with what we were talking about. I had 1.00 for the normal, 1.009 for the low, so that's
inefficient because it's a higher number. Heather: I have 1.09 for my low as well.
Mark: Oh, there we go. Then the 0.98 for my high cadence, which is
meaning it's more efficient because I'm putting out less power but traveling at good speeds.
Heather: Mine were not quite as clear as yours, but my lowest or my most efficient was my high
cadence, which I think shows that it's maybe less difference between what my normal cadence is and
my high cadence is. There was some interesting research that I read when I was putting this
together. There's been an experiment done with athletes who were what they called untrained
compared to trained athletes and they got them running at these different cadences.
There was a much bigger difference in the ECOR, a much more bigger improvement in running efficiency
when the untrained runners upped their cadence than compared to-- Everybody had a
much more efficient gait when they upped their cadence. Whereas the trained runners, it was
on average still, but definitely not as much. I think the moral of that story is almost the
lower your cadence or the less running you do, the more scope you've got to improve
by upping your cadence. Does that make sense? Mark: That is really interesting.
Heather: Does that make sense? Mark: Yes. Just looking at my numbers
again as you're saying that, my normal cadence is 168, and my high cadence, 183. My ECOR was 0.02
lower on the high cadence and more efficient. My heart rate was only one beat higher on the high
cadence. It has made me wonder, is my normal cadence okay or could I actually start moving
towards this high cadence and just getting a tiny bit more efficient? We're talking
marginal gains here. Heather: Over a longer
distance, it would produce more. Mark: Yes, I think I am going to
try and do some high cadence work. Heather: I think all of it comes back to,
as well, that cadence is the only-- You're changing your cadence, but your run gait
as a whole is one big package, and as soon as you change something, other things change. To improve
your efficiency, you might be changing something else which naturally improves your cadence, and
it's just a matter of going home and playing with it. If you guys have any of these metrics
on your watch that maybe you're not even looked at before, the majority of watches will have cadence,
and a lot will have your oscillation, and the time you're going up and down,
and the time your foot's on the ground, and it just starts getting really interesting when
you look into it. I would suggest just going and having a little bit of a play yourselves,
and let us know if you can see any differences. Mark: Yes. We hope you guys have enjoyed today's
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