The Truth About Cadence and Running Form

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to lead a simple How to Run instructional warm up/workshop at the Evanston Running Club’s 0-5K program.

This program is awesome because it consists of a bunch of people who are relatively new to running or are trying to build up their endurance. All these runners are fertile soil for making improvements in their running.

When tasked with the challenge of how to improve a beginner runner’s form in 15 minutes or less, my go to lesson is: shorten stride by increasing cadence

Of all the things I could instruct on
Of all the activities I could have the runners do
Of all the different intricacies of running gait

Shortening your stride by increasing your cadence is the simplest and most effective technique. Biggest bang for buck.
Shorten stride by increasing cadence
But there is a problem with what I did this past Sunday…

We were outside, running around the Arrington Lagoon on a sidewalk, while I played a metronome set to 180 on a bluetooth speaker I was carrying.

You know which variable was not controlled for?

Speed

When performing cadence retraining, most people have the tendency of wanting to speed up. The cadence they’re shooting for is higher than they’re current cadence and when you’re NOT running on a treadmill, most people just start RUNNING FASTER to match their target cadence.

That is NOT what we want to do. We are trying to change the shape of the stride. Shortening the stride length by increasing step rate at the SAME SPEED.

Cadence retraining is soooooooo much more effective if performed on a treadmill because you can control the speed variable. That’s why I’m hosting my How to Run workshop at Blink Fitness this upcoming Saturday April 12th at 11am.

They’ve got a bunch of treadmills and I’m reserving a space to have 10s of people all learning how to improve their running form on the beautiful piece of machinery that is a treadmill.

Speed variable controlled. Maximum improvements possible.

If you’re interested in learning how to improve your running form, you should come out this upcoming Saturday. The information is below along with the RSVP link. Don’t forget to register!

Your best is yet to come!

Dr. Michael