The Truth About Cadence Part 1

Is taking 180 steps per minute the magic number to aim for? Just about every search you do on the web will tell you it is. I’m not entirely sure though. As you will see almost all elites do indeed run with a cadence of 180+. But they’re elites and they’re typically only measured running at elite paces i.e. 5min / mile or better.

If you’ve arrived here by Google (or any other search engine of your choice) then you probably already know what cadence is.  If you didn’t – it relates to how many steps you’re taking per minute – your step rate, sometimes inaccurately referred to as stride rate. The two tend to be used interchangeably. Maybe that’s why it’s easier to refer to it as running cadence!

Your running cadence is likely to be somewhere between 160-200; although at one stage mine was as low as 150. It’s also possible for it to be a little higher than 200. If you’re walking it will be significantly lower – something like 100-120. All of it, as we shall see, depends on how fast you’re moving.

In the days when information was less accessible and sport science was still evolving; I recall reading that running speed is simply the result of how many steps you take in a minute and how far you travel with each step. This was made to sound mathematical by saying Running Speed = Step Frequency x Step Length.  If you take 200 steps in a minute and cover 1 metre with each then you run 200m in a minute therefore with 1,609 metres in a mile you’re running at 8min/mile.

I previously tackled Stride Length in a couple of articles written some time ago because I feel that’s more important for recreational runners to work on. But having written articles on how the glutes should power runners and how it’s possible to create high cadence by not using the glutes I wanted to dig further into the topic.

Origins of 180

In his Running Formula book, renowned coach Jack Daniels states that he and his wife spent the LA Olympics in 1984 counting the cadence of elite athletes. Rather than count the steps, they counted armswings because they’re always in sync – as a leg moves forward, an arm moves forward. It’s a good way of counting cadence which I use when I’m evaluating runners.

Jack found that 800m runners had the highest cadences of over 200 with other middle distance runners approaching this value. Once he turned to the runners in races longer than 3000m he found the cadence was lower; yet all but one runner had a cadence of 180 or more.

While I cannot state for certain this is where the magic 180 number came from, I think it’s quite likely. During those Olympics he counted 50 runners – male and female and therefore got a good sampling. These days we are lucky enough to have cadence monitoring built in to our GPS or smartwatches and if we want to look at elite runners we can watch playbacks on digital film or video.

---

In this series of posts, I’m going to provide you with the cadence data for contemporary runners. Some of it has been calculated with the latest digital cameras and film; others I’ve used Jack’s method of counting armswings! I’ll be looking at sprinters and middle distance runners as well as those doing the longer events like 10,000m and marathon that many recreational runners race too.

To read part 2 and find out the cadence of elite sprinters – click here.