We’ve all heard it: 180 steps per minute. Target it. It’s the ideal number. You’re less efficient and more injury prone if you are taking fewer steps per minute.
Reality isn’t that simple.
In reality, your ideal cadence is probably not 180 steps per minute. Depending on both your physiology and the circumstances of your run, your ideal cadence is probably something else. Yes, your ideal cadence can even be different from one run to another based on conditions or what you’re doing.
Here are a few examples of what might affect your ideal cadence:
- Your height. More specifically, the length of your legs. If you remember from your high school physics class, a longer pendulum takes more time to swing. A runner with longer legs will generally have a lower cadence than a runner with shorter legs. Not because the shorter runner needs to take more steps but because the longer runner has a longer pendulum (leg) to swing, which requires more energy and takes more time.
- Your speed. If you need to run faster, you can either take longer steps or more steps. In reality, both of those things tend to happen. So faster running tends to lead to a higher cadence. Obviously, this means slower running tends to lead to a lower cadence.
- The conditions you’re running in. The best example of this right now would be snow or ice. If you’re running on slippery surfaces, you might need to shorten your stride to stay upright. A shorter stride means a higher cadence at any given pace.
So, with these primary factors and many other secondary factors, where did 180 steps per minute as an “ideal” come from? Well, the original source was a review of world class marathoners. It was found that world class marathoners tended to cluster around 180 steps per minute while racing. What the best in the world do must be the best way to do things, right?
While that makes intuitive sense, there are reasons to question that philosophy in this case. Just looking at the first two considerations above, consider:
- Elite marathoners tend to be shorter than the average population. For various physiological and biomechanical reasons, there are advantages to being shorter (within reason) if you’re a marathoner. There are exceptions but, on average, an elite marathoner is shorter than a member of the general population. As noted in point 1 above, shorter means a higher stride rate.
- Elite marathoners are, by definition, running fast. A 2:10 marathoner is running 4:57/mile. A 2:25 marathoner is running 5:32/mile. You’re probably not running 5:00-5:30/mile (I know I very rarely am these days). As noted in point 2 above, a faster pace means a higher stride rate.
Given these factors, we would expect most runners to have a cadence slower than elite marathoners have when they are running a race. Not surprisingly, many runners struggle to get their cadence up to 180. That number is almost certainly not ideal for them and may not even be realistic.
This doesn’t mean we should never think about our cadence. There is some evidence that increasing your cadence slightly from what you naturally settle into might improve your efficiency a small amount. However, forcing a change of more than about 2-5 steps per minute over what you do naturally will likely reduce your efficiency and increase your risk of other problems. So don’t try to force yourself to 180. Either do what comes naturally or try to develop a slightly faster cadence.