If you’re looking to improve your overall running speed, while ensuring you reduce your chances of injury, you want to pay attention to your running cadence. Don’t get sucked in to trying to make every single run hit a cadence of 180, but let’s look at how to increase your running cadence when it makes sense.
Running cadence, simply put, refers to the number of steps you take per minute while running. While it may seem like a minor detail, mastering your cadence can have a profound impact on your running efficiency, speed, and injury prevention.
For many years, people have been told to aim for 180 SPM (steps per minute), but is that really our ideal step count?
The latest studies suggest that maybe we’ve been focusing too much on the 180. Instead, we need to understand how it truly affects our overall running form while considering our individual height, strength, and running mechanics.
This is all that we’ll be answering and more in this article!
What is Running Cadence?
Running cadence (aka stride rate or stride frequency) is the number of steps per minute (SPM) you take as you run.
To put it more simply, it’s the number of times your foot hits the ground in a minute while you run. To quickly calculate your running cadence, follow this formula:
- Try counting…
