First, from Jeff Galloway... the Cadence Drill:
Summary:
The Jeff Galloway Cadence Drill combines physical and mental training to increase speed. It is common sense that the number of steps you take while running will make you faster. Performing this :30 second interval training, 4 – 8 times, once a week , will help you accomplish your goal. Let’s get training.
Now, the flip side... per an article I read in Runner's World, the number of steps you take per minute should be consistent.
Per this little excerpt, you want to have 180 steps per minute. So increasing steps shouldn't be your goal. I have run many time next to Ashley at the gym and she runs much, much faster than me. I have noticed numerous times, though, that we tend to step down the exact same number of times in a minute... often in rhythm with each other... despite the huge speed difference.
What do you think? Is there an optimal number of steps per minute? Or should your goal always be to increase the number of steps per minute?
4 comments:
I've tried counting my steps to get to 180 per minute...and I usually barely make it to 100! lol I think I'll keep working on it. Not sure how to answer your question, though!
Forget counting, just try to get a nice 3 steps per second feel. This is so much easier on a bike, any good computer has cadence on it (uses a separate sensor on the crank arm). For cyclists, 70-90rpm is considered optimally efficient. Lower rpm is more power and higher rpm is more cardio.
I think it depends on what your body is like. No matter the activity, I am naturally better at increasing my speed by increasing my stride length, not by stride speed. Walking, running, rowing, whatever. I get very quickly spent if I have to keep doing something very fast, but if I can use a slower, longer, more powerful stroke, I can do ok. Maybe I have a high proportion of slow twitch muscle fibers. Other people are perfectly able to just move faster, as long as it means they can push less hard on the pedals or pull less hard on the paddle. At the very least, regardless of my muscle fiber type ratio, I certainly have body proportions (and in my legs, distribution of muscle mass) that are much better able to produce power than they are able to produce speed.
This is where I feel like running starts to get over my head. I kind of just go out there and do it and don't really think about it much. I'm still overwhelmed about hearing people talking about running and it sounds like algebra to me!
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