Strident Debate: Does stride length matter?
Does size really matter? RW finds out if extending your stride is the way forward
Posted: 7 October 2010
by Ruth Emmett
What's better: lots of little steps or fewer big ones? Many runners plump for the second option, as legendary running coach Jack Daniels found that faster athletes - those attracted to shorter distances - had longer average strides. So we should all be opening up wide? Not so fast.
The right balance
The journal Modern Athlete and Coach reports that an elite sprinter ran 60m with shorter strides than normal. His times, unsurprisingly, crept up. Over the same course, with longer strides, his times shot up again. "Everyone has their individual ideal stride," says coach Nick Anderson (runningwithus.com). "Artificially altering stride length doesn't work." Performance analyst Mitchell Phillips (strideuk.com) agrees: "It's likely you'll end up heel-striking on locked knees, incurring braking forces."
Quick Step "Your perfect footstrike should be as close as possible to your centre of gravity," says Phillips. "Leaning forwards slightly makes this easier."
Short and sweet
Overly long strides are linked to fatigue and injury. One particular study filmed elite Boston Marathoners during the first and final five miles. As their pace dropped from 4:50 minutes per mile to 5:05, they began to over-stride. This bumps up the risk of stress fractures by six per cent, according to Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.
Quick Step As you feel your form begin to drift towards the end of a long run, imagine running on hot coals. You'll lift your knees higher and naturally shorten your stride.
Number crunch
Cadence (stride frequency) is the key to speed. Elites clock 180-190 strides per minute, but most of us make 150-160. Work out where you stand: count how often your right foot hits the ground in one minute. Do this three times and double the average. "Below 150, and you're probably over-striding," Phillips says. "More than 190, and you should be on the Olympic team."
Quick Step The quickest way to up your cadence? Get on your bike. At the University of Colorado, US, triathletes ran 3200m nearly a minute faster after bumping up their cycling cadence by 20 per cent.
Embrace variety
"To increase cadence, you need to activate fast twitch muscle fibres," says Anderson. This means more speedwork and fewer junk miles. Incorporate tempo runs, intervals and other sessions designed to take you away from your comfort pace. Your foot turnover will naturally increase and you'll become more robust, injury-proof and efficient.
Quick Step Hill reps are a dreaded - but effective - way to boost foot turnover and improve form. "You'll strengthen your quads, start using your arms more and lean forwards. If you ran like that all the time, you'd be a fantastic runner," says Phillips.
Extend yourself
As you progress, your stride length will change. "Most beginners run very slowly, with too short a stride," says Anderson. "As they get fitter, they experience a natural lengthening as the body's true range of movement stops being distorted by tight muscles."
Quick Step This lengthening is a positive, natural process - but you can ease it along with dynamic stretches that improve your range of movement and help you cope with the greater impact forces that occur when you take bigger strides. Anderson recommends incorporating walking lunges, one-leg squats and running with high knees into your usual warm-up.
Discuss this article
Nowhere in that article does it actually define what a stride is...
Is it
a) the distance between your feet, or
b) the distance between your take-off point and your landing point? Trying to increase the former is what will lead to heel striking, braking strains and eccentric stresses across the knees. The latter should increase with increase in power, reduction in weight, wearing springs... Increasing cadence whilst keeping a and b the same will increase your speed of course, though I found that for me both a and b shortened slightly when I first starting increasing cadence. The shortening of a I believe was what saved my knees - I've had a few arthroscopies but nowadays they're fine. I like to put it down to increased cadence, anyway. Anyway, the articles a bit of a mish-mash of stuff, but generally good. 
Posted: 08/10/2010 at 08:45
I think the article is dreadful. Especially this bit: "To increase cadence, you need to activate fast twitch muscle fibres," says Anderson. This means more speedwork and fewer junk miles. Incorporate tempo runs, intervals and other sessions designed to take you away from your comfort pace. Your foot turnover will naturally increase and you'll become more robust, injury-proof and efficient." The most effective way to concentrate on technique (particularly technique at speed) is to carry out short drills when fresh, with each followed by plenty of recovery time. The paragraph above also suggests that a higher cadence is not possible at slower paces, which is complete rubbish. A description of the study misleadingly referred to can be found at http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/triathlon-cycling-training-85 andis quite interesting. The conclusion I'd draw from it is the importance of strides as part of a warm up, particularly pre-race.
Posted: 08/10/2010 at 09:25
Oh one sensible answer, but a Q. not sure I understand the difference in A + B in Ratzers post. I think the article is too short and very superficial. Still food for thought. I think I am lazy and have very low cadence. Except when I run up hill, I run on my toes, have a very short stride and high for me cadence. I find this to be the most energy efficient way of running up hill. I do notice that when I do 'strides' in warm up at the club I slow down toward the end - over striding I guess. Other than that I have really short strides.
Posted: 08/10/2010 at 09:27
Tiffany necklace - I give you this My gift to you
Posted: 08/10/2010 at 09:29
Yeah, Silas, I noted that bit as well, but generally ignore quotes designed as soundbites. I assumed that the purpose of the article was to get a beginner to think about increasing cadence - after I read it the second time and then ignored the title. If it is, then it's reasonable. More experienced and knowledgeable runners won't need to read it. The tri article is interesting, but off the back of it would anyone recommend warming up for a running race by cycling instead of running? Hmm... Strides are good to get everything going.
Posted: 08/10/2010 at 09:36
That was a truly horrible article.
So you don't think you can knock a minute off your 3.000m time by doing more cycling? You're sooo cynical!
Posted: 08/10/2010 at 11:33
i read the runner's world that had this article in it, plus they were recommending wearing a plastic bracelet with a magic hologram, because some bloke did. i googled the bloke in question, and rather than a scientist or somebody who might have any opinion worth noting, it was a chav football player. this is when i realised that everything printed in runner's world was absolute, unmitigated shit.
Posted: 08/10/2010 at 13:25
i read the runner's world that had this article in it, plus they were recommending wearing a plastic bracelet with a magic hologram, because some bloke did. i googled the bloke in question, and rather than a scientist or somebody who might have any opinion worth noting, it was a chav football player. this is when i realised that everything printed in runner's world was absolute, unmitigated shit.
Candy - according to the site you are still a subscriber!!!!! 
Posted: 08/10/2010 at 15:05
did someone mention magic holograms ? i heard i could knock an hour off my half marathon time if i wore one of those, apparently they use not only the power of magic but also that of holograms, and not just any holograms but actual magic holograms, oh yeah and plastic.
Posted: 08/10/2010 at 20:29
Cadence is the key to speed? I thought it best to keep the cadence the same, say 180, and increase stride length with speed. My Nike SportBand generally tells me my cadence is a bit too low and I try to pick my feet up to increase it.
Posted: 10/10/2010 at 10:54
Magic holograms? Where do I get me one of those?
Posted: 10/10/2010 at 10:57
Why do so many people moan about articles...and how bad runners world is...if you think its all crap then dont read it and take your negative arses somewhere else...or even better write something yourselves if you can string more than a sentence together...
People moan about articles because they think they're not very good articles. And I don't just see moaning, I see constructive criticism of specific points raise in the article. Given that the article is supposed to give people advice, if there are criticisms to be made IMO it's very useful to have an open forum in which to raise those points.
As for people being negative or writing something themselves, I see a lot of the contributors on here either starting their own posts offering advice or responding to queries from other forum users, also offering advice and/or opinions. And at the end of the day it is all opinions, and other people's posts and replies, just like the articles posted on the RW website, are quite rightly open to debate and criticism. Besides, RW are peddling bionic bands. If that's not open to criticism or straightforward ridicule, we're in a big mess!
Posted: 12/10/2010 at 09:52
A good example being the very first paragraph which sets the tone for an incorrect premise / nonexistent dilemna for the whole article: "What's better: lots of little steps or fewer big ones? Many runners plump for the second option, as legendary running coach Jack Daniels found that faster athletes - those attracted to shorter distances - had longer average strides. So we should all be opening up wide? Not so fast." Actually Jack Daniels said "Elite distance runners tend to stride at about the same rate, almost always 180 steps per minute.....a rate that doesn't vary much even when not running fast. The main change ..is in stride length....the faster they go the longer stride becomes". It should be obvious that Jack Daniels' point was that cadence largely stays the same irrespective of speed and any one runner adjusts speed by altering stride length. His other point, which would have been useful in an article like this, is that many recreational runners overstride as demonstrated by their low cadence. I suspect the writer of the article is a researcher not a running expert and that she cobbled together random quotes whilst missing the point entirely. Either way the article does runners a grave injustice through its presentation of this area of running. I can think of at least 3 or 4 contributors on the forum whom I could give a pen and 4 hours and they'd come up with something of a far higher standard and that was more useful and better researched than this.
Posted: 12/10/2010 at 10:29
spot on, Moraghan. the article advocating (partly) an increased stride length, without warning that this should never mean overstriding, is a recipe for lots of beginners to injure themselves. it's completely irresponsible. and as to "higher cadence means fast twitch", err, not necessarily, depends how fast you're going! although nothing turns on that, ie it's not going to give anybody shin pain or tendonitis, like the overstriding will. or maybe the article was assuming that the beginners in question will have taken RW's advice and invested thirty quid in a magic hologram badge, which will make them injury proof (as will as making all of their fibres twitch faster, in harmonywith the protons)
Posted: 12/10/2010 at 12:54
The basic problem is that a glossy magazine with a lot of pages and pictures has to come out every month - and there just aren't enough new developments that occur in that time. Most magazines, running, mountain biking etc regularly revisit and rehash old subjects. Often they are contradictory. I suppose the articles should just give us a thinking point for people to go out and start experimenting with. I was recently talking to may partner about cadence - and she had just never conceived that someone may actually count their steps and work out their cadence when running.
Posted: 15/10/2010 at 08:47
Mark, a good point who counts their steps when they are running. Paula Radcliffe
Posted: 15/10/2010 at 20:06
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