When increasing stride rate at a given effort level (as represented by the same pace or same HR) is it a corollary that breathing rate will increase?
Said differently, if easy running is 2:2 or some ratio, and your stride per minute goes up from, say, 160 to, say, 180, does your breathing rate also increase by the same 12.5%?
Thanks!
From what I have seen there does not seem to be to strict a relationship with height or leg length, similar findings in the literature. Some tall runners have short strides and short runners have long strides for a given speed. I did notice but not explicitly examined, the shorter runners with long strides had a great deal of vertical oscillation. It is an interesting point regarding the pendulum idea.
Most of the talk has centred on the selection of stride frequency that is suited. However looking at the other side of the coin maybe it is the chosen stride length that is the determining factors; range of motion or leg power?
Has any reason physiologically been suggested of the value of 180 step/min? Assuming 180 is perfect, does anyone have any suggestions regarding the mechanism of the selection of a less efficient stride frequency for someone of 160 step/min? Since both stride length and frequency increase with speed, running at a higher speed the body would become used to not only a greater stride length but also frequency. I am still a believer in the human body's selection of the most efficient movement pattern, however I am open to the fact some people run inefficiently. Just interested if anyone can put forward a reason for the inefficient selection.
somayhem wrote:
When increasing stride rate at a given effort level (as represented by the same pace or same HR) is it a corollary that breathing rate will increase?
Said differently, if easy running is 2:2 or some ratio, and your stride per minute goes up from, say, 160 to, say, 180, does your breathing rate also increase by the same 12.5%?
I don't know about anyone else, but unless I'm running hard, my breathing tends not to "sync up" with my footfalls. (It might, but then I might do 2:3 followed by 3:3 followed by 3:2, so who knows?) One would think you could increase the rate of breathing while decreasing the depth, thereby keeping ventilation pretty much the same (assuming you have the tendency to keep breathing and strides in sync).
Legalizit: Let's agree to not go there. I'll pretend you never posted and that I never replied if you will.
While having no experience in exercise physiology, I think the answer to your question is contained in the previous posts on the Penn studies - where they determined that any change in stride frequency requires additional effort/is less efficient.
I would imagine that many people (myself included) start off running with a basic stride frequency that matches their fitness at the time, i.e., a low stride frequency. After time, their fitness improves, as well as their efficency, and so does their racing. However, I would imagine many of these runners stay close to their original (slower) frequency because they become more inefficent at running if they speed up the stride frequency. SO, why else do they stay at a lower-than-optimal rate: a) they not coached by someone who knows that faster frequency = faster times; b) they haven't been running for years; c) their speed work isn't showing them that faster turnover is key.
Just a guess.
You do tend to keep the same breathing rhythm, so if you go up in stride rate you will go up in ventilatory frequency, with an accompanying slight drop in tidal volume (the size or depth of each breath). I would guess that some people who like to breathe more deeply (and slowly)will tend to take quicker turnover, and the rapid breathers will slow down turnover to try to be comfortable.
If someone starts at a lower fitness level does the stride frequency not improve when their fitness improves. Elite runners tend to have a long stride for a given speed, also from looking at joggers they tend to have shorter strides too. For those two reasons I would be of the impression that beginners have higher frequency for a given speed. It would be interesting to track some ones changes.
From the first posts of the thread the person asked regarding the 180 step per minute and how this relates to training pace. I am unfamiliar with the rational for this 180 but it appears to be grounded in racing pace of elite. I know that my 5/10k race pace would be around 180 but easy pace would be 160. I have tried to adapt to a higher frequency over the last few days but can't get anywhere near the 180. Should 180 be the benchmark for easy running too? I see an injury prevention view point for a short stride while training but would a greater freqency induce an improvement in frequency at race pace too.
I've been trying to get my stride frequency up on easy days to 180 and I can't do it either. I'm hitting around 170 and that seems quick. I think it's because I've been plodding on my easy days and I'll adjust to 170. My legs do feel fresher after an easy runs of concentrating on a higher stride frequency.
I would be interested to hear how you get on. I think I will try to shorten my stride on my easy days purely from an less shock/reduced injury point. Have not really put too much effort into maintaining it for long so have not experienced fresher legs. If the frequency increases from 160 to 165 so be it, not going to be too focused on a certain number, just let nature take it's course. Also will try some strides with shorter steps to see if that improves my faster speeds.
I've changed my frequency now, from 160 to 180, It felt terrible in the beginning (3 weeks ago) but now I feel great, I can run my long runs much easier and my legs feels fresher after. And it helps a lot if u wear lightweight trainers!
That's what I'm starting to feel. Tough during the run, but my legs feel fresher after. I think I'll adjust after a few weeks.
Eldo, I'll keep you posted on how mine goes. As a follow up, I just did 4 miles in the 90 degree heat. The first mile, I was suffering. I counted my strides and was doing 160. I thought about bagging it until this evening. I then picked up the strides to 170. It was tough at first, but it got my legs going and the next 3 weren't nearly as hard as the first one.
More over those things... I am very interested in find a recent review about the stride length along competition, if it is constant or not and what is best. There is a lot of work done in swimming, but there the policy is different. They order a fixed lenght opposite to the "natural one", and I agree with your comments based on scientific literature. Could you tell me if you know this kind of research in running?
Jonathan Esteve wrote:
More over those things... I am very interested in find a recent review about the stride length along competition, if it is constant or not and what is best. There is a lot of work done in swimming, but there the policy is different. They order a fixed lenght opposite to the "natural one", and I agree with your comments based on scientific literature. Could you tell me if you know this kind of research in running?
It's difficult for me to tell what exactly you are asking. Could you re-phrase the questions a bit? I'm also very interested in this topic and it sounds like your questions would be thought provoking if I could better comprehend them.
Cat Paws wrote:
I've been trying to get my stride frequency up on easy days to 180 and I can't do it either. I'm hitting around 170 and that seems quick. I think it's because I've been plodding on my easy days and I'll adjust to 170. My legs do feel fresher after an easy runs of concentrating on a higher stride frequency.
Keep it going, you will find that by increasing your stride rate on slow runs, you can increase your pace during fast sessions and races too, with a faster recovery rate also.
Curious to me that no one seems to be mentioning the neurological effects of higher stride rates, which I think is a very important factor.
Let\'s remind ourselves of the purpose of training slowly: to work aerobically, and stimulate mitochondria growth and capillarization, right? Well, there\'s another reason: to train at an intensity that\'s easy enough so that we can get in ~10 or more hours a week of running. That extra practicing causes our neural pathways to become more efficient.
If a pianist wants to develop good technique, they want to train their hands to quickly and efficiently respond to the signals our brains send them. The body operates on a feedback loop - when you first start playing, your hands get a signal from the brain and all sorts of muscles in the hand fire. After practicing for years, your body learns to fire off certain signals and not others: only the correct finger muscles move, and in the way you want.This is the development of coordination.
I say all this because we also need to learn to do this as a runner - we all need to get more coordinated, and at all speeds (just like a pianist does).
There are two separate issues:
1) What stride frequency makes you the most EFFICIENT at Marathon Pace + 80 sec (let\'s just call this easy pace for now - we know sometimes Geb\'s easy pace is 9min miles!!)?
2) What stride frequency at MP+80sec is the best way to TRAIN so that your MP PACE is the most efficient (and we all know from Canova et al that fuel efficiency is everything at the marathon!)?
I\'m more interested in the answer to question 2, though the stride frequency might be the same for both questions.
I suspect that the answer to question 2 is about what jtupper says is the optimal \"easy run\" stride rate: keeping your stride rate close to 180. My reasoning is that your muscles need to learn to operate aerobically at that stride rate, and so it needs to learn how to respond to neural signals coming in at that quick rate.
Perhaps if all of your aerobic miles are at 160strides/min, your muscles don\'t know how to be aerobic at 180strides/min... this spells disaster for your marathon abilities, since we know from jtupper that, during a race, no one fast is running below 180strides/min...
I don\'t know of any studies that have addressed this specific issue. I don\'t have any answers. But I do hear that Kenny B and all of them run with very high stride rates, and high knees some days (form drills, etc). Didn\'t JonnyO say that KennyB was around 230 strides/min on the last 200 at Paris?! This reminds me about what Canova said, about viscosity of the blood and how quickly blood is entering the muscle fibers - 230 is blazing!
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Many people have said false things from a physics perspective. One thing I\'ll point out in particular: the leg is NOT a pendulum, so the stride rate is NOT determined by leg length!
A pendulum does not bend (whereas a leg in running motion obviously bends at the knee). We teach runners to kick back with their legs, and then swing the BENT leg over (smaller radial length = less torque required to move that leg from back to front), and then extend at the knee just in time to catch your fall forward. Repeat.
This is why long-legged Paul Tergat has nearly the same stride rate as Geb (who\'s about 7+ inches shorter, I believe).
slow geezer, in the past few weeks, I have been doing a lot of research into the questions you are asking.
I agree with much of what you say, however, long legs, have biomechanical differences to short legs, which are obvious in running technique.
We can't say that 180 or whatever is optimum for everyone.
It is true that most World Class runners do 180-200 strides per minute when running 800m up to Marathon distance, and that when sprinting at the end of a distance race, 230 is normal. Some runners though have a longer slower stride than normal, even for their height, and some have a shorter faster stride than normal for their height.
Two obvious examples are Edith Masai at typically 170 spm and Catherine Ndereba at 200-210 spm.
I do believe that most top runners have learned to run slowly with a fast turnover, and this is something that has to be practiced.
This does indeed make it easier to run fast with a fast turnover, it is also more efficient, reduces injury risk and allows faster recovery between workouts.
I have seen video footage of Gebreselassie training with other Ethiopian runners, in ways that I have not read about in books.
The Ethiopians do a lot of slow running with a fast turnover at up to 3500m altitude, some of these workouts are easy all the way and some are extremely hard, despite a modest pace.
This allows them to do incredibly fast workouts at 2600m altitude. This in turn allows them to make all the other 10000m runners on the planet look very slow, when racing at sea level.
Gebreselassie and Bekele have a very fast turnover AND a very long stride on the track, they have practiced this style of running so much that they make it look easy.
I haven't taken the time to read every post on here, so maybe the point I'm about to make has already been brought up. I also tried to change my stride rate after reading Mr. Daniels book. I did this in order to help some injury problems with my lower legs. My stride rate was very slow when running easy, but much quicker when running at race pace. The slower cadence on my easy runs meant a longer stride. The longer a one's stride the harder one's legs hit the ground. When I changed my stride rate and cut down my stride, I got rid of the pounding, and rid of the injuries.
JonnyO - are you well? You have been away for ages...
indeed Pantman I am well, and yourself.
I have been racing, since the London Marathon, April 18, 3 wins and 3 second places (all to Ian Fisher of Otley, who beat me by 10 minutes in London)
JonnyO,
Interesting reply, thanks. Where are these videos of Ethiopians training that you speak of? I would love to see them myself.
Of course you're right that the characteristics of running with long legs vs short legs are dramatically different - I just didn't want people to oversimplify with the wrong model. Our ability to walk and run on two legs is one of the most amazing engineering feats in Nature - robotics folks have only recently (in the last 10 years) gotten robots to walk, and walk up and down stairs. No robots can yet run, at least that I've heard about.
If the leg were just a pendulum, we'd have had walking robots in Da Vinci's time!
The human uses their core muscles and their major leg muscles in highly, subtle, interactive ways, that vary from person to person depending on their core muscle weaknesses and strengths. From what you say, we can gather that the Ethiopians are doing something very right in terms of developing amazing technique and form.
My guitar teacher used to always say:"It's very hard to play the guitar poorly." By this he meant that, when you are playing with poor technique, you are inefficient, tensing muscles you don't need, and not properly activating muscles that you do need. So playing guitar becomes a physically exhausting effort - your hands tire out too quickly, and you make mistakes. Playing becomes hard.
Some macho-types do the guitar equivalent of weightlifting, and learn to tolerate the pain. But all the greats have learned how to play effortlessly.
I'd imagine that this is similarly our goal - to learn how to run effortlessly.
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One point I'd meant to make about this general discussion is this: efficiency is at least in part due to the correct neural pathways being streamlined. So if you start running with quicker turn-over, your body isn't used to sending (and responding to) signals at that rate, and so it may need to create more efficient pathways than those it currently uses.
The point: a few weeks down the road, you may find that your effeciency at the higher stride rate improves - which is what we've been hearing in various testimonials on this thread.
slow geezer wrote:
................One point I'd meant to make about this general discussion is this: efficiency is at least in part due to the correct neural pathways being streamlined. So if you start running with quicker turn-over, your body isn't used to sending (and responding to) signals at that rate, and so it may need to create more efficient pathways than those it currently uses.
The point: a few weeks down the road, you may find that your effeciency at the higher stride rate improves - which is what we've been hearing in various testimonials on this thread.
Quite so slow geezer. However, to develop a fast efficient style at race pace, we can also gain considerable benefit from doing drills to develop our technique, as well as pace sessions and tempo runs using the faster turnover. These sessions and tempo runs don't have to be very hard at first, we should progress gradually to harder and harder sessions, and the more sensible the progression, the more we will benefit.
I agree when you say;
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Some macho-types do the guitar equivalent of weightlifting, and learn to tolerate the pain. But all the greats have learned how to play effortlessly. I'd imagine that this is similarly our goal - to learn how to run effortlessly.>>Most runners try too hard to impress each other and their coach when they do high intensity work. Even if an experienced athlete tries to tell them to increase gradually, most will not listen. I really believe that the desire to do things properly is rather rare amongst runners.