The importance of Cadence Training

I mentioned in my first blog entry that introducing cadence training into my weekly programme has had a massive impact in my overall speed.

The idea is that you reduce your stride length but increase your leg turnover.  This may seem counter-intuitive, and at first I found my legs were tiring and it was even harder work just to breathe OK!  After my first attempt (which exhausted me) I spoke to trainer James about it, and he advised me that I was probably speeding up to cope with the new cadence, when in fact it doesn't really matter how much distance you cover - you can almost run on the spot provided while practising a high cadence.  By increasing your cadence when moving slowly you will perfect technique, and once your technique is improved that will automatically translate through to longer and faster runs.

So, I've been doing my best to fit in a minimum of one, but ideally two, cadence sessions a week.  Sometimes I don't have time to do everything listed within the session, so I cut everything by half (other than the warm up and mobility). I think little and often is better than large and irregular (and this idealology applies to more things life than you may think)!

The cadence drills James gave me were:

WEEK 1  5 minute easy run  5-10 minute mobility  A Skip and C Skip - hundred meters on both  4x45 seconds at 94-96 Cadence  A Skip and C Skip - 100 meters on both  1x2minutes at 91 cadence Recover  Tabata sprint - 20 seconds on as fast as you can 10 seconds off. REPEAT 8 Times

WEEK 2  5 minute easy run  5-10 minute mobility  A Skip and C Skip - 100 meters on both  4x1 minute at 96 Cadence  A Skip and C Skip - 100 meters on both  1x4minutes at 91 cadence   Recover   Tabata sprint - 20 seconds on as fast as you can 10 seconds off. REPEAT 8 Times

There is also a B Skip that I don't do - mainly because I have awful co-ordination.

Also in case you didn't know when measuring cadence you generally only count on one leg, so a 96 cadence means your right leg touches the ground 96 times in a minute, so that's 192 times a minute for both legs.  The reason we do this is because often our legs are moving too quickly to count both easily.

Another problem I encountered was that I was counting as my right leg touched the ground. This had the effect that i was pushing really hard through my right leg, and was basically stamping it down too hard, resulting in sore shins!  I found the solution in one of Barefoot Ken Bobs visualisation techniques where rather than focusing on putting your foot down, think about picking it up, so now I count on when I lift up my right foot.

This technique has subsequently translated to my longer runs, and as a result I find I'm stepping much more lightly and quickly, and therefore am quicker too.