Cadence and Injury

Some runners look very smooth; others (and I’m one) look awkward. But it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to look at a runner and predict how likely they are to get injured. One of the most promising candidates for a simple warning sign is running cadence, which is the number of steps you take in a minute. Those with low cadences – relative long, slow steps, in the 160s or lower – are thought to be more likely to crash down heavily on their heels, raising their risk of injury.

A recent study f rom researchers at Harvard ’s Spaulding National Running Center put this theory to the test, comparing 32 healthy runners with 93 injured runners. The injured runners actually had a slightly ( but not significantly) higher average cadence of 164, compared to 161 in the uninjured group. More importantly, there was no correlation between cadence and average or instantaneous vertical load rate, two measures of how hard your foot hits the ground. Having a slow cadence, in other words, didn’t seem to increase the pounding your joints absorb.

That doesn’t necessarily mean cadence is irrelevant. Other studies have found t hat increasing your cadence by as little as five per cent may reduce the load on your knees and hips, while increasing the load on your ankles – so it may be helpful for some but counterproductive for others. Cadence also increases when you run faster, making it difficult to propose universal “ideal” cadence targets. The bottom line: just as you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can’t judge a runner by cadence alone.