Don’t change the cadence by changing the cadence when running

Great video but also hate it... why? Because I'm pretty much a beginner runnner and want to improve my pace / cadence... well great? NO, because if you look on tipps and training plans you find a ton of athletes (not random people, well known trainers, coaches and elite runners!!!) and EVERYONE tells you a different story about how to do it!
HOW is someone like me supposed to know what to believe and how to really improve???
One athlete (olympic runner and coach!) tells you to literally just increase your step count, you tell the complete oposite!? Both statements seem to be valid / proven but how could that be???

Great video! thank you! it solved the myth of 90 degree elbow I have had. I have another question. My cadence isnt bad. When I start my run today, it was around 190, but after like 4 miles, it dropped to 180, at the last few miles of the 10 miles I did, it was around 175. How can I make it stay around 190?

This is awesome! Im a heavy runner (over 100kg) and I notice in my run my upper body was rotating too much causing my foot strike to plant on the ground too long. I watched Kipchoge and Kipturn and notice they kept there arms close to there chest at sharp angle. I figured because my arms are big and heavy I try this to reduce my lateral movement and reduce my foot strike time. Boy it made a huge difference I felt it increase both my energy efficiency and increased my cadence from 163 to 170 bpm, because it reduce my lateral movement which reduce foot strike ground impact and move my hips over my feet because my arms were higher up on my chest which allowed my back to keep upright. Your video proved it was right the thing. Thanks alot

Brilliant! I didnt know that the 90° "rule" was nonsense, but the proof is right here. And now that I think about it, I probably don't pull my shoulders back much at all! My normal cadence is actually around 170+, but my feet are low to the ground and my shoulder joints don't move much. can't wait to implement these new tips on my next run!

Was so delighted to try this out and instantly see results. Still need to work on my form. I wasn’t able to not go faster than intended when I started the movement in my arms.
Also, every time I adjusted my moved my hips forward I felt better use of my energy but made me speed up an increase my hr.

Okay, that widen arm swing is stalling your run sounds make sense. I just happened to have my first 10k race about last week ago. I remember trying to speed up the couple last kilos but felt like I couldn't hardly sped up, now I recalled that seems like my arm swings were too wide. Thank you for the video.

how much do you think cadence should vary? Some say it should be nearly independent from speed but mine varies between 150-230 depending on how fast I'm running. The slower cadences are on rocky trails that run along the base of a mountain and the faster ones are sprinting on the track.

Fascinating! Can't wait to try this as other than just running faster or trying to consciously shorten stride length there doesn't seem to be a practical way to optimize this....until now!

Update: tried it, head up on an imaginary thread, shoulders relaxed and elbows in and bent....and what do you know?...most of 18km actually in my green cadence zone at an average of 8 or 9 spm above the previous week! Felt compact and low stress...thank you so much!

I'm fine with using a metronom to increase my cadence. I have a feeling that once I can maintain 194 steps/minute, muscles that I usually don't use that much are finally strong enough. But when I do 5k or 10k trials I let my cadence just flow and usually hit between 174 to 182 (if I had trained my cadence before).
Update: stopped metronom running, felt much more natural and easier

I can't believe how much this video is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Struggling with bad vertical ratio and cadence, with every other video on YT telling me to just up my cadence.

In recent days I found another piece of running magic.
I ran like sb held me from behind at my waistline. It felt really like there was sb grabbing a hold of me to slow me down and I felt my hamstrings fighting this resistance!!
On the contrary I ran like sb was pushing me forth from behind. It also felt really real and my hips began to overhaul my legs so my legs became extremely relaxed and my heels began to fly high freely.
Before I felt that my quads were still tense after toe off and restraining my heels from swinging up.
The pulling by the leg scissoring movement and the hip momentum should be trained separately but dispensed together wisely while running.
A little more hip momentum changes the whole running mechanics so the proprioceptive reflexes will work for you instead of against you!☝

When I moved my hips forth about an inch and straightening my lower back, the cadence went from 160 to 170! It was about one inch only, but it changed a lot and again saved energy.

On one of my slow runs some weeks ago I realized that I have to step quicker into the ground, so that my knees are not bent that much. My body is moving downwards so my feet have to be faster not to loose to much height which I must press up again. So I saved unnecessary vertical oscillation and a remarkable amount of muscle effort. My Heart rate dropped a few beats immediately. I didn't watch my cadence unfortunately.
But running felt much easier.

Finally my questions about cadence are answered. I am one of those runner who tried all kinds of advices about increasing the cadence with the only result being my heart beat went out of the roof. I am looking forward to trying out keeping my arms closer for my next runs since it makes so much sense. Thank you so much for this video 👍🏻😊

This is the video I have been looking for!!! :)

NO it is not true that there will be any side-effects =D Sounds a little bit like this, your speech

Can you please provide the links to the videos you mentioned here. (BTW you explain things so well and entertaining)

Thank you SO MUCH for this tip! I was struggling to increase my cadence and brought my arms in, up, and swung them faster -- instant 180+ cadence without any thinking. Still struggling to maintain it on really slow, easy runs because then my pace gets too fast with a faster cadence, but this tip has been invaluable.

Previously focused so much on forced-consistency in performance that I’d actually trip over my own feet.

Fredrik, thank you, you’re the first coach to actually help me find a more sustainable way of improving my cadence, so performance improves naturally.

Tack Fredrik. Ska kolla lite mer videos. Jobbar på mitt livs bästa form och fyller 50 nästa år. Konditionsmässigt kan jag glömma det men teknikmässigt absolut. Det blir nog något köp av dig i framtiden för det är du värd.

Cadence:
Music to my ears and my running.
Will be "playing" all your videos.
Thank you Maestro.!

I was trying to bring my beer belly cadence down from above 210 to something slower by using music. Found playlists of ancient balboa jazz neatly ordered for BPM. At the moment my cadence is fine mostly around 200, But now ow playing with different cadences has become a thing by itself It is a really nice way to add variety to my long runs. In stead of running for 2 hours straight I run for stretches of two to twelve minutes at a given cadence, this way the time passes quicker and I think this really improves coordination and strength.

I will definitely try this - wonder how much it helps...
Problem is - my relaxed cadence isn't 160 and I want to up it to 180... Its around 70 😂

155 here no matter what i do .. :( But will keep trying

How to run hi cadence and LIFT legs higher as you sugested in recent video. Lifting makes larger step.

Love this man ❤

Don’t increase cadence too fast. I increased and my knee pain went away, but I got an ankle injury

This is brilliant. I am walking while watching and it works for walking as well.

Really appreciate your content!

Wow such great advice!! I’m going to try doing this on my next run. As a former figure skater I appreciate the comparison. Thank you Fredrik!

Well, if runner doesn't rotate upper body while running, shouldn't it look like shoulders are still when looking from side? For example, Kipchoge looks like he rotates his upper body, shoulder moves front and back and his and chest and back are alternately more visible.. Also Yuki Kawauchi has low arm carriage and still manages to have high cadence (and probably rotates his body more than Kipchoge)..

Awesome tips as usual, many thanks Fredrik!

Sounds like holding a water bottle slows down the cadence due to slower arms swings?? Need to find a good waist hydration belt

I don’t buy that increasing cadence is as simple as arm angle. Remember the Chinese distance runners at the Beijing Olympics. They ran with a very low arm carriage, elbow angle > 90°, yet with typical elite runner cadence.

Keeping elbows in and not overstriding both help with cadence (and speed!). Also seems to help with knee pain.

Congratulations to 1 million views🏃‍♀️

Wow! This is a game changer for me! I have not been able to run slow without HR creeping up until I tried this. Thanks!

I’m a former track runner, I did the 100, 200 and 400m. While my running technique for speed is great, my long distance technique is terrible.
What helped me a lot was imagining that I’m running on the track but I’m watching myself run in slow-mo. My pace went up by one minute with the same effort. The only issue I have now is that if I lose focus for one mere second, I immediately fall back into old bad habits.

Thank you!

This video seemed really great and with scientific base

Fantastic insight as usual. Great video

Scientifically proven (almost) as amazing advice!

I have only been running 10-months and I only increase my elbow angle from 90-degrees to be the same as per this video. Here are the results from two 10k runs this week.

Using the new method:

Time 1% slower (strong headwind on final 2k)
Average cadence up 3%
Average stride length down 5%
Perceived effort significantly less (especially on the long last climb to the finish)

Some more tuning required but amazing results for just changing elbow angle!

Well, I tried this. I can barely believe the effect - from 155 spm last run to 176 on the first try. I think this will change my running a lot, might take a while getting used to. This is such a good video over all!

What type of education does one need to become a running technique specialist?

Exactly what i have been noticing on my runs, arms closer to body and relaxed shoulder really help to increase cadence or keep it consistent. Iam currently struggling with over pronation/supination (dont remember which is which) and i beleive it is something on the hips, but i cant exactly figure out what. Could you do a video about it please?

I agree 100%👍👍 But you look more atletisk with arms swinging like a orangoutang😁

This makes so much sense, yet I've never really thought about it in 30 years of running! When I ran track as a young man we always used to joke about 'pointy elbows' as part of defending your position in a pack or avoiding jabs from the elbows of other runners. Given Kiptum runs marathons about the same pace I could run a mile, lol, makes sense he has pointy elbows. Something must've become muscle memory because I maintain around 175 steps a minute now on easy runs, and 180-190 when trying to go a bit quicker.

Great!

Very interesting video, with a huge amount of important information in it! I will definitely need to rewatch this one before my run today.