In recent years there has been a trend towards focusing solely on maximum force production as a way to train sprinters. Do they do this explicitly ie are they conciously aware and thinking "now I'll increase my stride length/ frequency" Or are they less conciously aware of the mechanics and just aiming to run faster and doing that in naturally different ways? Stride rate describes how fast strides are taken and the units are strides per time. Mathathi who had a small stride length tried to increase that during the final kilometer. If we consider his world record of just under 1:41 and simplify our assumptions to make the math easy, we would come to the conclusion that he took roughly 370 steps to cover 800 meters. Some authors det… Cheers! It matters because it helps us wrap our minds around things if we start at the highest level. I don't know about Lydiard's guys. I'm a Chi Running instructor and a competitive runner. There used to be some clockwise races in Europe way back in the day. That would be interesting to look at. It simply means that to see a change in speed you’ve either got to increase the ground you cover (stride length) or increase your turnover (stride frequency) or some combination of the two. If your stride and frequency push you further off a straight line course, then optimum speed measured in linear distance travelled will be negatively imacted. In particular it should be obvious that there is no magic stride frequency that everyone should run. The bottom line is that something has to change. Required fields are marked *. November 3, 2010 • 32 comments, Section 2: The History of Endurance Training, Section 4: The Mental Game- Understanding People and Ourselves, When Damage is a good thing AND High Speed NYC marathon video. Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever books are sold! Success in competitive running in the sprint distances depends on a simple but ironclad formula: Stride length times stride rate equals speed. If you don't do this, you can't measure angles. Thanks for the post and thanks a lot for claryifying the Chi running stuff. Short distances call for long strides. From my own personal experience, increasing stride rate at the end of a race is easier for me than increasing my stride length. Another interesting fact, which we saw in the 10k study too, is that the height of the athlete did not impact whether or not they would take longer strides or have a higher cadence. according to this article a good rate would be around the 200 mark which seems pretty big to me and that stays the same if going fast or slow its the stride length that determines speed rather then stride rate. In essence, this is what Bekele did. Bekele had a low stride frequency with a long stride length for the first 9,000m. What is also interesting is that Mathathi who is 1.67m tall and Sihine who is 1.71m tall both had considerably smaller stride lengths than Bekele who is only 1.60m tall. On the other hand, some sprinters seem to rely on the nervous system’s ability to rapidly turn the legs over and contract and relax the muscles extremely quickly, thus making them more reliant on stride frequency. Danny has helped me and many others to break away from a lot of the dogma in the running community and explore other options outside of the conventional discourse. This is the only post where you can see what other good runners actually get for stride rate and length – thanks. Steve, this is very useful and practical material. As for my comments on Chi or Pose or whatever. It's certainly beneficial to dissect and analyze different teaching methods. I searched dozens of posts to find any with actual numbers for the stride length. To apply that formula to running speed, we get a likewise simple equation: Speed is stride length (distance covered) times stride rate (1 / the time it takes to cover the distance). Cadence is your walking rate, measured by the number of … References: The question is how did these athletes do it? Stride length, on the other hand, is the distance from the initial contact point of one foot to the next initial contact point of the same foot. This opens up a lot of questions, but before delving into those let’s look at one more study. We fully acknowledge there are things that will not work for some people. If you want to train runners a certain way and you've had success with it, go for it. To give you guys a visual, I took two screen shots of video I had of myself running. With some rounding error, that’s roughly 7 feet per step. In a marathon race, one runner is moving at 5.0 m/s passes a second runner moving at 4.5. I mimicked frequency with a computer generated beeps with which athletes adjust their stride frequency by hearing. You can move your legs at a faster rate, called stride rate or cadence, or you can take longer steps. Period. Rick- Thanks for the cycling info. Agreed. If I want to run faster, I need to either take longer steps or take them more quickly. As for hip angle/seperation= It's essentially a way to sort of quantify hip extension/knee lift. In Bekele’s case he had a low stride rate, so he increased that dramatically. In his excellent article Understanding Stride Rate and Stride Length, coach Steve Magness considers a study done by Enomoto et al. For reference they went from hitting around 2:42-2:45 for each km to final km of 2:30, 2:33, and 2:36 respectively, and had last laps of 55.51, 58.66, and 62.16 so the pace picked up considerably. Runner’s like Bekele may have adaptations that lead to him being able to hold a massive stride length for a long time, and then switch and be able to hold a large stride rate during the latter stages of the race. Flow- An increase in stride length seems to cause more impact. because of the room for improvement within limits this writing has good implication on training. Lastly, Mathathi, who had the shortest stride length, increased his stride length on the 3rd to last lap to increase his speed. Somewhere, he had heard that world record holder David Rudisha ran with a stride rate of 220 steps per minute so he thought that was optimal and tried to match that. Additionally, there was a study done by a former competitor that shows stride lengths and frequencies of some top notch NCAA Kenyan runners as they went from a slow run to about marathon pace or a notch faster. If drift is "minimal" then why are track events held in counter clockwise rotation and not the other way around? It also applies to street running when corners are in opposite to a runner's natural drift tendencies as technique has to change since increasing speed during the curves of any race is impossible to do. Getting there slowly . Get into your natural running rhythm, then time yourself for 60 seconds as you count your strides. Stride length, stride rate, and ground contact time. The result is a rate (fraction) of feet per second. Hi Steve,This post is one of my favorite topics about running and IMO one of the most misunderstood. I understand that too much anaerobic work can alter the blood ph; esp if one was to do that kind of work for a long amount of time. If optimum running form isn't measured or described, then optimum speed will never be achieved. His stride frequency is about equal to his competitors, but his stride is so much longer thanks to those long legs of his. This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs. And Sihine who was in between both during the race in terms of rate and length, did a little bit of an increase in both. The graph below depicts their speed, stride length, and stride frequency: The first thing you notice is that these three different athletes ran the same speed until the last 2 laps or so. Shorter, faster strides allow you to run more efficiently with less impact on your joints. I think Usain Bolt is a great example of how speed is derived from a combination of stride length and stride frequency. Runners do base building, intervals, and tempo work, but they often do not actively work on their running stride rate. First off, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. stride rate definition in the English Cobuild dictionary for learners, stride rate meaning explained, see also 'get into one's stride/ hit one's stride',take sth in your stride',strident',striped', English vocabulary On the other hand, the SL reliant athletes need to keep their strength levels up throughout the season and have the required flexibility in the hip area to produce long steps. I think a further exploration into Chi Running will help you find that a lot of instructors are very similar to yourself. Championships in Athletics, New Studies in Athletics. And for elite marathon runners, are measured at 29-31 miles and amateurs at 36 miles, in physical distance travelled calculating in drift rates. Meaning that the 3 points better be somewhere consistant. Biomechanical analysis of the medalists in the 10,000 metres at the 2007 World Cutting 20 seconds of a 5K is easy when the biomechanic factors which induce drift are eliminated in track competition. If Rudisha was really running at 220 steps per minute, which I’m not fully certain of, he had the power to deliver an incredible force to the ground in an astoundingly rapid rate so he could take long steps while doing that. whenfrequency of stride increases the length gets shortened. This included Bekele (1st) Sihine (2nd) and Mathathi (3rd). Do you think this hurt the aerobic development that would need to be had for later in the year? If you, like Chi running advocates, try to hold one constant, you’ll reach your limit in increasing the opposite one before you should, and thus will be slower. Let’s look at what the elites do. So far, I don't have any conclusive results. Increasing your stride rate by 10%, say, from 160 to 176 strides per minute is much easier than lengthening your stride by 10%. Running economy incorporates more than your stride rate, but this article focuses on running rhythm. Consequently, it is proposed that the SF reliant athletes are required to concentrate on neural activation in their final preparations for the major races and have a nervous system ready such that they can produce the quick turnover of the legs. His contention was that you needed to work on going back and forth between these two stride types during practice. But you have to be able to change but frequency and length throughout the spectrum of running speeds. The following exercise explains how you can calculate the stride length and stride frequency of a runner on a treadmill. Salo et al. What they found was very interesting. It was fostered by Weyend et al.’s early 2000’s study that showed sprint speed was partially determined by vertical Ground reaction forces. The Salazar/Ritz piece was a good article. (2010) entitled: “Elite Sprinting: Are Athletes Individually Step Frequency or Step Length Reliant?”. Speed, if we’re going to look at the pure mechanics of it, is simply based on two factors: stride length and stride rate. A study of step length and step frequency. Driving this point home, the author’s stated that “Thus, it is possible to reach the absolute top level of sprinting in the world (run under 10.00 s) with widely varying pattern of SF and SL reliance.”. I'd have more respect for Chi running if it didn't use pseudo-scientific explanations to justify it, and didn't try and bridge a method that seems to be for recreational runners, into the competitive side of the sport. It simply means that to see a change in speed you’ve either got to increase the ground you cover (stride length) or increase your turnover (stride … This is during the exact same 150m sprint. If you could become adept at using both strides, then you could run the majority of your race in your preferred stride style, but when fatigue started to happen, you’d switch to the other stride style. It's an article though written by someone who has no running background most likely, so it's hard to tell what the exact changes are and such. STRIDE RATE There is an abundance of advice on how to improve your stride rate. The ultimate answer for us distance runners may be that we should be like Bekele and be able to run submaximally with one strategy and then be able to switch strategies when fatigued. This simple equation is a staple in sprinting and biomechanics material. If we add other factors that are components of these two factors, we can overemphasize one factor to the detriment of the other. It may well be much more complicated than that, or result of a lazy technique when just running along. BOTH! The stride can reduce the resolution of the output, for example reducing the height and width of the output to only \(1/n\) of the height and width of the input (\(n\) is an integer greater than \(1\)). I've increased my stride frequency from 160 to 176. Which is huge. Now I know where I stand in relation to other runners. Period. The author’s conclude by saying: “Overall it is reasonable to conclude that SL is related more to increased force production, and SF is associated with faster force production during the contact and quick leg turnover requiring neural adaptations. Generally, strides per second (aka, Hertz or Hz) or strides per minute are used for units. To me, the rate of force delivery and the onset of fatigue are the critical issues affecting speed. One study looked at the stride length and frequency of the top 3 finishers in the 10k at the 2007 world championships. In this study they looked at world class 100m dash competitions and calculated the individuals stride length and rate to see what the best athletes did. Padding and stride can be used to adjust the dimensionality of the data effectively. I’ve heard a lot of similar comments from other runners and coaches. Your email address will not be published. STRIDE LENGTH VS. In general, the shorter the distance, the longer the average stride … Or should we work on our weaker side of the equation? Which method of increasing speed generates less impact force with the ground, and increase of stride rate or an increase of stride length? Maybe this is why he can kick so well? min -1), describes the duration of a complete stride cycle (left and right step). Lastly, I deal with the competitive side of the sport. I do think you could improve in your approach as you seem to be more emotional about Chi than scientific. Speed is a function of the frequency and the length of the stride.3-7 These parameters are interdependent and their optimal ratio allows for a maximum running speed.8The increase in speed can be achieved by increasing the length or frequency of the stride. Say I wanted to do start introducing sessions such as 20x200m or 10x300m in say January once a week at about 60s 400m pace to prepare for indoors (for a sub 14min 5k guy). It depends on the athlete and their speed. My strides are tiny for my height. For example, if we say the three factors are stride rate, stride length, and ground contact time, we might focus more on improving our stride rate to the detriment of improving or maintaining our stride length. 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