Running Cadence with Danny Dreyer from Chi Running

Let's talk about cadence for a bit, because when I think back about my initial experience with Chi running, it was the metronome. And many of us in the training program were running with a metronome set to, I believe, 85 or 90 beats. Talk a little bit more about the integration with Chi running.

Yeah, now the metronome is an interesting thing, and it's, it's probably one of the best teaching tools I've ever had. I'm not a gearhead. I don't go out with heart rate monitors and all kinds of stuff, you know, but that metronome, I tell you, and it really works. And what it does is that— so first of all, you know, the ideal cadence for human beings, if there is an ideal, usually falls between 170 and 180 strides per minute. So when you said 85 to 90, that's counting only one leg. So if you count both feet, 170 to 180 strides per minute, about average. If you— and I've seen the science on this— if you get slower than 170, you're spending more time in contact with the ground, which means more time in your support stance, which means more muscle usage to support your body over time. Okay, so if you're doing a marathon, those little fractions of seconds add up. To a lot of just standing on one leg, right? On the other hand, so that's muscle usage in during the support stance. Now, if you're going over 180, then yes, your contact time shortens. But when you go over 180, you start using muscle to turn your legs over faster. That's another muscle usage, a different type. One's support, one's propulsion. Turning your legs over. And so most people fall within that 170, 180. And taller people kind of drift towards the slower end because their legs are longer pendulums. They—

yeah, that makes, that makes sense—

longer to swing. And shorter people have shorter pendulums and they can go faster. But the metronome, what it does, and what I'm a big proponent of, always having the same cadence. Cadence stays It's totally solid. And if you, if you, what most sprinters do is the opposite. As they run faster, their cadence turns over faster. And for a sprinter, that's necessary. You have to do that. There's just no other way around it. But for an endurance runner, what's really important is economy of motion. So you really want to have a very economical cadence, one that's matched to how you run. Hopefully between 170-180. If it's matched, then if you want to go faster— you remember this forward fall— if you want to go faster, fall at a little steeper of an angle. That's it. That's the only thing you need to do. You don't need to push harder, you just need to fall steeper. If you fall steeper, gravity is going to pull you even faster. But at the same time that you're falling more into the pull of gravity, you need to relax the moving parts, meaning your arms and legs. So, if you relax the moving parts, that means your stride opens up. It's a longer stride. If you have the same cadence and you relax your legs to where you get 2 inches, 3 inches per stride longer because you're really relaxing that leg, then the same cadence But more distance in the same period of time equals speed, right? If you want to go at different speeds, it's like a car. How a car is designed, or most cars, I'm— with the exception of like the Prius electric cars because they don't have a transmission. But a car with a transmission is designed to be the most economical. You get your best gas mileage if your engine's turning over like 2,500 RPM, right? So it's doing 2,500 RPM in first gear, you're moving really slow. 2,500 RPM in second gear, you're moving faster. 2,500 RPM in third gear and fourth gear, whatever gear you're in, you're more economical if you can keep that engine turning over where it's designed to be the most optimal. So in the human body, you want to have that same with— for the same reason, you want to feel like, okay, my optimal cadence is comfortable for me. It feels really good. Okay. If I can get used to how good that cadence feels, and then if I want to go faster, I just fall forward a little bit more, but relax my legs. Then I have the same comfort level with a longer stride, same cadence, same comfort level. Longer stride because I'm relaxing more. So what have I done? I've just shifted to a higher gear within the same effort range or close. But it's not like my perceived rate of exertion is going to go through the roof if I get into a fast run. It's going to go— it's going to just very slowly incrementally rise. It's not going to be like a sprinter because if I'm a distance runner, I don't want to have to maintain anaerobic you know, running forever. You want to keep it within your aerobic capacity and ideally within a really good comfort range. I mean, Eliud Kipchoge was in a comfort range that really worked for him and it just happened to be really, really fast. But he had to get himself to the point of being comfortable at that pace. Okay. And so that's what this is. It's really use the metronome to keep a very steady cadence. Then if you want to go faster, you just fall forward at a little steeper angle. The cadence stays the same and it forces you to relax as you go faster. That's the cool thing about it. It forces you to relax. If you go up a hill, downshift. You get a shorter stride, same cadence. So you're shifting like you do on your bike, you know, shift to a lower gear, you go up the hill, still feels the same. It's that range of perceived rate of exertion stays just within a very tiny window instead of like all over the place.

Yeah, that's so well said because I do hear from time to time different questions coming up about this of like, hey, I'm trying to run in this optimal cadence zone of 170 to 180, but my heart rate is going up more and more the harder I try to get my cadence up. But you explained well that that doesn't have to be the case. It's the lean forward where it does make a difference.

Yeah. If the big part is falling forward more, but the biggest part, the reason why their heart rate goes up is because they're, they think they need to push harder to go faster instead of relax more to go faster. And if you relax more, your heart doesn't have to work as hard. And then your heart rate doesn't go up, and then you can breathe through your nose even for a marathon because you're not breathing that hard. You know what I mean? It all starts adding up.