jason sadler’s Story
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So, long story short...
jason sadler made the mistake of
using long strides and not counting my cadence
My Advice to You is
bear with me on this mistake/lesson learned!
Here's the whole story
I am in rehab for a torn ACL/Meniscus and sub-articular fracture of the tibia (fracture sounds worse that it is). I have finally made it to "Week 9" out of surgery whereby I am allowed to jog on a treadmill.
Being on a treadmill is nothing new to me, as I used to do it 3-4 times a week. I used to do short interval runs and longer, slower interval runs. I have never paid attention to exactly how I ran, how many arm swings in 30 seconds and what my cadence is while running. I learned about all of these today as I stared at myself in a mirror while running and had the physical therapist breaking my running style down.
To relieve stress on your knees while running (the point of a treadmill), you want to use short & shuffling steps. This may feel awkward, but it is amazing how much less stress it puts on your entire body. One key thing to notice is how much trunk movement and up and down movement of your head you have. Olympic runners run with almost no trunk movement; without seeing their lower body you might not even know they are running at miraculous speeds. The way to figure out if your running in a more correct manner is to figure out your cadence by counting your arm swings (pick one arm to count) for 30 seconds and then multiplying that by 4.
I started out running with a cadence of 128 (32 arm swings in 30sec multiplied by 4). After adjusting my running style to the shorter steps with much less body movement my cadence improved to 164 (41 arm swings multiplied by 4). I was told that anything above 160 is a decent cadence, and at the pace I was jogging (5.5mph) it wasn't too bad.
Moral of the story:
Shorter, more shuffling steps.
More arm swings, leading to a higher cadence.
More sweat, less stress on your body.
Slight awkward feeling, but all around better result.
Comments (6)
This should translate to distance running outside also, right? It's not necessarily limited to treadmill running?
I see people at the gym doing this all the time. Always wondered why.
this relates to any type of running! elite olympic running, marathon running, etc.
the strides will increase in length as the pace increases.
today i think my cadence was 184 (46 right arm swings in 30sec x 4)
I'm definitely going to have to try this and see if it helps prevent me from getting sore shins / shin splints.
I tried this the other day, and you're right, it was real awkward at first, but the next day I felt a lot less sore.
I've been trying to do this lately to alleviate my shin splints, but I don't think I'm doing it right. Next time I see you, you'll have to demonstrate.