Using Music to Improve My Cadence

I live in Minnesota, where we have long cold winters.  For a few months each year, the streets are covered with ice and/or packed snow.  The highway department puts enough on the major roads to melt the snow and keep them dry, but it’s not safe to run on a highway.  When I try to run (or walk) on residential streets, there’s so little traction that my pace is nowhere close to my race pace.  I can put in enough mileage, and I can get a tiring workout.  What I can’t do is work on my speed.

I do most of my winter training on a treadmill.  It’s not exactly the same as training on roads, but I’ve found I can do quality workouts on the treadmill.  I’ve had good results in road races after doing most of my training on a treadmill.  One winter, I even took second place in a 50-mile trail run after doing all of my training on a treadmill.

I haven’t had the same success race-walking on a treadmill.  I’ve consistently found that my walking pace on the treadmill is slower than my walking pace outdoors.  I often feel like I’m working just as hard as I do outdoors, but my pace will be a minute per mile slower.  For a long time, I was at a loss to explain it.  In the last year, I finally came up with a hypothesis.

A lot of people listen to music when they run, whether it’s indoors or outdoors.  I don’t do that unless I’m indoors.  When I’m outdoors, I like to hear my environment.  I like to hear the birds chirping.  I like to know when a car is approaching from behind.  If another runner talks to me during a race, I want to hear what they’re saying.

If I’m indoors – running or walking on a treadmill – I can listen to music without missing other sounds.  When I’m in the home gym in my basement, the only other sound beside my music is the background noise made by the treadmill.

I’ve never needed music to help pass the time when I’m outdoors.  The constant change in scenery is enough.  It gives me a feel for how far I’ve gone.  When my progress feels tangible, the time passes easily enough.

Running or walking on the treadmill is another matter.  It’s mind-numbingly boring.  One mile on the treadmill feels like about four.  I don’t think I’ve ever lasted more than four miles on the treadmill without listening to music.  Even with music, the miles don’t pass as easily as they do outdoors, but having a musical “landscape” goes a long way toward replacing the visual landscape that I’m missing.

When I run on a treadmill, I frequently adjust my gait.  Sometimes I take long strides.  Other times, I take short strides with a rapid cadence.  I’ve noticed a tendency to adjust my cadence so I’m in time with the music.

That works fine when I’m running, because I can easily adjust my stride length.  That doesn’t work as well when I’m walking.  When you run, you have a “flight phase,” during which both feet are off the ground.  When you walk, you don’t have a “flight phase.”  You always have at least one foot in contact with the ground (or the treadmill).  That’s what distinguishes a running gait from a walking gait.  When you’re walking, your stride can’t get much longer.  If you slow your cadence to be in sync with the music, you’re going to have a slower overall pace.

I’m pretty sure that’s why I can’t walk as fast on the treadmill as I do outdoors.  My music is causing me to subconsciously adopt a slower cadence.

My treadmill was a built-in step counter.  I’m not sure how it works, but it seems to be fairly accurate.  I’ve tried to improve my cadence, both indoors and outdoors, but the fastest cadence I’ve ever achieved on the treadmill was 156 strides per minute.  Outdoors, I usually have an average cadence in the 160s, with a peak cadence in the low 180s.  In a recent 10K race, I had an average cadence of 175.

I used to walk with too long of a stride.  I was able to go fast, but it wasn’t efficient.  I was wasting too much energy.  To get faster, I needed to retool my gait, so I had a shorter stride and a faster cadence.  I’ve had some success at that, but only outdoors.  When winter comes, I need to be able to do the same thing on the treadmill.

To test my hypothesis that my music was slowing me down, I created a playlist of songs that have a tempo of roughly 180 beats per minute.  That’s faster that my current average cadence, but it’s the cadence I’ll need to get much faster.

At first, I didn’t know how easy it would be to find a list of songs with the right cadence.  After a quick Google search, I discovered it wasn’t too hard.  180 strides per minute happens to be the same cadence that’s often recommended for people who are trying to improve their running economy.  As a result, there are websites with lists of songs that are 180 beats per minute (or close).  Here’s a screenshot from one such website.  The songs listed here all have tempos between 178 and 182 beats per minute.

I was only familiar with a handful of the songs on the first page of this list, but there are 70 pages.  I went through the whole list to identify songs that were already in my library.  I found about 40.  They spanned seven decades, and they were from different genres, but that’s OK.  I only had two criteria.  I had to enjoy listening to them, and they had to have the desired tempo.

I came up with more than three hours of music that met my criteria.  That’s more than enough for a workout.  I created a playlist on my laptop, connected it to my stereo, and put it in shuffle mode.

Winter weather is still two months away, but today we’re getting all-day rain.  I used that as an opportunity to do a walking workout on the treadmill and test my new playlist.

I initially set the speed to 5.5 mph.  That’s close to the pace that I’ve been walking outdoors, but it seemed much too fast to sustain on the treadmill.  I backed off to 5 mph, and then gradually increased the pace as I warmed up.  As I did, I found it easier to get my cadence up to something that was close to the tempo of the music.

I walked the first mile in 11:38.  That’s slower than I’ve been walking outdoors, but in my second mile I managed to speed up to 11:15.  That’s roughly my race pace for a marathon.

Having faster music doesn’t magically make you run or walk faster.  If your cadence is close to the tempo of the music, you’ll adapt.  If your cadence isn’t close to the tempo, you won’t.  I chose a tempo of 180, because that’s my long-term goal.  It’ll take some work to get there.

After a few songs (and after finding a speed that I could just barely sustain), I sometimes found myself getting in sync with the music.  Sometimes I could do it, and sometimes I couldn’t.  The most important thing is that my music was no longer slowing me down.

I walked seven miles.  Every 10 minutes, I glanced at the step count and did a rough calculation of my average cadence.  At first, it was about 172 strides per minute.  By the end of my workout, it was only averaging 170 beats per minute.  It’s worth noting, that my average cadence walking outdoors rarely gets that fast.  My previous best on the treadmill was only 156.  This was real progress.

The pace felt more tiring when it should have.  My average pace wasn’t as fast as my recent outdoor workouts, but it was more tiring.  I was working hard to get a fast turnover, yet I wasn’t getting as fast of a pace as I do outdoors.  That can only mean that I had a shorter average stride length.  I suspect that’s another case where I’m subconsciously influence by the treadmill.

I think I was limiting my stride in two ways.  First, I was probably avoiding placing my lead foot too far forward for fear of making contact with this plastic frame at the front of the belt.

Limiting the front end of my stride is actually a good thing, but I suspect I was also subconsciously limiting the back end of my stride.  Ideally, you want to roll all the way through your toes.  I can often feel myself doing that when I walk outdoors, but I never seemed to do that today.  I suspect I was afraid of getting too far back on the treadmill.  That really shouldn’t be a concern.  I probably never used more than half the length of the treadmill deck.  I have some awareness of how far back my stride extends when I run, but I have a shorter stride when I walk.  Why be concerned about moving too far back?  Have you ever fallen off the back of a treadmill?  It’s a mistake you only make once.  It’s an experience that puts some fear into you.

Overall, I consider this experiment to be a success.  Using music with a faster tempo made it possible for me to improve my cadence significantly.  It’s still going to be a lot of work, but my music is no longer holding me back.

When winter comes, I’ll be doing treadmill workouts almost every day.  The playlist I have now has enough variety for the occasional workout, but even in shuffle mode, it will start to get stale eventually.  My challenge before winter will be coming up with a longer list.

You’d be surprised how difficult it is to find songs that are that fast.  Even songs that I think of as fast tend to have tempos in the range of 150-160 bpm.  180 is really fast.  To get a longer playlist, I’ll probably have to add songs that are 90 bpm and take two strides per beat.  That’ll be a future experiment.