Improving Turnover

Audio Transcript

Michael Hammond: Hey Runners Connect fans. Welcome to another episode of the Run to the Top Extra Kick podcast. I’m here to answer a question from Phil about turnover and how to improve it.

Phil: What exactly is turnover and how can you improve it? Also, is this more important for shorter races or can it benefit you over any distance?

Michael: That’s a great question, Phil. What exactly is turnover? I feel like we talk about this a lot but you’re right, we don’t really get all that specific with it.

I think turnover is somewhat of that runner lingo, one of those things that we talk about on a day-to-day basis as if everyone knows what we’re talking about.

If you just went to the supermarket and told somebody about your run that day, you’d probably use a bunch of terminology and stuff like that, that people would have no idea what you’re talking about.

Turnover is one of those things that we throw around a lot without necessarily defining exactly, and I think that’s partially because there’s not necessarily a great definition of turnover.

There’s not one exact thing but I’m going to do my best to go through the aspects of it. Also, we’ll get to how you can improve it as well.

When I think of turnover, the number one thing that comes to my mind is cadence, and we did a podcast on that a month or so back.

Cadence is the number of steps per minute that you take. You can count on one foot or both and the supposed ideal is about 180 steps per minute if you’re counting on both feet, 90 if you’re counting on one, but this is a vague ideal.

Take this with a grain of salt because that is not a scientific measurement. There was no scientific measurement that said 180 steps a minute is appropriate, or that’s what everyone should strive for.

It’s also very unlikely that every single human being should be at the same cadence; that doesn’t make any sense.

What I would do is use that as more of a guideline, as it’s not necessarily an exact. People are going to be different, especially taller people.

Very tall men tend to over stride. If you’re talking about 180 as the norm or ideal, then tall men are over striding.

It is very difficult for very tall guys with long legs, or women as well, to get to that stride rate because if you think about it as a lever, it’s just that much longer and each step requires that much more movement.

Again, 180 per minute is a vague estimation. I believe somebody looked at videos of elite runners, elite marathoners, elite 10K runners, and just did an average of their cadence, and it was typically about 180 steps a minute.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s exactly what you should strive for. Cadence is more or less used to improve your stride efficiency,

First, we’ll talk about under striding because this isn’t very common. If we’re calling 180 ideal, under striding would mean you’re above 180, maybe 185, 190 steps per minute.

To be honest, this is so rare it’s so uncommon, that to some degree it’s not even worth spending a lot of time on.

It’s very uncommon for somebody out on an easy run to be 190, 200 steps a minute. It is out there and it has potential problems of its own, but we’re going to focus more on the over striding.

Over striding on the other hand is extremely common. This means that you are going less than 180 steps per minute.

Not necessarily that exact number. If you’re, say, 160 steps a minute, especially if you’re, say 150 steps per minute, more than likely, you’re over striding.

Even if your ideal is more like 170 for your body type, if you’re at 150, you know you’re over striding.

Over striding can lead to things like heel strike, much more commonly. Heel striking means that your foot lands on your heel, your heel is the first thing to land on the ground, whereas the ideal is more at the mid foot.

You don’t want the front ball of your foot, not up towards your toes, and you also don’t want back on your heel.

You want to strike roughly mid foot, and in addition, you want your foot to strike the ground immediately underneath your center of gravity.

What happens when you over stride is you strike out front, slightly in front of your center of gravity. What this does is it slows you down.

If you think about it, your momentum is all moving forward. If you strike at the heel, a little bit in front of your center of gravity, of your center of mass, then you are going to impede your momentum, you’re going to impede your forward progress.

You’re actively slowing yourself down. Not necessarily just if you heel strike, because there are heel strikers who strike under their center of mass, though it’s quite rare. It’s a bit bizarre to think about it, but it does happen.

Are you heel striking, and is your foot strike in front of your center of mass?

If so, you’re most likely slowing yourself down and putting yourself at a much more of a risk for shin splints, which is a common one, that puts a lot of pressure on the shins, and then knees, hips, all sorts of issues can arise, IT band.

A lot of issues can stem from over striding because it puts a lot of extra pressure on different muscles and tendons that aren’t meant to take that much pressure.

If you have a good foot strike, and you’re striking under your center of mass, you’ve a good forward lean, your form is all good, then it’s going to be more efficient.

You’re going to have less shock reverberating up through your legs in places that it shouldn’t.

It’s going to be absorbed properly as it’s intended to, as your body was designed to, and you’re also not going to be slowing yourself down actively, which is what we’re talking about with the heel striking.

Ways to check your cadence and improve it.

Time a minute on your runs, you’re out on an easy run, maybe 10 minutes into the run or so, when you’re nice and warmed up, time one minute and try not to think about it.

Count your steps, just run as normally as possible and see where you’re at. In all likelihood, I would say the vast majority of people find themselves in the 160- 170 range.

From my experience, regardless of height, or gender, regardless of anything, most people find themselves typically in the 160 -170 range.

In terms of getting up closer to 180, two things. One, 180 yet again is just a number, it’s an estimation of what’s optimal. We don’t necessarily know with 100% certainty that that’s ideal for every person. In fact, I strongly doubt that it’s the best for everybody.

Number two is, even if 180 is you perfectly ideal cadence, you don’t want to do that right away.

Let’s say you’re at 160, which is very common because a lot of people will find themselves over striding and right around 160.

If you’re at 160, you don’t want to immediately switch over to 180 because that’s a pretty big difference, that’s a huge difference in your stride.

If you’re at 175, then sure, going to 180 is probably not going to be that huge a difference.

But if you’re at 160 and you’re going up to 180, that’s a huge difference in your body and as always, the body responds much better to slow, gradual incremental changes rather than changing everything at once.

A way to improve it is to time that minute early in the run, give yourself another 10 minutes or so, just running normally and then later on in the run, you time another minute.

And this one, whichever way you are, if you’re 160 or if you’re 200, you try to get it a little bit closer to 180.

I’m not saying it must be 180, but you make it a little bit closer and see how you feel.

Quickly on that, I don’t want people to feel like, Oh my gosh, I’m at 165, my form is terrible, I’m at risk for a huge injury and it’s going to happen, I have to get to 180.

That’s not necessarily the case. Like I’ve said several times here, it’s very vague and it’s also very individual.

If you’re at 172 cadence and you’re running great, feeling good, you haven’t had any major injuries recently, and your time’s improving and everything is going well, then awesome, you’re good.

I wouldn’t want to mess with that because as they say, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

If you’re doing great, you’re running great, and you have no injuries, I don’t see a reason to mess with your running form.

If you’re at 160 or 165, and you’re having shin splints, knees, chronic issues, and a big injury history, that’s a situation where it might make sense, and you want to increase your stride rate a little bit.

Or your stride’s a little bit shorter, shorten up the stride, quicken it up a little bit and get a little bit closer to 180.

The other big thing when we’re talking about turnover, is we’re talking about running form and this is all related to improving turnover.

We’ve gone over the cadence, but when we’re talking about your running form in general, of course cadence is intended to improve your running form, but there is a lot of other stuff that goes into this.

One is knee lift which is a huge part of running form. You see some people, especially people who are over striding or have poor form overall, like almost leaning backwards, not doing a slight forward lean like is ideal, what you’re going to see a lot is barely any knee lift. If you looked at them from the side, their knees look like they are barely coming up. You definitely want some knee lift, especially when you’re going a little faster.

This is more relevant to the shorter faster races, 5K- 10K, but nonetheless very important for your half marathon and full marathon as well, you’ve got to have good knee lift.

The other one is the foot strike which we talked about with cadence, but to go over it again, mid foot strike is ideal. Heel is hugely not good, nor is striking at the toes. I’ve seen both and heel striking is the most common. Ideally, you want to strike at the mid foot.

The way to practice this is to literally stand up straight and do marches. Just march in place for 10-20 seconds and start to consciously think about where are your feet striking right now.

I guarantee 100% they’re not heel striking, they’re going to be striking right on the mid foot when you’re doing that march, not at the ball of the foot.

Another thing to think about is, if you walk around barefoot, go walk on concrete or a harder surface, and if you’re heel striking, I’ll be impressed because typically you’re not going to, because it hurts.

The reason a lot of people heel strike is due to shoes. Having such a massive block of cushioning and material under your heel, that makes it easy to heel strike.

This is a theory of a reason; I’m not going to say it’s the reason.

So those are some things you can work on with the foot strike and the knee lift as well.

A few things that you can do to help improve your running form overall and your knee lift, your foot strike, one is drills.

A skips, B skips, and then plyometrics, are fantastic drills. All these can work to improve your running form overall and improve your cadence, improve your turnover in terms of quickness as well.

You want to do those drills quick, but let’s say you’re doing 10 yards, 15 yards, you don’t want to get from 0-15 yards fast, you want to get from 0-15 yards very slow.

You want to be doing the drills quick, you want to work up to the point where you’re doing them quick and then move forward very slow while you’re doing those drills.

Strides are another fantastic one. You can do four times, 15-20 second strikes after some easy runs, maybe some long runs.

You don’t want these to be all out, not 100% all out sprints, but good effort, maybe 90% effort or so.

Work on your knee lift, work on your foot strike, and work on your upper body form as well.

Get those arms pumping right and relax the shoulders, that will help your running form and especially the nice thing about doing them at the end of the run, is you’re going to do them when you’re tired, which will help your body learn how to run properly when it’s fatigued.

Short sprints can help. I wouldn’t recommend this for people doing half and full marathon training, and especially beginners.

For more advanced people that are doing 5Ks, 10Ks, even shorter races potentially, short sprints can be good.

Typically, you’re going to go out to a track, you can do them on a flat road as well, but you’re going to want to find maybe a 40 meter stretch, and do really short, really quick sprints.

This is all out but it’s very short and you take a long recovery. That’s going to help your form overall, help your basic foot speed and help your turnover.

Then the last one is heel sprints or heel strides. I call them heel sprints because it’s the same thing.

You want them to be relatively short because this is just working on form; you’re not trying to improve your fitness with these exercises.

Find a relatively steep hill and run up it maybe for 10 or 15 seconds and go 95% effort, very close to all out.

Work on your knee lift, get your arms driving and that will help improve your form tremendously.

Runners Connect fans. That’s it for today.

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Thanks for tuning in Runners Connect fans, enjoy your run today.