08/21/2026
Your cadence is how many steps you take per minute while running.
When your cadence is low, you take fewer, longer steps. That means your foot lands out in front of your body instead of under it. Landing that way sends a bigger spike of force up through your ankle, shin, and knee on each step. Over a long run, that adds up to thousands of hard landings.
Speeding up your steps fixes a lot of this on its own. Your foot lands closer to your body. Your stride shortens. The force going through each joint decreases. Studies that measure this consistently show less load at the knee and hip when runners increase their cadence up.
Lower load per step does not guarantee you stay healthy. Training too much, too fast is still the biggest reason runners get hurt. But if you deal with knee pain or shin pain that shows up every time you run, cadence is one of the easiest things to change.
Skip the 180 number you have probably heard. That came from watching elite runners at race pace, and cadence naturally goes up as you run faster. Find your own average on an easy run, then aim for about 5 to 10 percent higher. If you run at 160, try 168 to 176.
Use a metronome app or a playlist at your target tempo. Run 2 to 3 minutes at the new rate, then go back to normal. Build from there. It will feel strange for a couple of weeks, then it will feel like nothing.
Got a running question? Drop it below and I'll answer it.
