 I want my foot to just touch the ground, just touch the ground ever so gently. And again, it's all, see, if this is my ankle, onward and upward, how are we doing everyone on this fine weekend? It's Saturday when I'm recording this. It's the afternoon, which means it's nap time at the D'Amore household. We like nap time around here, but I'm out in the studio as they're napping inside. So we're going to talk real quick about running faster by increasing your cadence today. This topic's coming up a lot in the comments on Strava. Yeah, mostly on Strava actually. People are just curious about how I usually am able to maintain a 180 cadence. So what is cadence? It's the amount of steps that you take in a minute, also known as SPM, Steps Per Minute or RPM, Rotations Per Minute. You hear that in the automobile industry as well. So here's the deal. How did Haile Gebre Selassie of Ethiopia, who is, I don't know if he still is, but I'm assuming he's still five feet, five inches tall. How did he out kick Paul Turgat, who is six feet tall of Kenya in the 10K final? How did this happen, everyone? Well, here's a clip of them coming down the track. If you look really closely and you start counting the steps, Haile is taking more steps than Paul over, well, in this case, over the period of let's say nine to 10 seconds down the straightaway. Well, no, it would probably be 11 to 12 seconds coming down the straightaway, okay? So that is what we're talking about, how to run faster by increasing your cadence. Now just imagine, if you, now let's say, so I think, did I already mention this, that I usually maintain about a 180 cadence on my, let's say, not on my easy, easy days. On my easy days, it usually drops down to, I'd say like 175 to 178, and you can track this in a lot of different ways. Now of course you can buy the foot pods, I actually have one, the stride, I don't use that, watches do it now as well, the Polar Vantage V, the Sun 2.5. So now let's say you have a 165 cadence, so that's how many steps you take in a minute, and you are able to increase that to a 170. Imagine if you could do that. If you do the math, five more steps per minute multiplied by a seven minute mile, five times seven is 35 steps. Now what does that mean? It means you have 35 more opportunities to push off of the ground over a given mile, alright? Now it comes down to the, now there's obviously a lot of different variables that go into our entire running economy, as far as our aerobic capacity, as far as our lactate threshold, as far as our resting heart rate and how quickly our heart rate rises, our stride length, our ground force impact, our ground, sorry, the ground reaction force, and so we have to place our running cadence and our steps per minute into the bigger picture of our running biomechanics and our running economy. And how I like to look at steps per minute mentally is that this is 35, using the example I just gave, let's say 165 to 170, this is 35 more opportunities over a mile to push myself down the track, down the road, down the cross country course. Now how does one go about increasing their running cadence, alright? This is the good stuff here. Now you see me doing plyometrics all the time, whether it's in the gym, whether it's even inside my house sometimes or in a park in downtown Denver, like whenever I have the opportunity it's usually just so you know, three to four times a week and it usually takes 10 to 15 minutes every session to do all of the plyometrics exercises that I do. Now I learned my plyometrics in college at the University of Colorado, I've also added some since then, there's a lot of different ways to do plyometrics, there's plenty of videos out there that you can watch on how to do different plyometrics. But specifically for cadence, these are the three that I hone in on and I'm going to give one little mental strategy as well at the end, but three that I hone in on to increase my steps per minute. So they're really, it's nothing earth-shattering, but if you add these into your mix of weekly training, and again I do three to four times a week, you're going to want to start out one to two times a week, probably just one and then the next week bump up to two and then hold that for two to three weeks and then eventually bump up to three and then see how the legs are feeling because it is hard, especially if you're doing these within a high volume training program, okay? So here we go, we've got quick feet, butt kickers, and toe taps, all right? Quick feet, butt kickers, and toe taps. Now all the plyometrics that I do, you see me jumping over a box right now, like this helps as well, but that is this, for example, this box jumps are more for explosive through the entire gait cycle. I'm focused more so directly on my foot strike and how quickly I can bring my other foot to the ground to get to that next step through my gait cycle. And so number one, quick feet, it's very straightforward. You're standing in place and you're moving your feet as quick as you possibly can. I do three sets by 30 seconds, three to four times a week, all right? And it burns, baby. Oh, does it burn? It does not, it hurts actually, like you are tired by the end. Your heart rate will increase quite a bit. Now don't start with three by 30 seconds, I would start by, again, one by 20 seconds and then come back, you know, five days later and do it again until you feel like your legs are starting to respond to the quick feet. Next is butt kickers. I love this one. You're going down 20 to 30 meters and then coming back 20 to 30 meters, raising your feet up to your butt and literally kicking your butt. And again, this is to help with especially the knee joint and everything going on in that knee joint, just trying to recruit those fast twitch muscle fibers specifically around the knee so you can bring your leg through that swing phase of your gait so that you can return your foot, again, back to the ground as quick as possible. So butt kickers is number two. Love butt kickers and I do, I do down and back three times. So again, 20 to 30 meters, you don't, it doesn't have to be exact. Usually takes, oh gosh, usually takes about 15 seconds to get down and then come back, okay? So those are butt kickers number two. And last but not least, toe taps. Very simple. I like to do it on, I like to tap my toes onto any object, whether it's a curb, you could do a curb, you could do a step at your house, I'm using a foam roller in this example, just don't step on the foam roller, but I'm in the gym doing toe taps. So just raising my legs up just a little bit. Just a, it's a little different than quick feet. Quick feet, you're barely raising your toes off the ground, barely. Toe taps, you're raising them up, you know, six to eight inches as quick as possible, tapping and being light on your feet. That's another key, key point is with toe taps, with quick feet, even with butt kickers. You want to be light on your feet, meaning you're not spending much time on the ground. In fact, as little as possible. So you're, you're just dancing over the ground is another way to think of it. You're just like being light, light, light on your feet. Now mentally, here's my tip that I use as far as the muscle groups that I'm focused on to increase my cadence. I'm really focused on my lower quads just above my knee. Okay. And here's the exact specific muscles for the scientists out there or the people that are really interested, but those muscles right there spelled out. So because again, it's that snappiness through the knee joint that I'm really concerned, concerned about. Like I really want to make sure my knee joint is fluid and is snapping through that swing phase of my gait. And the second area mentally that I focus on is my ankle flexion, specifically the front of my ankle, um, right, like your lower shin, essentially. And again, here's the muscles that I had from a scientific level that you can look into. And again, it's that ankle flexion where I'm snapping my foot down. Now I'm over exaggerating right now with my hand, but I want my foot to just, just touch the ground, just touch the ground ever so gently. And again, it's all, see it's, it's, if this is my ankle, it's hard to do with my hand, but it's right here on the front of my ankle. Okay. Then I'm just, and it will get tired, but with the quick feet, with the toe taps, especially those two, you will increase the, um, the endurance. That's not the right word. The, um, yeah, yeah. The, the, the strength of those muscles, but the, their ability to withstand that ankle flexion for longer periods of time, the more work you do, uh, with these little exercises that I just mentioned. Okay. There we go. I went a little long there, longer than I wanted. I got a little excited cadence, RPMs, SPMs. I'm, I'm, I'm not obsessed with them, but as I continue to tinker with this road marathon business and trying to get through my gate as quick as I can, um, keeping in mind that it's part of the bigger picture of my entire running economy. Um, I'm excited to dive more and more into this topic. Mentally for me as I'm out running a lot of high volume right now, uh, but also for all of you and yes, question of the day, do you, have you ever focused in your training on your cadence, on your RPMs and, um, how has it impacted your training? All right. And what tips, all right. Maybe you have some ideas on how you have increased your RPMs. All of that is fair game. All of it down below in the comments. Okay. Blog's not over. It's Saturday family day. Uh, let's go see if everyone is awake inside. Oh, we could go on and on about this. This is a good topic. All right. Here we go. I almost forgot everyone that some boxes arrived at the PO box. Thanks for sending these. All right. Let's see here. First of all, and yes, using, using the antler knife from Blake. Okay. Here we go. Oh, hello. Oh, wait a minute. So these are some ultra shoes. We're going to have to talk about these. These are the temp twos and these are this is the V-hole for the second time. Hmm. We're going to have to get to the bottom of this bottom line may have some ultra shoes to pass along to all of you in the studio. Oh, boy. Interesting. Okay. Moving on here. Let's see. Second box. This is from, uh, from Walmart. Oh, from Walmart. Oh, everyone. Teamwork makes the dream work. True love, Pampers, Pampers, diapers. Let's see. Who's this from? Size one. Perfect. Okay. True love's cheering in the background. I'm not sure who they're from. Thank you for sending diapers. Henry appreciates it. The true love says best gift ever. That is amazing. I don't know who they're from though, so I can't give a shout out. Uh, well, they're from Walmart, but somebody sent them. So anyway, thank you for sending those. And then last but not least, this is a little package from the Bronx, New York. Uh, Janicee. Shout out to Janicee. Okay. Let's see here. Hold on. Hold on. Oh, my, my crafted by Ness. I have a feeling this is, hold on. Let's see here. Let's open this up. Oh, my, my crafted by Ness. First and foremost, congrats to you and true love. Oh, hold on. You and true love for baby Henry. Secondly, thank you for the daily information and inspiration you provide on your channel. My wife and I watch daily. Lastly, I look forward to seeing you in New York City for the marathon group run, hoping for serious PRs for us both. That's awesome. Much love and success to you and your family from Hylene and Noel. Oh, look at this. Oh, my goodness. It's a onesie. It says, uh, daddy's running buddy butter my bread. That is a me. Oh, my gosh. It says seek beauty, work hard and love each other. Okay. That's amazing. We're going to have to put this in a shout out to crafted by Ness. I'm not afraid to give a shout out crafted by Ness on Instagram, crafted by Ness. N-E-S-S. That is so awesome. Thank you, crafted by Ness. Family movie night, Saturday night, family movie night. Gosh, I love it. I absolutely love it. I love that it's Paris. Yeah, after Tokyo.