How to increase stride length and stride frequency for sprinting

Your speed is the product of two things: how far you travel with each stride (stride length) and how many strides you take per second (stride frequency).

Speed = stride length × stride frequency

Run 2.15 m per stride at 4.6 strides per second and you’re moving at 9.9 m/s. Any improvement in speed shows up as longer strides, quicker strides or both. In sprinting, a stride usually means a single step, from one foot touching down to the other, and that’s how it’s used here.

The two aren’t independent. A study of 36 sprinters by Hunter, Marshall and McNair (2004) found a negative interaction between them: athletes with longer strides tended to have a lower stride frequency, and the other way round. The biggest factor was how much each athlete projected themselves upwards at take-off. Push more vertically and you spend longer in the air, so the stride gets longer but the frequency drops. Reach for the ground and the stride gets longer while you brake. The aim is to raise one without giving the other away.

Which one is holding you back?

There is no ideal mix that suits everyone. Salo and colleagues (2011) followed elite sprinters across many races and found that some ran their best times with a higher stride frequency and others with longer strides. Leg length is part of it: longer-legged sprinters tend to take longer strides at a lower frequency.

Film yourself side-on at speed and look for these signs:

Your own runs are the best guide. Compare a good rep with a poor one: when you run well, which one changes?

How to increase stride length without overstriding

Stride length is decided mostly during ground contact, not in the air. The more force you put into the ground in the right direction, the further you travel before the next foot lands. Weyand and colleagues (2000) compared faster and slower runners at their top speeds and found the faster runners didn’t reposition their legs through the air any more quickly. They applied greater force to the ground in a shorter contact.

Strike under your centre of mass

Overstriding is reaching for a longer stride: the foot lands well ahead of your centre of mass, with the shin angled back and the knee close to straight. The stride gets longer, but every contact starts with a braking force, so you lose speed. Strike the ground close under the hips, with the foot already moving down and back as it lands, so the force keeps driving you forwards.

Stiff ankle, stiff knee

At touchdown, hold the ankle dorsiflexed, toes pulled up towards the shin, so you land on the ball of the foot instead of letting the heel sink. The knee should be only slightly bent, around 150° in fast sprinters, and shouldn’t collapse through contact. A stiff leg makes use of the stretch-shortening cycle: the muscles and tendons absorb the landing and return it as force. If the ankle or knee gives, that force is lost and the stride shortens.

Push into full extension when accelerating

In acceleration, stride length grows with every step, from roughly a metre out of the blocks to over two metres for trained sprinters at top speed. It grows because each push finishes in triple extension, with a positive shin angle directing the force backwards. Cut the pushes short with quick, choppy steps and the stride never gets the chance to grow. More in sprint acceleration technique.

Build strength and power

Because stride length comes from force, a large part of improving it long term is getting stronger and more powerful: lower-body strength work, plus plyometrics such as bounds that train you to produce force in a short contact. Technique makes sure that force reaches the ground in the right direction.

Drills for stride length

For wicket runs, place mini-hurdles or flat markers in a line, spaced to your stride length at speed. Widening the spacing a little at a time asks for a longer stride while the wickets stop you reaching for it.

How to increase stride frequency

Every stride is a ground contact plus a flight. Shortening the flight would cost you length, so the frequency you want comes from shorter contacts that still produce the same force. At top speed, contacts in elite sprinters already last under a tenth of a second.

Shorter contacts, same force

Short contacts come from applying force quickly, not from getting off the ground early. A sprinter who simply tries to move the feet faster usually pushes less, which shortens the flight and the stride with it. What you want is the same force in less time: a dorsiflexed ankle and a stiff leg at touchdown, and plyometrics that train the stretch-shortening cycle. More in ground contact time.

Fix overstriding first

A foot that lands out in front stays on the ground until your body has passed over it, which lengthens the contact and lowers your frequency. Low frequency is often a foot-strike problem rather than a slow leg, so check your shin angle at touchdown before anything else.

Heel recovery and front-side mechanics

After toe-off, the heel should fold up under the hips and the thigh should come through high, to about 70° from vertical. If the heel trails low and long behind you, the leg comes through late and tends to reach for the ground. Most of the leg action should happen in front of your body rather than behind it, which coaches call front-side mechanics.

Arms in rhythm

The arms move in time with the legs. Keep the elbows near 90°, drive them back from the shoulder and keep the shoulders relaxed. A tight, short or wide arm action, or tension in the neck and shoulders, makes a high rhythm harder to hold.

Drills for stride frequency

Holding frequency late in a race

When sprinters slow down in the last part of a 100 m, it’s usually frequency that drops. In a study of well-trained sprinters, Bezodis and colleagues found that, on average, stride frequency fell from 4.40 to 4.25 per second between 30–40 m and 70–80 m, while stride length didn’t change. The fastest in the group limited their slowdown by lengthening their stride as their frequency fell. It’s one reason coaches put so much emphasis on staying relaxed and holding your mechanics late in a race.

How to measure stride length and frequency

• Stride frequency = strides ÷ time. 10 strides in 2.2 s is 4.5 per second.
• Stride length = distance ÷ strides. 20 m in 10 strides is 2.0 m.
• From video: count the frames from one foot touching down to the other foot touching down, then divide the frame rate by that number. 7 frames at 30 fps is 30 ÷ 7 = 4.3 per second. One frame either way changes the answer a lot (6 frames is 5.0, 8 frames is 3.75), so average over several strides.
• Cadence is the same measure in strides per minute, common in distance running: 4.6 per second is 276 per minute.

SprintVision measures both from a normal phone video. It marks each footprint on the track, measures the length and timing of every stride and plots the whole run, so you can see how your stride length and frequency build from the start to top speed, and where they level off. Frequency is rated against research targets; length is shown so you can compare your runs.

Sources

• Hunter, J. P., Marshall, R. N. and McNair, P. J. (2004). “Interaction of step length and step rate during sprint running”, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. PubMed
• Salo, A. I. T. et al. (2011). “Elite sprinting: are athletes individually step-frequency or step-length reliant?”, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
• Weyand, P. G. et al. (2000). “Faster top running speeds are achieved with greater ground forces not more rapid leg movements”, Journal of Applied Physiology.
• Bezodis, I. N. et al. “Changes in step characteristics between the maximum velocity and deceleration phases of the 100 metre sprint run”, ISBS Proceedings Archive. Link
• “Kinematics of maximal speed sprinting with different running speed, leg length, and step characteristics”, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 1:37, 2019.