Guides · Cadence on a treadmill
Is your cadence lower or higher on a treadmill than outside?
Your watch shows about 170 steps a minute on your easy runs outside. On the treadmill, at the same pace on the display, it sits a few steps lower, or a few higher. Is the treadmill changing how you run, or only the number?
At the same speed, studies found runners take about the same steps per minute on a treadmill as on the ground, on average. On the pattern one lab study found, a belt 3 percent off moves your cadence by under one step a minute. What it moves is your pace.
What the research found at the same speed
A 2020 review pooled 16 studies that ran people at matched speeds on a motorized treadmill and on the ground. On average, it found no real difference in step rate, and no reliable lean in either direction. The authors graded that evidence low, so read it as "about the same" and nothing finer.
Single studies did not all agree. Where one found a gap, the review suggests those runners may have been less at home on the belt, or may have felt the belt as faster than the same speed outside.
Settling in matters too. Getting used to the belt took from half a minute to nine minutes across the studies, and most put it near eight. Your first few treadmill minutes may not show your settled stride yet.
So a cadence a few steps lower indoors is as possible as one a few steps higher. The more useful question is whether your two runs were really at the same speed.
Why the belt barely touches your cadence
Cadence is your steps counted against a clock, so a belt's speed error can reach it only through your speed. Speed does change how you run, but most of the change goes into the length of each stride. A lab study of recreational runners found that steps per minute rose about 4 percent across a range of speeds where each stride grew about 28 percent. The guide to step-based distance on a treadmill shows what that pattern does to a distance counted from your steps.
Picture a cyclist on a flat road. She can keep her legs turning at the same rhythm and still go faster by shifting into a bigger gear. Her pedal count shows how busy her legs are, and it says little about the bike's speed. Your step rate is the pedaling, and the length of your stride is the gear.
A belt that runs a little off changes the gear and leaves the pedaling almost alone. On the pattern that lab study found, a belt 3 percent off moves your cadence by under one step a minute. That figure is arithmetic on a group average, so your legs may differ a little. A belt a few percent off will not explain a gap of several steps, so how you run on the belt that day is one place to look.
What the belt does change: the pace beside your cadence
The belt's error lands on the numbers next to your cadence. Say the display reads 6.3 mph, which is a 9:31 mile, and your watch shows 166 steps a minute.
The same run on a belt that turns 2 percent slow
This runner and belt are invented. The cadence shift comes from a lab group average. A 2 percent slow belt sits at the slow edge of what a 2021 study measured on four lab treadmills, whose belts averaged from about 98 percent of the setting up to about 103 percent.
| If the belt runs | Pace on the display | Real pace | Steps a minute |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 percent slow | 9:31 | 9:43 | about 165.5, down from 166 |
Your cadence barely moved, and your log is the part that went wrong. The 9:31 easy run you wrote down was really a 9:43 run, so the 9:31 you expect to feel easy on the road is a pace you have not been training at.
Any step length you work out from the displayed pace inherits the pace's error. Some watches work in the other direction, and the guide on how one watch turns cadence into a pace covers that.
So treat the two numbers differently. Compare your cadence on the treadmill with your outdoor cadence only after the first several minutes, at what you believe is the same speed. For pace and stride, the belt's real speed is the one input you may never have checked. When the belt runs off its setting, putting it right belongs to the owner's manual or a technician.
Find the speed under your steps
That belt sets the gear your legs have been pedaling in, and the display never measured it. Set your easy speed with nobody on the belt and stay on the floor beside it. Treadwell measures how fast the belt is really turning. It needs an iPhone Pro, because it works from that phone's camera and its LiDAR. That reading is the pace that belongs next to your steps a minute.
Put a real pace next to your cadence
Read the belt at your easy setting before your next treadmill run. You need an iPhone Pro to use Treadwell.
Scan with your iPhone Pro to get the appTested: in our tachometer tests the app read within about 2 percent of true belt speed.
Quick answers
Is cadence lower or higher on a treadmill? At the same speed, studies found runners take about the same steps per minute on a treadmill as on the ground, on average. On the pattern one lab study found, a belt 3 percent off moves your cadence by under one step a minute. What it moves is your pace.
Why is my cadence lower on the treadmill? Start with the comparison itself. Use treadmill numbers from after the first several minutes, and check that both runs were really at the same speed, because a slower run tends to come with a slightly lower cadence. If both hold and the gap is still several steps, look at how you run on the belt that day.
Does treadmill speed affect cadence? It does, a little. On the group pattern from that lab study, steps per minute rose about 1 percent for every 7 percent of extra speed. Most of a speed change shows up in the length of each stride.
What does cadence mean on a treadmill? It means the same as it does outside: how many steps you take in one minute. Research papers often count strides instead, and one stride is two steps, so 83 strides a minute is 166 steps.
Sources.
- Treadmill versus ground: Van Hooren B. et al., Sports Med 50(4):785-813 (2020), PMC7069922. Pooling 16 crossover studies at matched speeds on non-inclined motorized treadmills, stride frequency did not differ significantly (mean difference 0.02 strides a second, interval minus 0.03 to 0.06), with evidence graded low. The authors link the gaps some single studies found to runners less comfortable on the belt or perceiving its speed as faster, and report familiarization estimates from 30 seconds to 9 minutes, most near 8.
- Cadence and speed: Cavanagh P.R. and Kram R., Med Sci Sports Exerc 21(4):467-479 (1989). Across 3.15 to 4.12 meters per second on a level treadmill, stride frequency rose about 4 percent and stride length about 28 percent in male recreational distance runners. These are group averages.
- How far a belt strays: Scientific Reports 11:2244 (2021), Willwacher and colleagues, PMC7838258. Four lab machines, one of them heavily worn, ran at mean belt speeds from roughly 98 percent up to 103 percent of target. That range describes those four treadmills only, not gyms in general.
- The runners at 170 and 166 steps a minute, the 6.3 mph run, the 2 percent slow belt and the cyclist are my own illustrations. The under-one-step figure and the 1 percent for every 7 percent rule are my arithmetic on the 1989 group averages, not a prediction for any one runner.