Stride frequency is the wrong number to chase

Turning the legs over faster is an outcome of hitting the ground harder, not a skill you can drill on its own.

Put a stopwatch on a fast sprinter and you can count the steps. Put a force plate under one and you learn something more useful, which is that the steps are a symptom.

Sprint speed is stride length multiplied by stride frequency. That identity is true and almost useless, because the two terms are not independent and you cannot raise one by wishing. Athletes who deliberately increase turnover usually do it by shortening the stride and softening the contact, and the net speed is the same or slower. They look busier. The clock does not care how busy you look.

What actually raises speed at the top end is how much force goes into the track in the fraction of a second the foot is down. Higher force, shorter contact, and frequency rises by itself as a consequence. Nobody in a final is thinking about cadence. They are thinking about pushing.

So why does the number keep getting coached directly? Because it is easy to measure. Anyone with a phone camera and a frame counter can produce a steps-per-second figure, and a figure that exists tends to become a target. That is a general disease in sport science, not a sprinting one. Measurable does not mean causal.

There is a fair objection. In the acceleration phase, the first fifteen or twenty metres, turnover genuinely does need coaching, because a lot of young athletes stand up early and stall. Quick, aggressive steps out of the blocks are a real cue and they work. My argument is about maximum velocity, where the mechanics invert and the same cue starts producing shorter, weaker contacts.

The honest coaching version is to stop talking about frequency and talk about what the foot does. Where does it land relative to the hip. How stiff is the ankle at contact. Does the athlete let the knee collapse and then push, which is slow, or does the whole limb behave like a loaded spring that gives back what it took. Those are trainable things with clear drills behind them.

Frequency then goes up on its own and someone films it and writes an article about the athlete's remarkable turnover. Which is roughly like praising a car for its rev counter. The needle moved because of what the engine did, and the needle is not the engine.