The universal step rate advice comes from one afternoon of counting

An observation made at a single race got turned into a target every recreational runner is now told to hit, regardless of their legs.

Somebody once counted the step rate of elite runners at a championship, found most of them close to a certain figure, and published the observation. It was a fair observation. What happened next was not. It became a target, then a coaching cue, then a setting on a watch that buzzes at you, and now recreational runners are being told to change their gait to match a number derived from athletes running considerably faster than they ever will.

Step rate is not independent of speed. Run faster and, up to a point, you take both longer strides and more of them. The elites being counted were racing. A runner going at nine minutes per mile who forces the step rate of somebody racing at five is not copying elite mechanics, they are shortening their stride to hit an arbitrary count.

Step rate also depends on how long your legs are. A tall runner with long levers has a slower natural swing period than a short one, for the same reason a longer pendulum swings more slowly. Telling both of them to hit the same number means telling one of them to fight their own anatomy for the whole run.

Now, the underlying instinct behind the advice is not stupid. Many recreational runners do overstride, land with the foot well ahead of the body, and take a hard braking impact through a straight leg. Increasing step rate is a quick, effective way to fix that, because shortening the stride pulls the landing point back under the hips almost automatically. It is a good intervention aimed at a real problem.

It is just not a universal target. It is a correction for a specific fault, and the correct dose is a modest increase from wherever that individual currently is, not a jump to a published figure. Five to eight percent above your own habitual rate is enough to move the landing point. Twenty percent produces a shuffling, tense, energetically wasteful gait that costs more than the overstriding did.

Measure your own rate on an easy run. That is your baseline. Nudge it if something hurts, leave it alone if nothing does.

The number in the article was a description of other people. It was never a prescription for you, and it certainly was never a rule.