Orangetheory Base, Push & All Out Pace: BPM Cheat Sheet

TL;DR: In Orangetheory, Base is a conversational pace you can hold for 20+ minutes, Push is uncomfortable but sustainable for a few minutes, and All-Out is a 30–60 second sprint. For most joggers that's roughly 4.5–5.5 mph (Base), 5.5–6.5 mph (Push), and 6.5–7.5+ mph (All-Out). Match music around 150–160 BPM for Base, 160–170 BPM for Push, and 170–180+ BPM for All-Out to keep your legs locked to the effort instead of the clock.

The tread block is where most people either sandbag or blow up. The coach calls "Push pace" and you either barely nudge the speed up or you crank it so hard you're hanging off the handrails 40 seconds later. Both waste the interval. The fix is knowing your three numbers cold, and then using music tempo to hold them without staring at the console.

What Base, Push, and All-Out actually mean

Orangetheory doesn't hand everyone the same speeds. The three efforts are defined by feel and heart rate, not a fixed mph. That's the part people miss.

• Base pace is your foundation. You should be able to hold a short conversation and sustain it for 20 to 30 minutes. Heart rate sits around the top of the green zone (roughly 71–83% of max). This is not a warm-up jog; it's a working pace you could keep going at if you had to.
• Push pace takes it up a notch. You can still talk, but only three or four words at a time before you need a breath. It's meant to be uncomfortable in a controlled way, holdable for a few minutes. This is the orange zone.
• All-Out is exactly what it sounds like: a full effort for 30 to 60 seconds where you empty the tank. Short red-zone surges. If you can do an All-Out for two minutes, it wasn't an All-Out.

The whole method is interval training: alternating those high-intensity blocks (Push and All-Out) with recovery (Base) forces your body to adapt and raises the speed you can hold over time.

The pace cheat sheet by runner type

Orangetheory groups treadmill users into three lanes: power walkers, joggers, and runners. Here's the widely used starting framework. Treat these as a launch point, not a prescription—your green and orange heart-rate zones are the real referees.

A clean rule of thumb from the coaching side: your Push is usually about 1 mph faster than Base, and your All-Out is about 2 mph faster than Base. Power walkers scale by incline instead of speed, which spares the knees while still spiking the heart rate.

As you get fitter, bump the whole ladder. If your Base creeps up to 5.6 mph, move Push and All-Out up to 6.6 and 7.6 at the same time. The gaps between the three stay roughly the same; the floor just rises.

Why cadence beats speed for holding a pace

Here's the reframe most Orangetheory members never hear: chasing a treadmill number is a losing game because the belt speed and your stride length keep shifting how your legs feel. Cadence—your steps per minute—is the more stable handle.

Recreational runners naturally land somewhere between 150 and 170 steps per minute (SPM) at easy-to-moderate paces. When you speed up for Push and All-Out, cadence rises with it. If you anchor each effort to a step rate instead of a belt number, you stop overstriding when you get tired and you stop reaching for the handrails when you get scared.

There's real evidence this matters. Research on running economy consistently shows that overstriding—landing with your foot well ahead of your body—acts like a brake and loads the knee. Nudging cadence up shortens that stride and moves the footstrike back under your center of mass. On a tread block, a quicker turnover is often what separates a clean Push from a flailing one at the same speed.

Matching music BPM to each effort

Music tempo (beats per minute) and cadence (steps per minute) live on the same scale, which is why a well-chosen track can pull your legs into rhythm automatically. The trick is picking BPM ranges that map to each Orangetheory effort.

A 2020 meta-analysis in the Psychology of Sport and Exercise found that synchronizing movement to music can improve performance and lower perceived effort during endurance work (Terry et al., 2020). Translation: the right tempo makes a hard Push feel a click easier, which is exactly what you want when the coach says 45 seconds left.

If your legs feel like they're fighting the beat, you don't have to switch songs. Try a half-time feel—take one step every two beats—so a driving 90 BPM track supports a controlled recovery walk, or a 160 BPM track can anchor a slower base without frantic turnover.

The playlist problem (and the fix)

Building an Orangetheory-style tread playlist by hand is tedious. You'd need a block of 150–160 BPM songs for Base, a stack of 160–170 BPM tracks for Push, and a handful of 170–180+ BPM bangers for All-Out—and most people have no idea what tempo their favorite songs actually are. Manually skipping tracks mid-interval to find the right energy wrecks the flow the whole method depends on.

This is where a tool like GagaRun earns its place. It reads the real BPM of the music you already listen to and filters your library so only songs matching your target cadence play. Set it to 165 BPM for a Push block and every track that comes up keeps your footstrikes locked in—no thumbing through your phone while your heart rate spikes. It's the difference between running to the music and running against it.

For more on the science of stride rate, see our guide on how to increase running cadence without running faster.

Frequently asked questions

What if I can't hit the suggested Orangetheory paces?

Drop them. The paces are a starting framework, not a mandate. Your green and orange heart-rate zones are what actually define Base and Push for your body. A Base pace you can barely sustain for five minutes is really a Push. Adjust down until the effort matches the description, then build from there.

Should I use incline instead of speed for Push and All-Out?

Power walkers should—raising incline spikes heart rate without pounding the joints. Joggers and runners can add incline occasionally for variety, but speed is the more direct lever. If your knees complain at higher speeds, shifting some Push work to incline is a smart trade.

How do I know my natural cadence?

Run at an easy, comfortable pace on the tread for 60 seconds and count how many times your right foot lands, then double it. That's your baseline SPM. Most recreational runners land between 150 and 170. Build your Base music around that number, then add 5–10% for Push efforts.