From the home, to the gym, the treadmill has become a staple part of many cardio equipment setup. And that’s not without reason. They are convenient and increasingly affordable. Getting yourself to a treadmill is one thing – getting the most out of a treadmill workout is another. The best return on your investment in a treadmill will only happen if you’re intentional about it. And here’s how to achieve exactly that
Preset Programs
Most treadmills come with preset exercise programs that you can activate at a touch of a button. These are custom-built for different health goals such as calorie-burning, or simply to simulate certain workout contexts like ‘fun run’, ‘hill climb’, etc. They are essentially combinations of different speed and incline modes that run for a preset length of time.
Make use of these preset programs to get out of your comfort zone and the familiarity that can lead to mental exhaustion. With these programs, your treadmill becomes your personal instructor in a way, who tells you what to do and when, as the machine takes over the control of the running speed, incline and segment durations.
You can choose a different inbuilt program for each session to work-out your body in a more comprehensive way, with less mental exhaustion
Warm up and cool down
The mere fact that you considered jumping onto a treadmill tells me you are more highly driven than many. This also means you are likely very susceptible to the temptation to just jump on the treadmill to get the ‘most’ out of the 30-or-so minutes you scheduled for it. Bad idea! Starting a treadmill workout without first warming up, is a sure way to self-inflicted muscle and joint trauma. When done right, warming ‘loosens up’ your muscles, tendons and ligaments to take on the task of the fast repetitive movements of the workout with ease. These tissues naturally stretch in a manner referred to as viscoelastic. This property means you’ll get more from them, and safely, if you correctly warm up before the workout.
A good warm-up should start away from the treadmill. Take time before you step on the treadmill to stretch. A full head-to-toe stretch concentrating on the key areas like the neck, shoulders, lower back, hips, knees and ankles should do it. This should take between 5 and 10 minutes.
The second part of the warm up is on the treadmill. Start off with a slow-pace walk and take up gradually it to around speed 4 (4km/hour) in 5 minutes.
You are now ready to start your planned workout.
Frequency over intensity
When it comes to any health or beauty goal, ‘repetition’ is the word. Any goal-oriented activity in this area, needs to be frequent enough to feel that this is the world you live in, not one you visit once in a while. This forces the body to restructure itself to adapt to that world. This ability to adapt is what enables humans to lively and thrive in extremely differing habitats, all the way from the Antarctica to the Sahara. In case of treadmill workouts, this is what produces the reduction in blood pressure, reduction in belly fat, etc.
To get the most from your treadmill, it’s thus more important to use it frequently than intensely. A 25-minute daily workout for 4 days in a week will do you way more good than a single 100-minute session. You need at least 4 days in a week with a cardio workout to keep a healthy heart and overall health.
Some incline
Treadmill workouts differ in several ways from outdoor versions. One important difference is the lack of the outdoor air resistance with treadmills. The other is the ‘shifting ground’ phenomenon produced by the movement of the treadmill belt. The treadmill ‘ground’ moves itself reducing the effort you use to propel yourself against it. These differences make treadmill workouts less physically demanding.
This is where the treadmill incline comes in. Having some incline in a workout increases the level of difficulty which, in a way, compensates for the reduced physical difficulty.
Even an incline of 1 degree increases the physical effort invested in each step, thus increasing the calories burnt across the entire workout
Engage your ears
Running on a treadmill lacks the ‘adventure’ element of outdoor workouts. Running in place in the corner of some room soon or later gets boring, and starts to feel harder (even though it technically isn’t) than outdoor jogging.
Engaging your ears with music goes a long way in counteracting this boredom. Needless to say, the kind of music should be the right one for the occasion. It’s workout, so keep it within a genre and mode that keeps you ‘pumped’. Most treadmills now come with an onboard music player with Bluetooth, flash and/or audio jack connectivity. If you’re like me and you don’t find the acoustics of this ‘energizing’ enough, you can opt for your own headset, preferably with SD-card or Bluetooth sourced music.
Happy Jogging 😊