Treadmill Workout

If you work out on indoor cardio equipment (well, really, what is OUTDOOR cardio equipment?), then you may be awfully bored with what you have been doing. The following is a fantastic treadmill workout which my clients love (to hate)!

First check your treadmill to see what the incline percentage is, i.e. is the range 0%-10%, or 0%-15%. They do vary, but most treadmills now have the 0% to 15% range.

Start on the 0% incline, at 3.5 miles per hour, or a comfortable walk. Stay there for about 3 minutes and then increase your speed until you are at the fastest, but also comfortable walking or running speed. What that means is, if you are a runner, you will need to increase your speed until you are running very comfortably. For a walker you will have to increase your speed until you feel as if you need to break into a run, and then back it off until you are walking at a brisk pace, but comfortably.

Once you have established your pace, the workout really begins. I am going to outline one workout in this post. There are quite a few you can do, but I am going to leave those for later posts, so check back.

After you warm-up and find your pace (which should take approx. 5 minutes), increase the incline to 5% for one minute. You must try to keep your original pace throughout the workout. After one minute at 5%, drop the incline back to 0% for one minute. Repeat, raising the incline to 7%, dropping to 0%. Repeat the same sequence at 9%, 11%, 13% and 15%. In other words, up one minute, down one minute. Again, throughout the work out you need to try to maintain your original pace. Cool down for 3-5 minutes and then stretch.

This is an interval workout without the need to increase your speed, which a lot of people assume they need to do. I love this type of cardio training because you do not have to be a runner, walkers can achieve the same intensity (and same results) without running.

The workout takes 25-30 minutes to complete and burns approx. 9X more fat then steady-state cardio activity. SO if you got on the treadmill and walked or ran steadily for 45-60 minutes, you would achieve LESS fat loss results then if you performed the above workout for 25-30 minutes.

I would say that was much better use of your time, wouldn't you?