Welcome to the wonderful world of treadmill workouts! The treadmill is probably the most popular machine for cardio training indoors. Since the day the very first treadmill was placed in the gym till this day, the number of people that are using them has grown incredibly.
There is an excellent reason for that! There are so many benefits of using a treadmill. Treadmills became more silent, better in design and quality, and so easy to use.
Nowadays, treadmills provide you with useful information such as heart rate, number of calories burnt during the workout, time, pace, and inclination angle.
Many good treadmills offer you various programs and possibilities to automatically change the pace and incline angle based on your pulse.
But the main reason why so many people are using a treadmill for their cardio training is that the treadmill is the most efficient cardio equipment for workouts indoors.
While working out on a treadmill, you burn more calories in a minute than you would on any other cardio machine. Also, the treadmill is great to increase your endurance and help you burn body fat.
Reduction of Body Fat
Now that you know that the treadmill is the best machine for burning calories, the question is how to use that potential to reduce body fat and lose that extra weight.
We lose weight when we burn more calories than we consume during the day as simple as that! So what you need to do is when you are on the treadmill, you need to get your body into a “fat-burning zone.”
This is the speed of your heart rate during the workout that is between 65 and 70% of the maximum speed, which is the ideal speed for weight loss.
When you are exercising at low or moderate-intensity, your body can provide enough oxygen for the muscles that you activate during the exercises.
Opposed to that, when you are exercising at high intensity, your body can not provide enough oxygen for you to produce enough energy. So your body produces a higher level of energy anaerobically, meaning without oxygen.
The energy created in that way uses more carbs and less fat. We are never able to burn all the fat or all the carbs and vice verse. If your goal is to burn more fat, the “fat-burning zone” makes a lot of sense. Let me elaborate.
The truth is that with low-intensity workouts, you burn more calories from fat. But the percentage of fat is not what is essential for long term permanent loss of fat.
Remember, weight loss is based on the ratio between the intake and burning of calories. With low-intensity training, you might burn a more significant percentage of fat. Still, the real amount of burnt fat will be much larger with high-intensity training because of the overall number of burnt calories.
Your goal should be to burn as many calories as you can during each workout. In that manner, you are creating a constant deficit of calories, which leads to the loss of fat and body weight.
Next to the larger number of calories burned during the high-intensity training, there is also the larger calorie burn after the training itself.
After you have done a high-intensity training, your metabolism remains faster to regain the energy consumed during the workout. So you are actually burning calories after the workout doing nothing, just while resting. How cool is that!
Reduced Risk of Heart Disease
High-intensity training not only helps you with the loss of fat; it also helps with lowering the risk of heart disease much more than the low-intensity training.
How To Know How Many Calories You Burnt?
Most of the treadmills give you the possibility to know how many calories you burnt during your workout, but these estimates are usually incorrect.
The easiest way to calculate how many calories you burnt is this: if you are walking on a treadmill at the pace that is not hard for you at all, you are burning between 3 and 5 calories in a minute.
At a moderate pace, you are burning between 6 and 10 calories in a minute, while at a high pace, you are burning between 11 and 15 calories in a minute.
Program For Faster Loss of Fat
Since high-intensity training is the best way to get rid of fat for good, it would be best to train as hard and as long as you can. The result of this would be a high level of burnt calories and fat.
Unfortunately, it is impossible that you workout for long with that intensity. What you can do is interval training. That means you should have periods of high-intensity training switching with a period of low and moderate-intensity training.
I’m sure you are thinking now, “How can I know at what intensity I am working out?” There are two methods to determine that. The first is to follow your heart rate. For this, you would have to have something to measure your pulse.
You can determine your maximum heart rate when you subtract your age from 220. For example, if you are 35, your maximum heart rate should be approximately 185.
You should workout at 65% of your maximum, which means 120. Although the experts are recommending this method, we are somewhat skeptical since these estimates are based on very general statistics.
Actually, your maximum heart rate could be much higher or lower. It can also vary based on many different factors, such as how much sleep you have had, time of day, stress levels, general health condition, even the weather.
This is the reason why we think that the second method is far better, more reliable, and much easier. It is based on the scale from 1 to 20 that is there to measure the effort you put in while exercising (1 means there is no effort at all while 20 means the highest possible effort).
With this scale, you only measure how hard it is for you to exercise at a certain pace. There are three levels of intensity, and those are:
Low – between 12 and 13 on the scale meaning about 65% of maximum heart rate.
Medium – between 15 and 16 on the scale meaning above 80% of the maximum heart rate.
High – between 17 and 18 on the scale meaning above 90% of maximum heart rate.
While exercising at a low intensity, you should be able to normally talk while doing so, but not able to sing. If you can not talk normally, that means that the intensity is high.
On the other hand, if you can sing normally, you are not training hard enough. At the medium level, you shouldn’t be able to talk normally while working out, but still, this should be the intensity that you can maintain for at least 20 minutes before you get exhausted.
High-intensity training is the one when you are training really hard but not at your maximum; you should feel that you can keep training like this for at least ten minutes.
Low-intensity intervals are there for you to increase your endurance and to recover after high-intensity intervals. Medium intensity intervals are very important since, during those intervals, your muscles are creating lactic acid.
Through various complex chemical reactions, this lactic acid is transformed into energy. At this exercise level, your body produces more lactic acid that cant be all transformed to energy, so it is piling up.
This leads to muscle fatigue, which makes you slow down or stop with your activities. While doing some exercise at this level, you are enhancing your body’s ability to process this lactic acid. At the same time, you are training to be able to exercise more intense at a longer period.
As a result, the levels of workout intensity that used to be hard to do at one point now becomes easier. This means that over time you will be able to workout longer and harder and burn more and more calories and fat.
High-intensity intervals of your training will help with this process and will also make you stronger, especially in the lower body area targeting glutes, quads, and tendons.
The treadmill is ideal for this fat reduction program. It allows you to precisely determine the speed, inclination, and duration of the training.
It makes no difference if you are a beginner or a professional athlete, you can tailor your training according to your goals and needs.
As our suggestion here is a one week program just to help you get started:
Day One
Low-intensity training – Set the inclination level on the treadmill at 1% and run or walk at a low pace between 40 and 60 minutes. You can not train hard every day; you need days of low intensity for your body to recover and to be ready for harder training.
Day Two
Interval training – Again, set the inclination level on the treadmill at 1%. Run or walk fast 30 to 60 minutes. You should swap the 5-minute low-intensity intervals with 1-minute high-intensity intervals. As your level of fitness increases, so will the pace at difficult training levels. This means that you will constantly increase your ability to work out harder and burn more calories.
Day Three
Low-intensity training to recover. You can either do the low-intensity training or simply take the day off.
Day Four
Piling up of lactic acid – Set the inclination at 1% and run or walk very fast at a very high intensity for about 20 minutes. In the beginning, that is as long as you will be able to do. The more you train and the fitter you get, you will be able to do two or three intervals of 20-minute high-intensity training with 5-minute intervals of low-intensity training in between.
Day Five
Low-intensity training to recover.
Day Six
Training with the higher inclination – Set the incline at 4% and run or walk at a very high intensity for 5 minutes. Then reduce the incline to 2% and run or walk at a low intensity for 1 minute.
Increase the inclination to 5% and run or walk at high intensity for 5 minutes. Then again lower to 2% and run or walk at a low intensity for 1 minute.
After that, raise the inclination level to 6% and run or walk at high intensity for 5 minutes and after that go back to 2% and low intensity.
Continue in this manner until you reach the inclination of 10%. Then steady your heart rate by walking on the treadmill with the incline of 2% for 5 minutes.
You will probably have to slow down as you increase the inclination level. This workout is excellent for strengthening the lower body and shaping the muscles of your butt, thighs, and calves.
Day Seven
Rest -You should have at least one day of rest during the week.
Conclusion
No matter what your goals are, you can achieve them by using the treadmill. You can burn fat and lose weight to strengthen your muscles and get in shape. The only thing that is important when you are using the treadmill is that you use it properly hope the tips we gave you will help you there.
