Treadmill: What It Is And How To Use It

How does the treadmill work?

Modern treadmills offer a long series of technological solutions, capable of making workouts safer, more fun and more effective. The speed and slope adjustment allows you to modulate the effort made, adapting it to individual abilities and to the progress made with training. Furthermore, almost all treadmills are equipped with a cushioning system capable of absorbing shocks and reducing the microtraumas that running can generate, especially when practiced on too hard ground with unsuitable footwear Sweat Central.

For some years now, many treadmills – even low-end ones – have been equipped with a computerized interface, with which to monitor various parameters related to training. Among them, the most common are: Distance traveled, Training time, Calories consumed, Speed, Heart rate.

Of all, running is the activity with the highest specific caloric consumption; in an hour of running, for example, much more energy is consumed than an hour of cycling.

The medium-high range treadmills also provide various preset training programs, during which the intensity of the effort varies according to preset protocols. Generally, these programs have a short initial warm-up and final cool – down phase , separated by increases and decreases in the slope and / or speed at pre-established time intervals. A classic example is the “Fartleck” workout.

Treadmill: heart rate management

Heart rate monitoring is the foundation of the ” HRC ” program , available on medium to high quality treadmills. This function allows you to set the workout so that changes in speed and slope reflect changes in heart rate, keeping it within a narrow range of values set by the user based on the goals he intends to achieve.

The maximum heart rate (HRmax), which is the maximum number of beats the heart can generate in one minute, can be established in two ways:

With an aptitude test, difficult and, in some ways, risky to repeat on untrained subjects

With a formula, calculated empirically and almost always established by the treadmill computer on the basis of the data previously entered – specifically, in relation to the user’s age.

Benefits of the treadmill

There are many benefits associated with using the treadmill. Above all, it guarantees an improvement in aerobic endurance , with many positive implications for health. These can be divided into psychological and physical; let’s see some of them: