Treadmill training workouts

Treadmill training offers the beginner and experienced runner a great opportunity to develop their running training through a controlled environment, where the runner can have total control of the speed, incline and duration of their training sessions. However, runners usually have a love/hate relationship with the treadmill. I happen to love it!

Now I understand that the treadmill has a bad reputation, it’s boring, right? Well, not the way I do my training sessions! And I’m more than happy to share some of these with you in the coming weeks and months.

So why use the treadmill rather than run in the great outdoors?

• You never have to worry about the weather. The wind, rain, snow and ice are irreverent when you’re in the comfort of the indoors, where it’s nice and warm or nice and cool depending on your environment

• You don’t have to worry about the darkness, traffic, potholes or yappy dogs when using a treadmill

• You have complete control over the speed, terrain and duration of the training session

• It is an amazing tool for developing speed and strength endurance through interval training

I’ll go into greater details in a later blog post about the specific advantages/disadvantages regarding speed/incline/time, training methodologies, treadmill running technique and other treadmill specific training strategies, however from the 4 bullets above, you can see the awesome advantages that treadmill training provides.

For me personally, I’m not too concerned about the weather or potholes or yappy dogs, so the real advantage for me lies in the ability to absolutely control the training session, to have the treadmill make you push through to complete the interval, whereas you might wuss out when trying to do the session outdoors. For me, running faster is the key to running faster. Obvious, right? But you’d be surprised how many people simply go out and plod along at a slow pace. Running faster, and using interval training, is the single best thing that will take your running to new heights. The higher bouts of intensity followed by lower bouts of intensity (walking or jogging) allows the body to recover slightly, therefore allowing you to train at a higher intensity for longer than you would be able to manage if trying to train at this intensity in a steady, longer run.

Using the treadmill for doing intervals allows you to have control over the speed of the interval, the incline of the interval and the speed/incline of the recovery period between intervals; this is not always possible when training outdoors (you can’t control the size of the hills outdoors or the recovery period in between the intervals when you have to return to the bottom of the hill to start the next interval).

The treadmill is a great training tool, check it out using some of the treadmill sessions I'll be posting here over the next few weeks. If you're a runner, triathlete or endurance athlete and would like some advice on treadmill training, running training concepts or training plans check out our Vale Sports Therapy website or contact our running coach, Mark (Cardiff, Penarth & Barry) on 07947 010276.