A Treadmill is a powerful and common machine with which one can perform several respiration-enhancing exercises. Being an all-round heart exercising instrument, a treadmill is very handy when it comes to weight loss.
However, the machine has many more advantages. First, a treadmill is a convenient machine since you can position it in your living room if you wish and watch the TV while exercising on it or you can buy a treadmill with tv. Besides, you can make use of the machine at any time of the year. The machine is also fortified with a handrail which proves useful when one is recovering from an injury.
Being a cardio workout machine, the treadmill does help to reduce the risk of heart diseases, enhance sleep, boost brain workings, and improve one’s mood. Thankfully, this machine is not hard to come by as they’re available in gyms. And if you wish, you can simply add a treadmill to your home gym.
Now, it’s time to discuss the 4 ways through which you can lose weight while working out on a treadmill.
1. Find Your Fat-Burning Zone
Knowing your fat-burning zone is the first step to burning a lot of fat. In order to know your fat-burning zone, you must first measure your maximum heart rate.
This is the highest number of times your heart can beat during 1 minute of work out. Your highest heart rate is the result of 220 minus your age. Typically, your fat-burning zone is 70% of your highest heart rate.
Working Out
- Wear a heart rate monitor on your wrist and ensure the treadmill is flat.
- Walk for 5 minutes at 2 mph to warm yourself up.
- Adjust the incline to 2% then jog at 4 mph for 1 minute.
- Run at 8 to 10 mph, or till you reach your fat-burning zone then race for 15 to 30 minutes at this heart rate.
- Jog at 4 mph for 1 minute.
- Walk at 2 mph for 5 minutes to calm down.
2. High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
This has to do with exchanging sets of high-intensity exercise and rest. These workouts have proven effective for decreasing body fat and getting rid of calories within a short period of time. To make this work, exercise hard for short periods and then take rests between these intense workouts. Once you’re done and your body tries to return to its normal state again, it will make use of body fat thus helping you lose weight.
- Doing HIIT on a treadmill:
- Make your treadmill flat then warm up by walking at 2 mph for 5 minutes
- For a total of 30 seconds Run at 9 to 10 mph.
- Walk at 3 to 4 mph for 60 seconds.
- Do these again 5 to 10 times.
- Walk at 2 mph for 5 minutes to calm yourself
3. Do Different Workouts
When working on a treadmill to lose weight, an effective tactic is to change your routine. When you do different exercises each time, you’ll not only be avoiding training plateau, where there’s hardly any result because you’ve done the same thing for so long, you’ll also be preventing boredom and minimizing your risk of injury.
A Workout Plan
- Sunday: get some rest, do a leisurely walk, or perform gentle yoga
- Monday: perform treadmill HIIT routine for 20 to 30 minutes
- Tuesday: do some mild treadmill jog and strength training
- Wednesday: take a rest, do leisurely walk, or yoga
- Thursday: strength trading and light treadmill jog
- Friday: perform treadmill HIIT routine for 20 to 30 minutes
- Saturday: bodyweight workout
4. Make Your Workouts More Challenging with Hills
In case you don’t know, Walking or running on an incline helps to burn more calories. This is because your body works harder when performing these tasks. Hills also helps to build more lean muscles.
Try This Sequence
- To warm up, Set the treadmill to flat then walk at 2 mph for 5 minutes
- Proceed to change the incline to 1 percent then Jog at 4 to 6 mph for 1 minute.
- Increase the incline every minute by 1% and repeat until you reach between 8 to 10% incline.
- Start to reduce the incline by 1% per minute. Keep doing this until you’ve reached 0 to 1% incline.
- Walk at 2 mph for 5 minutes to cool down.
Conclusion
Treadmill exercises do more than help you lose weight. In fact, they strengthen your endurance, promote healthier skin, reduce joint stiffness, control blood sugar and even improve sexual arousal. The benefits of this machine are just too numerous.
If you wish to get a treadmill but aren’t so sure which one is best, we recommend you see a certified personal trainer. Once you secure a treadmill, learn to do treadmill workouts with strength training as this will not only accelerate your weight loss but boost your health in other ways.