The best way to get results from your treadmill workouts is to get started with a treadmill workout plan that improves multiple areas of fitness including cardiovascular fitness, metabolic conditioning/body composition (weightloss and fatloss), as well as functional fitness for your daily activities. Any cardio workout plan that targets all these areas of fitness will help you reach your health, fitness, and fatloss goals much faster.
Start with an Assessment
Most treadmills have an assessment setting or testing feature that measures your current level of fitness. This is not the best assessment you can get but it will give you a good idea of where you are so you can set some short term goals that you can work on for 4 weeks as well as some long term goals that you can work on for 4 months.
Set Weekly & Monthly Goals
Once you determine where you are be sure to set some fitness goals you can measure as well as a deadline for accomplishing those goals. Then map out your workouts through your deadline to get started. Having goals and a deadline will keep you focused on improving and help you avoid zoning out to long boring workouts that get you nowhere and often lead to plateaus, frustration, and quitting.
Set a Time & Work on Gradual Increases
Choose a set amount of time you will spend on the treadmill each time you workout and then instead of working on increasing your time or mileage at each workout, focus on increasing speed, incline, and intensity instead. This allows you to choose any treadmill workout setting you like but forces you to work on improving your level of fitness within your set workout time. The main reason you need to do this is to avoid falling into the longer is better trap that most treadmill users who never get results fall into.
Monitor Your Rate of Perceived Exertion
Forget about calories burned readings, heart rate zones, carbs and fat burned readings, etc. Most treadmill readings are totally inaccurate and distract you from what you really need to focus on which is your rate of perceived exertion. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the equivalent of running from a serial killer and 0 being the equivalent of sitting on the couch watching TV. aim for an RPE of 8-10 during your hardest work intervals, a 5-6 during moderate intensity intervals, and a 3-4 during easy recovery intervals. Try to work all those ranges during your workouts for maximum fat burning, endurance, and results.
Boost Results from Treadmill Workouts
Believe it or not your treadmill workout plan is only as good as the other type of fat burning workouts you’re doing off the treadmill especially your dumbbell workouts and full body workouts. Treadmill workouts only burn a set number of calories and elevate your metabolism for up to 8 hours and that’s only if you’re incorporating high intensity intervals. But adding some fat burning dumbbell workouts or full body workouts before or after your treadmill workouts will skyrocket your metabolism and fatloss for 24-48 hours. This is called the after burn effect and you can’t get that from a treadmill so be sure to add in some effective resistance exercises to your treadmill workout plan if you want to reach your goals faster.
Burn more fat with treadmill workouts by adding 30 Minutes To Fitness: Weights Workout with Kelly Coffey-Meyer
