Each week the Empire Tri Club will feature a Weekly Teadmill Workout that will kick your ass into serious shape. Beat off the holiday belly-bulge by hitting the gym, for a quick 30-minute high intensity treadmill workout! Spice up your treadmill workouts by varying the speed and incline to significantly reduce boredom and give you the most bang for your buck. You don’t need to spend countless hours at the gym to see results. A high intensity 30-minute sweat session can fire up your metabolism and help you burn extra calories for several hours after your workout too!
This week’s workout:
- 5 minute Warm Up – brisk walk or easy jog
- 7x 2 minute intervals with 1 minute recovery between each
- 5 min Cool Down – brisk walk or easy jog
Description:
- For each interval, push yourself at a challenging effort (PE 7-8 out of 10 – see below!)**
- 1 minute Active Recovery between each- keep moving! Just slow down your pace.
- As your fitness improves, you’ll be able to recovery more quickly between intervals and without slowing your speed down quite as much. Try and reduce your speed only as much as you need to in order to recover for the next interval!
- For this workout keep the incline at 0-1% grade*
Incline for Treadmill Running
*Because treadmill running is easier than outdoor running (since there’s no wind resistance), you can set the incline to 1% to better simulate outdoor running conditions. If you’re used to running on the treadmill at no incline, running at a 1% incline may feel harder, but it will help ease your transition to outdoor running. Of course, if you’re totally new to running, you may want to start with a 0% incline and then gradually move up to 1%.
Perceived Exertion
When exercising, it’s important to monitor your intensity to make sure you’re working at a pace that is challenging enough to help you reach your goals, but not so hard that you blow a lung. One way to do that is to use a Perceived Exertion Scale. In general, for most workouts you want to be at around Level 5-6. If you’re doing interval training, you want your recovery to be around a 4-5 and your intensity blasts to be at around 8-9. As you’ll see below, working at a level 10 isn’t recommended for most workouts. For longer, slower workouts, keep your PE at Level 5 or lower.
- Level 1: I’m watching TV and eating bon bons
- Level 2: I’m comfortable and could maintain this pace all day long
- Level 3: I’m still comfortable, but am breathing a bit harder
- Level 4: I’m sweating a little, but feel good and can carry on a conversation effortlessly
- Level 5: I’m just above comfortable, am sweating more and can still talk easily
- Level 6: I can still talk, but am slightly breathless
- Level 7: I can still talk, but I don’t really want to. I’m sweating like a pig
- Level 8: I can grunt in response to your questions and can only keep this pace for a short time period
- Level 9: I am probably going to die
- Level 10: I am dead
References: About.com Perceived Exertion Scale
