Each week the Empire Tri Club will feature a Weekly Teadmill Workout that will kick your ass into serious shape. 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:
Warm-up: Jog for 10 minutes slowly increasing your speed to a 10k race pace.
Main Set: Repeat this sequence 5 times: (workout can be made longer by repeating 6, 7 or more times):
- 2 min @ 5-6% Incline – at a challenging pace!
- 1 min @ 0-1% Incline* – light jog (try and slow down only as much as you need to in order to recover for the next interval)
Cool down: 5 minute jog
Description:
- For each 3 min interval, GO HARD! Challenging effort (PE 7-8 out of 10 – see below!)**
- For this workout you will be adjusting both the speed & the incline. Every treadmill is slightly different so find out how to adjust the settings before you start.
- As you reach the 1 min mark, see if you can increase the pace/incline slightly for the 2nd minute! (you may want to start at 5% and move to 6% after the 1st minute, for example)
Incline for Treadmill Running *Because treadmill running is easier than outdoor running (since there’s no wind resistance), set the incline to 1% to better simulate outdoor running conditions. If you’re new to treadmill 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 that your pace/effort is appropriate for the workout you’re doing. 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
