With all the options out there for fitness equipment for home training, the treadmill may provide one of the best choices. Treadmills are easy to use, readily available, and offer roughly the same energy expenditure, muscle activation, and muscle motion as you'd get from walking or running outside.
Treadmills offer benefits you may not get from the road, but you need to adapt your workouts this fitness equipment for home to simulate outdoor conditions as well as avoid injury. Use these tips to get started:
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Adjust as you go. Counter the lack of wind resistance you would normally face outside. Because there’s no hard science equating wind resistance to incline percentages, you should experiment with your own adjustments to get your indoor experience to match your outdoor one.
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Shorten your stride. Have your feet land as close to your body as possible. Over striding (having your foot extend too far ahead of your body) can create an inefficient running form that can cause injury. Listen to your body to find a comfortable pace. If what’s normally an easy pace outdoors feels hard on a treadmill, slow it down.
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Don’t hold on. Holding onto the handrails can cause excess rotation in the lower body or increased stride width. These issues can lead to pain in the knees, shins, Achilles tendons, and iliotibial bands.
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Look straight ahead. Staring down at the treadmill’s display or turning your head to see a TV screen that’s off to your side can strain your neck and wreck good running posture.
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Watch your stance. A too-narrow stance is a common problem. Imagine a line dropping straight down from your belly button. The inside edge of each shoe should approach but not cross over the centerline of the body.
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Swing your arms front to back. Your hands should approach but not cross the centerline of your body. Imagine keeping them in line with the bottom of your ribs. Extra side-to-side motion wastes energy.
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Push off the belt. On a treadmill, unlike other fitness equipment for home, runners tend to simply pick their feet up and place them back down on the moving surface, rather than pushing off the surface as they would outside. Lean more forward at the ankles, land more on your forefoot, and concentrate on pushing off the belt rather than letting it carry you along—in other words, run with some spring in your step.
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Remember to drink up. You’re likely to sweat more on a treadmill. To avoid dehydration, drink two to four sips of water every15 minutes while running. In fact, hydration is important step to follow for any piece of fitness equipment for home or commercial use.
Check out our Landice L7 and L8 family of treadmills. Rated #1 by the leading consumer rating publications for fitness equipment for home training.
