Hill Workout on the Treadmill Using Incline

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June 3, 2020 Blog

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Incline feature of your treadmill offers you better workout. Treadmills often have an incline feature to mimic walking and running uphill outdoors. A few treadmills also have a decline feature to simulate going downhill. By changing the incline, you can change the type of workout or you can add intervals of higher intensity.

How to Adjust the Incline

Many treadmills allow to adjust the incline during their use, but a few requires some adjustments before you start workout. When incline changes every few minutes you will have to stop to change and it will not be easier to do interval workout.

Benefits of Treadmill Hill Workouts when you do it regularly

When you start exercise in your chosen intensity zone this way you can get your heart rate up to higher level at lower speeds.

If you have a leg injury or you need less stress on your joints, you can go slow by adjusting moderate level of intensity.

Hill workout provides variety, and this helps to fight treadmill boredom.

You will burn 12% calories for every 1% increase of grade (American research). So, burn more calories per mile walking uphill.

Basics of Treadmill Hill Workout:

Warm up: Warm up for five minutes with level walking or you can start with slight incline at a slow speed.

Slow is Good: While climbing a hill you get slower naturally, but your heart and breathing will show you that you are getting a higher exercise intensity than at zero incline. Let those gauges your workout effort rather than the speed.

Uphill Walking Technique: When you are using more incline use good posture and take shorter steps and don’t lean backward. You can slightly lean forward.

Let go of the Handrails: If you want to get a workout leave the handrails. You can begin uphill walking from the speed where you can walk or run with free hands.

Change One Thing at a Time: The intensity of your treadmill workout depends on speed, incline, and duration. If you add incline, keep the length of your workout and the speed you use either the same, shorter, or slower. When your tolerance for incline increases, then change the speed and duration and if you change the incline, keep the other two the same.