The treadmill can be a very effective weight loss tool, however it can also keep your progress locked into a plateau if you aren’t careful.
The human body is an amazing thing – it can adjust and adapt to almost anything in life, including your workouts. This means that while you will continue to burn calories doing the same 30 minute run or walk that you’ve always done, you won’t continue to see progress.
After a while of doing the same thing your body will eventually adapt to the workout and you will no longer see any results. This is why changing up and altering workouts monthly is so crucial – as your body changes, so must your workout!
Just because you are hitting a plateau on the treadmill doesn’t mean you have to ditch it completely. Instead of walking or jogging at the same pace and incline as you always do, it’s time to change it up!
Below are a few of the best fat burning treadmill workouts that will help you to bust through your weight loss plateau and shed fat. As an added bonus each workout takes less than 30 minutes, making these workouts time efficient as well as effective!
Best Fat Burning Treadmill Workouts
Incline Training
While treadmills do have an incline button, not many people are using them. Changing the degree of incline during your walk or jog may seem like a simple change, but even something as small as a few degrees of incline can drastically effect your workout.
In fact, studies have shown that walking at a slow pace on a high incline is as effective as a faster pace on a flat surface. Taking it slow on the treadmill is a lot easier on the joints as well, making incline training an effective way to burn calories for those who need to stick to low impact exercise.
Incline training also provides an anaerobic workout due to the challenge it places on the leg muscles.
Walking on a flat surface is easier for the lower body, which means that less muscles are involved. Ramping up the incline however requires more effort from the leg muscles, which in turn strengthens and develops them more.
Walking on a flat treadmill only activities about 20 percent of leg muscle while incline training at roughly 15 percent uses roughly 75 percent of leg muscle tissue.
Muscle naturally burns more fat and calories than fatty tissue does, which is why lean muscle tissue is such a vital part of weight loss. Building the muscles in your legs through incline training will help to burn more calories even when you aren’t exercising.
To perform incline training on a treadmill, pick two incline levels to work at – one at a higher intensity and one at a lower intensity.
Walk or jog for one to two minutes at the high incline before lowering it down to the lower incline and walk or jog for one minute. Repeat these inclines five to ten times. As you improve, be sure to increase your incline and spend less time resting to keep challenging and changing your body.
Another great way to begin hill or incline training is to select the “hill” or “incline” training button that comes with most treadmills. Adjust the speeds of the training progream to fit your fitness level.
Sprint Training
It’s time to ditch the way of thinking that has us spending hours in the gym every day and instead adopt the motto to train smarter and not harder.
While racking up miles and time on the treadmill might be necessary for some (such as those training for a marathon), long treadmill workouts aren’t necessary to burn fat. In fact, short sprint workouts are just as effective (if not even more so!) at burning body fat than steady-paced cardio workouts.
Sprints may be classified as a cardio workout, however sprinting works the abs, glutes, hamstrings, quads and calves while also increasing your metabolic rate and burning tons of calories.
While performing sprints on a track is much easier, sprints can also be performed on a treadmill. To perform sprints. simply increase the speed on the treadmill until you are running at your full pace. This should be a pace that you can only continue for 20 to 30 seconds. Rest for 30 seconds to a minute and repeat for up to ten times.
Sprinting is an intense workout, so be sure that you have warmed up and stretched prior to performing them to avoid injury. As you become fitter continue to increase the pace at which you are sprinting to keep challening your body.
Intervals
Intervals are a great way to bump up your heart rate and shed extra fat. The base of interval training is simple – alternate between a short time at high intensity and then recover at a lower intensity.
Continuously switching between higher intensity and lower intensity keeps your heart rate up, burning calories and shedding fat even after you’ve stopped working out.
This type of training is similar to incline training, however incline doesn’t need to be involved in order to achieve a great workout, though it can considerably up the intensity of the workout when you are ready to progress to that level.
To perform intervals, alternate between walking, jogging and running if you are a beginner and jogging, running and sprinting if you are currently following an exercise routine.
The template is simple – the lowest interval speed is done for 60 seconds, the middle interval is done for 30 seconds and the final interval speed is done for 15 seconds. Go through these intervals 4 to 8 times for a fat burning treadmill workout that will blast away calories.
Conclusion
The best way to burn calories and shed unwanted fat consistently is to keep your workouts varied. Continuing to do the same workouts over and over again will not only slow your progress on the scale but also in the gym.
Workouts on the treadmill don’t have to be the same, boring thing every time. Switch up your workouts to incorporate incline, intervals and sprint training and watch the fat melt away!
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