How to Train on a Treadmill (Without Wasting Your Time)

Most treadmill sessions look the same. Pick a speed, run at it for half an hour, get off. It's not that it doesn't work, it's that it stops working fairly quickly, and it's the slowest possible way to get fitter.

A few changes make a big difference.

Stop holding the handrails

The most common mistake, and the easiest to fix.

Holding on takes a chunk of your bodyweight off your legs, which means the number on the screen is telling you you're working harder than you are. If you need the rails to stay on at that speed or incline, the setting is too high. Drop it and let go.

Use the incline

The incline is the most underused dial on the machine.

Raising it lets you work hard at a much lower speed, which is easier on your joints and a lot more manageable if you're not a confident runner. Walking at a steep incline will get your heart rate up as effectively as running on the flat, and you can hold a conversation while doing it.

It also carries over well to real-world fitness in a way that flat treadmill running doesn't always.

Try intervals instead of one steady speed

Instead of thirty minutes at one pace, alternate. A minute hard, two minutes easy, repeated eight or ten times. Or thirty seconds fast with a full recovery in between.

You'll get more out of twenty minutes structured like that than forty minutes plodding, and it's considerably less boring.

What about 12-3-30?

You'll have seen it, 12% incline, 3mph, 30 minutes. It became popular on social media and it's a genuinely decent session.

What makes it work isn't the specific numbers. It's that it's steep, sustainable and repeatable, and people actually stick to it. If 12% is too much to start with, use 6% or 8%. The version you'll do three times a week beats the version you abandon after one.

Vary the hard days

If every treadmill session is flat out, you'll plateau and you'll probably pick up a niggle. Most weeks work better with one genuinely hard interval session, and the rest steady enough to hold a conversation.

Treadmill training at Perpetua

Tread & Shred is our treadmill and strength class, intervals on the tread paired with work on the floor, coached, with the structure already built for you so you're not deciding what to do mid-session.

Never been to a studio class before? Trial our 3 for €33 Intro Offer and give Tread and Shred a go.