Why You Should Add Walking as a Second Workout treadmills that looked like minimalist conveyor belts with railings. These were the curved, self-powered treadmills I had heard about—models include the Keys to Reaching Your Full Potential, Trueform Runner, and Technogym SkillMill.
I climbed aboard. Because this type of treadmill uses bodyweight and the friction of your foot to move the belt—rather than a motor—my initial steps were awkward. After a few minutes, I realized that my cadence and how far up the front of the curve I stepped affected how fast I moved. I also learned I could adjust the resistance of the belt using a knob on the front of the machine.
Finally, I got situated, but a few minutes later, I found myself panting and struggling to continue. I wasn’t running anywhere near my usual pace, and yet my heart was pounding. Were curved treadmills London Marathon Results?
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Why You Should Add Walking as a Second Workout, the answer is definitely yes.
For this study, researchers from the University of Essex School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Science recruited 13 male runners, all of whom had 5K PRs of 20 minutes or better. They had the runners complete four treadmill runs over a span of two weeks. The first run was a voluntary run to exhaustion, in order to define baselines for each runner’s Fastest Marathon Runners, How to Master the 5k 1 percent gradient.
On the second run, the participants familiarized themselves with the curved treadmill by practicing the protocol they would follow on the third and fourth experimental runs: four minutes running at five different velocities (40, 50, 60, 70, and 80 percent of their personal maximum velocity), with three minutes of passive recovery Health - Injuries.
In the final two experimental runs, they completed the intervals they practiced on the second run on a curved treadmill and a standard motorized treadmill, respectively. During the last minute of each interval, the researchers measured the runners’ oxygen uptake, respiratory exchange ratio, cadence, and heart rate, and also asked the runners to rate their perceived effort.
What researchers found was that, similar to manufacturers’ claims, runners really do work about 30 percent harder on the curved, non-motorized treadmills. The runners perceived they were working an average of 27 percent harder when they ran on the curved treadmill, and physiologically, their symptoms matched: They consumed an average of 32 percent more oxygen and had 16 percent higher heart rates, 2.5 percent higher running cadence, and 38 percent worse running economy Hopping May Help You Run More Powerfully.
Despite these intimidating statistics, Patrick Schoenmakers, the study’s first author, pointed out that curved treadmills have unique advantages. “Every step you take affects what the [curved] treadmill does,” he said. This means that instead of making a conscious decision to speed up or slow down and then pressing buttons to generate the speed you think you can do—as you would on a motorized treadmill—the curved treadmill allows runners to self-regulate with every footfall, just as they would outdoors. This is useful for runners who don’t like to think about their pace before or during runs, and also for scientists who want to study how athletes will react naturally to stimuli, like the instruction “run harder.”
than when they ran at equivalent speeds on the motorized treadmill Schoenmakers says he considers motorized treadmill, curved treadmill, and for athletes According to a study published in a 2018 edition of the, How to Run Slower on Easy Days posterior chain muscles: Health - Injuries.
practice hill running outdoor running interchangeable, so people should use whatever they prefer. The main thing to note concerning curved treadmills is that even once people get comfortable operating them, they should keep in mind at least a 20 percent difference in pace. A 2023 study also showed that a curved treadmill is “more biomechanically different compared to overground than motorized treadmills,” so if you are truly training for a road race you should likely stick to your longer runs on the traditional mill.
“Runners can be advised to lower their speeds, so for instance, if they usually run 4:00 minute per kilometer reps (15 kilometers per hour, or 6:26 minutes per mile) in their training, a speed of 12 kilometers per hour (8:03 per mile) will mimic that,” he wrote in an email. “The same conversion factor can be used for long distance and tempo runs.”
Allison Goldstein is a freelance writer and editor who is endlessly fascinated by the scientific “why” of things. When not writing or reading, she can be found running, baking, or petting her cat, Tabouli.
