Training — Two Simple Treadmill Workouts for the New Year

The evidence of the New Year is everywhere around us. I was at the gym at noon, a mistake on most days of the year, but a disaster today. The ten treadmills were all full with people lurking to find an open slot. The crowds are hitting the gym, which I applaud, but as I watched what was going on, I can sum up: slow, plodding miles, passing by the minutes on the treadmill. Not only is the slow roller on the treadmill ineffective, but it is just plain boring. Today, I present two simple workouts to ramp up the caloric burn, make your treadmill time count, and get you sweaty enough to soak your best friend with a post-workout hug.

Workout #1 — Progressive Pace — In this first workout, you’ll progressively increase the pace that you are running or walking throughout the workout. Increasing the pace slowly provides two things: a good warm-up and increasing effort levels as the workout goes forward. This workout can be done quickly in a pinch by shortening the intervals or can be extended to become a very difficult up-tempo style run. In the workout below, I’ll suggest speeds as examples, but you’ll need to adjust the speed based on your capabilities. The trick is to make sure that you don’t start out too fast or you will not be able to continue to increase the pace over the course of the workout.

Here’s what you’ll do:
1. Start out walking a brisk pace for 4 minutes to warm-up (e.g. 4.0 MPH)
2. Increase the pace to a warm-up jog pace for 6 minutes (e.g. 6.0 MPH)
{this is a 10 minute walk and jog warm-up}

3. Increase the pace to your normal running pace for 5 minutes (e.g. 7.0 MPH)
{you can increase the time of this for up to a few miles to get fully warm-up}

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