Treadmills are popular tools for burning calories and toning the muscles in your lower body. One of the best features a treadmill offers is its incline capability. The more you increase the incline of a treadmill deck, the more calories you'll burn. Additionally, you'll get a more intense workout on your leg muscles, particularly your calf and quadriceps muscles.
Treadmill Inclines
Many powered, and some manual, treadmills offer the option to exercise at an incline. The incline is usually measured as a percentage ranging from zero to 15. You can manually adjust the treadmill incline to increase or reduce the intensity of the workout. Additionally, treadmills often offer built-in programs that use the incline feature and automatically adjust it according to the program. An common incline workout is to use interval training. Walk at a level or very low incline for two minutes followed by four minutes of walking at a high incline, and then repeat up to 10 times.
Calories Burned
The exact number of calories you burn during an inclined treadmill workout depends on your current body weight, exact incline, duration of exercise and speed. However, even minor increases in the treadmill incline can produce significant increases in the number of calories you burn. For instance, a 180-lb. person walking at 3.5 mph on a level treadmill burns 311 calories an hour, according to NutriStrategy.com. The same person burns 490 calories walking on a medium incline. That's more than a 57 percent increase in the number of calories burned.
Muscle Worked
Running coach and personal trainer Rick Morris says that exercising on an incline requires more muscle activation. That's the reason you really feel your legs burning when walking on an incline. He also points out that you're also working your core muscles around your waistline and your upper-body muscles as you stride forward. Your muscles perform much more work walking at an incline, which results in firmer and more toned muscles in your legs and core.
Considerations
Walking at an incline increases the intensity of your workout, so be cautious to avoid overtraining. Symptoms of overdoing it include nausea, muscle cramping, joint pain or dizziness. It's best to start at a lower incline -- 1 to 5 percent -- as a beginner, and then work your way up to greater inclines as your fitness level progresses over the coming weeks. Complete your inclined treadmill workouts three to five times per week for 30 to 60 minutes per session. It's even more critical that you stretch before and after an inclined treadmill workout due to the fact that your muscles are working harder than they would on a level treadmill deck.
Member Comments