Using a Treadmill to Improve your Running Speed

The treadmill is a great tool for improving your running speed for a variety of reasons. This will take time because in order to improve your speed, you need to build up both your muscles and your endurance. Incorporating speed workouts into your a daily running routine can help improve running speed and race time. Speed workouts include both running hills and tempo runs, which are actually easier to achieve on a treadmill.

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When doing speed workouts like tempo runs or interval training, time is the main factor. Most people use a stop watch to keep time, but thankfully time is always right in front of you on a treadmill. You can easily watch a countdown and push yourself without having to stop and start or monitor a stopwatch. Since you can leave the belt running and simply hop off at the end of an interval, treadmills allows users to jump back to the exact same pace they want to hit every time. Using the treadmill for speed workouts also allows you to incrementally adjust your pace so that you can begin to feel how different paces impact your legs, lungs, and the rest of your body. This alone is ideal for race training and injury prevention.

A treadmill is also the perfect way to train on an incline (or “running hills”). Treadmills have built-in incline (and sometimes even decline) capabilities so you don’t need to drive out to a hilly area to work out. You can simply create the steepest hill you want and monitor your progress by changing the incline and tracking your improvement each time. This type of speed workout improves your running speed by building strength and improving flexibility. Another speed workout is running stairs, which is similar to running hills, but uses a quicker increase of speed rather longer timed intervals. Even though a treadmill obviously has no stairs, there are workout programs on many treadmills that simulate stair climbs.

And speaking of built-in workout programs, a treadmill can be like having your own personal professional trainer pushing you right along. Most treadmills have a variety of workout programs that include interval training, hill sprints, speed tests, and more. So you can work on improving your running speed without having to watch a clock at all. Everything is done for you and results can be stored or recorded. By storing your results through an app or other method, you can easily track your progress and improvements. These programs will also push you outside of your comfort zone, which is always a great way to improve your running speed. Check out our reviews of the best treadmills for runners to find treadmills with high-performance features that are ideal for runners.