Hit A Plateau? Here Are Three Ways To Improve Treadmill Workout Results

Dedicated walkers and runners eventually stumble into fitness plateaus. In fitness plateaus your old exercise habits may have lost their power. With that in mind, here are three favorite ways to improve treadmill workout results.

In This Article:
Add Weight To Treadmill Workouts ?
Improve Your Cadence With Music ?
Take Advantage Of Incline ?

1. Add Weight to Treadmill Workouts

Breaking a fitness plateau might actually be simple: Just add dumbbells or other weight. When you move extra weight, you burn more calories per step. The extra weight could also stimulate your muscles to work differently, bringing better tone.

How Much Weight?

You can improve treadmill workout results by first walking or running with simple half-pound or one-pound hand weights. Then, to avoid another fitness plateau, gradually increase the amount you carry. Important: To avoid stressing your joints and tendons, don’t exceed 10 percent of your bodyweight.

Not Just Dumbbells

Runners and walkers have three main choices for workout weights: ankle weights, hand weights and weighted clothing.

Ankle Weights

Treadmill workouts with ankle weights can make your hamstrings, quads and glutes work harder than usual. Within a few sessions you will likely notice better muscle definition and higher calorie burn.
This LiveStrong video shows how to run with ankle weights. Take time to learn the basics, as improper form could be harmful.

Hand Weights

Hand weights are the most popular weights for improving treadmill workouts. They’re easier to use than leg weights, and they turn treadmill training into total-body exercise.
For light weights we like slip-on wrist weights. These are made of Neoprene and other soft materials. For heavier weights, covered or coated dumbbells (versus uncoated metal weights) are most comfortable to use.

Weighted Clothing

A weighted vest is an example of weighted workout clothing. A vest won’t deliver the same muscle-toning benefits as the options above, but it can help improve treadmill workouts with faster calorie burn.
Wearing a weighted vest, you can burn more calories per minute without increasing your pace or the treadmill incline. Many people find that adding weight feels less challenging than adding speed, yet it has more payoff.
Other examples of weighted workout clothing are shorts, shirts and gloves.

2. Improve Your Cadence With Music

You probably run to music, but is it optimized to improve treadmill workouts? One leading researcher has referred to paced music as “a type of legal performance-enhancing drug.” He found that music of the right tempo can boost endurance by up to 15 percent! Here we explain how paced music can help you keep time, maintain good form and avoid injury.

About Cadence, Running And Music

The best music for treadmill exercise promotes your ideal cadence, or stride rate. For instance, if your cadence is 180 strides per minute (SPM), then music with 180 beats per minute (BPM) can help you keep time.
What cadence is best? Experts sometimes generalize and advise taking at least 180 SPM (90 strides per leg) — but one number can’t perfectly fit everyone. Your most efficient cadence depends on your body, your treadmill workout goal and other factors. In general these are numbers to strive for:

• Average Jogger: 150 SPM
• Average Runner: 160 to 170 SPM
• Elite Runner: 180 SPM

Increasing your SPM can improve treadmill workout results. Raising your cadence helps you cover more distance per minute. It also allows less shock to your body because faster cadence is associated with shorter strides. With less shock or impact, your endurance improves.
How to improve cadence with music: If you’re at 168 SPM, try exercising with songs that have 170 BPM. See if you can gain two steps/minute over a week or two of workouts. Then move up to 172 BPM and try to keep pace.

Find Paced Music

Personal trainers sometimes buy music produced specifically for workout classes. Regular people tend to use sites like JogFM to find popular songs sorted by bpm. JogFM connects with Spotify, iTunes and Amazon to help you build playlists.
Examples: These songs have 150 to 180 BPM according to JogFM.

• Good Vibrations – Beach Boys – 152 BPM
• Happy – Pharrell Williams – 160 BPM
• Touch of Grey – Grateful Dead – 160 BPM
• Sabotage – Beastie Boys – 168 BPM
• Hit the Road, Jack – Ray Charles – 172 BPM
• Santeria – Sublime – 180 BPM

A full playlist would of course include slower-paced music for warmup and cooldown too.
Remember that variety is best. If you do the same treadmill workout everyday, your body will experience less and less challenge. Experiment with playlists for speed interval training and incline training (if appropriate for your heart) to improve treadmill workout results.

3. Take Advantage Of Incline

Incline training is a popular way to improve treadmill workouts. First, personal trainers advise that when you don’t use a slight incline as your baseline, treadmill running is a bit easier than running outdoors. Using a one percent incline can make up for absent wind resistance. But the main benefits of steeper incline training are faster calorie burn and better muscle tone.
How steep are treadmill inclines? Generally you get a maximum setting of at least 10 percent. Many top-rated home treadmills have 15 or 20 percent maximums. Bowflex TreadClimbers and other incline treadmills have 40 percent maximums.
Over weeks and months you can gradually raise the incline to improve calorie burn and avoid fitness plateaus. If you train at an angle, the increase in calorie burn will be dramatic at any speed. You’ll likely be amazed at how your race time drops when you run flat again.

The Finish Line

With enough repetition, even the best treadmill workout routines lose some potency. Breaking through a fitness plateau could be simpler than you think with help from weights, music or incline training.
Have you broken a plateau with treadmill training? Share your plateau-busting tips below.