9 Things To Keep In Mind While Exercising On Treadmill

Treadmill is one of the most sought after fitness equipment and can be easily found in many homes these days. It is not much expensive and provides you the comfort of enjoying a jog at home. During winters, you may not get motivated at all to go jogging in the morning. But you can’t even see yourself piling up those fats and pampering your love handles. At such juncture, treadmill comes to your rescue and you can easily warm up your body and melt those ugly fats without facing the winter chills.

Everyone loves to hit the treadmill either at their homes or at gyms. But it is not as easy as running outside is. When you run outside, you have complete control over your body balance and hardly need to worry about severe injuries. On the other hand, when you start working out on treadmill, then you need to take care that you have complete guidance of a trainer. If you have treadmill at home, then initially you can join the gym for sometime to know how to exercise on it. If you have children at home, then make sure that elders are around when they use treadmill or any mishap can occur.

Treadmill is easy to use and comes handy when you don’t feel like working out much but there are few things you need to remember when you use treadmill. To safely use treadmill as an indispensable mode of workout and give a boost to your fitness, you need to first read these 9 things to keep in mind while exercising on treadmill:

1. You Need To Wear The Right Kind Of Shoes

While working out in treadmills, your foot bones and toes are at a higher risk of getting injured. Therefore, you must invest in a good pair of sneakers where you must give priority to the safety function before style. It is said by exercise experts that high padding in sport shoes are required for people working out on treadmills to protect their heels and toes from the impact of each foot strike. But it is also advised to keep these special padded shoes reserved for working out only because if they are used in cardio or dance classes, then chances are high that your ankle may suffer from a major twist.

2. You Need To Maintain A Straight Posture

Maintaining a straight posture while exercising on treadmill is very essential to get the right impact of exercising on it and to prevent any occurrence of injuries. Since the treadmill belt moves forward, your body may lean backward putting all the back portion in complete strain. This can cause you to lose your balance. If you want to maintain the right balance on the treadmill, then you need to land on your mid foot or ball of the foot instead on landing flat footed. You can thereby maintain a straight posture and can achieve safe balance on the treadmill.

3. Don’t Take Longer Strides

You must not take longer strides in a bid to cover larger area as it would seem leaping in the treadmill. Longer strides will imply that you are burning more energy that could have saved for properly doing exercise on treadmill. In fact, taking such leaps can cause injury and imbalance too. It is said that taking two or three steps per second is the best way to effectively use the treadmill and you must make sure that you barely keep your foot off the surface.

4. Never Look At Your Feet

You need to have a good balance while working out on a treadmill as unlike the ground surface, here you will be walking and running on a moving surface. You need to maintain pace with it. If you look at your feet, your neck will start straining and will pass on the pain to the spine, hips and then knees. This is due to a complete misalignment of the body. You need to maintain your eyes on the front in a manner that you are not feeling pain in any part of the body. Your neck, back, hips and knees should be relaxed and should be in a straight line.

5. Don’t Over Exercise On Treadmill

Exercise is a way to tone up your muscles and to give your body the required energy and flexibility. If you experience elevated heart beats that is taking too much time to normalise or strain in muscles and back, then you have probably over exercised. If you carry on exercising next day with this pain, then your health condition may get adversely affected. In initial stages, if you feel these kind of strain on your body parts, then you need to take break for two or three days so that you save yourself from critical internal injuries. As you get accustomed to exercising on treadmill, then you can increase the time of work out but not more than for twice or thrice a week.

Read: 7 Easy Steps To Develop The Habit Of Exercising

6. Avoid Arm Movements

Experts advise that when you swing your arms up and down in a bid to exercise your arms too while being on treadmill, then you will somehow not be able to maintain a straight posture and you may even deteriorate your energy levels. Your lost energy could have been efficiently utilised in working out more on treadmill. Till you reach higher speeds, you need to keep your arms on your sides and later you can keep your arms bent at 90 degrees that aids in proper movement of your torso. You need to keep your arms relaxed so that they don’t get strained and thereby, you enjoy working out on treadmill.

7. Don’t Take Support

Experts have said that working out on an inclined surface is more effective than working on the ground surface. But while you work out on a treadmill, you must ensure that you don’t take support from the sides or you won’t be benefiting your body from exercising on an inclined surface of treadmill. If a part of your body weight gets support, then you won’t be burning much calories and taking support would mean leaning forward, which in turn, causes body strain. Therefore, you must maintain a vertical stature by ensuring that you work out without taking support.

8. Avoid Distractions

Exercise of whatever nature requires your complete concentration. You must be able to gauge the impact of the work out on several body parts and must enjoy it thoroughly. If you are listening to music, watching television or checking your phone, then you may not be in rhythm with the moving surface of treadmill and this is known to be one of the major causes of accidents. You need to avoid all kinds of distractions and keep your mind attentive on the pace with which you are exercising.

9. Avoid Working Out On Treadmill Everyday

It is essential that you need to maintain your liking for treadmill by not working out on treadmill everyday. If you exercise everyday on treadmill, then it will become monotonous and after a month or so, you will feel that you are burning less and less calories as your body is getting adapted to that kind of training. You need to incorporate various fitness work outs in your regimen along with treadmill so that the impact on your fitness level is higher and your zeal to exercise also remains undeterred.

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