There are many different training tools that you can use on the treadmill to enhance your workout. One of my favorite training tools that treadmills allow you to do is incline training.
Incline training is such a powerful workout because it further challenges your leg muscles and helps to increase the power in your core, abdominals, quads and hamstrings.
I train several clients who are trying to enhance their speed for sport specific movements. The treadmill has been an amazing tool for this type of movement. With one of my clients who is looking to improve speed and lateral quickness for futbol, we will perform sprint intervals at different speeds.
His workout consists of four 30 second sprints on a 5 percent incline, four 45 second sprints on a 7.5 percent incline, and four 60 second sprints at a 10 percent incline.
The key with this workout for improving speed is to continue to raise the speed at which you are running. Every two weeks I will make him improve on at least 2 of the 3 runs by 1 mile per hour. This becomes very challenging and will force his body to adapt and run faster. Every four weeks you should improve the incline until you are at a maximum incline capacity on the last run.
An example speed incline workout for someone who has been doing this for 6 months and is at peak speed would be four 30 second sprints at 10 percent, four 45 second sprints at 12.5 percent and four 60 second sprints at maximum incline of 15 percent.
The key to getting speed results when using the incline on a treadmill is to not allow your legs to get use to the workout routine. You want to continue challenging your legs and making them work harder to run faster. This is when you will see results. Speed is something that takes a good commitment to see results.
The treadmill gives you the option to ALWAYS switch the incline, speed, and time of your intervals. It is best to find a treadmill that changes speed fairly quickly for this workout routine. There are tons of different variations that you can do with the treadmill. Every other speed workout you should make sure you drastically change up the pace, inclines, and even rest times between intervals.
Make sure that you are never hanging onto the handle bars when you are running sprints. This will seriously hurt your progress and cheat yourself out of a workout. You must involve your arms a lot while sprinting on a treadmill. You want to simulate the sprinting motion as realistic as possible so it will translate to increased speed in competition. If you practice with bad form it will translate into bad form on the field of competition.
Incline training is a fantastic way to improve your speed and get a great overall workout in. Even for the average person, High intensity interval training and speed training are great tools to lose weight and get in shape. You will burn far more calories per hour doing exercises like this than when you do basic cardio sessions and stay at the same speed the entire time.
