Until now, you’ve probably been living in an ideological world where you automatically trust what your treadmill is telling you.
If the treadmill says you’ve run 4km, you give yourself a pat on the back and congratulate yourself for being fit enough to run so far without getting too puffed. If the treadmill says you’ve burned 1500 calories, you mentally award yourself several Tim Tams.
But I’ve got some bad news. (I hope this doesn’t give you trust issues.)
Your treadmill is telling you LIES – and in more ways than one.
This is how:
1. It’s lying about the amount of calories you’re burning.
Unfortunately, your average treadmill is only able to give you a guesstimate of just how many calories you’re burning, using your weight and age to calculate the relevant number.
However, as exercise physiologist Greg Justice explained to Women’s Health, there are a lot of things to take into account when attempting to calculate just how many calories you’re burning. Weight, height, gender, age, body fat percentage and fitness level are all factors that need to be considered for an accurate estimate.
This is why treadmills can overestimate calorie burn by about 13 per cent. Which is, you know, a fair bit.
Justice suggests never taking the calorie counter literally, but instead using it to measure how hard you’re actually working at the gym: “Write down what your screen says after a cardio machine workout. Then, try and top it each gym visit in the same amount of time.”
Alternatively, if you enjoy a bit of maths, you could try this formula, and exercise some brain muscles while you try to figure it out:
Calories Burned = [(Age x 0.074) – (Weight x 0.05741) + (Heart Rate during exercise x 0.4472) – 20.4022] x Time / 4.184.
2. It’s lying about how fit you are .
Running on a treadmill means that you’re running in a perfect environment. It’s flat, so you’re not battling weird inclines and declines while you run. It’s on a controlled surface, so you’re not alternating between grass and gravel and concrete and bitumen. And your treadmill is generally in a temperature-controlled place, so you don’t have to deal with crazy wind working against you, or super-hot sun beating down on your face.
While there are benefits to all of the above, it also means that you may be getting a false promise of fitness if you’re always working out on a treadmill that’s set to an incline of zero. It’s happened to me before – I easily ran 40 minutes on a treadmill, then tried to do the same thing in the Great Outdoors and couldn’t work out why I was so exhausted after just two minutes.
To combat the false-fitness hopes, make sure you are setting the incline to at least 1.5 as soon as you get on the treadmill, or set the treadmill to a program that incorporates hill climbs into the workout. That way, you’ll be getting a more authentic workout.
3. It could be lying about speed and distance
The jury is still out on this one. A treadmill measures distance by revolutions of the belt, so many believe that it’s one of the more accurate measures that a treadmill can offer.
However, many regular runners feel as though the speed and distance of treadmills are a little out of whack in one way or another. Those who participate in outdoor timed runs and run on treadmills will often notice that they’re able to complete a run far faster on the pavement than they can on the treadmill. This does, however, have the nice effect of making you feel rather pleasantly surprised when you’re competing in Nike She Runs/the Colour Run/the City 2 Surf/whatever.
So are you saying that I should give up on my treadmill completely?
Nooooo. Treadmills are awesome! They’re excellent for so many things – interval training, warm-ups, cool-downs, recovery runs… the list goes on. Also, you have the added bonus of being able to use them even when it’s raining or dark outside.
It is good, however, to remember to take the statistics with a grain of salt. Don’t depend on them to tell you just how fit you are – instead, use the treadmill as a tool for increasing your fitness, and still be sure to reward yourself with a Tim Tam or two after an extra-long run.
Are you a treadmill lover? Do you notice the inaccuracies?
Top Comments
I am looking for a piece of exercise equipment that I can but for my home. Preferably something that I can fold up because I live in a 2 bed unit so space is at a premium.
I can't use steppers because they hurt my arthritic knees too much. Also I currently weight a little over 100kg (about 110kg) and a few of the things I've been looking at have a weight limit of 100kg.
Any suggestions from people who have bought/hired their own cardio gear?
What about a cross trainer? Kind of like stepper machines but they aren't as harsh or impacting on joints. Plus they are good for burning fat all over your body, as you use your arms and back too a bit.
My treadmill's running bed folds up which is handy, but as st87 suggests below a cross trainer is great. I have both and a rowing machine - they are really good as they use pretty much your entire body. Room wise could be a problem though.
December 2005 I weighed 105kg.
February 2006 I bought a treadmill.
June 2006 I weighed 83kgs (my goal weight).
By December 2006 I was 78kgs.
6 days of running per week. Minimum 45 minutes or 8km per session. Sometimes twice a day.
Of course when I started road running that was a shock to the system, but if you're only worried about weight loss and fitness, who cares about the actual calories?