Treadmill Running: Is the Treadmill Really the Dreadmill?

Treadmills have become a popular tool for athletes and exercise enthusiasts alike.  While they certainly do confer some benefits, they also have some significant drawbacks.  It’s important for endurance athletes choosing to leverage the treadmill to consider all aspects of this device so they can be aware of its impact - both positive and negative - on their training.

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https://www.fullcircleendurance.com/blog/treadmill-running-is-the-treadmill-really-the-dreadmill 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening
• 0:16 Treadmill or Dreadmill?
• 1:00 What is a Treadmill?
• 3:35 Is the Treadmill a Modern-Day Torture Device?
• 4:51 The Drawbacks of Treadmills
• 10:25 The Benefits of Treadmills
• 13:30 The Bottom Line
• 13:53 Closing

Transcript

(0:04 - 1:28)
Hello and welcome to the Full Circle Podcast, your source for insights into the science and art of endurance sports training and racing. I'm your host, Coach Laura Henry. Today is Coach Tip Tuesday. 

For almost as long as I've been a runner, I have heard the phrase, treadmill? More like dreadmill. And most runners have probably heard something similar as well. But is the treadmill truly something to dread? Whether you love it or you hate it, the treadmill has become the most popular piece of exercise equipment, and it is leveraged by athletes and exercise enthusiasts alike. 

There are many pros and many cons to utilizing a treadmill as part of one's training, and endurance athletes would do well to be aware of all of them so they can make an informed choice about how and when to leverage a treadmill as part of their training. Most of us probably know what a treadmill is. But as you'll see, diving into the specifics of what this device is and how it came to exist as we know it is illuminating. 

A treadmill is an exercise machine, typically with a continuous belt that allows a person to run or walk in place. William Cubitt invented the treadmill, called a treadwheel at the time, in 1818 in England. It was designed as a prison rehabilitation device.

(1:28 - 2:28)
Incarcerated prisoners were meant to sweat and suffer, and the treadmill facilitated this. The physical exertion of using a treadmill was meant to reform these prisoners and cure them of their criminality. In short, treadmills were invented as punishment and torture devices. 

Separated by partitions so that they could not socialize, up to 24 prisoners at a time could be made to walk on Cubitt's machine. In the beginning, the treadmill was used to grind corn or to pump water. However, this shifted and evolved rather quickly, and the device was ultimately used more as a torture device rather than a work machine. 

The act of moving without ever actually going anywhere without any measurable output or purpose was viewed as a punishment. Treadmills arrived in the United States in 1822 to be used in prisons here. By 1842, they were being used in more than half of all prisons located in England, Wales, and Scotland.

(2:28 - 10:46)
However, that initial popularity of the treadmill did not last. Toward the end of the 19th century, several legal acts were passed that labeled the treadmill as cruel and inhumane and called for them to be banned. By 1900, only 13 treadmills were in use in the United Kingdom, and they had faded from use in the United States as well. 

However, the treadmill had a bold remarketing campaign that started in 1913 when a U.S. patent for a training machine was granted to Claude Lorraine Hagen. Hagen's original designs for his training machine look extremely similar, visually at least, to the treadmills of today. In the 1960s, William Staub created the first home treadmill, a machine that was called the Pacemaster 600. 

One could say that the treadmill has benefited from one of the best remarketing and rebranding campaigns in history. Today, in the 2020s, the treadmill is the top-selling piece of exercise equipment in the United States, and a whopping 51.8 million Americans, 15% of the United States' population, use one for exercise, either at home or in a gym. While treadmills are no longer employed as punishment for incarcerated individuals, one could accurately draw some parallels to our present-day experience on treadmills and the experience 19th century prisoners had on these same devices. 

Going nowhere is boring, to say the least. It's mindless, and it does feel like a form of psychological torture to many people. It is these parallels of experience that have led many people to contemporarily refer to treadmills as dreadmills. 

In contrast, walking or running outside often feels liberating rather than torturous. Moving through actual space and experiencing an ever-changing environment is much more mentally stimulating than moving and staying in the same place, ultimately going nowhere. Researchers compared the results of several studies that considered the psychological impact of both indoor and outdoor workouts. 

They concluded that, quote, compared with exercising indoors, exercising in natural environments was associated with greater feelings of revitalization and positive engagement, decreases in tension, confusion, anger, and depression, and increased energy. The real and impactful benefit of spending time outside is something that we have lost sight of in our current culture, where we spend a whopping 93% of our available time indoors. One of the biggest drawbacks to treadmills that I see is that the treadmill is running the user, the user is not running the treadmill. 

This reality is inherent in how a treadmill itself is designed and how it works by setting a moving belt to a given speed. So no amount of mental gymnastics, such as a person telling themselves that running is running and things are the same whether on a treadmill or not, can change the fact that the treadmill is running the user. When you set a given speed or pace on a treadmill, the treadmill belt moves at a predetermined speed setting. 

In order not to be thrown off or injured by the device, you need to keep up at that exact precise speed that the belt is moving at. This means that you need to conform what you are doing and how you are moving to keep up with the treadmill belt. The treadmill, not you or your body, is setting the stage and pace for how the workout is being completed. 

You are not moving under your own power the same way that you do when the surface under you is stationary, such as a road or trail, and your actual running mechanics are different on a treadmill than they are if you are running outside. As an example, you are using your quadriceps slightly more and your hamstring slightly less when you run on a treadmill than you would be if you are running under your own power. Additionally, the angles of several of your joints, your ankle and your knee, chief among them, during the different phases of the running gait cycle are different on a treadmill. 

By running or walking on a treadmill, you are letting the treadmill dictate the work, not just the workout, for you, and you are moving your body in a way that is different than the demand that you will be imposing on it in real-world scenarios, outdoor training and race day being the most significant of these. In short, having to conform to what the treadmill is demanding is not a skill that translates to real-world scenarios where you have to do the work in outdoor training and racing. As much as people might not like to hear it, specificity matters. 

Always. Over the years, I have watched many, many athletes who train exclusively on treadmills, either for a given season, such as winter, or for all of their training, struggle when they attempt to transition to outdoor running or walking. By forcing the user to be in compliance with a preset speed, treadmills increase the probability that an athlete will overextend themselves, which in turn increases the probability of injury. 

Outside or on a stable, stationary surface, you would and do make micro-adjustments in pace and speed due to how your body is feeling in response to the changing terrain and conditions and as you fatigue. Additionally, you build up activity-specific strength and mechanics when it comes to muscle activation and joint angles. When using treadmills, my experience has been that many athletes quote-unquote set it and forget it, meaning that they set a specific speed or pace and then hang on to that pace for the planned length of the interval or the workout that they are doing. 

If they adjust the pace at all, they do not adjust the pace of the treadmill nearly as much as they would be micro-adjusting themselves when moving under their own power. And unfortunately, many athletes fall into the trap of believing that they are quote-unquote less than if they need to slow down the speed that they decide that they should be running at on a treadmill. And they will desperately do whatever they need to to hold on and stick to the same speed that they originally chose for the interval or the workout. 

In short, they lose a connection with how their bodies are feeling and they allow the treadmill to dictate things instead of their body. While many modern-day treadmills are calibrated relatively accurately, my experience has been that no running or cycling indoor data ever, in my experience of seeing these data files, has been exactly 100% accurate when it comes to pace or speed. This is true for both the speed settings on the treadmill itself and for devices that record indoor speed data, such as Garmin wearables. 

Data recorded from swimming and endless pools, which essentially function like a treadmill for swimming, are usually as inaccurate as treadmill or indoor cycling trainer speeds. On the other hand, indoor swimming workout paces recorded on something like a Garmin wearable device from indoor swimming pools are generally more accurate because they are conducted in an environment where the distance is known and where athletes are actually traversing actual distance versus staying in the same place like one does on a treadmill or an indoor cycling trainer or an endless pool. As I've said before, bad data is worse than no data. 

Thus, the fact that the speed and pace data from the treadmill workouts is not accurate is problematic. Over the years, I've had several athletes complete the same workout both outdoors and then indoors on a treadmill. When they've done this, the recorded paces have never been the same. 

In one particularly memorable example, the athletes difference in pace between an outdoor and a treadmill workout was a whopping two minutes and 38 seconds per mile. Yes, two minutes and 38 seconds per mile difference. The impact of bad data like this can be extremely far reaching when looking at the context of a training plan. 

The best predictor of what you will be able to do in the future ability wise is what you are able to do right now. As such, when I as a coach plan training for an athlete, I leverage what I know to be true about an athlete's current abilities. And I glean this information from a combination of their workout data and their subjective feedback. 

If the athlete in the example that I just gave and I had utilized that inaccurate pace data that was recorded from their treadmill workouts to inform our choices about their future training, our perception of their abilities would have been so inaccurate that the negative ripples would have been too numerous to count. And be clear, it doesn't matter if the difference is faster or slower than what you can actually do. The inaccuracy is the problem. 

All of this being said, treadmills do actually afford us some major benefits. The ability to train indoors when extreme weather conditions makes it legitimately unsafe to train outdoors is the most significant benefit that treadmills provide. Being able to train at any time of day is also a benefit as many athletes are hesitant to go for a run outside when it is dark.

(10:47 - 12:09)
Being able to do a workout without interruptions due to intersections, traffic lights or vehicle traffic is also a plus for many runners. Visually impaired athletes can train on their own safely without needing a guide or another person with them when they use treadmills. For young parents, the ability to exercise without having to go elsewhere and therefore without having to seek childcare is a massive benefit as well. 

And while I did lament the inaccuracy of pace data recorded from treadmill workouts, the fact that treadmills do allow you to control the speed and get used to what it feels like to maintain a consistent speed, even if it's not exactly what the treadmill says it is, can be a positive thing. This is especially true for new or inexperienced runners who often struggle with learning what it feels like to hold a consistent pace for an extended period of time. By paying attention to how the body feels and how it responds to the steady state imposed by the treadmill, athletes can attempt to replicate those same sensations when they are completing a run under their own power and thus learn to maintain a consistent pace while running under their own power. 

For athletes who are recovering from an injury, illness or a surgery, a treadmill can offer a safe location to resume workouts again. If needed, the side rails can provide stability and support. Additionally, the ability to control the speed, incline and intensity can be useful for individuals coming back from an injury or illness as it can be a more controlled environment than self-powered workouts.

(12:09 - 13:03)
And this is especially true for those athletes who have a tendency to do too much too soon. The treadmill can kind of act as a governor for them. As I've preached constantly over the years, consistency is critical for any athlete who wants to see sustained gains and who wants to reach their goals. 

For many people, treadmills offer a very real way to achieve that consistency. Without the treadmill, athletes would have breaks in their training, which are ultimately more harmful to them over time. If it's a choice between doing a workout on a treadmill and not doing a workout at all, doing the workout on a treadmill is almost always going to be the better option. 

Finally, the very thing that made treadmills torture devices in the first place can actually be a benefit. By facing the very real, the very boring discomfort dragon that is the treadmill, athletes have an opportunity to build more mental stamina. Yogi Berra, the legendary catcher for the New York Yankees said that baseball is 90% mental.

(13:03 - 13:53)
The other half is physical. I think that this can be applied to running as well. While running clearly has a large physiological component, the mental side of running is just as important, if not more so than the physical. 

Embracing opportunities to experience discomfort and to build mental stamina is important in the long run, pun intended, for athletes who want to seek sustained gains in their running and who want to maintain a healthful, longstanding running habit or practice over the course of their lives. Treadmills may have started out as torture devices, but they have evolved into a tool that can be leveraged effectively by runners all around the world. While there are massive benefits to using treadmills, there are some very real limitations and drawbacks to treadmill running, and it's important that athletes understand these so that they can make informed decisions about how and when to incorporate treadmill running safely and well into their training.

(13:55 - 14:39)
That was another episode of the Full Circle Podcast. Subscribe to the Full Circle Podcast wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. If you like what you listen to, please be sure to leave us a rating and review as this goes a long way in helping us reach others. 

The thoughts and opinions expressed on the Full Circle Podcast are those of the individual. As always, we'd love to hear from you and we value your feedback. Please send us an email at podcast at fullcircleendurance.com or visit us at fullcircleendurance.com backslash podcast. 

To find training plans, see what other coaching services we offer, or to join our community, please visit fullcircleendurance.com. I'm Coach Laura Henry. Thanks for listening.