Does Walking on the Treadmill Improve Conditioning

will walking on the treadmill 6 days a week for 30 to 60 minutes improve conditioning, fat loss and/or heart and health along with 3 full body strength training workouts per week

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Yes it can be used to burn extra calories (without impacting performance), and is considered a form of Active Recovery as well, depending how you utilize it.

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Yup. Especially if compared to NOT doing that.

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If this is more than you do now - then yes.

Any increase in your activity level will help improve conditioning. And will help fat lose so long as you don’t eat more.

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Depends on your baseline. If you maintain your heart rate at 65-75% of your max heart rate (220-age), 30-60min can be a fairly effective stimulus. If your resting heart rate is above 80bpm, you will probably see conditioning gains

It’s unlikely you’ll work up a significant caloric expenditure from the walking, but it will definitely help (provided you don’t then overeat)

Absolutely! WHO recommends 150-300min of moderate intensity aerobic exercise each week, to significantly reduce mortality and risk of CVD

Including weight training is massively benefical for all three of your above goals, great stuff!

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Walking will absolutely make a difference, but only if you do enough of it consistently. It has the absolute best stimulus to fatigue ratio for fat loss: meaning you can burn a substantial amount of calories with the least cumulative fatigue on your body. So it’s a great way to burn extra calories on top of your workout without overworking your body which has a negative impact on your hormone balance. This hinges on you sticking to it and getting a lot of steps per day (10k+) while not over eating. It will burn less calories per minute compared to higher intensity running or HIIT, but what it does burn, it burns at very low cost to your fatigue level which doesn’t wreak havoc on your hormone levels from exhaustion and you can quickly recover from it as opposed to smashing HIIT or sprinting really hard to burn a bunch of calories quickly at the cost of really high fatigue, risk of injury, and likely a massive hormonal swing which can wreck you for days.

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I’ve noticed walking on the treadmill can help with general conditioning. I can recover from sets faster when I am walking more.

I really need it in the winter in MN. It is just cold and icy most days making walking or general activity outside not very appealing.

I have gotten back on the treadmill band wagon. In just a week or so, I’ve noticed higher inclines at the same speed are already easier.

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Ditto to the above two. To @mattyD’s point, specifically, I think of walking as a recovery deposit and HIIT as a recovery withdrawal.

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I’m seeing this concept all over the place these days and it makes a ton of sense to me. It is also borne out by my personal experience. And it doesn’t seem to matter much for me if I get the steps as part of a purposeful walk or just in daily life so long as I’m over 10k per day.

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Been walking on a treadmill for many months, at least the spead of 3.0 ( sometimes faster) and ramping up to incline between 7 and 12 for a minimum of 30 minutes and a max of 60 minutes…all depends on how i feel that day

whats confusing, this past week i did some brisk walking outside on a sidewalk for 3 miles on flat ground for a few days and my ankles, legs and knees are kinda sore

not understanding why there is such a big difference that would cause the soreness

Anybody tell me why?

I’ve walked on the treadmill at your exact parameters for years. The reason it’s better than flat ground is because there’s no impact going up a hill. It’s a climb. On flat ground there’s an impact at each step, albeit a lot less than running but same type of impact.

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Treadmill is not equivalent to walking on ground; there’s a reason marathon runners train outside.

There is some explanation that involves physics but it’s dicey and complicated. Adjusting the Incline to 3* is to roughly even out in comparison to walking on flat ground… still not quite the same.

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The treadmill belt gives under your step; the sidewalk is more stubborn.

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