Threadmills -Good or bad?

CountryWise

I have been hearing lately a lot of bad stuff about treadmills and i was wondering what the pro's and cons are of them?.

Personally im a bit worried that my joints will be wrecked from them later on in life as i use one 4-5 times a week, also im a shin splint sufferer and i dont think the threadmill is great for this problem either....or any other injury for that matter in the legs due to the shock impact...anyones thoughts?

Also how much more would i benefit from just hitting the road for a run instead of the threadmilll?

The good thing for me is that i can run when its lashing rain outside!

CerebralCortex

What kind of problems later in life are expecting to have in your joints? If you know this maybe you read up about its causes then you'll know whether you should use the treadmill.

Money Shot

I would have thought running on concrete would be far more severe on your joints and shin splints than running on a threadmill. Threadmills are designed to absorbe a certain amount of shock.

If your worried about joint impact, maybe you should try other sports such as cycling or swimming, which are have far less impact.

pwd

Running on the road is more difficult than using a treadmill. This is because you have to push yourself forward, instead of just keep yourself in the same place - so you use more muscles.
So if you run on a road or track etc instead of running on treadmills you'll be able to run faster and further.

CountryWise

thats good to hear, i prefer road running to threadmills, i can adjust my running better to a comfortable pace!

thirtyfoot

I'm susceptible to shin splints and for my long runs I usually use grass or trails.

I always get niggles when I use a treadmill or prolonged stuff on the road.

From my experiences I'd rank surfaces the following (safest first)

1 Grass
2 Trail
3 Running Track
4 Treadmill
5 Tarmac
6 Sand
7 Concrete

Aedh Baclamh

Surely sand is the best for them?

thirtyfoot

Sand is brutal for shin splints. The foot shifting on contact is not good and that will happen a lot on sand, whether hard or soft sand.

GreenHorn

I personally steer well clear of threadmills as I find them very hard on my joints, even though I have no history of injury to speak of.

I find the cross-trainer an awful lot better as there's not so much impact on the knees etc.

jdivision

Cross trainer probably best. I can't use treadmills. Shins killing me afterwards. I run on the grass usually.

Marathon Man

pwd wrote:

Running on the road is more difficult than using a treadmill. This is because you have to push yourself forward, instead of just keep yourself in the same place - so you use more muscles.
So if you run on a road or track etc instead of running on treadmills you'll be able to run faster and further.

Agreed. I had a training partner who was of a similar ability to me who joined a gym and ran on the treadmill whilst I continued to run on the road. The volume we both did was around the same. However, six months later when he decided to join me on a road run he found it extremely difficult to keep up even at a moderate cruising pace. Thus if you are training for competition the road is IMO a good bet. But it has to be mixed up with some grass runs too. I'm sure there are some athletes who swear by the benefits of a treadmill, each to their own i guess.
Regarding the rain: One wouldn't get much done in Ireland if one planned one's day around the weather. Regardless of rain, snow, thunder I run every day. It has a way of toughening one up.

g-punkteffekt

running on the road is certainly harder than running on a threadmill. I use threadmills but what I do to compensate for the fact that it's easier on the threadmill is up the incline to about 2 or 3%. Apparently this compensates for the fact that you're not pushing yourself as much. Anyone heard this?

HammerHeadGym

Personally, I hate the treadmill, buggers me knees and a get a wierd disorientation after ward like I'm being pushed back. I run on concrete usually but sand when I can. Get workout running on a beach.

Gillie

I use the treadmill a lot but lately i've started to run on the beach just to mix it up a bit.
Running outdoors is a helluva lot harder than the treadmill!

quozl

g-punkteffekt wrote:

running on the road is certainly harder than running on a threadmill. I use threadmills but what I do to compensate for the fact that it's easier on the threadmill is up the incline to about 2 or 3%. Apparently this compensates for the fact that you're not pushing yourself as much. Anyone heard this?

It's a bit of an urban myth really. Have a look at
http://www.hillrunner.com/training/tmillchart.php
for an equivalency chart. I've also seen articles linking studies using VO2Max to measure work-done pretty much saying how minor the difference is.

From that chart at 1% incline on a treadmill you're working harder on a treadmill than on the flat on the road until you're doing faster than 8 minute miles. For 2% incline you're still working harder on a treadmill doing 5 minute miles than 5 minute milling on the flat.

There was also a winner of the US olympic marathon trials, in 2000, called Christine Clarke who did almost all her training for it on the treadmill, as she lives in Alaska.

I can accept the treadmill is less fun than running outside (It is!) but it's not as different from road running conditioning wise as rumour would have it. I also amn't recommending only running on a treadmill, you need to get conditioned for the surface you'll be racing on. Plus it'll do your sanity good to run outside.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

quozl

They're not identical but they're very similar, much closer than any other form of cross-training. All the articles/studies I've seen about them say that they're a suitable replacement for road-running, with a few caveats such as you need to do enough mileage on the surface you'll race on to become properly acclimatised to it.

For example a good treadmill is lower impact than road running, so you need to make sure you're well used to the roads before trying to run 26 miles. They're also very uniform so you won't be used to uneven footing, or cantered running services if all you do is treadmill running.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge pro-treadmill advocate - running outside is much nicer imo, but I figured I'd present the other side of the argument. I also don't believe that doing basic aerobic training on them is less effective than running on roads.

HammerHeadGym wrote:

I hate the treadmill, buggers me knees

I believe you but that's weird. You say you run on concrete, if anything should be buggering your knees I'd bet on concrete. I find a good treadmill much easier on my legs than concrete.

damianmckeever

For what it's worth here is my two cents.

Most Threadmills will absorb quite a lot of the impact. That is why we don't use them in the shop for Gait Analysis. Everybody has a pretty unique running gait someone who runs with very little knee lift and has more of a shuffle will find the Threadmill running quiet hard because the more "airtime" you have on your gait the easier running on a threadmill is. If you don't lift your feet very high you're going to find threadmill running harder than road running.

Secondly in terms of injuries while the Threadmill does absorb more impact it is also very repetitive. So if for example you are putting pressure on your IT Band when you run, on a threadmill you're going to be doing almost 100% the same thing to the IT Band every stride you take. At least when you are running outside you have a slightly different gradient on each step you may even have to run slightly longer shorter strides depending on road surface, so you're not doing exactly the same thing with every stride which tends to decrease your chances of picking up an over use injury.

The guys who ranked the surfaces in order of safest, I wouldn't disagree with too much. Running on grass can be very boring but in terms of people coming in to the shop with injuries, it's very rare that someone who does the bulk of their running on grass has a serious injury. Trail runners may get serious injury in terms of lateral sprains but they are less likely to come in with an over use injury. I'd probabaly switch the bottom two around though, running on loose sand is the biggest cause of injuries coming in to us.

Money Shot

damianmckeever wrote:

For what it's worth here is my two cents.

The guys who ranked the surfaces in order of safest, I wouldn't disagree with too much. Running on grass can be very boring but in terms of people coming in to the shop with injuries, it's very rare that someone who does the bulk of their running on grass has a serious injury. Trail runners may get serious injury in terms of lateral sprains but they are less likely to come in with an over use injury. I'd probabaly switch the bottom two around though, running on loose sand is the biggest cause of injuries coming in to us.

I honestly don't know how people can run on sand for long periods. I find it extremely difficult and unsatisfying. I don't like grass either - I find it very uneven and very tough on my ankles.
Road running is by far the most enjoyable, although I find the threadmill by far the easiest surface to run on in terms of impact and duration.

I have an over use injury on my knee and it's very hard to pinpoint what actually caused it because I do a lot of cycling too. From the above though, my money would be on the threadmill, although I had alwasy assumed it was the concrete.

hunnymonster

A bit OT, but this was the most recent thread I could find with a post from Amphibianking's Damian McKeever. Mr McKeever became a M. yesterday, completing ironman Austria in a time of 14:06. Well Done Damian.

The irish record also went yesterday. It was no surprise that Trevor Woods broke the record to come home in an amazing time of 9:18:40, 46 seconds faster than the previous best time.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Kinetic^

hunnymonster wrote:

A bit OT, but this was the most recent thread I could find with a post from Amphibianking's Damian McKeever. Mr McKeever became a M. yesterday, completing ironman Austria in a time of 14:06. Well Done Damian.

The irish record also went yesterday. It was no surprise that Trevor Woods broke the record to come home in an amazing time of 9:18:40, 46 seconds faster than the previous best time.

That is awesome, well done to both of them.