Treadmill workouts

Short answer The two things a treadmill gives you that the pavement does not are exact pace and exact incline. A good treadmill workout uses both deliberately rather than just running until bored. The three sessions below are structured around that, not around a calorie number we cannot verify.

To put a number on the speed in any of these, the treadmill speed for a 5k, 10k or half marathon works back from a target time. If you are starting from nothing rather than choosing between sessions, the NHS Couch to 5K plan on a treadmill is a structured nine weeks and is not ours to argue with.

Incline walking intervals

For building fitness without running. Warm up 5 minutes flat at an easy walking pace. Then alternate 3 minutes at an incline within your machine's incline range against 2 minutes flat, repeated 5 to 6 times. Finish with a 5 minute flat cool-down. The incline is the variable this session is built around, and the incline calculator shows what each grade does to the energy cost of the same walk.

Pace-controlled tempo run

For runners who want to train at a specific pace rather than by feel. Use our pace chart to set the treadmill to your target race pace exactly, then hold it for a set duration rather than a set distance. We do not give a duration, because we could not source one. The treadmill holding the pace for you, rather than you having to police it yourself, is the entire advantage over running the same session outside.

Classic HIIT intervals

Short, hard efforts against longer recovery. Warm up 5 minutes. Then 30 seconds at a speed noticeably faster than your comfortable pace, against 90 seconds at an easy walk or jog, repeated 8 times. Cool down 5 minutes. That is one part work to three parts recovery; we are not going to tell you it is the right ratio, because we could not source one. Adjust the work interval and the speed to your own fitness rather than to a fixed target we would be guessing at for you.

What we are not going to tell you

How many calories any of these burn, precisely. Our calorie calculator gives a population-average estimate for steady-state effort; intervals vary speed and effort constantly through a session in a way that estimate does not capture well, and we are not going to dress up a rough number as a precise one.

We also have not run any of these sessions ourselves and are not claiming results from them. They are structures built around what a treadmill's controls actually let you do, not a record of our own training. How we review.

Before you start

If you have not exercised in a long time, have an injury, or have any health condition that affects exercise, talk to a doctor before starting any structured session, this one included. See what a treadmill is actually good for for the wider context.