YouTube tutorial (Jeffrey Jaime, CISSP) on using a hotel treadmill safely and effectively. Advises setting treadmill incline to 1.0 to better simulate outdoor running, avoiding holding the handrails, and using hill-repeat routines instead of steady-pace runs. Presents a hill-pyramid workout with warm-up followed by 2-, 4-, 6-, (optionally 8- and 10-) minute hill climbs each separated by ~2 minutes easy jogging, and recommended inclines for each effort.
Questions this video answers
1.0
No — do not hold onto the handrails.
Warm up 5–15 minutes, then: 2-minute hill climb + 2-minute easy jog; 4-minute hill climb + 2-minute easy jog; 6-minute hill climb + 2-minute easy jog; optionally 8-minute and 10-minute hill climbs each + 2-minute easy jog.
The treadmill. Now, if you happen to be staying at a hotel that's in an urban environment where it's either dangerous to run outside or it's going to be very difficult logistically for you to navigate through traffic and stoplights and all that jazz, the hotel treadmill can be a very good option for you. It burns almost as many calories as running outdoors. Not quite as many, but almost as many. But there are a few things that you need to make sure that you do when you're working out on the hotel treadmill. First of all, set the incline at 1.0. By setting the incline at 1.0 rather than 0.0, you're going to simulate the ground reaction forces and the wind resistance that you would experience if you were running outdoors. The next thing you want to pay attention to is not to hold onto the handrails. Just like climbing stairs is easier when you hold onto handrails. Running, walking. Jogging is also easier when you hold onto handrails, there's no handrails outdoors when you're running, which is why you burn a lot of calories. You're not going to burn that many calories if you try to use the handrails on a treadmill. So when you get on the hotel treadmill, one of the things you don't want to do is just run at a steady pace for X number of minutes. You're not going to burn that many calories or get that much bang for your buck out of a workout like that. Hill repeats are very, very effective on a treadmill. That incline tab is right there, and it's actually kind of convenient. When you run outdoors, you got to run to a hill, you got to find a hill. When you're on a treadmill, you can create the hill whenever you want to. So what's one of my favorite workouts to do on a treadmill? It's called a hill pyramid. You warm up for five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes, and then you use that incline button right there on the treadmill. What you do is a 2 minute hill climb followed by 2 minutes of easy jogging. A 4 minute hill climb followed by 2 minutes of easy jogging. A 6 minute hill climb followed by 2 minutes OF easy jogging. And if you're fit and you want to continue to challenge yourself, an 8 minute and a 10 minute hill climb followed by 2 minutes of easy jogging. Now, preferably for the shorter hill climbs, you're using a steeper incline. For the longer hill climbs, you're using a less steep incline. So for example, your 2 minute effort might be at an incline of 8.0. Your 4 minute is 7.0, 6 minute is 6.0, your 8 minute is 5.0, and your 10 minute is 4.0. And you separate each of those by an easy jog of about two minutes. Very effective, difficult workout, but a great way to use a treadmill. It's a wonderful workout, burns a lot of calories. It really gets you in good shape too. So try it out on your next hotel treadmill visit.
