Is Treadmill Jogging Good for You?
So I walked into the Verizon Wireless store today wearing a tank top, and one of the employees asked me how I managed to get so toned. He asked, “How many miles do you run every day?” I initiated my response by laughing at him. I couldn’t recall the last time I even considered jogging. I probably spent the next 10-15 minutes explaining to this guy why it is never my exercise of choice by lecturing him on the relationship between target heart rates and their corresponding energy systems – (stick with me, I’ll explain). I realized that this wasn’t the first time somebody has asked me about the relevance of jogging on a treadmill, so I’d like to take a second to enlighten the general population on what I explained to this man.
JOGGING IS OVERRATED. Unless you enjoy running outdoors – feeling the wind in your hair, the sun on your skin, and taking a scenic route to calm your mind and find your inner chi, or nirvana, or whatever other hippie relaxation methods you think you’re shooting for – chances are you spend your time on a belted machine inside a stuffy gym, where the only thing keeping your mind distracted from thoughts of quitting and that terrible burn in your chest is a TV conveniently placed 3 feet in front of your face playing close-captioned soap opera reruns, or ESPN if the gym owner is the least bit considerate. If I’m going to invest 1-2 hours/day, 6-7 days/week trying to improve my body both athletically and aesthetically, I’m not going to do it by wasting my time on a treadmill… at least not at a jogging pace. It’s hard on my knees, I’m bored after the first mile or two, and my leg muscles usually only tighten up in one specific location and it’s all I can think about the entire time I’m running. Sure, there are marathon runners out there that love running long distances, but even in their case, research has shown that there is no translation in performance improvements between treadmill jogging and running outside on real terrain. In other words, the only thing jogging on a treadmill will help you improve is… your ability to jog on a treadmill. Congratulations, you’re about as athletic as a hamster on a wheel.
Let’s discuss what jogging does to your body. With each stride, you take a shock equivalent to up to five times your bodyweight reverberating up your legs and into your spine. This puts a lot of stress on your joints and causes painful inflammation that can easily be avoided by practicing more efficient fat-burning routines. Running for 20 minutes or more will also start to increase your cortisol (stress hormone) levels, causing your body to break down and burn off some of that muscle you worked so hard to build. This is partially why many guys that think they know what they’re doing will bulk themselves up, then when it comes time to cut weight, they jog all of their muscle away and look exactly how they did when they got started. Looks like meat-head needs to pick up a book explaining the differences between aerobic and anaerobic respiration. Allow me to save you the time and give you the simplified explanation now.
In a nutshell, your body uses fats when it is working at a low intensity level; you use glycogen (aka carbs, or blood sugars) at moderate to mildly high intensities, and phosphocreatine is called upon for those moments when your intensity levels are through the roof and you go all Animal Planet jacked up on caffeine and beta alanine (and perhaps maybe some shadier substances that no one knows you’re using except you and that one creepy guy whom you only acknowledge when the two of you are in an empty locker room together and you’re low on supply…) Ok, maybe you don’t have to work THAT hard to utilize the last one, but you get the relationship between the three. With that being said, if you want to burn body fat, my recommendation is this:
Move around at a slow pace for a long period of time – for example, WALK on a treadmill/stairmaster or ride a bike while maintaining a heart rate at or below 110-120 bpm, or you can
Train at a high level of intensity for short periods of time – i.e. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), like running sprints or Tabata training.
The former option will cause your body to choose dietary fat and body fat as its primary energy source. An easy indication that you’re moving at the right pace is your ability to speak or sing without sounding sluggish and out of breath. Choosing the latter will burn off glycogen and stimulate muscle in the process, but the real payoff comes later, as high-intensity exercises will boost your metabolism and increases fat oxidation throughout the rest of your day. This is what’s known as the “afterburn effect” or EPOC. Burning fat while sitting around doing nothing? Yes, please!
So to recap, if your goal is to train for a 5k, half-marathon, or a marathon and the weather outside is frightful, by all means jog on a treadmill in lieu of the better option. But if you are amongst the other 95% of the population who works out because you want to look better with no clothes on, stop wasting your time and destroying your joints by jogging on those awful muscle-loss machines. Move slowly or move quickly. Leave that gray area in the middle for resistance training.
KDS-Strength 