Frequency of Treadmill Workouts
For a treadmill workout to be effective - should you workout every day, or just a few days per week? This is the key questions facing exercise buffs all over the world.
The easy answer is to say that for any exercise to be effective - not just on the treadmill - you need to stick at it for a longer duration of time. In other words, doing just a single episode of exercise will do absolutely nothing in terms of weight loss or muscle gain.
But that still doesn't tell us what the ideal balance of exercise is. Should we be working out religiously, or is it possible to skimp on a day here and a day there?
Optimum Exercise Frequency
Recent research has suggested that people should exercise for 5 days out of the 7 each week. There are a number of explanations for this finding - including the following points:
- Exercising every day is bad for the body (i.e. the body never has time to recuperate).
- Exercising only 1 or 2 days per week causes minimal effect.
- Over-exercising can lead to injury and breakage.
Over exercise is one of the most common issues for people who consciously choose to exercise more than their body can withstand. Don't forget - during periods when you are on the treadmill, the body is forced to sacrifice a number of internal processes to stock the muscles with constant energy.
Too long spent with those other systems shut down can lead to a myriad of issues and problems in the long run.
Balancing Treadmill Workouts with Other Exercise
For most people, exercising on the treadmill will probably not be the only way they get fit. There are a huge number of ways to exercise these days... including muscle training, swimming, sports, and so on. Therefore, it could be possible for you to be overtraining - especially if you are doing a number of these things at the same time.
To get around the over-exercising issue - analyse all of the exercise you do each week. If you're performing more than 2 hours each day on a regular basis, consider cutting back a bit. Your body will probably thank you for it.