The Monday Shakeout: Treadmill Running
By Andrea Myers
This week Andrea shares about many a runner's least favorite running activity: the dreadmill. She shares some research on treadmills and offers the one tip that runners should integrate into their use of treadmills to get the most benefit.
Fall is here, which means the days are getting shorter and winter is coming. For many runners, this means more time on the treadmill due to darkness, frigid temperatures, and icy or snow covered roads. When you can't run outside, treadmill running is a convenient alternative. Of course, treadmill running is not exactly the same as running outdoors because the belt is moving underneath you and there is a lack of air resistance.
A 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis looked at the differences in running biomechanics between overground running and treadmill running. It included 33 studies with 494 participants and compared motorized treadmill running to running on a track, concrete, or laboratory runway. In general, the authors concluded that "spatiotemporal parameters, kinematic, kinetic, muscle activity, and muscle-tendon outcome measures are largely comparable between motorized treadmill and overground running."
However, they did find some statistically significant differences between treadmill and overground running, including decreased vertical displacement (less bouncy gait pattern), minimally increased knee flexion (bending) at initial contact, decreased knee flexion range of motion during stance phase, minimally decreased foot-ground angle (less dorsiflexion) at initial contact, decreased peak propulsive force, minimally increased ground contact time, and conflicting findings for amplitude of muscle activity, but a trend for lower activity in most muscles investigated. The authors theorize that these differences can be explained by variations in surface stiffness between treadmills and overground surfaces, with the treadmill surface being less stiff; runners not being as comfortable on a treadmill as compared to overground, which may result in biomechanical compensations; insufficient treadmill motor power and restrictive belt dimensions, which may cause belt speed variations and subsequent changes in biomechanics; and differences in air resistance at higher overground running speeds as compared to treadmill running.
Many runners have heard that they should put their treadmill on a 1% incline to account for the lack of air resistance when treadmill running. A 2023 study done at the University of Minnesota did a validation study of the commonly used HillRunner.com treadmill pace conversion chart and found that it "may be used for accurate prescription of submaximal exercise intensity in trained runners at speeds ranging from 10:00-6:45 minutes/mile, and at inclines up to 4%." The subjects in the study were moderately trained runners, so the authors state that their findings cannot be applied to untrained or highly trained, elite level runners.
What does this mean for runners who need to run on the treadmill as part of their race preparation? When running on the treadmill, using a 1% incline is a good way to account for the lack of air resistance and make the effort level similar to running overground, but may not be sufficient when running at paces faster than 6:45 min/mile or slower than 10:00 min/mile. It also means that the biomechanics of treadmill running and overground running are largely similar, but due to the principle of specificity in training, if you are preparing for an overground race, you should do at least some overground training when possible. If nothing else, we can all hope for a mild winter.
For more, we had a podcast all about the treadmill during winter running a year ago. You can listen to that episode here.
References:
Van Hooren, B., Fuller, J. T., Buckley, J. D., Miller, J. R., Sewell, K., Rao, G., Barton, C., Bishop, C., & Willy, R. W. (2020). Is Motorized Treadmill Running Biomechanically Comparable to Overground Running? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Cross-Over Studies. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 50(4), 785–813.
Foreman, N. A., Lee, E. J., & Lundstrom, C. J. (2022). Assessment of a Treadmill Speed Incline Conversion Chart: A Validation Study. International journal of sports physiology and performance, 17(7), 1030–1036.
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