My mom is an avid runner and refuses to run on a treadmill no matter what. She would rather run in negative degree weather than do an hour inside on the treadmill. She just says its boring, but she might actually be helping herself in the long run.
According to Time magazine, “ ‘Most running injuries are overloading injuries that involve muscle, cartilage, bone or tendons wearing down over time,’ Davis explains. While there isn’t a lot of good research on this, Davis says those types of injuries probably occur more frequently when you repeat the exact same running motion thousands and thousands of times—as you would on a treadmill or a flat, consistent stretch of pavement. “
This means that running on a treadmill subjects your body to wearing down faster than if you were going to run on a path or an area that is not just flat and straight.
Another issue is that using a treadmill is actually not a natural way of moving. Livestrong
says, “Since the rubber belt essentially pulls your feet out from under you when you run, you don’t have to push off as much to generate forward momentum. This affects your gait and foot strike pattern, which can affect your joints if you’re used to running with a natural gait outdoors.”
What I have gathered is that if you run on a treadmill once or twice no harm is going to be done to your body, but once you start a daily routine on the treadmill you may be facing some serious consequences.
As an avid cross country runner and track sprinter throughout high school , these two different running environments throughout high school has taught me so much about myself, my health, and a healthy lifestyle. I see that you’ve gathered a lot of resourceful information to your analyzations. Perhaps even look further into your topic by finding reliable studies that test your question? Just as I was reading through your blog post, I wondered whether running on a treadmill could ever reach the same energy exerted during a marathon? So I went ahead, searched around and found this study questioning the same.
This is a very interesting blog post, but I disagree about how treadmill wearing us down because its flat. At the gym I go to, while I’m running on the treadmill, the incline increases and this makes me much tired faster. According to this article( https://www.lifefitness.com/blog/posts/treadmill-inclines-maximize-a-workout.html) I just found, you get less injuries from a treadmill if it has an incline.
Your blog is a very reminder to me. I like work out. I usually jogging on treadmill for almost half an hour as warm up. Recently I just wondering if there will be a bad consequce if I run a lot on it. I think using treadmill will put a lot pressure on our knees as we using a same speed jogging for a long time. Human being is made of flesh, but not machine.
Very useful article. There are a lot of argument around if running is helpful or not. Talking about which kind of running is more helpful will bring people some new thoughts on running. I will agree with your mom that running outside is more interesting than running on a machine. It is interesting to hear that repeating the same motion can be harmful to our knees. I also wrote an article last blog period about how running will affect our knees. http://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/2015/09/16/is-running-harmful-to-our-knees/
BTW, is there any research on the harm of running on treadmill? That should be helpful.
This is a very interesting post. I have never liked running on a treadmill as much as running on pavement. It is interesting to learn that a treadmill actually pulls your feet out from under you and is not how you are supposed to run. I think if you added some more research to see if a treadmill could potentially be bad for you feet and what exactly they are.
Very interesting article but maybe look at more sources because personally I have read tons and tons of magazines that say running outside is worse than running on a treadmill. I don’t think this experiment or study is really all that reliable because it doesn’t run multiple trials. Correlation cannot prove causation in this case being that many third variables can interfere with these findings such as time spent on treadmill, outside exercise other than running, diet, and how often you work out.