How Fast Should Walking Speed Be on a Treadmill ?
Ever wonder what that fine line is when a walking speed on a treadmill should transition to jogging? Just HOW fast should someone walk on a treadmill?
Walking, either on a treadmill or outdoors, is one of the safest forms of exercise and highly recommended by doctors.
The irony is that the person who’s wondering how fast he or she should walk on a treadmill, might think nothing of ambulating briskly over a long distance at an airport to catch a plane.
Or, they might walk quite fast in an attempt to make a meeting that’s at the other side of the building they work in.
But on a treadmill, suddenly, the idea of brisk walking becomes a concern.
Reassure yourself that walking is as natural as drinking water.
The human body was engineered to walk, including briskly, and including up hills. This is how ancient man survived.
In fact, people did a heck of a lot of walking up to the time that cars were invented.
I honestly cannot think of one medical condition in which this fundamental form of movement can hurt a person, with the exception of orthopedic injuries, and afflictions such as osteoarthritis.
But even people with diabetes neuropathy, peripheral vascular disease and emphysema will benefit tremendously from walking.
So how fast would you like to know you can walk on a treadmill?
- How fast do you normally move in day-to-day life?
- Does brisk ambulation bring on hip or knee pain?
If so, you need to see an orthopedic medical professional. Did you recently sprain an ankle? Limit your walking.
Do you have plantar fasciitis? Same thing during flare-ups: Limit walking.
If your joints are fine and you have no injuries, then exercise away. If you feel dizzy during your session, get off the machine.
It’s possible your blood sugar is low, or that you may even be pregnant.
It’s also possible your body just isn’t used to walking on a moving belt.
Do not hold onto the machine, as this will not solve the underlying issue.
If this popular exercise brings on nausea or dizziness, stop and re-evaluate your eating habits and water intake.
Medications can also cause these side effects. If you’re pregnant, treadmill use is perfectly safe to do as long as you feel fine. Talk to your OB/GYN about that.
What’s most important is not how fast you should move on a treadmill, but your form.
You absolutely should not cling onto the machine when walking. Here are 10 reasons never to hold onto a treadmill.
Walk fast enough on a treadmill to get the heart rate up.
Swing arms and focus on good posture and breathing.
• Don’t slam your feet.
• Relax and let your body fall into its natural stride.
• If walking fast on a treadmill fails to get your heart rate up much, then either add an incline (but not so much that you’re forced to hold on), or transition to jogging.
• Don’t obsess about heart rate, and when you do take it, it’s more accurate to take it via feeling for your pulse while at rest, rather than assuming that the machine’s interpretation is correct.
Put a challenge on yourself: Train to work up to maintaining a 4 mph pace on a treadmill — without holding on.
That’s a pretty fast clip, but at the gym where I had worked as a personal trainer, I always saw a man, age 72, spend an entire hour walking 4 mph — without holding on!
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
Stopped Losing Weight? Don’t Blame Genes; It’s Your Diet
Don’t chalk your stalled weight loss up to body type or genes.
There are several dietary reasons why the scale is now stuck at that still-too-big number.
When I was a personal trainer at a gym some years ago, I frequently counseled clients on nutrition and the reasons for weight loss stalls.
Not Eating Enough
Freepik.com,/schantalao
Significant calorie restriction may at first result in weight loss, making clothes fit looser, but the body doesn’t take long to start “panicking” and go into the so-called starvation response.
Stored body fat becomes harder to lose, to protect the body from what it “thinks” is a severe food shortage. We are hardwired for this response.
So why doesn’t it work in underdeveloped nations where multitudes of people starve to death or in developed countries where anorexia nervosa seems to be on the rise?
The severity of the typical dieter’s calorie shortage isn’t extreme enough to cause blatant wasting away of muscle and bone and impair organ function.
For some people, calorie restriction in the dieting range, rather than underdeveloped-country or anorexia nervosa range, may result in the weight loss eventually stopping.
Long Periods Between Eating
Long periods between eating can dip a person’s energy level and result in subdued physical activity: a smaller calorie expenditure. It may also slow metabolism.
Eating every three hours can spike energy levels in those who feel fatigued.
Unknowingly Adding More Food
You’ve lost sight of what you’ve been eating, and the diet has now increased in calories, causing you to stop losing weight.
Re-examine your portions including how much dressing or sauce you’ve been using.
Eating at the Wrong Times
Are you now eating cheat meals late at night, when metabolism has slowed down and there’s no activity to burn off the food?
Diet Is Not Effective at Losing the Desired Number of Pounds
It’s possible that the weight loss has stopped because you’re still overeating, even though initially, there was some weight loss.
What if you’ve gone through the above list, made the corrections, and are still stuck at a weight loss plateau?
“If you stop losing weight after being on a healthy diet, it could be possibly because of certain foods causing inflammation to your cells and tissues,” Prajakta Apte, RDN, owner and founder of Right Nutrition Works who helps people create a healthier lifestyle.
“Inflammation can be an origin of you having challenges in weight loss,” continues Apte.
“You are not what you eat, but you are what you digest. A simple blood test can solve this problem.”
The blood test is called C-reactive protein and can be ordered by your doctor.
Don’t go overboard by going on a starvation diet. Practice portion control, limit processed foods and fast foods, and engage in strength training and high intensity interval training to fire up metabolism.
Prajakta Apte is the author of the eBook “Overcoming Nutrition Roadblocks.” Her personalized approach to nutrition therapies helps treat root causes of conditions such as type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, GI disorders, hypertension and many more.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Depositphotos.com
Burn Fat, not Muscle with HIIT on a Treadmill
You no longer have to avoid doing aerobic exercise in the name of preserving the muscle you’ve worked so hard to build. (more…)
Best Fat Burning Cardio for Big Muscles
Men with big muscles will want to burn lots of fat to show off those giant muscles as much as possible. Here is how.
Additionally, those with big muscles will also want to slash their body fat levels so that their waist gets smaller — which will make their muscles appear even bigger.
I’ve noticed that men with hypertrophic builds seem to prefer the elliptical machine for their fat burning workouts more than any other cardio equipment.
Why the elliptical machine for burning fat?
The elliptical machine is very popular for all kinds of people.
But it’s especially favored among men with huge muscles.
Muscle is heavy. Perhaps it hurts their knees to jog on a treadmill or around the gym’s track.
As for walking on a treadmill, perhaps heavily muscled men figure that walking won’t burn enough fat or get the heart rate going, so they choose the elliptical to get a faster motion with their legs.
But faster doesn’t always mean more fat burning.
Walking on a treadmill at an incline will burn tremendous amounts of fat – but only if you don’t hold onto the equipment!
Wrong. Do not hold on, especially if you want to burn fat. Dreamstime.com/Aleksandar Todorovic.
This “no holding on” rule applies as much to men with huge muscle as it does to anyone else wishing to burn up the fat.
If you’re a big guy with lots of enviable muscle mass, but want to further shave down your body fat percentage, here is a recommendation:
If you use the elliptical machine, keep your hands off the machine.
Nobody says you must hold onto those arm cranks.
Let your arms move at your sides in synch with your body, as you would if you were jogging along the beach.
Contrary to popular belief, gluing your hands to the arm cranks will NOT burn more calories.
If the arm cranks are a distraction, use an elliptical that doesn’t have this gimmick if one is available at the gym.
Revolving staircase or “stair stepper”: Again, hands off the equipment.
Imagine climbing flights of stairs for burning fat, whether those flights are in a high rise building or outdoors.
You wouldn’t be leaning against anything or grasping at anything.
Use this logic when using the revolving staircase.
Treadmill walking or jogging.
The man with the big muscles can burn a lot of fat if he uses the treadmill correctly.
The first step is to walk like a real man: Keep your hands off the treadmill’s rails or the bar in front.
Used the rails only to memontarily steady yourself.
If you use the incline, keep your hands at your sides anyways, as you would if you were walking hills outdoors to burn fat.
The guy with the big muscles should also consider jogging on the treadmill. Start slowly at first.
The best way to use cardio to burn fat is to engage in HIIT style training.
HIIT not only burns the most fat, but it actually takes less time to do than traditional “long slow” cardio.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Freepik.com
Are You Fat but Think Strength Training Will Make You Bigger?
The most important thing an obese woman can do is stop believing that training with weights will make her body even bigger.
NOT TRUE! Stop thinking like this!
The thought that lifting weights makes obese women bigger is a misconception.
When I was personal trainer I often explained to overweight women that strength training will shrink their bodies, not enlarge them.
I explained: “You need to lift heavy to blast fat away, but that heaviness is light to men who lift weights.”
It’s a misconception that has caused many overweight women to fail to accomplish their goals, so it needs to be put to an end.
Looking at pictures of massively muscular bodybuilders doesn’t help the situation at all, but what about them?
They lift weights and get bigger and bigger.
Wouldn’t that make this type of exercise something obese women should avoid?
Why Strength Training Will Not Make an Obese Woman Bigger
Muscle is denser than fat and it burns up fat. Somehow, when obese women think of lifting weights, they picture big muscles being created under their fat, making them bigger, and it just doesn’t happen that way.
- Lifting weights makes obese women smaller, not bulky.
- Fat actually takes up more space than muscle.
Strength training adds lean shapely muscle; it does NOT add more fat!
If an obese women succeeded in replacing all their fat with muscle, still remaining at the same weight, they would be much smaller.
However, the rate by which fat is burned off by muscle means they most likely won’t remain at the same weight. They’ll lose weight instead.
Lifting weights is actually beneficial for obese women.
The deadlift exercise. Shutterstock/Miljan Zivkovic
There is almost nothing that burns off fat quite like muscle does.
As you build muscle, your metabolism increases, meaning that the excess weight that’s burn continues around the clock, even in your sleep because the muscle stays with you.
Every time an obese women lifts weights, she’s raising her metabolism to a higher level that can be permanent, as long as she continues to exercise on a regular basis.
It can help her reach her goals in record time.
Don’t fall for the crazy myth that overweight women will increase their body size from working out with weights — even heavy resistance, for that matter.
Why let such mixed up thinking keep you from having the body of your dreams?
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
Excess Sitting Raises Calcium Score: What You Should Do
You probably already know that lots of sitting every day raises calcium score, but here are some clever yet easy solutions to avoid “the sitting disease.” (more…)
Safe Summer Hiking Preparation for Obese People
Obese people can begin their hiking preparation safely inside a gym or even their home, but if they want to venture outdoors from the start, that’s fine too. (more…)
Should You Hold onto a MANUAL Treadmill?
If you like using a manual (foot powered) treadmill but hold onto the rails, this is very wrong and defeats the purpose of this kind of machine.
Holding on cancels out or undoes the benefit of the foot-powered apparatus.
As a former personal trainer, I was inspired to write this article after seeing a woman “walking” on a manual treadmill at a fast speed.
Her hands were clutching the side rails at every moment, arms stiffly bent and tense, shoulders locked up, posture skewered. This is not the right way to walk.
She was actually slightly leaning over to one side, one arm more bent.
Her upper body was locked in this crooked position while her legs “walked” on the manually powered belt.
In short, her holding onto this manual treadmill was wrecking her posture through-and-through.
She was wasting her time. I just could not believe what I was seeing.
What is the point of using a foot-powered treadmill when you’re going to clutch the rails?
Every so often she intentionally jerked in an attempt to get more out of the “walking,” pulling harder on the hand rails with each step.
By the way, it was easy for me to observe her because I just happened to be working out at a station that was facing her about 30 feet away.
I thought, “If you want to up the ante of your walking, take your hands off the rails!”
Manual Treadmill: Why You Should Not Hold Onto the Rails
Pexels/Anastasia-shuraeva
If you’re not holding on, the muscles in your legs and glutes are doing all of the work. YOUR CORE IS ALSO VERY INVOLVED.
It’s easy to see that the walker’s core is getting a free ride as she grips the side rails. Letting go will force her body to improve balance. If she goes slowly enough, she will NOT fall off. Shutterstock/wavebreakmedia
Leg muscles burn more calories than arm muscles. So if burning calories is important to you, do not hold onto the rails.
Ignore the calorie display: This is triggered by the speed, not the person using the apparatus.
What if you don’t care about calories burned?
If you don’t care and are focused more on a cardio and fitness workout, then again, do not hold on. This messes up posture and creates a false sense of “I had a good workout.”
“The same rules should apply to both manual and motorized treadmills when it comes to holding on,” begins Dr. Tom Carpenter, corrective exercise specialist, certified personal trainer and chiropractor, inventor of Stand Corrected™, a portable harness-like stretching tool that helps alleviate back, neck and shoulder pain.
Dr. Carpenter continues, “Being hands free will engage the entire core and kinetic chain, enabling the body to recruit all of its posture and balancing muscles.
“Although there are other pros and cons to motorized versus manual treadmills, letting go of the rails is important when using either one.”
Let Go of the Manual Treadmill and Feel the Difference
If you walk without holding onto the manual treadmill, you’ll instantly feel a big difference: Your feet are truly powering the tread, rather than just gliding through the motions.
Don’t think for a moment that just because the treadmill is powered by your feet, that it’s okay to hold on.
- It’s not.
- This is cheating.
- It’s not real walking, even though there’s no electric motor.
- Your hand placement on the rails, especially a solid grip, subtracts significant workload from your legs, hips and feet!
Fear of Falling off a Manual Treadmill
• Walk slowly at first. The woman I saw was charging along and perhaps felt that if she let go she’d get thrown off.
• Walk SLOWLY. And just stay at that slow pace, without holding on, until you feel in control.
• Then gradually move faster. This is a manual treadmill, not a tight rope.
Walking on a manual treadmill without holding on will force your core muscle group to work!
It will force good posture! It will strengthen your ankles and calves. Need I say more?
Photo credit: Aleesia Forni
Based upon 30+ years of experience, Dr. Carpenter’s practice approach reflects his belief that restoring optimum health and function will enable his patients to enjoy a much greater amount of vitality and wellness. Chiropractic care is true health care, not sick care!
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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Top image: Shutterstock/Piyawat Pansirimongkonkun
How to Deadlift with Long Femurs to Shin Ratio
A person of any height can have disproportionately long femurs.
The long femur problem is not a function of overall body height.
It’s about femur length relative to torso and shin length.
My femur length seems to be a few inches longer than my torso, but what’s more striking is that my shin bones should be longer, relative to my femurs.
These proportions put me at a biomechanical disadvantage with the deadlift, especially since my arm span is only equal to my height or maybe one-half inch more at most, though I haven’t had this formally measured.
Let’s put it this way: The length of my arms certainly serve no advantage in the bench press.
I can pull 245 x 4 (I’m a woman), and I never use straps, gloves or chalk.
Why Long Femurs Interfere with Efficient Deadlift Form
It’s simple: Long femurs (again, relative to torso and especially shin length, regardless of height) force your hips further behind the barbell.
This forces you to lean forward more to reach the barbell, placing your back in a stressful position — which for some people, is nearly parallel to the floor in the start position of the pull.
With your hips sitting way back, you just have no choice but to compensate by leaning forward more to get your hands to the bar.
If you have wickedly long arms along with the lengthy femurs, you won’t need to lean forward as far to reach the bar.
How to Deadlift with Long Femurs and Short Shins
Some people swear by the Sumo style. Others endorse a variation of the conventional style: wider foot placement, but not as wide as Sumo.
Some suggest turning out the feet with the standard style, to trick the body into thinking the femurs are shorter.
I’ve studied my profile in a mirror, experimenting with these variations.
If my feet are wide but not Sumo, there’s pretty much zero difference in the “uprightness” of my back.
If I pull Sumo, my back is only a little bit more upright, and it’s very awkward on my hips.
Due to the long femurs, Sumo forces a lot of engagement of the hamstring-glute tie-in. Not pretty.
Sumo style deadlift may work well for some people with long femurs. Shutterstock/ Oleksandr Zamuruiev
Turning my feet out doesn’t change anything, either. So my advice is to find the form that you feel most comfortable with.
For me, my feet are close together. I have the most power and comfort this way. My hands are close together, just inside my knees.
The irony is that few people deadlift this way, and would probably find it difficult. But my body feels as though it’s in its strongest position this way.
Tweaking Deadlift Form with Long Femurs (and Short Shins)
If your shins are short relative to your femurs, keep reading! Freepik.com
Learn how to tolerate the barbell rolling up along your shins.
You’re already leaning out further than you should be, due to the long femurs forcing your hips way behind the bar, but you have no choice.
And the only way to offset this (which isn’t much) is to roll that bar along your shins, so that you’re not leaning forward any further than you absolutely have to.
My shins sometimes have mild bruises on them. I have perfected this roll so that it’s not klutzy or uncontrolled.
Your shins will have to be covered with sweats, leggings or socks.
- Next, no matter what you do, keep your shoulders above hip level.
- Do not round your back.
- Fight to keep the lumbar area slightly arched. Just fight for this.
Concentrate on driving upward with leg power while your lower spine is stabilized.
Make sure your knees don’t buckle or cave inward as you pull.
Are there any exercises that will help with the deadlift?
I do not improve with the deadlift by doing rack pulls, “deficit” deadlifts, hex bar (trap bar) pulls or dumbbell deadlifts.
Hex deadlift
However, you should try these because what doesn’t work for one person may be a godsend to another.
Getting stronger in the back squat should help — but that’s probably not what people with long femurs and short shins want to hear.
One sure way to get better with the deadlift is to keep training in this movement.
What if you have T-rex arms along with those long femurs?
There’s not much more you can do than to follow the guidelines here and also consider hiring a powerlifting coach.
Other Factors that Influence Efficiency with the Deadlift
Ratio of fast twitch fiber to slow twitch, integrity of spine, tendon insertion length, grip strength and size of hands.
If you have long femurs and especially short shins, you can still learn to do a pretty good deadlift.
Just never get into the habit of rounding your back.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Shutterstock/Maridav
Sudden-Onset One-Eye Epiphora: Possible Causes
If you have sudden-onset one-eye epiphora, don’t panic, as this may pass after only several days like a light being switched off.
“Epiphora can be from either an occlusion somewhere along the nasolacrimal passageway (easy to test for in the office) or acute dry eye,” says Yuna Rapoport, MD, a board certified ophthalmologist with Manhattan Eye in NYC.
An occlusion is a blockage. The nasolacrimal passageway is the drainage system that links the sinus area to the eyes — which is why the nose runs when people cry.
One evening I became aware that there was moisture collecting on the skin below my inner right eye.
Next day the eye was persistently welled up, and produced three or four full-fledged, clear tears rolling down my cheek during the day.
In between those tears, the eye was in a state of persistent excess wateryness.
There were no other symptoms and no recent history of trauma.
Dry eye can cause excess tearing because the dryness stimulates the tear ducts to overcompensate.
I suspected dry eye and gave it a lot of artificial tears, but it continued to be welled up.
Next day, it produced more tears rolling down my cheek. Next day, even more. Next day, in the morning, it was on course for producing even more tears.
This unilateral epiphora (which means one eye tears or is excessively watery) was building up by the day.
Causes of Sudden Epiphora in One Eye
“Sudden-onset epiphora could be from an acute infection in the nasolacrimal system, from a physical obstruction (like a stone, a punctal plug, foreign body), or from dry eye/surface disease,” says Dr. Rapoport.
The punctum, where debris could cause an obstruction. Diogo Melo Rocha/CC BY 2.5
Other possible causes: nasal polyp, corneal abrasion and an inverted eyelash.
Can cancer cause an eye to suddenly tear excessively?
“Cancer would be the last item on my differential diagnosis,” says Dr. Rapoport.
There are many more causes for a gradual onset of an excessively watery eye, vs. a suddenly watery eye.
To be fair, it’ll be pointed out that malignant and benign tumors in the sinuses can cause a gradual onset of epiphora in one eye.
A cancerous obstruction in the nasolacrimal drainage system, too, can trigger excessive tearing in one eye. But again, this would be gradual rather than sudden appearance of tear drops rolling down the cheek.
Paranasal cancer is very rare, and malignant tumors in the lacrimal system are EXTREMELY rare.
On that fifth day in the morning, I made an appointment to see a general practitioner.
The sensation of the welling up in the right eye, prior to leaving for the appointment, seemed to be disappearing, but I figured that was just its occasional remittent nature over the past several days.
But as I waited in the doctor’s office, I was realizing that the eye didn’t feel welled-up at all. There had been no tearing since I had made the appointment.
The doctor couldn’t tell me what was wrong, but she also didn’t think it was an infection.
This sudden one-eye epiphora was simply GONE and never returned.
Eventually I asked an optometrist whom I’d spoken to previously about eyedrops for an unrelated matter what could have caused it.
He said: “a partial obstruction of the punctum.”
The puncta are the holes in the eyelid that drain tears.
“A little strand of mucus further down in the canal, not necessarily at the surface, and it kind of worked its way through,” he said, when I told him that the condition had magically shut off without tapering.
As for corneal abrasion, he said, “Generally you’re going to have some discomfort in the eye, but if it was a very small abrasion, that could cause a little bit of reflex tearing.”
Reassurance: Absence of Other Symptoms
There’s no need to panic if one eye suddenly starts watering with no other symptoms.
Concerning symptoms include vision problems (other than the blurriness caused by the excess water), a bulging eye, nearby swelling, numbness below the eye or near the nose, a stuffy feeling in the nose, nasal discharge and ear pain.
Nevertheless, if epiphora in one eye fails to clear up, you should see an ophthalmologist — even if your medical plan requires that you first see your primary care physician.
Yuna Rapoport, MD
