Is Running on a Treadmill Harder or Easier Than Running Outside?
New research debunks some persistent ’mill myths.
Hailey Middlebrook/Runners' World Online, Mar 22, 2019
- A new meta-analysis published in Sports Medicine analyzes 34 studies that compare the physiological, perceptual, and performance differences between running outside and running on a treadmill.
- The research concludes that when runners speed up on a treadmill, they have higher heart rates and report feeling more fatigued than when they run the same speed on land.
- Runners display more endurance running outside than on a treadmill.
In a new
research published in
Sports Medicine,
scientists from Australia sought to answer these questions by
investigating the differences in running performance on a treadmill
versus real ground. To gather this data, they analyzed 34 studies that
compared treadmill runs to “overground” (outdoor) runs. Twelve of the
studies asked participants run on a 1 percent grade on the treadmill,
while the others used higher or lower inclines.
The
researchers were focused on three key measures of comparison:
physiological (how hard the runners’ bodies were working to maintain
pace and finish their workouts, measured by
heart rate, blood lactate levels, and
VO2 max), perceptual (how hard the workout felt for the runners), and performance (how the runners performed in time trials).
(
Link to article)
