Making walking on treadmills less boring
It's an avoidable fact of Minnesota weather that walking for exercise is best done on an indoor treadmill. It's certainly possible to walk outside between December and April, but ice on the ground discourages walking fast, snow covered walkways and sidewalks limit where you can walk, and the cold temperatures discourage being outside for long periods. Unfortunately, walking on a treadmill can quickly become boring with its lack of variety. Here are some strategies and ideas for making treadmill exercise more interesting. Playing with the incline and speed Nature is not perfectly flat, and we are not robots that walk at a perfectly consistent pace. The easiest thing to do, for anyone using a treadmill, is to slightly vary the speed and incline. Let's say you're at a typical 3 mph/4.8 kmph pace, with a 0% incline. Every few minutes, randomly bump the incline up or down a % point. Go crazy and jump from 0% to the max for a little while, drop it down to 2%, back up to 5%, ...