Interesting Article - Get outside and run/walk!

After returning from my two hour Thanksgiving day nature walk I came across this article. It is an interesting look into an outdoor walk/run vs. exercising on the treadmill. While I think the treadmill is a great peice of equipment for warming up before strength training or on a rainy/cold winter day when you would otherwise not exercise, I would advocate exploring outdoor trails, paths and roads.

Treadmill Running

Walk into your local commercial gym, what do you first see?  Other than the weirdo doing overhead press on a bosu ball, most likely a bunch of mice running on a treadmill.  "But what's wrong with a treadmill?  I want to lose fat/improve my aerobic capacity/stare at the chick in front of me on the elliptical."  I won't get into the arguments of steady state cardio vs. optimal fat loss, but here's the view from a biomechanical standpoint.

What's the difference between treadmill running and road running?  On the road you are master of your own domain?  Want to go further; run a bit harder.  You have complete muscular control of what you are doing.  On a treadmill you are stationary relative to an observer standing on the ground.  The belt you run on which keeps you in place is assisting with your hip extension - you perform the knee extension and hip flexion (forward stride), which by the way is mostly quadriceps activation, then the belt takes over and passively performs hip extension and knee flexion for you, which is mostly hamstring/glute activation.  So what's the problem here?  The passive hip extension/knee flexion eliminates the need for you to activate your own hamstrings/glutes - the belt does it for you so your body doesn't have to.  However, you are still activating your quadriceps during the knee extension; this is essentially highly repetitive quadriceps activation with very little hamstrings/glutes activation.  Talk about muscular imbalance - perform 300 reps on the leg extension machine and do no hamstring work.  In a week let me know how your knees feel.  That imbalance of forces, a force couple, exerts high forces on the anterior (front) side of the knee with no balancing force on the posterior side.  Unequal distribution of forces will produce what?  Structural imbalances, weak muscles and pain.

From: http://eggandmeat.blogspot.com/2010/08/exercises-you-shouldnt-be-doing.html

 

If you want anymore info, please contact me! Remember to check out the new ONE MONTH CHALLENGE. If you sign up before the end of October you will recieve 20% off!

Alli Cain, B.A.Kin, C.K.
Personal Trainer
www.ACAINtraining.com
905-806-7198