Treadmills are excellent devices for workout beginners as you can stop when you want and be in the same place.
If you try to do this outdoors, you will end up exhausted miles from your starting point.
Keeping in mind that you can exercise regardless of the outside weather conditions, treadmills are excellent for beginners.
However, there are always doubts among beginners on the speed they can run on a treadmill. Perhaps you are following a 5K sofa plan.
You either want to stay fit and healthy, or you want to lose weight.
How fast you can go depends on many factors.
If you are overweight and over 40, you can’t go faster than before.
When you are young and slim, you should run much faster and for a longer time.
Fitness level and experience also affect your speed on the treadmill.
Walking
Walking is one of the first treadmill exercises you may have to do as a beginner.
Walking is an exercise in itself, especially if you walk quickly. Many plans for beginners require a brisk walking plan which we advocate.
The recurring question is how fast you should go.
Walking is something that everyone does and so, how fast you do it on the treadmill is what matters.
You will have to walk easily during warm-up and cool-down, but brisk walk during the main exercising segment of the routine.
Below are some walking speeds to guide you on the treadmill as it will be showing your walking speed.
The warm-up and cool-down walking speed should be less than three mph.
As part of a brisk walk, your training should be between 3mph and 4.5mph.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) agree that this pace is fast and fits moderately intense exercise schedules.
Jogging
If walking easily meets your stamina and you want something more challenging, then you should try jogging.
Jogging is the next step once you are a pro at brisk walking.
Moderately vigorous cardiovascular exercises, such as jogging, are a long-term solution for keeping excess weight out of the body.
Jogging requires you to move quickly, allowing you to burn more calories.
Jogging on the treadmill can be challenging for beginners, especially if you plan to do it for extended intervals.
However, jogging can be part of the overall running schedule to warm up or cool down for some people.
Jogging speed can be an intense workout for many people and can make them breathless.
Regular jogging speeds range from 4.5mph to 5.3mph. It is a vigorous activity according to CDC, and so it is essential to include it here.
According to the CDC, strenuous activities are good for health if you carry them out for 150 minutes a week.
When brisk walking, you will burn approximately seven calories per minute.
If that speed makes you breathless and your heart is beating hard, accept it as an intense workout. In most cases, this applies to those who are new to treadmill exercises.
Running
As we can see, jogging is an intense workout for some people and can even make them breathless, and their hearts beat hard.
However, if jogging is easy for you, you should consider running to make the workout more challenging.
Run as fast as you can but be careful not to lose your breath or get exhausted after a relatively short race.
Running too fast, like sprinting all the time, is not a good workout. It only causes injuries, even on the treadmill.
However, if you can run faster and feel comfortable, go ahead and do it. It means you already have a good fitness foundation for exercise or your body fits for this kind of exercise.
The running speed should be higher than the jogging speed, so it should be more than 5.3mph.
You can see people running faster at the gym, but probably, these runners have experience. You may also not know the time interval they run at that speed. If you run at this pace, you will soon achieve the couch to 5k.
Related post: How Long Does it Take to Run 1 mile on The Treadmill?
How Fast You Should Go?
If you are a beginner, despite all of the above, the speed you should go will depend on how you feel when running.
An excellent way to find out is to use your heart rate, but not everyone has a heart rate monitor, and those on treadmills are not very accurate. You can tell how often you breathe and how much you can say while exercising.
If you can pronounce the phrase you are practising, it means you are walking or running comfortably, and you should maintain that pace.
If you can only say a single word before you breathe, you are probably walking or running too fast. If you are exhausted after only 10 to 20 minutes of exercise and are not training for a sprint, you are running too fast.
Your speed may change as you get familiar with the exercise. You will soon breathe better after completing the couch to 5k.
Remember to use the speed selector button carefully. You can also improve your speed by doing good speed exercises on the treadmill. They are mainly for experienced runners, but you can find the plans online.
Maximum speeds in terms of time per distance
- The 100-meter sprinter reaches a top speed of around 27mph in less than 10 seconds.
- The average football player spends 12-13 seconds at 100 meters and a top speed of 19 mph.
- According to the Strength and Fitness Council, an average person can run at 15mph for short periods.
- The average speed of a two-hour marathon runner is 13mph
- The average rate of a three-hour marathon is 8.67mph.
- The average speed of a four-hour marathon is 6.5mph.
- The average man runs at 8.3mph
- The average woman runs at 16.5mph
- The average speed of a 5-minute runner is 12mph
- The average speed of a 6-minute runner is ten mph
- The average rate of an 8-minute runner is 7.5mph
Intervals to improve treadmill speed
As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. If you exercise regularly, you will be fine and will be able to increase your speed.
The same applies to treadmills, training, and weight loss. Your body adapts to the lifestyle changes you are trying to achieve through regular exercise.
At first, you can’t keep up with the pace when you step on the treadmill for the first time. With regular exercise, your body adapts to your training needs.
We understand that it is not easy in the beginning. Therefore, we recommend intervals to boost the speed and to set your pace. As a beginner, you want to take things slowly and quickly.
Training for short periods such as interval training is simple and very effective. Nobody likes to be out of breath and with a fast-beating heart.
For this reason, coaches recommend doing blast or interval exercises for the best results. Not only is it manageable, but it also burns more calories.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a male of around 20 to 30 years old with good health conditions can manage to run at about 602mph.
However, as the person ages and gains weight, it becomes challenging to maintain the same pace. To prevent such cases and maintain optimum fitness levels, you should keep exercising over the years. Although the fitness levels will not remain the same, they will help you maintain the weight you desire even as you age.
Remember that speed is personal, and you do not have to compete with people when running. Also, don’t compete with yourself being younger.
You should only maintain the recommendation by specialists, which is 30 minutes a day, five days a week. You can do it at a speed of 8.2 mph, which will make your heart beat faster, and you will know the workout is adequately intense.
Think about what you want to get out of the exercise.
To lose weight, do it slowly and for a long time. For race training, consider speed and running distance.