Treadmill Walking for Seniors

As age catches up with you, you find it difficult to stay fit. The risks associated with lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and arthritis increases with every passing birthday.

However, old age does not equate to living sedentary life marked by the constant struggle against life-threatening diseases or diminishing body strength.

The treadmill walking workout serves as a perfect fitness routine for seniors to build fitness and stay healthy.

Consult your doctor and embrace a treadmill workout to manage your health conditions easily and effectively.

It will update you with all the required knowledge and ways of getting started with treadmill walking.

Benefits of Treadmill Walking for Seniors

The regular treadmill walking assists you in maintaining your gait, mobility, and body balance.

It invariably forms a part of the health management routine by boosting body metabolism, improving cardio-respiratory health, and burning calories.

Every time you do treadmill walking, you leave your heart, joints, tummy, and back smiling.

Buy a treadmill for home and avoid going to the gym. Rather invest your time and energy in an indoor treadmill walking from the comfort of your home.

This way, you can avoid the congested traffic and tiring journey to a gym. You need not wait for your turn at equipment in the gym.

Moreover, you can make huge savings on expensive gym membership fees and even continue your workout at home irrespective of the outside climatic conditions.

Ensure to get a proper treadmill that provides a lower impact and excellent cushioning for protecting joints, hip, knee, and ankles in seniors.

The treadmill allows you to customize your workout by offering variable speeds, pace, inclines, and other workout settings. The incline feature makes your workout challenging and tests your stamina for a robust cardiac workout.

A treadmill also allows you to track your progress with various monitoring tools on the electronic panel. It serves to inspire you and go further.

The treadmill simulates the brisk outdoor walking and helps you achieve the same rhythm and feel of walking. Moreover, you can also enjoy your workout by putting on wireless earbuds and listening to music.

How to Pick Your Treadmill?

As you are looking to buy a treadmill for your home usage, don’t buy a commercial model designed for gym workouts.

The commercial models are expensive and comprise many advanced features. You may not need most of these high-tech features.

Ensure that your treadmill looks and feels robust and stable. Get on it and see how it fits you.

The next thing to consider is your treadmill’s motor power that supports your walking or running pace. It depends on the weight of the user.

If you have an average weight of around 80-90 kgs, go for a treadmill with at least 2.0 CHP motor power. For overweight seniors, you need at least 2.5 CHP motor.

Consider other factors, like brand, features, and comfort levels before buying a home treadmill.

Choose Proper Clothing and Shoes.

You should ensure to have proper clothing and walking shoes before you start your treadmill walking session.

Wear a flexible and comfy fit T-shirt and track pants that allow easy and flexible movements during our treadmill workout. Ensure that the track pants must stay away at a comfortable distance from the belt of the treadmill.

Wear fitness and sportswear shoes that provide a stable and comfortable grip on the ground. The high-quality shoes provide the front foot’s convenient movement and offer great responsiveness, cushioning, and support during a treadmill workout.

How to Begin Treadmill Walking?

Don’t jump on the treadmill the moment you see it. If you have been inactive and not doing any physical activities for a while, go slow and steady in the beginning.

Do proper warm-up exercises to increase blood circulation and improve muscles stretching before the main treadmill workout.

Get yourself acquainted with the functioning of the treadmill. Know about its various features, control, and adjustable settings.

Find about how to power on/off your treadmill. Read instructions about how to stop a treadmill in case of an emergency.

The treadmill comes with a clip that is attached to the user’s short or waistband. It serves to stop the treadmill in case of any accidental fall or stumble.

Educate yourself about the controls for increasing and reducing the pace, speed, and incline.

Take deep long breaths to settle the butterflies in your stomach. Stand on your treadmill when it is in a stopped state. Start the treadmill by keeping the speed and incline at its lowest settings.

Keep your hands firm on the handrails to maintain steady balance and slowly get used to the walking stride along with the belt’s movement.

Graduating to the Next Level

Once you are comfortable walking at a slow speed, you can slowly move to the next level and gradually increase the speed of the moving treadmill belt.

The treadmill is designed to perfectly simulate outdoor walking or running. You may hold on to the handrails initially, but after some time, you need to let your hands off the handrails.

Consult with your doctor or physiotherapist to see if it’s ok to walk or run on a treadmill without the handrails, keeping in mind your health conditions.

When you do a treadmill walking with your hands on handrails, you don’t have the correct walking posture. It affects both your balance and stability for walking. Moreover, it may also result in aches and pains.

You should walk unassisted on a treadmill as you normally walk outdoors.

If your doctor permits, try to walk at a speed that allows you to take your hands off handrails and hit the same rhythm of brisk walking as you normally do in your park outside.

For the first few days or weeks, maintain a slow pace and a minimum incline while doing treadmill walking. Focus on maintaining a straight and upright posture.

Avoid leaning forward towards the electronic panel and ensure that you are looking forward to the wall or TV set in front of you.

Maintain the natural swings of your arm back and forth as if you are walking outdoors.

Once you have developed enough confidence with slow-paced treadmill walking, try to make your workout more challenging. Try to increase the speed slowly and see how you cope up with it.

With an increased walking pace, you would experience more sweating and harder breathing. Don’t exert yourself too much. It takes time to build the stamina.

Slowly but gradually increase your treadmill workout time. Begin with 3-5 minutes and try to extend it to 10 minutes within a few months.

If you feel uneasy during the workout, find yourself out of breath, or lose your balance at any point in time, immediately reduce the treadmill speed to the level where you feel comfortable.

Ensure to do the cool-down exercises for 5 minutes after completing the workout.

Try to maintain a disciplined treadmill workout routine and stick to it as far as possible.

If your treadmill model has a pulse monitoring feature, check your pulse periodically and see if it is between the recommended range of 50% and 70% of your maximum heart rate.

You may sweat heavily or breathe harder even at a slow pace; it’s perfectly ok as it amounts to a moderate-intensity workout.

How Much Exercise Do You Need?

The seniors should do at least 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercises every day.

If it is difficult to do the 30 minutes of treadmill workout at a stretch, break down your fitness routine into three sessions of 10 minutes each.

The key is consistent and regular workouts to experience lasting health benefits.

Apart from the treadmill workouts, also do strength training exercises every alternate day.

Club the stretching exercises with treadmill workouts to ensure effective cardio-vascular, muscle strengthening, and calorie-burning workouts.

No matter when you throw your retirement party, you need to believe age is just a number.

With regular workouts, you can maintain an active lifestyle, delay aging, and stay fit for many more years.

Buy a good quality treadmill and revitalize your life with regular treadmill walking sessions.