6 Best Treadmill Workouts to Lose Weight and Burn Fat (2024)

Ah, the humble treadmill. Since its introduction into gyms as an exercise machine in the 60s and 70s, the treadmill has become a staple cardio machine in big box, boutique, and even home gyms. It’s not uncommon to find walls upon walls of treadmills at gyms, and even if you don’t have a full home gym set up, you likely have a small treadmill at home.

The reason why treadmills continue to reign supreme as a gym staple is because they’re so effective for building leg strength and losing weight. And you don’t need to run in purgatory to achieve results, either! By choosing an effective treadmill routine specifically targeted for weight loss, you can spend less time on the treadmill and still transform your body composition.

While many people may associate treadmills with torturous running that seems to go on forever, there’s no need to run in fear from treadmill workouts. While most people tend to “set it and forget it” when it comes to treadmill workouts, high-intensity workouts mixed with inclines, and a combination of sprints, jogs and walks can all be effective ways to cut time spent on the treadmill yet still burn calories effectively. For example, a 160 lb person might burn about 150 calories walking on the treadmill for 30 minutes. If they boosted the incline by 5%, they’d burn about 100 more calories. And turning up the incline to 10% could add another 100 calories on top of that.

3500 calories = 1 lb of fat, so these small changes could really add up quickly, leading to faster weight loss.

Belly fat is caused by a variety of reasons, including a bad diet, lack of exercise, and stress. When the body is stressed, it releases a hormone calledcortisol, which makes you crave sugary, fatty foods. This leads to a vicious cycle of belly fat gain, stress from weight gain, stress-eating due to high cortisol levels, and more weight gain. Cortisol also deposits fat around your belly.

Again, yes. A treadmill is good for weight loss, as long as you utilize a mixture of HIIT workouts, interval workouts, and steady state cardio. You’ll also need to watch your diet as mentioned above and practice self care like prioritizing sleep to reduce stress and cortisol build-up.

Spin bikes are more commonly used for total-body high-intensity interval training (HIIT), while stationary exercise bikes are used for more controlled cardio and endurance training, mainly focusing on the legs.

You may think that running as much as you can on the treadmill is the best way to lose weight, but that’s a misconception. In order to effectively lose weight on the treadmill, workouts should be between 20-45 minutes long, depending on your fitness level, routine, endurance, and current weight.

For example, a HIIT treadmill workout (High Intensity Interval Training) involves intervals of high speed, followed by active recovery intervals. During high-speed intervals, you’ll want to elevate your heart rate toZone 4 (80-90% of your maximum heart rate) to really reap the benefits of HIIT. Because of this, you can afford to do about 20 minutes of HIIT training. HIIT also offers other benefits like the EPOC, or the “afterburn effect,” which means you continue to burn calories even after you’re done running.

On the other hand, if you’re doing steady state cardio you’ll set your treadmill to a speed you can hold for at least 30 minutes and continue running at that speed for a set amount of time. Because there’s no high elevation of the heart rate, you’ll need to spend more time on the treadmill to burn more calories. With steady state cardio, your heart rate should remain inZone 3, the fat-burning zone. With steady-state cardio, you won’t experience EPOC. Because of that, you’ll want to increase your workout to 30-45 minutes.

You may have heard of the TikTok workout dubbed “12/3/30”. Basically, this means you’d set your treadmill to a 12% incline, speed at 3 km/h, and walk for 30 minutes. Here’s the full workout:

In this workout, you’ll alternate between high intensity intervals and active rest intervals. Not only does this force you to exert a high amount of energy, burning calories quickly, but as your body recovers from the bursts of high intensity exercise, it further metabolizes body fat for energy. Here’s how to do an effective HIIT treadmill workout:

4. Repeat the run/walk sequence 5-8 times

If you’re a beginner and can’t quite do HIIT training or incline walks, LISS is a great option to burn calories with a moderate amount of effort. In this workout, you’ll set your treadmill to a speed that you can hold for at least 20-30 minutes and simply jog until time’s up. The key to this is to make sure your heart rate remains in Zone 3 (the fat-burning zone) for most of the time that you’re working out, to reap the full benefits. Your effort should be moderate, with your heart rate hitting about 70-80% of its maximum. With aperformance treadmill, you can grab onto the handles to check your heart rate while working out.

This one’s a spin on HIIT training, allowing you to run, walk, and jog all in the same workout. The upside is that the constant switch in speeds will keep you engaged without getting bored, making time fly by!

This treadmill workout is simple and short, but extremely effective in burning fat quickly. The premise is simple, the execution not so much. In a nutshell, you’ll start off with a flat incline and increase the incline by 1% every minute while attempting to hold your pace. Once you’ve reached the maximum incline, decrease it by 2% every minute until you’re back to a flat road.

Justin Tardif-Francoeur