So Easy A Caveman Can Do It- Best 30 Minute Treadmill Workout Ever

When it comes to exercising on treadmills, I generally find that people don’t know what they’re doing. You think every time you’re on the treadmill you need to be jogging 4 miles straight for a half hour. That couldn’t be any more counterproductive to what you’re trying to accomplish, which is to burn fat, lose weight, and build lean muscle mass.

To do that you don’t need to be running at a 9-10 mph pace for a half hour on a flat incline. Remember, you’re overweight as is, how are you going to run at that speed for 30 minutes without killing yourself? What’s going to happen is, if you’re lucky you’ll be able to run a mile, maybe a mile and a half. Then you’re going to get tired, but your “Rocky” mode will click on, and you won’t want to give up, so you’ll sweat it out. Tomorrow you’ll be able to do the same thing. After a day or two though, you will subconsciously dread getting on the treadmill. Why? Because you’re killing yourself.

What you need is a 30 minute treadmill program that keeps your heart rate in a decent range for fat burn, typically around 65%. To get that rate, subtract your age from 220, now multiply it by .65

Mine is 125.45. What’s yours? Use the heart rate calculator if you’re having trouble.

That means I basically need to keep my heart rate above 125.45 to keep burning fat. Fat burn takes place during lower intensity exercises that occur over longer periods of time. So that guy you see in the gym who’s been barely moving on the elliptical for an hour, while you’ve been damn near hyperventilating trying to run an 8 minute mile on the treadmill, he’s burning more fat than you. It’s like the old tortoise and the hair story, slow and steady wins the race.

Truth is, there’s a lot more to heart rate and fat burning zones, cardio zones, etc. I’ll get into all that in a later post. Odds are if you’re out of shape, just getting your heart rate over 100 should do the trick. Usually the machines in the gym have heart rate monitors on them. They’re not always accurate so you may want to get a heart rate monitor. At the very least you can feel like Edward Nortion in the Incredible Hulk.

So now that you’ve got being a marathon runner out of your mind (at least until we get you in better shape), you’re going to want to try this 30 minute low intensity workout. Combined with a diet, this workout is guaranteed to yield results if you do it 4 days a week minimum. It’s so easy that you have no excuse not to do it. I advise you to print this out and take it to the gym with you. It’s a little bit of a pain adjusting the treadmill every minute, but it’s just a minor inconvenience for a new body. If you have a treadmill at home you can most likely program it right in.

minute 1- speed 2.0, incline 0
minute 2- speed 2.0, incline 0
minute 3- speed 2.5, incline 0
minute 4- speed 2.5, incline 0
minute 5- speed 3.0, incline 3
minute 6- speed 3.0, incline 4
minute 7- speed 3.0, incline 5
minute 8- speed 3.0, incline 3
minute 9- speed 3.0, incline 4
minute 10- speed 3.0, incline 3
minute 11- speed 3.5, incline 5
minute 12- speed 3.5, incline 6
minute 13- speed 3.5, incline 4
minute 14- speed 3.5, incline 7
minute 15- speed 3.5, incline 8
minute 16- speed 3.0, incline 7
minute 17- speed 3.0, incline 8
minute 18- speed 3.0, incline 7
minute 19- speed 3.0, incline 8
minute 20- speed 3.0, incline 5
minute 21- speed 3.5, incline 4
minute 22- speed 3.5, incline 3
minute 23- speed 3.5, incline 6
minute 24- speed 3.5, incline 7
minute 25- speed 3.5, incline 8
minute 26- speed 3.0, incline 7
minute 27- speed 3.0, incline 8
minute 28- speed 2.5, incline 0
minute 29- speed 2.5, incline 0
minute 30- speed 2.0, incline 0

What you’ll very quickly notice is that there is no running involved.

What? How could that be? I thought the treadmill was for running. Walking is for old people at retirement homes.

Yeah, and it’s for people who want to get in shape as well, no matter what the age. Walking is the healthiest exercise there is, period. It is the most primitive form of a workout, and it still works exactly as it did for cavemem. When’s the last time you saw a picture of an overweight caveman? You wanna get in shape, you’ve got to get all primitive with it.

When you get comfortable with this workout, and walking at that max pace of 3.5mph starts to not feel like it’s not doing much, increase the speed to 4.5 in that little 5 minute where you would ordinarily be at 3.5. That’ll probably be feel like a fast walk or light jog. Once you’re comfortable, increase the speed a half mile per hour.

It should take about 2 weeks for you to feel like a speed increase is in order. Do this exercise 5 days a week if you can. Put a sweatshirt on while doing it, two sweatshirts if you can.

When you’re really comfortable with it, you can start taking this beyond 30 minutes. But you’ve got to crawl before you walk, walk before you run, run before you jump… ah well, you get the picture.