- As some of us move into the winter season,
you may be starting to venture indoors for your training.
And perhaps using a treadmill,
which is fantastic because treadmills are great
for quality workouts, working on specific paces,
and can be really time-efficient.
So today, I'm gonna be taking you through
one of my favourite running workouts,
which really focuses on that top-end speed
and your leg turnover.
So let's get started.
(electronic clicking)
(upbeat music)
Okay, so we want to start off
with a nice steady warm-up as I'm doing right now.
And then we're gonna move into the main set,
which is 10 lots of 30 seconds on,
followed by 30 seconds off.
Now what I mean by this on and off
is on is around a 3K pace,
so a real high intensity effort,
we're gonna get the leg turnover going.
The off is literally an off.
We're gonna stop and recover.
What you're actually going to do
is leave the treadmill running at this 3K pace
and when we finish that on effort,
we're gonna place our hands down
on the side of the treadmill,
lift our legs up off the treadmill belt,
place them down by the side, do our off.
And then after that 30 seconds,
we're gonna lift our legs back up
and lower them gradually down back onto the treadmill
and get that on effort going.
We're then gonna do a three minute jog recovery
after the 10 reps.
And then go again.
(hip hop music)
Although this is a session I used to personally enjoy doing,
it was actually Tim Dondefirst introduced it to me.
I saw him in the gym jumping on and off the treadmill
one day and asked him what it was all about.
Now despite it being a good run session itself,
it shouldn't be an absolute killer.
One of the main focus points
is for it to help increase your running cadence,
but also, increase your running economy.
Now, what I mean by this is that you're more efficient
and use less energy at the same speeds.
By running at this higher speed
and forced faster turnover the legs
it will also help to promote
better neuromuscular coordination,
which is essentially the communication pathways
between your brain and your muscles.
If you can improve this, the idea is that
you'll be able to recruit muscles at a much faster rate.
Now it's also worth mentioning
that I would usually set the treadmill
to somewhere between a one and two percent gradient
to get a real outdoor road feel.
But due to the aim of this session,
that isn't really that imperative.
I have for today's run but that was more
just out of habit, so it's entirely up to you.
In terms of lifting yourself off and onto the treadmill,
as you're running, place your hands onto the side rails
first, allow your arms to gradually
take the weight of your body
before fully lifting your legs off
and placing them to the side.
Then the same for placing your feet back on.
Just gradually lift and lower yourself
back down onto the treadmill,
rather than just plonking all your weight down in one go.
As you progress with this session,
you can drop the number of reps down to eight
and do the whole set three times through.
Then progress back up to 10 reps
but then three times through the whole set all say.
And with time you can even start reducing the recovery
between the sets.
The nice thing with running on the treadmill
is that it's easy to gauge progress over time
because your environment is consistent.
I hope you enjoyed that session.
And if you are fixing on short distance triathlons,
then this could be a great session
for improving that top-end speed.
Equally, I've also given this to athletes
that are focusing on longer distance triathlons
to try and improve their leg turnover and their cadence.
Now if you'd like to see more videos like this
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If you'd like to see our how to run a fast 5K
with GCN's Dan Lloyd, then just click up here.
If you'd like to see a little bit more
on how to improve your run cadence,
then just click down here.