HIIT Treadmill Workout For Beginners

December 28, 2021 |

Sharing a HIIT treadmill workout that’s perfect for my beginner friends out there!

Hi friends! I hope you’re having a wonderful morning. Today, I’m chatting about treadmill workouts since it’s getting chilly out there and many of us are taking our workouts indoors. While I can get very bored on the treadmill just slogging along, I LOVE treadmill workouts designed with a purpose. A treadmill is an awesome way to get in an effective cardio workout and exercise indoors, and HIIT treadmill workouts can help break up the monotony of a steady-paced run.

What is HIIT Training?

HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. HIIT workouts alternate between periods of hard work and rest. You’ll work as hard as you can, take a short periods of time to catch your breath, and repeat. It’s very different than steady state cardio, where you keep a consistent pace.

How Long Should HIIT Training Be

The beauty of HIIT workouts are that they’re SHORT and you can vary the length depending on the intensity and amount of time you have to spend. A true HIIT workout shouldn’t last more than 25 minutes or so (plus a warmup and cool down). If you’re doing it right, you won’t want to do HIIT longer than that. 😉 While HIIT workouts are designed to be an advanced style of training, beginner friends can still reap the benefits of this powerful training technique.

How Many Calories Does HIIT Workout Burn

While HIIT workouts are short, they can burn a significant amount of calories before and after the workout. HIIT training can also help to improve heart function, speed, endurance, power, strength, and energy levels. I always have a little extra pep in my step after doing this type of workout and love HIIT so much, I even wrote a couple of books about it.

Today, I’m sharing a short and effective workout routine that beginners can follow.

A couple more tips:

– Make sure your shoelaces are tied.

– Avoid holding onto the sides of the treadmill. If you feel like you need to hold on, decrease the speed or incline.

– Increase your speed and adjust the incline as you see *fit.* You may find that some days you feel like you can go faster than others, while other days you need to go more slowly. That’s ok! Honor how you’re feeling.

HIIT Treadmill Benefits

HIIT Treadmill Workout For Beginners

Below, I’ve designed a few HIIT treadmill workouts that my beginner friends can use. Typically, I like to use RPE (rate of perceived exertion) to judge the intensity of a workout. While advanced friends can reach a level 8-9 (on a scale of 1-10), I recommend that beginner friends start with a lower intensity and try to reach RPE 6 or 7 during their work intervals. Remember that you can always push harder later on and that strategic training is more sustainable. If you injure yourself, you can’t be consistent. Be smart, k? <3

Friendly reminder here to always talk with a doctor before making any fitness changes and honor your body. Before attempting interval training, I recommend having a solid cardio base of 30 minutes most days of the week. Once this is manageable and consistent, you can start to incorporate alternate training methods. Be sure to warm up and cool down before your workouts! Warm up at a comfortable pace before starting each workout and spend about 5 minutes afterwards to cool down and decrease your heart rate.

While these are designed for treadmill, you can do these on pretty much any cardio machine, like rowers, stair climbers, and ellipticals. For the speed interval, bring your pace up to a quick walk or comfortable jog, depending on your fitness level.

My advanced friends can absolutely follow these workouts, too — just challenge yourself to a higher RPE level (8-9) for the intervals. HIIT is easy to adjust, modify, and progress appropriately.

Finish Line HIIT Treadmill Workout for Beginners

This workout involves steady state effort for the first 15 minutes with some short bursts of intervals (30-second sprints = speed surges) to the finish line, at the last 5 minutes of the workout. Save some energy for the last portion of this workout! Those rest periods always fly by, don’t they!?

Speed Surge HIIT Treadmill Workout for Beginners

This HIIT treadmill workout is a classic HIIT style of training, with various interval lengths to keep things exciting. Challenge yourself during the speed rounds within a manageable range for your fitness level.

Holy Hill Climb Treadmill Workout for Beginners

This treadmill workout uses inclines instead of speed for the HIIT intervals. This challenges the muscles in your legs a little differently and it’s fun to see that you can still get your heart rate up without depending on speed.

HIIT Pyramid Treadmill Workout for Beginners

These intervals are pyramid-style, so they increase in length and then decrease in length for the duration of the workout. This is a great way to play with speed, since you can go a bit faster for the short intervals and take the tempo down a little for the longer intervals.

Save these workouts for a rainy day or the next time you’re at the gym looking for treadmill workouts!

Do you like the treadmill or not so much? Fave HIIT strategies?

Gina