The exercise craze has swept across the nation and back once again. Like all other popular things it has gone from an incredibly popular fad to the mainstay of treatment protocol recommendations by many of today\’s family practitioners and internal medicine physicians. In the 1980s running was made popular by Jim Fixx and Frank Shorter. Once that took hold running stores became popular hangouts for individuals as they sought to purchase the best running shoe for their body type and feet, as well as meet up with other runners to form groups.
Today, running has become so commonplace that manufacturers have developed treadmills that fit the price range and structure of an individual\’s home. No longer do people have to run on the road or go to the gym in order to be able to get their workouts in. When the weather is poor, there\’s snow on the ground or it\’s dark outside an athlete can go to the basement or their exercise room hop on their treadmill and be finished with the workout in no time flat.
But choosing that treadmill for their home environment can be an incredibly complex and overwhelming task. There are treadmills which were made specifically for walkers and have rollers which slipped frequently if the machine is pushed to a running pace and there are treadmills which could actually hold up well inside of a large gym.
Before going shopping for treadmill each athlete in the family should determine what their goals are and how they want to use the treadmill. These goals will identify the size of the motor that runs the rollers, the number of features and workouts that the treadmill will come with as well as whether or not the treadmill must meet certain design or space specifications.
Treadmills can come as a bare-bones model which includes the rollers and the motor with a decent platform and pretty much nothing else. Some of the higher end models will also include audio trainers which talk the athlete through their workout, visual feedback on how far and how fast the athlete has gone as well as programmable workouts that will automatically inclined the treadmill and bring it back down during cooldown.