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indoors versus outdoors
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There is an OBVIOUS DIFFERENCE!!!!! When the runner's foot hits the road - the road stays still - the only part of the equation that is moving is the runner. When the runner's foot hits the treadmill belt the belt moves the foot backwards.......
Oh s*d it - I'm going to try and give you nightmares about this tonight
Can't we just change the subject?
Have you noticed the price of peas lately?
Please will someone ring the bell?
I tend to find it easier than running outside, perhaps it's also to do with the fact that you can do the sessions in vest and shorts all year round.
When I'm treadmill-fit I know I can translate this into good racing form too. I don't seem to encounter any style/biomechanical issues.
SS did you not do physics at school - reltaive movement is ALL that counts - if you didnt push against the surface of the ground you WOULD fall off the back of the treadmill.
A parallel is (without the gait arguements)- imagine a car travelling along a surface at 50mph. Imagine the circumference of a tyre of the car is the treadmill belt. The tyre periphery is moving at 50mph and thus pushing the car along the road. if the road were moving at 50mph the tyres would still have to rotate at 50mph or the car would move backwards!
I'm not saying you have no propulsive forces forward - but I am saying those forces are less than when running - because the belt moves your foot backwards rather than you having to provide that part of the energy.
If you use Rating of Perceived Effort or Heart Rate on the treadmill then you can see this difference.
And it's not related 100% to wind resistance etc - because as the studies showed in the PP articles - the energy savings of running on a treadmill are just far too great for this to be the case - and these are illustrated eg by the reduced oxygen consumption on the t/mill and the dramatically faster times which can be achieved by runners on (flat) treadmills compared to running on the ground. It's pretty obvious to me that if people can run faster on the treadmill - then there has to be a reason why .....
It also depends on how much of the runner's energy is converted into 'upwards motion' rather than horizontally forward with each stride - because that also influences how much of the belt passes underneath the runner with each stride and therefore how many strides / minute the runner has to do to stay on the belt.
Anyone noticed a difference in leg turnover rate for a set mileage on the treadmill compared with the road ?
I do fewer strides on the treadmill and get more 'airborne' than when I'm on the road - both vertically and an improved stride length. This hasn't been 'measured' but was clearly visible on teh gait analysis I had done on the treadmill compared to video footage of running at the same speed on grass. In fact I'm quite chuffed with my action on the t/mill - cos on the road I barely lift my toes 40mm off the ground
Fewer strides means fewer movements by me = an energy saving compared to running on the ground.
(OK so - I'm in a minority of one here - against the whole world - but I don't care! It's what being British is all about. But please will someone come and rescue me from the loony bin........
you could consider the world to be a large treadmill, constantly rotating. it isn't easier to run westward, and have the ground spin towards you, than to run eastwards. all that matters is your movement relative to the surface you are running on.
Therefore there is some energy being introduced into your running action by the treadmill belt.
Even with a following strong wind (force 6) I can't replicate the action on the treadmill out on the flat road. As soon as the road goes even slightly down hill - I can . Why ? Because again I'm getting some 'energy for free' being introduced into my gait.
Believe me when you struggle with your muscles the way I do you notice everything that makes a difference.
By way of conciliation, yes, there are certainly factors that make a difference, stuff like the treadmill slowing briefly when you hit it (another of those laws of physics!), and I think the psychology is very different, which can cause biomechanical change. But I'm relatively happy to be sceptical about the PP article and the references in it because of the glaring problem with the 'treadmill belt disappearing behind you' argument. With all of the references presented, we simply don't know from the article how the studies were approached, and how rigorous they were. Have they analysed the air resistance thing properly? This is a huge problem - we know how simple objects move through a viscous liquid (or gas), but a mechanically complex thing like a clothed person, arms & legs pumping, is a whole different matter - there's turbulence, for example, and that's well-nigh impossible to model properly. I'm quite certain that Pugh's study would have just assumed that the force due to air goes as the square of the relative velocity, rather than run a very, very complex computer model. And the effects would be much greater for sprinters. Has anyone even tested runners in a wind tunnel? There's no mention of it. Did the stride-length study take into account the psychological effects of the confined space in the treadmill? No, because it's almost impossible to do so. Were the track data taken on a perfectly still day, or alternatively were the treadmill data taken outdoors? Dunno!
So there's plainly some plausible reasons for adjustments in gait on the treadmill relative to the real world, and as far as I can see, these have not been settled indisputably, because there are practical reasons why the tests can never be rigorous. But my main point is that the argument that there is a fundamental difference (on an idealised treadmill and with psychology catered for) is absolutely contrary to the laws of physics, and the arguments in the article are trying to convince us that a physically-impossible conclusion is sound, based on an incomplete consideration of the data and our willingness to believe a proposition that sounds right. It IS different, but I'm with Sir Isaac!
Nurse! Time for my sedatives!
your planted foot is moving backwards relative to your centre of gravity, but exactly the same thing happens on the road (you plant your foot ahead of you, then it moves backwards relative to you).
if we ignore wind resistance, there are no outside forces affecting the running, the only things to consider are the runner and the running surface (i hope we can agree on that). on a treadmill the belt moves one way, the runner moves in the opposite direction at the same speed. if you take a runner and a road in isolation, exactly the same thing happens, only we like to describe movement relative to the earth because it is big and we are small. it could just as easily be described relative to the runner, in which case the road would be moving backwards (some athletes are convinced they are the centre of the universe anyway).
do you think that it would also be easier to cycle on a treadmill than on a road (apart from the wind effect)? if i had a remote control car that moves at 6 mph on a road, and placed it on a treadmill that was set at 6 mph, would it fall off the front of the treadmill because the belt was helping to move its wheels backwards for it? or one of those walking robots with flashing eyes?
it seems likely that psychological factors also make it easier to run indoors than out, in addition to wind, but not absorbing energy from the treadmill.
Personally I dislike it, but given work commitments it's that or nothing.
You really started something here!
Impey
And I take back a lot of what I said in my penultimate post ......but not the way you'll like it Swerve!
You don't hardly push off from your back (ie grounded) foot at all on the t/mill - it really lands in front of you - is dragged backwards and this action then makes your pelvis rotate forward on the other side which swings the leg forward to land and then repeat the cycle. Unequivocally - energy expenditure is no where near as great as when the only thing moving is the road. As soon as you try to push off against the moving t/mill belt you're up against the front of the machine
Out on the road - all that moves is the runner ; on the t/mill you've got the runner and the belt that move - and the net effect is that the runner is not expending as much energy as on the road - because the treadmill does some of his work for him.
Honest
Take 1 pill 3 times a day was it....or 3 pills once a day ?
I think there's only one way to resolve this one. On the heath, at dawn, you choose - pistols or swords. I nominate kaskas as my second.
;-)
I do know however that Ingrid Kristianson did most of her Winter training an the TM by necessity - the roads are covered in frozen snow for months in Finland. She did OK.
I use the TM a lot and find that my races are faster by a large margin, but that could just be the competitive element.
Anyway I've just finished 20.2 miles on the TM as the last long run before the Blackpool marathon in two weeks. Six miles left so I'll keep my fingers crossed that it will work for me.
Good luck at Blackpool!
Good luck with the marathon!
I started this tread because I find it really difficult to train on a TM. I will do a 10k minutes faster outside ( about 6 minutes faster with the same effort.)
On a TM it's so hard... I feel like I run and run and don't go anywhere. The mileage clock just doesn't move.
Firstly I know that I want to do the 20.2 in 3 hours to give me a chance of 4 hours for the full distance. I then start slowly at 6.2 mph and build up to reach 10 in about 92 minutes. The aim then is to reach 13.2 miles in 2 hours with the TM running at 6.8 mph. That ensures 20 miles in three hours. I then pick the speed up over the last six miles to achieve the required time. Simple in theory but it does keep the mind occupied working out the necessary increases in speed.
Obviously the road is better but I just wouldn't have gone out for three hours on my own so it is better than nothing.
48 hour treadmill world record holder, 146.31 miles
Have you ever gone for a run outside immediately after running on a treadmill? It's quite a bizarre feeling - I find i'm sort of bounding along like a nutter.
This debate sounds quite similar to the rowing machine vs real boat thing where there is quite a considerable difference in technique required even though the rowing machine still ends up being very useful in training the right muscles. Presumably that's what's important at the end of the day?
One other thing to throw in is that i find i land much more heavily on a treadmill than i do outside. Why is that?