joints

Treadmill Training with Healthy Posture

Treadmill Training with Healthy Posture

Esther Gokhale
Date

During the Victorian Era, a British engineer, William Cubitt, invented the treadmill as a means of harnessing hard labor in prisons and penal colonies. It was also used unproductively, purely as a punitive measure. Despite this sordid history, the treadmill has become a highly beneficial and enjoyable device within the context of a contemporary lifestyle.

The sedentary nature of modern life in the industrialized world leaves most of us with less than the ideal amount of physical activity. In 1968 the importance of aerobic exercise was popularized by the book Aerobics by Kenneth H. Cooper. Inspired by this book, the first electric consumer treadmill was developed by another American by the name of William Edward Staub. 

Front cover of book Aerobics by Kenneth H. Cooper
The book Aerobics by Kenneth H. Cooper did more than any other to promote the role of “aerobics” for health, founding a paradigm that continues to this day. Aerobics by Kenneth H. Cooper

Staub’s invention was enthusiastically taken up and the exercise treadmill is now used by some 50 million¹ plus Americans and millions more around the globe. The treadmill has several benefits over running outside:

  • It provides a controlled environment and avoids inclement weather
  • It can be private and safe
  • The track is clear and trip-hazard free
  • Incline or speed can be set as required
  • Progress can be tracked and data stored
  • You can read and work at it

A row of contemporary treadmills with screens, with one female user
Treadmills are now in gyms, homes, hotels, colleges, and research and medical facilities across the world. They encourage cardiac fitness, but not necessarily healthy form. Unsplash

Treadmills can be particularly helpful for some groups of people:

  • Those new to exercise who are still building a baseline of fitness and confidence
  • People rehabilitating from injuries, surgeries, strokes, etc. 
  • Those with a lack of access to good walking and running terrain
  • Athletes, fitness trainees, and research subjects wanting to track progress
  • Those who have little time for exercise

NASA astronaut Mark T. Vande Hei on a treadmill inside the ISS module Tranquility
NASA astronaut Mark T. Vande Hei jogs on a treadmill inside the International Space Station module Tranquility—perhaps the ultimate example of limited space and opportunity for exercise, and for the value of monitoring. Wikimedia

Healthy form—as important in treadmill workouts as any other activity

Because a treadmill track has more give than some terrain it may appear to be a more forgiving surface for our joints. However, we know from research on running shoes that substantial cushioning can actually result in a higher level of injuries²—the cushioning reduces proprioceptive sensitivity and lulls people into a false sense of being protected and actually hitting the ground harder.³

When it comes to using a treadmill, you don’t want to rely on either softer shoes or a softer surface to offset the effects of less than healthy biomechanics—and the biggest obstacle to healthy biomechanics is poor posture. 

Man running with tucked pelvis, internal rotation of feet and legs, rounded torso, and forward head carriage
Jogging or walking with a tucked pelvis, internally rotated feet, legs, and hips, a rounded torso, and forward head carriage stresses both muscles and joints. Switching to using a treadmill won’t fix these problems—but reclaiming healthy posture will. Pexels

Treadmill exercise is repetitive, and what you want is repetitive benefit, not repetitive strain. With some posture know-how, your treadmill training will not only get you aerobically fitter and stronger, but will also retrain your musculoskeletal system to work optimally. That means more gain, less pain, and less time out nursing injuries. Here are our top training tips:

Caution: Using a treadmill can be hazardous. If you’re not accustomed to using one, make sure to get appropriate support to make your introduction safe. Please consult your physician or PT if you have medical challenges. 

Starting your treadmill session

We recommend that you walk before you run! Not only is walking an excellent orientation and warm-up on a treadmill, but you get to practice actions common to both walking and running at a speed that helps you correct, pattern, and refine as you go. We encourage all our students to evoke the benefits and protections that are built into the ways our ancestors have walked for millennia.

Man in India walking carrying pitchers on yoke.
Treadmills are useful for practicing many aspects of healthy walking form, a body-wisdom we can relearn from traditional village societies where it is still prevalent. This man is in India. 

Power yourself with the right muscles

The earliest treadmills were human powered—which meant you had to push the ground away behind you, much as in natural walking form. With a machine powering the track beneath you, it is easy to underdo the muscular self-propulsion that ideally comes from squeezing the glutes of the leg that is going backward, and pushing off with that foot. 

Use your treadmill session to wake up your foot muscles. Imagine the treadmill is broken and you are using your feet to jump start it. In the first half of the stride your foot pulls the ground towards you; in the second half of the stride, it pushes the ground behind you. Be careful to not disproportionately use the muscles under your toes, but rather, include the long plantar muscles under the main arches.

Michelle Ball, Gokhale Method teacher, running on sandy beach, close-up
We can relearn the natural responses of the feet to grab the ground and push it behind us—even while wearing shoes on a treadmill.

We teach these nuanced techniques in logical sequence and detail in our in-person Foundations course, one-day Pop-up course, online Elements course, plus Gokhale Exercise program. 

Using an incline on a treadmill can improve your posture and back pain

Setting an incline of 10°–15° for part of your workout will help you cultivate a slight forward lean. This stance puts your behind behind you and your gluteal muscles in a position of mechanical advantage. It can also take pressure off the upper lumbar area if you have a habit of swaying.

Woman running on curved HIT treadmill, lower body view.
We get greater benefits and reduce potential downsides when we use treadmills with healthy posture. This runner is on a curved track, designed for sprinting and high intensity training (HIT). Pexels

Monitor your posture as well as your performance 

One thing that treadmills cannot track is your posture. Especially as you increase your miles and speed, problematic posture increases the risk of damage throughout your body. We suggest the following ways to monitor your posture:

  • Take a deep-dive into healthy posture by reading 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back or taking one of our courses
  • Use the mirrors in the gym or an app on your home computer 
  • Videotape yourself and play it back in slo-mo to examine your form
  • If you have a personal trainer, share this article and get them on board with your healthy posture treadmill training
  • Use PostureTracker™, our Gokhale Method wearable, available to course participants and Alumni.

3 views of PostureTracker™app in use.
PostureTracker gives you real time feedback on your form, and tells you the degree to which you are moving away from your healthiest position—whether that’s your spinal shape (a), your head position (b), or your degree of leg extension (c).

For more detail on healthy posture in running check out our blog post series: 

P1: Introduction  P2: Meet Your Feet  P3: How to Choose Running Shoes  P4: Taking Care of Your Knees  P5: Anteverted Pelvis  P6: Upper Body

Best next action steps for newcomers

If you would like insight on your posture, consider scheduling an Initial Consultation, online or in person.

You can sign up below to join one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops. . .

 

References:

¹ Statista Research Department. “Users of treadmills in the U.S. from 2006 to 2017,” Dec 8, 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/191605/users-of-treadmills-in-the-us-since-2006/.

² S. Robbins and E. Waked. “Hazard of Deceptive Advertising of Athletic Footwear,” British Journal of Sports Medicine 31, no. 4 (December 1997): 299–303, https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsm.31.4.299.

³ Daniel E. Lieberman, “What We Can Learn About Running from Barefoot Running: An Evolutionary Medical Perspective,” Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews 40, no. 2 (April 2012): 63–72, https://doi.org/10.1097/jes.0b013e31824ab210.

 

Hypermobility

Hypermobility

Esther Gokhale
Date

Flexibility in the body is generally regarded as a plus, and most people want more of it. Flexibility is seen to enable a wide range of motion, avoid muscle pulls, and spare wear and tear in overly tight joints. But like most things in life, you can have too much of a good thing. In this blog post we are going to look at why excessive mobility has a downside and how healthy posture can mitigate that.

An exceptional range of motion makes for a very “bendy” looking body. Enter the age-old art of the contortionist, a mainstay of acrobatic troupes, circuses, and fairs, which for centuries have enthralled and appalled audiences in equal measure. 


“The most Extraordinary Posture Master.” Wikimedia
Engraving of Joseph Clark of Pall Mall, London, England, by Thornton, c. 1690

What is hypermobility?

An unusual degree of flexibility is still sometimes referred to as being “double-jointed,” but this is poetic license and inaccurate—hypermobility is a better term. Hypermobility is usually due to laxity in the ligaments that holds one bone to another, forming the joint. Hypermobility enables more rotational movement in ball and socket joints such as the hip, more “bend” at hinge joints like the knee and elbow, and also larger angles of bend between the vertebrae of the spine. Hypermobility can be genetic, acquired by persistent over-stretching, or a combination of both. 

The Beighton score, along with other criteria, is used to assess hypermobility. It gives 1 point for each elbow and knee that hyperextends by 10 degrees or more (4 points), 1 for each little finger that bends back by 90 degrees (2 points), 1 for each thumb which can be touched to the forearm (2 points), and 1 for touching the floor with the palms. Wikimedia

Hypermobility can do damage

Unfortunately, there is a high incidence of injury associated with over-stretching ligaments, which lack abundant blood supply to repair themselves and the elasticity to return to their baseline length. Most professional dancers, gymnasts, or acrobats are trained from an early age to further enhance their natural flexibility with stretching regimens. But this can be taken too far. 


Israeli rhythmic gymnasts at the 2012 London Olympics. Note the hyperextension of the center gymnast’s standing leg,
 which bows backward. Wikimedia

A memorable example of taking flexibility and stretching to the point of damage was the career of gymnastics champion Olga Korbut. Having won gold at the 1972 Olympics she toured West Germany. In her autobiography she wrote, “During that tour of Germany, the lumbago in my back began to hurt more and more. The Novocaine injections took away the pain for a while, but I needed time to rest and heal. By the end of the tour, I walked as though I had a stake in my spine.” 


Olga Korbut demonstrating her prowess on the beam. Her upper lumbar spine is being pushed into significant curves. Alchetron

Protecting the spine

It is common to find vertebrae that have become hypermobile where the adjacent section of spine has become stiff and lacks movement. This can be a particular issue in movements such as a golf swing, where it is important that the rotation be distributed appropriately through the whole body rather than achieved by an extreme twist between a few vertebrae.


Tiger Woods follows through with rotation throughout his body, not just twisting at the waist. Flickr

Hypermobility in the spine can result in damage to all its structures. The vertebrae may lay down problematic extra bone in an effort to protect the area. The discs are also at risk of wear and tear and herniation, and the nerves risk compression. Muscles may become hypertonic (held tight) or spasm in an effort to stabilize the area and protect the delicate structures of the spine.

If you do have a genetic disposition to hypermobility, then it’s important to have adequate strength in the muscles surrounding the affected joints to maintain good alignment. Equally important knowledge of healthy posture will ensure you know how to find and keep ideal alignment. 

Protecting elbows and knees 

If you have hypermobile elbows and are on all fours, don’t “park” into those joints. You want to retain a little “give” at the elbow creases. This works the muscles around the elbow joints, affording them protection and encouraging the hands to also be responsive rather than compressing the wrist joints as they take all the weight. 


Avoid locking out your elbows, which pushes into the joints and further distends their ligaments. In the example above, the hands are inactive and all the weight is pressed into the wrist joints. Freepik

Similarly, if you have hypermobile knees, you don’t want your knees to go past straight to bow backward when standing. If this is a habit for you, join me on the 1-2-3 Move program on Monday, September 6 and I will show you a couple of dance techniques to displace this habit. You can also join Eric for Gokhale Fitness on Tuesday, September 7 when he will share an exercise approach to maintaining healthy knee joints.

If you would like to join either or both of these classes but have not yet subscribed to the 1-2-3 program, sign up now for your 7-day Gokhale Exercise Free Trial.


1-2-3 Move happens daily with Esther or guest teachers at 9:45 a.m. (Pacific Time)
Gokhale Fitness with Eric runs Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays from 7–7:25 a.m.
(Pacific Time), and Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays from 3–3:25 p.m. (Pacific Time)
Gokhale Moving Meditation with Roberta is Mondays at 2 p.m. and with Kathleen is Wednesdays at 12 p.m. (Pacific Time)

Flexibility in your body is a wonderful thing. It looks good, and feels good, but requires some wisdom in its usage. The Gokhale Method® approach to movement and exercise is always holistic, supports good posture habits, and develops the necessary strength to protect the joints from injury. 

If you would like an expert one-on-one assessment of your posture and flexibility you can arrange an Online Initial Consultation or take an in-person Initial Consultation if you have a Gokhale Method Teacher near you.

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