Have FUN exercising on a treadmill!

By Paul Piotrowski on Jun 15, 2006 in Health and Fitness

Today, day 17 of my ‘Exercise Everyday for 30 Days’ trial I discovered a SECRET to exercising!
As part of my 30-Day trial I have been weightlifting on some days and running on my treadmill on other days, basically alternating between an upper body workout, a lower body workout and a cardio workout on the treadmill. For some reason I haven’t had any problems weightlifting but I’ve dreaded doing the treadmill run. Even back in high school I remember hating when the teacher made us run around the school for 20-30 minutes during PE class.
Anyway, today I overcame that problem. Before I explain HOW, let me first go through and explain what happened 3 days ago on day 14 of my exercise trial.
On day 14 (last Sunday) I came home at around 11:20pm after watching X-Men 3 at the theatre. I haven’t done my exercise for the day yet so I knew I had to get on the treadmill to do my 30 minute run.
I jumped on the treadmill and began my run. After a bit of a warm up at 2.5mph I sped the treadmill up to 4.0mph as usual and began a light jog. Shortly after I bumped it up to 5.0mph for 5:00mins. Then I bumped it back down to about 3.0mph for a few minutes to cool down a bit. I kept it at a light pace until about 12:30 into the run when I bumped it back up to 5.0mph to do my second “run” of the 30 minute session.

My goal was to run at least 2.0miles during the 30 minutes so I pushed myself to maintain the rate. At about 15:00 or 16:00 I began to really get annoyed with the run and my mind started to attack me with stupid doubts saying “Why are you doing this? Slow it down, nobody will know.” and I would fight back thinking “Shut up! Quit being a wuss! Let’s keep going!”. Shortly after that something screwed up with my iPod so my music cut out and now I had to run without music. This sucked.

Sure enough an eternity would pass and I would look at the clock and only a minute has gone by. Initially I was going to slow it down at 17:30 into the run but I decided to keep going until I reach 20:00 minutes into the run. I wanted to push myself. The whole time I was NOT having fun and my brain was really fighting this torture. I kept going, however and persisted. At 20:00 I slowed it down and took a breather and then went back to a running from about 22:30 to about 27:30 into the run at which time I slowed it down and finished off the 30 minute run having done the 2.0 miles of distance I wanted. I got off the treadmill glad that it was over, happy that I accomplished my goal but not happy with what I just put myself through.

Have YOU ever had an experience like this on the treadmill? How easy do you find to get back on there the next time cardio day comes around? Probably not very easily.

Today, I discovered a secret and changed the way I do this now. Here’s what happened.

I jumped on the treadmill to “get it over with”. After the initial warm up I stepped it up to 5.0mph and began my first “run” of the session. Sure enough a few minutes after that I began hating the feeling of having to run until I reach 7:30m into the run. However, this time, I did something different. I changed my thinking. Instead of fighting it, I just decided to forget about expecting some sort of distance outcome of 2.0 miles. I decided to just run at whatever speed I felt like running at or walk the whole 30 minutes if I felt like it.

So I ran a bit, slowed it down and walked a bit. Then a good song came on so I ran for a bit more and then whenever the song got boring or came to an end I would slow down again and walk as slow as I felt like. When I had a burst of energy I would run, and when I felt lazy I would slow down to a crawl. I didn’t give a crap how many miles I would run today, I just wanted to enjoy the process.

My thinking all of a sudden changed to “Hey, what if I made this FUN? What speed would I run at if I was having FUN?” So I began to play with the controls and messing around. At one point a fast-paced song came on and I felt a lot of energy so I cranked it up to 5.0mph, then that didn’t seem fast enough so I went to 6.0mph and then 7.0mph and then finally up to 8.0mph at which point I was basically running fast, almost sprinting. The loud music coupled with the energy of my fast paced run and the deep breaths I was taking sent waves of energy up and down my body like being in a sporting event when your home team scores. It was great!

About a minute later I ran out of steam so I slowed it right back down to 3.0mph and just laughed at myself for being such an idiot and running so fast. Images of me flying off the treadmill and hitting the wall with a thud came into my mind for a second and I just laughed it off while trying to catch my breath. I kept the speed low for a bit longer and then I just cranked it up and down from 4.0 to 5.0 to 2.5 back to 5.0 whenever I felt like it. I just decided to have fun and do whatever speed I felt like. At one point I was running slower but raising my knees really high to see what that felt like, another time I was holding onto the side rails and running that way for fun.

End result? It was the most FUN I’ve had on the treadmill since we got it like 5 years ago. I had NO expectation of any distance I wanted to specifically run, I just decided to get on there and have FUN.

30 minutes flew by and I felt very energized. I looked at the distance ran and it was at 2.15 miles! That’s 7.5% FURTHER than my Sunday run where I “pushed” myself. I was so excited! I actually OUTPERFORMED myself just by letting go and having fun than by trying to force myself to run at a certain speed.

That’s the secret! Just have fun. Find a way to make exercising fun! Install a mirror in front of your treadmill, if you have one at home and wear goofy clothes or make funny faces or swing your arms up and down like a crazy maniac or do SOMETHING to make it fun!

I’m actually looking forward to my next treadmill session. Maybe I’ll go for a run outside if it’s a sunny day too and do some crazy sprinting like that too, and make people think I’m some kind of weirdo.

Anyway, that’s my little secret. Try it out if you want, it might just make it a lot easier to hit the gym and run on that treadmill or elliptical or whatever you use. I’m not suggesting you make things unsafe, but there are many ways you can make the session fun. Bring along a comedy CD/MP3 while you do your run so you can listen to jokes. Don’t push yourself to run at a certain speed, just vary the speed based on whatever you feel like doing. I did that and it turned out to be 7.5% MORE than forcing myself and it felt like a lot more fun.

If you belong to a Gym, and you haven’t been for a long time and are still paying the fees, you should setup a time to go in and try this out. Just go in and try having FUN while exercising. What’s the worst that can happen? They kick you out? Big deal, you’re not going anyways.

Consult your physician, read you treadmill manual and follow all safety precautions before following any of my advice in here. I have no idea what dangerous possibilities exercising and having FUN at the same time (what a concept!) might have, so do so at your own risk!