It’s 6:30 sharp Monday morning. It’s Memorial Day and you decide today will be the first day you begin your 5 mile run each day for 3 months. Three weeks go by and you see improvements on each run making you excited that your new workout is working! The next day you head into work and you over hear your co-workers talking about their fitness goals and workouts.

Feeling really excited about your accomplishments, you decide to chime in and let them know what you are doing to stay fit. After telling them that your workouts include a 5 mile run around your neighborhood, another co-work states that “treadmills are much better than running on pavement”. Your first reaction is they are absolutely wrong! But, then you think for a moment and question if your philosophy is wrong? Well, before you make any changes, allow me to lay it all out for you!

If you do not already know, there are many benefits to running than just losing weight; improved circulation, reduces risk of osteoporosis, and a great stress reliever. Now, on both the treadmill and the road you will see these benefits, so both are great exercise selections.

On a treadmill your environment never changes, so the elements never play a factor in your exercise. A treadmill is also better for absorbing impact which will decrease the wear and tear on your joints, further prolonging your joint life. Lastly a treadmill will provide information on your run, from the amount of calories you burned, to the distance you ran, to the time you ran it in, etc…

Now, on the flip side to the treadmill, the road is simply more challenging! The surface is inconsistent (hills, slopes, curves) adding to the difficulty of the run. Unlike the treadmill, the road forces a person to drive their weight forward to cover distance, adding to the difficulty.

Yet, the biggest difference between the treadmill and the road is the amount of calories burned. What most people do not understand is that a person will burn more calories on the road than on a treadmill due to intensity. Since the road is more intense, a person will consume more oxygen resulting in the burning of more calories.

The oxygen rate is very important in calculating calories burned, which most treadmills fail to do. So the 350 calories your treadmill displays at the end of your run could really be closer to 300 or less. That is something the manufacturers forget to tell you in the instruction manual. If you are not worried about calories or intensity, the treadmill is the perfect apparatus, but if you like the true grittiness of the outdoors, then hit the road!

-Phil