Treadmill 101
Ah yes, the treadmill. A device that means different things to different people. I believe that the general population’s opinion on running treadmills is that they are torture devices — only to be used when strictly necessary. If you took a survey at your local gym, I would imagine that most people would admit to finding treadmills incredibly boring.
Forget those people.
Treadmills aren’t only for running! Skiing on the rollerski treadmill at Pioneer Midwest (ski shop in Minnesota)
At the risk of sounding cocky, I will say that I am not the average local gym user. I assume you are not either. For me, as a professional athlete, the primary metric of concern with any fitness device is: “Will using this device make me a faster skier?” The training utility of treadmills for elite level athletes is the only consideration that matters.
In the case of 1500M World Champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the treadmill is used almost daily throughout the year for interval sessions, fitness progress testing, and even easy runs.
Jakob doing a threshold test on a running treadmill. He does these periodically throughout the year to test his training progress.
But is he having fun? He is becoming a faster runner, which lets him win more races. Winning races is fun.
I look just like Jakob Ingebrigtsen here if you squint hard enough.
The Many Benefits of the Mill
You might be wondering why I frequently do workouts on a rollerski treadmill all year round even when I have a near infinite supply of good rollerskiing right out my door.
There are some unique benefits offered by the treadmill that I simply cannot replicate outdoors:
The environment is completely controlled.
Speed, grade, temperature, surface, etc.
Allows me to do the exact same workout weeks or months apart. This is one of the ways I track my training progress.
Great option to have if there’s freezing rain or a thunderstorm outside…
You can literally go uphill (or flat) forever.
Ideal for practicing terrain-specific skiing techniques, both skiing easy or doing intervals.
Minnesota doesn't have many uphills longer than 15 minutes — and even those require 5-6 minutes to ski back down, a bit longer than the 1-2 minute recovery time that is ideal during most interval workouts.
Rollerski treadmills are perfect for working on technique.
Pioneer Midwest’s rollerski treadmill has both a mirror in front of you and a camera next to you hooked up to a TV. It’s incredibly useful to be able to watch yourself ski, as you are skiing!
A coach can watch you ski on the treadmill and provide feedback that you can implement in real time and see the difference yourself.
It’s even possible for two people to ski on the treadmill at the same time (though I wouldn’t recommend this for most people due to safety reasons)
Conclusion
Overall, treadmills play a pretty key role in my training regimen. I have been incredibly lucky to be able to access a rollerski treadmill for many years now.
As a student-athlete at Northern Michigan University, I was able to take advantage of the treadmill at the sport-science laboratory, as well as the technique expertise of coaches Sten Fjeldheim and Andy Keller.
“My grandma can stride better than you!” — Sten, Fall of 2018
More recently, as a member of Team Birkie, I have been extremely fortunate to be able to use the rollerski treadmill at Pioneer Midwest, a local Minnesota ski shop.
This treadmill is actually open to members of the public who want to take advantage of all of the amazing benefits rollerski treadmills have to offer. I’ll provide a link at the end of this blog to learn more about Pioneer Midwest’s mill.
Video of a workout on the Pioneer Midwest treadmill from this summer.
Thank you so much for reading! Hopefully you find some of this information useful. I really appreciate all of the people who take the time to read my blog. Let me know if there is anything you would like me to write about in the future!
