The treadmill equipped with electrical tilting have two motors one for slide the tape and the other to tilt the carpet. The motors of the treadmills for home range from a power of 1.5 Hp (horsepower) to 3.5 Hp while the professional ones can reach up to 6 horsepower.
We must always take into account the continuous horsepower and ignore the so-called “peak” as it is a data that does not allow us to understand the true power of the engine but is simply the maximum power that the engine can reach when it reaches the point breaking.
There are ventilated or non-ventilated motors: in the former, the fan is able to cool the engine by a good 75% and this prevents the engine from overheating.
The cheapest mats are not equipped with electric inclination but generally have a manual inclination on 2/3 levels, so to be able to vary the inclination during training you have to stop and select the inclination manually while in those equipped with electric inclination the slope can be varied without interrupting the workout.
The slope normally reaches 10-15% but there are also some models that can reach 40% of slope used mainly for walking uphill.
The most common motors are the V2, the V3, the V4, the V5 and the V6, which is a more expensive model. The V5 has a peak of 6 horsepower while the V6 can reach up to 9 horsepower. In the slide mats the tape is placed in the center of the mat and the feet are placed on a platform that is on the other side of the tape. In the treadmill equipped with electric tilting the tape is placed on the left side and the feet are placed on a platform that is on the right side of the tape.
The treadmill comes with a hand-held remote control (RC) that allows you to adjust the speed, the incline and the inclination of the treadmill. The treadmill can be equipped with an automatic belt adjustment system or the user must adjust the treadmill itself every time he/she puts his/her foot on the tape.
The slope is generally between 5° and 15°, if the slope is too steep you can experience problems with back pain and muscle fatigue as well as difficulty to keep the balance. In this case we advise to work on an incline of 5° or less.
The treadmills are very important as they allow us to use the muscles that would not be used by walking on the ground, in particular the quads and glutes. With a good treadmill you can train many different muscles with the minimum amount of effort.
We always use a mat of at least 2mm thickness as it allows a better support to the feet during the workout.
A mat of at least 3mm thickness is recommended because of the fact that it allows us to do more exercises and it allows us to avoid the problem of “toe-off” while we are running on the ground.
The surface of the mat is made of plastic and rubber. The rubber is necessary because it has a good grip while the plastic is needed because we can easily cut our hands while training. The mats are usually covered with a material called “puck”.
This material is used to allow the athlete to sweat and it allows us to get rid of the water and dirt that accumulates in the mat.
When you sweat on the mat you are able to get rid of the water and the sweat. The amount of sweat that accumulates in the mat is limited because of the fact that we need to be careful when we change the mat.
We use the treadmill with the inclination of 0%. This allows us to use the muscles that would not be used by walking on the ground.
The treadmill incline must be between 0% and 15%. We cannot use the treadmill incline lower than 0% as this would not allow us to train our glutes and quads.
The treadmill incline higher than 15% will cause us to use the muscles that are not used by walking on the ground. If we want to use a different inclination, we should refer to the manual of the treadmill.
The first thing that we do after we have bought the treadmill is to read the manual of the treadmill and to check the size of the mat that it comes with.
This is very important because the mat is too small if we want to perform the exercises that are included in the manual. The size of the mat is usually indicated by the number of steps. The number of steps is usually between 1500 and 2000 steps.