Treadmill vs Outside Running

I was on a public forum today and a young bloke asked about running on a treadmill as the next few days are gonna be scorchers.

I said run outside, someone else suggested he could go on the treadmill.

I have to disagree.

It all gets back to the SAID principle which states that if a person is put under physical stress of varying intensities and duration, the person attempts to overcome the stress by adapting specifically to the imposed demands.

In english, running on a treadmill will make you good at running on a treadmill, but not necessarily on the field.

It will train the cardiovascular system, but again the demands of running on a treadmill are different demands to running on the field. The energy systems may be similar, but the actual muscular demands are not.

The main for us footy players is the use of the glute muscles. They are the most powerful and also one of the biggest muscles in the human body. As the belt of the treadmill runs under your feet as opposed to you running over grass, you never enter into hip extension, the glutes main function. Even with an incline setting, you still don't voluntarily go into hip extension as the treadmill belt simply "pushes" you there.

Not only do you limit an already underused muscle group, but when you do go back to running on grass, your glutes fatigue very early thus moving a lot of your hip extension range of motion to the lumbar spine. Not cool.

Footy is played in hot days, cold days and in the case of my hometown, windy Warrnambool, hail stones so you may as well go out and train in it although you may need to alter your plan a little.

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