Treadmills Suck, Researchers Conclude
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A new report finds that treadmills “suck,” Dumb Runner has learned, confirming what many runners and gym-goers have long suspected.
The report, from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Treadmills (M.I.T.), is published in this week’s edition of the New England Journal of Stationery Activity, an academic publication devoted to the study of commercially produced writing materials that also occasionally includes research on aerobic exercise.
To reach their findings, a team of researchers studied 42 subjects, male and female, ranging in age from 14 to 72 years old; some were longtime runners, while others were relatively new to the sport. Each subject was watched closely for three treadmill runs—a 2-mile, steady-state “jog”; a 6-mile run; and a 5-mile “hill run” that made use of the treadmill’s adjustable incline feature.
“We used electrodes and fancy monitors and everything.”
The researchers detected suckage almost immediately, the report said, across all levels of age, gender, and fitness, and regardless of the duration or intensity of the workout. The same subjects showed little to no statistically significant suckage during outdoors runs meant to replicate the treadmill sessions.
“We can now say definitively that treadmills suck,” said Cheryl Tiegs, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist/sports psychologist and lead author of the report. “We used electrodes and fancy monitors and everything.”
The treadmill industry dismissed the findings, calling the research “fundamentally flawed,” without elaborating, and saying in a statement that, “You know what? THEY suck.”
