Treadmills- whats important?

**Trillian** · February 23rd, 2008, 08:12 AM

I brought one recently and I must say its one of the best things I ever did, I use it everyday. When we brought it and were talking about the different ones with the salesperson, he said basically they are all much of a muchness in what they do (walking and running) but some of the cheaper ones wont have a power incline - you have to get off and manually raise the incline yourself (if thats what you want it to have, otherwise a manual one is fine) and naturally the dearer they get the more techno features they have - like TV's and more specialised programming features Also the length and width of them increases too and some of them are dearer because they are designed along the lines of gym treadmills and are longer and wider for people to run on them. The one we settled on has the power incline but only basic programming and I'm quite happy with that because its easy to use so you're not pushing a heap of different buttons all the time to increase speed, incline etc. The brand we brought was a Horizon one if that helps.

**Tracey Habron** · February 23rd, 2008, 09:59 AM

My view having used them in the gym - walk, run and if you can afford it, power incline. I doubt you will get off and raise it yourself manually......we think we will and we won't.

As for techo features - forget them. You don't need them and it just means there are more things that can go wrong and require repair. Listen to your MP3 player, the radio or walkman.

The power incline is my fave feature 'cos when I am out of puff when running, I can slow it down, put it on incline and still get a good heart rate going.

Good on you for thinking about getting one. Just don't use it as a laundry clothes horse - use it!!

**rosehannah** · February 23rd, 2008, 04:59 PM

Thanks for the replies Sherie and Tracey,

I have wanted one for a while now. I love going for walks and playing sport of any kind but with three kids I am finding it harder to find some time to exercise and it is showing. I have never been so heavy without being PG.

I am finding I am getting poor self esteem from the weight gain which is effecting other areas of my life. Thanks again

**Trillian** · February 24th, 2008, 07:22 AM

I know how you feel - I'm exactly the same and I just can't get out of the house to go for a walk and I can't play sport because of DH working shiftwork. It truly is the best thing I ever did because I can just pop on whenever I have a spare 1/2hr or so - some days I have even done two sessions. And I'm already seeing results and it's really keeping me motivated.

**Phteven** · February 24th, 2008, 09:02 AM

I think the most important thing is the motor. If that's no good then the rest of the features are meaningless.
Ours has springs/shock absorbers under the track. If you're planing on running not just walking they'll make a big difference to your comfort.
I wouldn't buy one from ebay - the reason is that if it needs repairs under the warranty you might have to pay a fortune in shipping.
Most of the companies bring out a new model each year so if you can get last year's model on special you'll get a good saving without having to compromise on features.

**Yael** · February 24th, 2008, 10:17 AM

Ok, we have a cross trainer rather than a treadmill, cos i have shocking knees and ankles, so i wanted something less impact, but i'll tell you what i looked for when buying it:

1) Good Quality, not the cheap junk. We ended up going with a York brand, we did buy it 2nd hand from trading post, but as it was one of the higher models, we were saving around 50% and it was only a few months old. We went there and tried it out before buying it. We also foudn out that York has a place when you can get it repaired about an hour from us if we needed to.

2) consol display - this was really important to us.

I wanted one where you could set different times and programs (fat burning, cardio etc), because i found tht if it automatically changed the resistance for me i would cope with it, but i probably would have just stayed on the bottom one if i was controlling it.

I also found the little bar graph display really good for keeping me going, i knew i only had 1 or 2 more lines to get through and i found it really motivating to finish it right to the end of the set time, rather than thinking "this is so hard i need a break". Instead i would say "just one more line, one more line".

It also tells you how far you have gone and Cal burned, along with monitoring your HR, so you cna try and have it in the optimal zone for exercise. Also when i was preg it was great, i could still exercise and keep my HR below 140 to be safe to the baby.

We love having it here - you just just jump on for 25 mins, and then have a shower etc when the kids are down... so my easier then all the time it takes to go to gyn, get changed, exercise, get re changed, come home, have a shower etc.