Best HIIT Cardio Treadmill Workouts

It is no secret that running on a treadmill can be more than a little boring. Even avid runners bemoan the thought of replicating a 10K or half marathon run on the treadmill, which is why mixing up your workout by incorporating HIIT sessions will do wonders for your motivation as well as your fitness.

Many gym-goers, especially those who have only recently invested in membership, force themselves to run at a constant pace for a prolonged period believing this to be the best way to build fitness and burn body fat. While this will help you to achieve your goal, you should know that a HIIT treadmill workout can help to burn abdominal fat quicker than constant cardio.

Here, UK Gym Equipment introduces you to several interval cardio treadmill workouts that you can perform either at the gym or in the comfort of your home if you have access to a treadmill. Before you begin, you should experiment with the top speed and incline that you can sustain your effort at for a minute.

What You Will Need for Our HIIT Treadmill Workouts

Standard 30-Minute Cardio Workout on a Treadmill

Our first workout is a variant of the standard 30-minute HIIT treadmill session that you may have already come across via a quick Google search. The warm-up is included as part of the 30-minute HIIT workout and you must do so, otherwise, you run a real risk of injury should you jump straight into a sprint without warming up your muscles beforehand.

Minutes 1-5: 3-4mph, 1% incline

For the opening five minutes of this session, you should ease yourself in with a gentle jog on the treadmill to limber up your body ahead of the introduction of intervals. If you wish to begin at walking pace then that is fine too. Anything in the region of 3-4mph and a small 1% incline will form the basis of a solid warm-up ahead of moving into your interval training.

Minutes 5-26: 7x one-minute sprints at 6-8mph, 4-5% incline; 7x two-minute recovery at 4-5mph, 0-1% incline

As we move into our HIIT cardio treadmill workout, your body should be feeling limber and warmed up, ready to push itself to its limit. During the one-minute sprints, you should be performing at around 90% effort. If you are unable to sustain a sprint at the speeds and/or incline listed above, then you should perform this exercise at a level appropriate to your fitness level to avoid the risk of serious injury.

This is a standard HIIT routine and one that makes for a fantastic cardio workout, as well as being one of the best treadmill workouts for speed. The inclusion of an incline is optional and can vary depending on your level of fitness. If you are a beginner, we recommend starting with an incline between 1-2% and working your way up to 4-5%.

After every sprint comes a two-minute recovery, which should be at a pace between 2-3mph slower than your sprint speed. You mustn’t stop as the idea of this exercise is to train your body to recover whilst still moving.

Minutes 26-30: Gradual slow of pace (0.5mph each minute)

Once you have completed the interval session, you will finish with a four-minute warm-down lowering the pace by 0.5mph after every minute.

Pyramid Intervals

In an earlier workout post, we introduced pyramid intervals (on that occasion performed on an air bike). This same HIIT workout routine can be adapted to the treadmill, making for a fantastic, yet challenging, interval training session that will get you hot and sweaty.

This routine begins at the bottom of the pyramid with a 10-second sprint and 50-second recovery, working your way to the top of the pyramid, where you sprint for 50 seconds with just 10 seconds to recover, followed by a return to bottom with a 10-second sprint. One cycle can be performed in nine minutes so, depending on your fitness level and/or time available, you can choose to perform one, two or three cycles.

Before beginning this routine, make sure to warm-up with a steady five-minute walk or jog on the treadmill. Perform each sprint at 6-8mph with 4-5% incline and recovery at 4-5mph, 0-1% incline.

Minute one: 10-second sprint, 50-second recovery

Minute two: 20-second sprint, 40-second recovery

Minute three: 30-second sprint, 30-second recovery

Minute four: 40-second sprint, 20-second recovery

Minute five: 50-second sprint, 10-second recovery

Minute six: 40-second sprint, 20-second recovery

Minute seven: 30-second sprint, 30-second recovery

Minute eight: 20-second sprint, 40-second recovery

Minute nine: 10-second sprint, 50-second recovery

Up the Hill

While our previous workout was all about going up and down the pyramid, our final treadmill interval workout is all about moving up the hill by increasing the speed and incline. This workout can be performed in 20 minutes, making this an ideal session for anyone that struggles to fit daily exercise in around a busy day.

Minutes 1-5: Warm-up with a gentle walk or jog at a comfortable pace (able to sustain a conversation)

Minute six: 4-5mph, 1% incline

Minute seven: 4-5mph, 2% incline

Minute eight: 4-5mph, 4% incline

Minute nine: Recovery (walk or jog at 3-4mph, 0-1% incline)

Minute 10: 4-5mph, 1% incline

Minute 11: 4-5mph, 4% incline

Minute 12: 4-5mph, 6% incline

Minute 13: Recovery (walk or jog at 3-4mph, 0-1% incline)

Minute 14: 6-8mph, 2% incline

Minute 15: 6-8mph, 4% incline

Minute 16: Recovery (walk or jog at 3-4mph, 0-1% incline)

Minute 17: 6-8mph, 3% incline

Minute 18: 6-8mph, 5% incline

Minutes 19-20: Warm-down at the same sustained pace as your warm-up

These are just a small selection of our favourite HIIT cardio treadmill workouts and hope that you feel the same way as us when you have given them a go. Do not hesitate to take our ideas and adapt your sessions to suit your fitness levels and goals. If you would like some information on the best treadmills available from UK Gym Equipment, please get in touch with a member of our team today.