Physical on a commercial treadmill

Is it running on a commercial treadmill and jogging in the same mountain from a physical perspective? This is what scientists think of it.

“You can’t achieve anything that is truly valuable and doesn’t apply to this.” – Roosevelt (Old Roosevelt)

One of the most popular sports in the gym is the running machine. Why not? Running or walking is a good way to load the cardiovascular system and make the body move. For many people, this is a good way to lose weight. No matter what you do: walking, jogging or jogging, you can do something that makes your workout more intense – tilt the track!

If you are running/walking outdoors, you may want to know if lifting and exercising on the plane are really the same or there is a fundamental difference between them. From a physiological point of view, there is a huge difference between walking up the mountain and the plane, but what do physicists think about this?

To lay a solid foundation for our subject matter reasoning, let’s start with the basic concept: if you are on the flat surface of the ground plane (or treadmill), you stay at the same level in the gravitational field. As you take every step, gravity pulls you toward the center of the earth, because your feet must have the same and absolutely opposite impact on the ground to prevent you from falling [this so-called normal support response – about. Transl. ], you don’t move up or down; you can only move horizontally or perpendicular to gravity.

Physically, this means you haven’t done any work. Of course, you work hard, but as long as you move vertically – in this case gravity – you don’t do any mechanical work.

But if you go up the mountain, you not only have to go straight, but no matter what your pace, you should gradually, every step, go beyond the gravitational field of the earth [that is, overcome gravity – about. transmission].

The gravitational field of the earth is not lazy. My weight is 85 kg. For me, only 5 meters of height rise requires 4200 joules of energy or one calorie [ E = m * g * h = 85 * 9.8 * 5~50 * 85~4200~1 k. – About. transmission].

In fact, if I climb to a height of 5 meters, I will burn more than one calorie. why? There are two most important reasons for this:
My body is not a perfect engine. This means that in order to spend 4200 J, I need to get about three times the calories from the food.
When you exercise and then stop, your body does not know that you can immediately lower your heart rate [this is also called the inertia of the body – about. transmission]. Therefore, walking uphill for 60 minutes will increase my metabolic rate by more than an hour.

Oh, yes, about the power of movement [about the power of the physical sense – about. transmission]. I am not a physiologist and can only reason from a physics perspective. So if we are based on the extra energy needed to elevate, what can we say about the power of practice?

Let’s make an auxiliary table. We will record the distance traveled and the angle you walked in the table and see your workload.

This table is for an 80 kg person, a little less than me. Impressive, isn’t it?

We talked about climbing, but what about treadmills? Is there any difference? Between a electric treadmill and a course walking on an ordinary mountain?Or you can try on a vertical climber machine and thinking about it. On the one hand, when you are on the track, you will not rise in the gravitational field. In this sense, there are nuances. But in fact, the difference between hundreds (or even thousands) of meters is not very large in terms of the effect of gravity on your body [this is obvious, if you recall the laws of the world and the radius of the earth – about. transmission].

In both cases, you need to apply some force in the opposite direction of Earth’s gravity to move on the ground – which means you need to fight gravity!

The only difference between a sloping runway and a straight mountain road is that if you stop while climbing, you will actually stop and you will be shot down on the track.

In fact, there is no difference in whether a treadmill is moving or resting: if you try to climb it, you have to do your job every step of the way. According to Einstein’s principle of equivalence, all other factors – including the speed of the track, the direction of movement of the belt and the height of the climb – are irrelevant. So there is no difference between climbing a tilting treadmill and activities: in both cases, you do the same physical work!