We will give you this one suggestion, even though you might not want to hear it - go and hire or buy a treadmill for your home. It will cost you around $1000 to get a decent one, the walking platforms fold up to save space, and they last for years.
Nysteia is about developing good habits for your life. This includes spending 30 minutes every morning doing cardio on your treadmill.
Let’s be honest here. Gyms are a business, and they are designed to take your money whether you use their facilities or not. Most gym members do not use the gym after a while, because their life gets in the way. Chances are that your closest gym is not right next door to your house. You may quite a distance to travel to get to the gym.
You may feel that in order to go to the gym where lots of people will see you, you have to have a shower, dress up in your gym clothes, maybe even a little bit of personal grooming like make up, get a new car, drive to the gym, find a parking spot, walk into the gym, put your stuff in the lockers, and then jump on a treadmill for 30 minutes.
You may find that it takes you 30 minutes to prepare and travel to the gym, to train for 30 minutes on a treadmill. That, my friends, is a ridiculous waste of time. You will not keep it up. You will stop going to the gym after a while, and you’ll do other things instead of your 30 minute cardio workout.
What we want for you is: no matter if it’s raining, snowing, hailing, hot, foggy, or if North Korea is threatening nuclear war - you will get up out of bed in the morning, have a cup of tea or coffee and five minutes quiet time, then throw on a pair of shoes (and if you feel like, a pair of shorts), and do your 30 minutes of cardio on your home treadmill.
So, we say again: please go today and hire or buy a treadmill for your home use. Yes, it’s a lot of money, but what price do you put on your health? And if you’re fat, how much has the rubbish food cost that you shoved down your throat over the years? I bet a lot more than the cost of a treadmill.
Go today and buy a treadmill - I am not sure if the instruction can be any clearer, but if more clarity is needed, and you are still confused by the instruction - go today and buy a treadmill.
It really is a life-and-death decision to you. It has never been put in that perspective for you, but if you take our advice, buy the treadmill, and use it in the way we suggest, you will likely add years to your life.
This is how you use the treadmill:
- Start on zero incline at 5.6 km/h for the first four minutes;
- Increase the incline to 6° for the next 25 minutes;
- When you hit the 29-minute mark, reduce the incline back to zero.
That’s all there is to it. Nothing fancy, no interval training, you will not die of exhaustion or overexertion.
At the very beginning, say for the first 14 to 21 days, if you are an exercise beginner, you may find that maintaining 6° incline for 25 minutes may be too tough to handle in one stretch. Don’t force yourself if you can’t keep that up initially.
If you are really unfit, and obese, it is okay at the beginning to incline to 3° or 4° for the 25 minute stretch. Set yourself the target of the 6° incline, and tried to achieve it after say 21 days.
I find it very useful to watch something on my iPad, such as a YouTube documentary or a show, while I am on my treadmill. As a matter of fact, I enjoy watching these documentaries so much, that I extend my cardio workouts so that I can keep watching the documentaries. Whatever works, the whole point is to make the cardio workout a daily habit.
Like other aspects of Nysteia, even though the philosophy is simple, the reasons for doing it are extremely profound.
Walking on a flat surface is what human beings were designed to do over tens of thousands of years of our evolution. We are not the fastest runners in the animal kingdom. We generally cannot run for very long distances at a fast pace (like a horse). When the best swimmers in the animal kingdom. We can’t fly like birds.
What we do well is walk. That’s how we survived, that was our trick.
When we found that an animal that we wanted to eat, it would be usually difficult to kill immediately using the primitive weapons that we had at our disposal. But we could injure the animal, and then continue to harass it, and walk after it until it collapsed from exhaustion - it would then be easy prey for us.
Because we walk so well, and indeed are designed to walk well, it does not take much effort for us to walk on a flat surface. In other words, not many big muscle groups are activated when we walk on a flat surface.
However, when we walk up a hill (and incline), all of our lower body muscles are activated. Our lower body muscles are the largest muscles in our body, and broadly consist of our calves, hamstrings, quadriceps, and glutes. These muscles represent nearly 50% of your total muscle content.
Research indicates that all of these muscles are activated at an incline equal to or greater than 3° from the flat horizontal.
At 6° incline, your calves, hamstrings, quadriceps, and glutes are totally activated and working, and the muscles of your core (abdominals and erectors) are also brought into play for stability.
So, in effect, you can turn your cardio workout into a lower body strength workout as well by adding a 6° incline to your treadmill session.
After a couple of months of daily incline treadmill walking, the tremendous results that you will see in your body will make you realise how valuable this incline treadmill advice is - it will make you stronger, give you tremendous stamina, catabolise residual carbohydrates thereby activating lipolysis and autophagy… and, it will carve your lower body into a beautiful and aesthetic physique… And there’s nothing wrong with that!
You must pay particular attention to the quality of your shoes that you use when doing your cardio workouts. We suggest you buy the best quality shoes that you can afford.
If you are extremely overweight, or if you have foot issues such as flat feet and collapsed arches, then please consult with a podiatrist so that your feet are well taken care of whilst exercising. You may require orthotics, or other types of foot support, in order to avoid stress injuries or repetitive strains.
For most people, simply buying a top-quality pair of shoes and thick walking socks to cushion the foot will be sufficient for walking on a treadmill.
Treadmills are generally designed to be quite “giving” surfaces to walk on especially compared to concrete or gravel, and as such you are highly unlikely to aggravate joints such as ankles, knees and hips.
So, bottom line, buy a decent treadmill and a great pair of shoes and socks, and every morning do your 30 minutes cardio as suggested above.