As I mentioned in a previous post, I am not a fan of treadmills, and find them to be a dangerous piece of equipment. That was confirmed this week by a May 5, 2015 article in the New York Times, entitled “Treadmill May Be Riskiest Machine, but Injuries From It Still Rare”, by Sabrina Tavernise, following the death of David Goldberg on a treadmill. According to the article, although deaths are rare, 30 reported from 2012 to 2013, treadmills were the riskiest of all workout machines, accounting for 24,400 injuries associated with their use in 2014.

In putting together any workout routine, one needs to come up with some activity that can be done conveniently, and/or inside when the weather is not so accommodating. For runners or walkers, that would seem to be the treadmill. For me, it is the recumbent bike, or elliptical, neither of which easily cause an injury when one has a lapse of concentration, plus they lend themselves to multitasking (watch TV, listen to music, read, make phone calls, etc.), which can help pass the time when one is exercising.

One of the problems with a treadmill is that it forces a set gate on your walking or running, but when we walk or run outside, our gate does vary. Another problem with the treadmill is that to achieve an aerobic workout, one must run on it at high speeds, and/or have the machine steeply angled — both dangerous configurations.  One really needs to have aerobic workouts if you want to achieve significant weight loss.

Every Sunday I take a 8 mile, 2 1/2 hour walk/run in New York’s Central Park. I walk most of the route, to preserve my knees from the pounding stepping on hard pavement can cause, but I briefly run in the middle of the route so as to keep my body in shape for running longer distances, like when I run the New Year’s Eve race in Central Park. I have taken this walk in both sizzling and freezing temperatures, and in rain or snow storms, and just adjusted my clothing to the conditions. In the extremely rare circumstances of extreme weather, like a hurricane, or blizzard, I stay inside and instead go on my bike or the elliptical for a longer period of time, or increase the intensity of my workout. So my advice is simple, unless the weather outside is dangerous, run or walk outside, and when then you do have to come indoors, choose a safer piece of equipment than the treadmill.