If you’re looking for a way to refresh your fitness routine with an effective workout that gets results, incline walking workouts may be the perfect thing for you. While walking is beneficial for your heart and maintaining a healthy weight, it takes a lot of walking to see and feel results. Incline walking, on the other hand, boosts the intensity of your walking workouts, increasing your heart rate, building muscle, and burning more calories. While a variation of workouts will give you the best results, incorporating incline walking into your fitness routine comes with a myriad of benefits.
What Are Incline Walking Workouts?
Incline walking workouts consist of increasing the incline of your treadmill to make your walking workouts more challenging. Walking is one of the simplest forms of aerobic exercise, but it’s not particularly efficient. You would have to do a lot more walking than a high-intensity exercise like running to see the same results. Incline walking is one of the best ways to boost the intensity of your walking workouts. By raising the treadmill incline you burn more calories and target different muscle groups in your legs.
Most treadmills with automatic incline are adjustable from 0 – 15% grade in 0.5% increments. Speed and incline can both have a significant impact on the intensity of your walking workout. Incline is great for toning your legs and building endurance, while speed boosts your cardio and burns calories.
What Are Benefits of Incline Walking Workouts?
- Low impact cardio – as a low impact workout, incline walking is great for people of all fitness levels and ages. It’s beneficial for those recovering from injuries and people who have joint pain because it puts less stress on the joints than running. The impact on your back, hips, knees, and ankles by running is reduced without reducing the cardio, metabolic, and strength benefits.
- Targets different muscles – incline walking targets different muscle groups in your legs, including your glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves. It tones and strengthens these muscle groups and the more you increase the incline, the greater the demand on these muscles and the better results you’ll see.
- Strengthens your core – during incline walking workouts, your core is engaged to help stabilize your body. As you walk uphill, your body leans slightly forward to help propel yourself up the incline and a strong core is key to keeping you balanced.
- High calorie burn – incline walking is a great way to burn calories and blasts more calories than walking on flat ground. There’s a greater demand on your body to walk uphill, which increases your heart rate and burns more calories. Walking on an incline burns fat from your entire body, including your stomach area.
- Cardiovascular health – consistently getting enough aerobic exercise is important for maintaining optimal health and reducing the risk of diseases like hypertension, obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers. Walking on an incline increases your heart rate, and depending on your incline and walking speed, your walking workouts can count towards moderate-intensity or vigorous-intensity exercise.
6 Low Impact Incline Walking Workouts
1. 30 Min Hill Walk Treadmill Workout | IBX Running
Ready to walk some hills? This treadmill routine will take you up inclines and change up your speed for a super effective workout. She talks you through the entire thing, plus the workout and progression bar is displayed the whole time on the screen. Every minute you do something different, so make sure to follow along!
2. My Treadmill Routine: 12 3 30 *Advanced* Walking Workout | Morgan Green
For this workout, she shows you how she’s changed up the 12-3-30 walking workout to make it more advanced. She talks you through where she increases her speed and incline, and also shows you what she does for her cool down. As an added benefit, she wears a Sweet Sweat and coconut oil to promote sweat and cut excess water weight.
3. 30 Minute Incline Walking Treadmill Workout – Calorie Blaster | Treadchic
This 30 minute treadmill routine takes you from incline 1% to 12% for an awesome workout that will burn calories and boost muscle strength. She uses one pound wrist weights as you’ll also be doing some arm exercises for extra toning. She also gives you advice for walking with the best form, so make sure to follow her tips!
4. Incline Treadmill Weight Loss Cardio Workout | Sunny Health & Fitness
This treadmill workout was designed to effectively increase your calorie burn and activate muscles in your glutes, hamstrings, thighs, and calves. The variety of intervals will keep you on your toes and having fun, while you get in a great cardio workout. You’ll start with a light warm up, followed by a combination of incline speed walks, and end off with a recovery.
5. 30 Minute Walk Intervals | IBX Running
Intervals are an amazing way to get your heart pumping and calories burning. This workout mixes in some quicker walk paces, as well as inclines. In the first half of the workout you’ll be picking up the pace of each interval, and in the second half, you’ll be crushing some hills! Get ready to work up a sweat!
6. Incline Walking Advanced 30 Min Treadmill Workout | Sunny Health and Fitness
If you’re looking for a more advanced incline walking workout, check this one out! You’ll be going all the way up to 15% and your speed will vary between 2 to 3.5 MPH. With 15 levels of advanced incline walking, you’ll strengthen and tone your legs and build your cardiovascular system. Push your fitness to new heights with this advanced workout!
If you’re ready to take your walking workouts to the next level, try incline walking to strengthen, tone, and boost your overall health and fitness.
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