Greetings everyone! I had way too much fun doing the treadmill backwards! At first I thought I would surely fall over. I eventually turned it to a dance of sorts. I was able to up my speed and HR to a respectable workout, for me. Anyone interstellar in funding a New Workout Craze!!! Hilarious… just kidding, but seriously!!
“The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong” Swami Vivekananda
Knees Over Toes Guy is really into backwards walking and actually sells a reverse treadmill:
Ive been running backwards on traditional treadmills for years as part of my warmup and agree it is a good exercise. My treadmill allows me to run at an incline, decline and is wide enough to easily rotate on while the belt is moving (be careful rotating at high speeds. I twisted my ankle once)
I also side shuffle on occasion but not for any meaningful distance (so I don’t think a treadmill has much utility for that).
That’s only type of running I do on my treadmill. I am not a big fan of running indoors, but running backwards is just not safe outside, plus you get weird looks.
I put it on slight incline so I am running backwards up, it’s a bit easier for balance I noticed.
I used to prefer running outside but now I mostly run inside for convenience. Im running shorter distances these days while focusing more on strength training. Id probably start running outside again if I was running more than 5-10k at a time.
Interestingly the last time I remember running backwards outside was about 3/4 of the way through a marathon about a decade ago after I felt my legs getting a little stiff. On that occasion (after running a block or so backwards) my legs felt rejuvenated and I was able to complete the race with more energy.
I can totally see that. This why I like riding a SingleSpeed mountain bikes for long distances - 50 miles plus with climbs. People think it would be harder not having any gears but actually it forces you to vary a span of cadence from spinning to stand up slow cranking. This completely changes the leg and core muscle engagement, which allows various muscle to rest.