How can you shake up a boring cardio routine? Reach for the stars! Not literally, but point your treadmill upward – Uphill sprinting is a safer and more challenging way to do cardio. In fact, rather than wasting your time doing that boring walk or running session, uphill treadmill sprinting is an awesome way to challenge your body and even better for seeing quicker results.

By running on a fairly steep incline, not only are you greatly increasing the intensity of the workout, but you are also surprisingly being better to your knees, hips and that vulnerable low back area. You see, when you set an incline, your body naturally tilts forward. this forward tilt limits your ability to stand too rigidly, where knees become close to lock out and the spine takes on a lot more stress from the impact. By leaning a bit forward (which happens naturally from being on an incline), it puts much less stress on those knees and hips and back. The incline and natural lean forward will also help to keep your form and concentration on point.

My favorite cross-training cardio session goes something like this: I often switch up my days between uphill run sprints and uphill walk sprints - There is a huge difference between the two. When I run uphill, I hold on to the handles, so that I am safe from possibly falling and can concentrate on going all out with my intensity. When I walk uphill there is no holding on! I walk with conviction and by not holding on, it increases the intensity and is easily as intense as those runs uphill. Is one better than the other? Heck no! Remember, the best workout is the one that you're not currently on. This means that variety and changing things up, even from workout to workout, will further challenge your body, while preventing the dreaded training plateau from spoiling your the results you so desire.

Let's get right to the training parameters for the uphill run sequence: I begin by setting the treadmill incline to grade of 6.0 and a speed of 3.2. I stay with that for about 3 minutes to warm-up my body - It gets the blood flowing and will usually have you breaking a slight sweat. At the end of the 3 minute mark, I'm ready for my first run sprint. I increase the incline grade to 8.0 and the speed to 6.5 -

This is pretty fast, but it is totally relative to your current fitness level. *Please go at your own pace and take it slow as you begin this new training protocol! Remember that there are many variables that will help to gauge where you should set your personal incline and speed settings. IE. For a person with shorter legs, a 6.5 mph pace may feel more like an 8.5 mph pace...Obviously the person with longer legs will have a much easier time running at 6.5 mph than the person with shorter legs...The longer legged person would probably need to increase their pace to around an 8.5 mph pace to endure comparative intensities.      
 

I run my first sprint for 45 seconds and once I hit the 45 second mark, I quickly bring my speed back down to 3.5 mph. I don't bring my incline great back down however. I allow myself to recover and catch my breath for about 1.5 minutes. At the end of the 1 minute mark, I bring the incline grade up to a grade of 10. Once I reach 1.5 minutes of rest, I am now ready for my next sprint. I quickly raise the speed to 7.5 and sprint again for 45 seconds. Once I reach the end of 45 seconds, I quickly bring my speed back to 3.5 mph. This time, I rest for 2 minutes to help aid in the recovery from the more intense incline and speed increase. Overall, I do about 4-5 sprints. For my 3rd sprint, I raise the incline to a grade of 12 and increase the speed to 8.0. The 3rd sprint only lasts for 30 seconds now, as the intensity will take a lot out of you. For my fourth and usually the final sprint, I increase the incline grade to 15 and the speed to either 8.5 or 9.0, depending on how I'm feeling that particular day. Again these sprints are only to last for 30 seconds and I warn you, that they are very intense and you need to both focus on your form and technique, while making sure to keep up with the speed of the treadmill platform.

Here are a couple of things that will greatly help to enhance the quality of your sprints: As you run, use your arms as a means to gain momentum; as you run, the forceful forward swing of your arms will help to build greater running intensity. Keep your body bent over slightly and stay tight as your forge forward. As you watch the clock counting down, getting ready for an upcoming sprint, get in the right state of mind - Be ready to instantly increase your intensity, allow those leg muscles to do the work of staying with your speed pace and think about how awesome you're going to look from this awesome cardio workout!

As for the walking sprints, you'll follow the same set up, except your incline grade and speed will obviously be set lower and progress less than your runs & you will not be holding on to any handles. 

I usually start with an incline setting of 5.0 and a speed of 3.0. I stay with that for about 3 minutes. I than bring the incline grade to 7.0 and bring my speed to 3.5. I stay with that for about another 3 minutes. I continue in this fashion for another 3-5 increases in incline grade and speed. As an example, my 3rd increase might be an incline grade of 10.0 and a speed increase of 3.7 - Again I'll usually stick with that for about 3 minutes. My fourth time might be an incline grade increase to 12.0 and a speed increase to 3.8. If I decide to do a 5th, my incline grade would be an all out 15.0 and my speed, a 4.0 mph pace.

Trust me, this is as intense as those runs - By not holding on, your quads and hamstring leg muscles will be howling!

I end both my uphill runs and walks with a 3-5b minutes cool down - I usually gradually bring both the incline grade and speed down every minute or so, until I've reached a 2.0 incline grade and a 1.5 speed pace. 

I guarantee that this cardio workout bring your many new found results in both increased lower body lean muscle tone, decreased body fat and an amazingly improved wind!

Best of Luck!