Non-motorized treadmill, "Curve" Treadmill

mallieh

Hi guys,

So my university gym has two Curve treadmills that I have fallen in love with. They are non motorized, which means your legs are pulling the belt and you are doing ALL of the work like you would if you ran outside. It's a beautiful machine, and I'm surprised more gyms aren't carrying them yet. Anyway, my question is about the calorie's it says I burn. The whole point behind the design of this type of treadmill is to create a higher burn than normal since you're legs and butt are doing much more work than a conventional treadmill. I burn 100 cals in 5 minutes, 535 in 30 minutes. That's just my typical burn.

Now, that excites me beyond anything because I love not having to spend an hour and a half on a machine to see a big caloric burn... BUT ... i am skeptical of "good things" ha ha ha . I just don't want to assure i'm burning more calories than I am and end up eating over my calorie limit, you know? Does anyone else use the Curve Treadmill or something like it and see similar high calorie burns ? I thought about buying a fitbit, jawbone UP, or bodybugg to corroborate the results but those are expensive and I'm in college and broke .

Any help would be great!

iWaffle

I would start off logging it as 10 calories a minute and just make adjustments as necessary. If you're under eating 200 calories it's not that big of a deal. You can adjust when/if you see that you are dropping weight too fast from a lack of calories. I would prefer this approach to over logging and overeating.

onwarddownward

Get the HR monitor and double check. Curves might be over-estimating to keep their clientele interested in their crappy treadmills. Sorry, but a non-motorized treadmill is an accident waiting to happen. It's very hard on the knees and hamstrings. And if it happens to stop while you are moving fast

---

> faceplant.

stefanieprice07

I can't vouch for the accuracy, but i know that when i run 5mph on the curve it feels like 6 outside. Definitely harder than normal running, and so much better than a treadmill, you can set your own pace and it stops when you stop, no awkward running while the machine catches up. We had one out on the aircraft carrier I was on, and I loved it, I was on it every day because it made me feel less like being a trapped hamster lol.

emjaycazz

It's actually a treadmill that's shaped like a "curve" as opposed to the gym under the same name--but I would say go with an HRM to track just to make sure. They use Woodway Curves at my son's sports conditioning place and the kids love them.

zakattack2158

@mallieh I found an interesting paper on "curve" treadmills if you're still interested. I know your post is from a few years ago.

http://dc.ewu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1267&context=theses