mprevost
Level 7 Valued Member
Great question! And one that I have thought about since the beginning of the year when my wife bought a Tread Climber. I know there won't be a 100% transfer from walking on an incline to jogging. But I am curious if doing a significant amount of work in zone 2 on the TC will have a positive carryover to jogging/running improvement. As it gets hotter, I am not as eager to get out and run.
Lots of factors affect the answer to this question. If you are a really fit runner, and switch to another mode, like a tread climber, you will not likely continue to improve as a runner. You may even lose some run fitness. If you are unfit and start doing the tread climber, it is likely to help your run, even if you don't run at all. If you are somewhat fit as a runner and switch to the tread climber, I would suspect that if you work hard enough, you can MAINTAIN your run fitness on the tread climber. However, if you train much harder on the tread climber than you did while running, maybe you can add some run fitness. These fitness transfer effects are much greater in unfit people than fit athletes but the moderately fit can get some transfer effects if they work hard enough. I found that I could maintain most of my run fitness by walking fast with a 55lb backpack. I am a moderately fit runner. If I want to get better at running though, I feel like I need to run.