Home Treadmills

Keeping fit and healthy is a major concern for many people who live a modern, fast paced and often stressful way of life. They have demanding jobs, crazy social lives, stressful commuting and are often harangued by others all trying to compete for their precious time. It sounds like a nightmare life, yet so many people live this way.

So finding time to get some exercise in between all the other activities and commitments is not an easy thing to do. Going for long, leisurely walks in the countryside are often out of bounds because there simply isn't enough time.

Yet walking is such a good exercise that doesn't put too much strain on a body that isn't used to more strenuous exercises. So how can you bring the long countryside walks into a more controlled environment where time can be made for it?

Home treadmills fill the vacant gap and provide for a means to get some serious walking done while still balancing all the other aspects of a busy life.

How Will You Use Your Home Treadmill?

So how will you actually use your home treadmill? Will it get heavy use or only light use? Is it just for your own personal use or will other members of the household use it too? Do you expect to use it daily or just occasionally and for how long each session?

These are probably the most important questions that you need to ask your self about the use that this piece of home apparatus will get. The best way to figure all this out is to write everything down about how you expect that you will use the treadmill and then you will have a clear picture of what you can expect from the machine in terms of it being long lasting and provide you with good reliability.

Once you know how you'll be using the machine, you can then move on to having a very good idea about what should you look for in a good home treadmill.

For a machine that is expected to be used extensively by many people, then robustness, reliability and quality build are factors that should come near the top of your list of wants. The machine will need to be hard wearing and be up to the task of being trampled upon daily by many pairs of feet that will carry bodies of varying weight.

Which leads us onto the next stage in the planning. You should also factor in the weight of the people that will be using the treadmill. Obviously, the heavier the people that will be using it, the stronger and more robust it will need to be to take all the extra punishment.

If its only one person and that person is relatively light in weight then a less expensive and tough machine can be happily integrated into your home exercise space for your personal use only.

How Much to Spend for a Home Treadmill?

Good home treadmills don't come cheap, and its often a case of getting what you pay for. Most people don't really know what a home treadmill is likely to cost them and of course much of this depends upon where you live and the availability locally should you choose to buy on in a brick and mortar store.

While there may have been some fancy looking treadmills for sale in a large discount store such as Wal-Mart or Makro for a few hundred hundred dollars, they shouldn't make the mistake of assuming this is a good starting price from which to gauge the alternatives.

Home treadmills that you want to last are going to have to be pretty rugged machines that will be used regularly and take an tough beating. So if you want a home treadmill that will still be working in a year or two's time, you're going to need to spend rather more than that.

A good recommendation for a good walking treadmill that is likely to withstand lots of regular use is likely to set you back somewhere in the region of $1,000 or so. This doesn't mean that you should ignore more expensive machines, which are more likely to exceed the two or three year shelf life of a cheaper one.

Spending around $3,000 on a home treadmill is worth it if you intend to use it heavily. But if you only intend to make light use of it, you'd be better off spending far less than that.