Take the speed and incline off the console, add the body weight the machine doesn't have, and see what the session actually cost.
Estimates are for general guidance only and are not medical advice. For a personalised plan, book a free guided tour at RPM Gym.
Read the two incline lines before the headline figure. You get the session, the same session at 0% grade, and the gap between them — and on a hill walk that gap is usually the largest single thing you did.
Grade is the biggest term in walking energy cost and it is not close. At 5.5 km/h the walking equation returns 3.6 MET on the flat, 8.3 at 10% and 10.7 at 15%: roughly 2.3 times the level figure, then almost three times it. Speed cannot reach that. For a 75 kg walker over half an hour at a fixed 6% grade, going from 5.5 to 6.0 km/h adds about 19 kcal. Going from 6% to 8% at 5.5 adds 37.
When this page and the machine disagree, the machine is the one working with less. It has belt speed, grade and elapsed time. It does not have your body weight unless you typed it in, and body weight scales the entire answer: half an hour at 5.5 km/h and 8% is about 252 kcal at 65 kg and about 369 kcal at 95 kg. A console with nothing entered has to pick one figure and hand the same one to everybody who steps on.
Gait is a question here, not a guess. At 7 km/h the walking equation gives 4.3 MET and the running equation gives 7.7 for the same belt speed — 182 kcal against 322 for an 80 kg person over thirty minutes. Neither equation is anchored at that speed, so choosing on your behalf would be inventing an answer rather than rounding one.
The result is gross. One MET for half an hour at 82 kg is about 43 kcal, and that sitting-still cost sits inside the number rather than on top of it.
Walking: VO2 (mL/kg/min) = 3.5 + (0.1 × S) + (1.8 × S × G) Running: VO2 (mL/kg/min) = 3.5 + (0.2 × S) + (0.9 × S × G) S is belt speed in m/min; G is grade as a fraction, so 8% is 0.08 kcal = VO2 × body weight kg ÷ 1000 × 5 kcal per litre of oxygen × minutes The gait you choose decides which equation runs. Nothing here infers it from speed.
82 kg, half an hour of walking at 5.5 km/h with the incline set to 8%.
318 kcal, or 270 to 366 once the error band is allowed for. The eight percent did marginally more work than the walking did. Distance was 2.75 km either way, which is the clearest possible argument against judging a treadmill session by the distance readout.
Because the console is working with less. It has speed, grade and time; it does not have your body weight unless you entered it, and weight scales the whole result. At 5.5 km/h and 8% for half an hour, a 65 kg walker is around 252 kcal and a 95 kg walker around 369. If you never typed a weight in, the machine chose one for you.
About 18 to 19 kcal per percentage point over half an hour at 5.5 km/h for a 75 kg walker, and it stacks in a straight line — the tenth point costs what the first one did. Double the duration and you double it; carry more weight and it rises in proportion.
Whichever you were actually doing, and it matters more than anything else on the form. At 7 km/h the walking equation returns 4.3 MET and the running equation returns 7.7 — 182 kcal against 322 for an 80 kg person over thirty minutes. Neither is anchored at that speed, which is why the tool asks. If you had a flight phase, with both feet off the belt between steps, it was running.
Energetically it gets close. Walking 5.5 km/h at 12% comes out at 9.3 MET; running 10 km/h on the level is 10.5. The choice between them is about joints, coordination and how long you can hold it — not about calories.
It does, because the equation only cares about belt speed, grade and your weight. Most walking pads have no incline at all, so the flat figure is the entire figure: an hour at 4 km/h is 2.9 MET, roughly 244 kcal for an 80 kg adult. Useful as movement, and clearly not a session.
Yes. Percent grade is rise divided by run in both cases, so a 10% treadmill setting is the same slope as a 10% road sign, about 5.7 degrees. Enter the console's percentage rather than converting it to an angle.
Incline, speed and the minutes you can hold them are training decisions, and they get made better with someone watching. Book a free guided tour at RPM Gym in Al Manhal.