Just when I thought I’d seen it all on TikTok, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw a video of someone running on a treadmill with a loaded 135-pound barbell on their back. “That’s a recipe for disaster,” I thought to myself.
A few minutes later, this video popped up on my FYP of a person doing backward walking squats holding a heavy dumbbell, then transitioning into walking lunges holding two dumbbells.
I decided to search “lifting weights on the treadmill” to see if this was a trend or just a couple of one-off videos. Sure enough, videos like this one populated in the TikTok results page, showing someone doing jump squats on a moving treadmill.
My only thought was “why?” Not only did these “exercise stacking” videos seem dangerous, but they seemed counterproductive as well. Wouldn’t you get a better strength workout if you just focused on lifting, or a better cardio workout if you just focused on running? I asked a few personal trainers to find out.
