The 12-3-30 workout is a treadmill walking routine: set the incline to 12%, walk at 3 miles per hour, and keep going for 30 minutes. Social media creator Lauren Giraldo first shared it on YouTube in 2019, and it became a TikTok trend a year later.
Cleveland Clinic exercise physiologist Katie Lawton notes that walking at a 12% incline burns nearly twice the calories of walking on flat ground, and that doing the routine five days a week adds up to 150 minutes of exercise. Because the incline is steep, she suggests beginners start lower, such as a flat or 5% incline, a slower pace, or less time, and build up without holding on to the handrails.
Source: Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials, “What Is the 12-3-30 Workout? And Does It Work?”
Image: Treadmill console by Shixart1985, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.