Learning The Benefits Of elliptical trainers | And How Can They Improve Your Life!
Disclaimer: No information on this article is intended to serve as professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This is my own personal ideas that I researched based on actual facts.
Top Elliptical Trainers Benefits That No One Told You About
Well,
Maybe you have heard about some…
But not all!
The popularity or usefulness of any exercise machine is common ground now. You find it in gyms, alongside other equipment. Professional trainers who coach at gymnasiums have a good idea of what’s good and what’s not good enough. Elliptical trainers are among the found stationary fitness equipment in gyms.
Also known as Cross Trainers and X-Trainers, Elliptical Trainers are simple to use, versatile and effective exercise machines. You can challenge yourself in a way that keeps your interest in exercise alive. While giving you clear and visible benefits from your workouts. Here is all that you need to know about the top Elliptical Benefits – weight loss, the effect on muscle groups. Along with the pros and cons of each trainer.
List of elliptical trainer benefits
Imagine working on a treadmill or jogging on a track. You need to lift your foot and place it on the floor to achieve movement, right? You will have to repeat this movement for a certain number of times to achieve fitness goals. In other words, the impact on the joints will be significant. If you happen to be suffering from problems, such as obesity, arthritis or recovering. From some kind of surgical procedure or intervention, this is not a good idea. Obese individuals are more likely to experience discomfort at the joints. Thus giving up exercising if the pain is severe. And for those who need to exercise as part of recovery, damaging joints may result in a relapse. This makes it necessary to choose an exercise that is effective, yet one that does not damage the joints. In other words, you need equipment or exercises that are non-impact in nature. Because of their low impact workout, ellipticals are recommended for people that experience knee pain from knee osteoarthritis when doing exercise. This way you can keep pain at bay, while working out for longer times and adding more physical activies.
Elliptical trainers are non-impact equipment that keeps your feet on platforms that glide and move. You need not lift your feet and bring it down. This removes the shock from the act of bringing your feet down. At the same time, the movements offer the right kind of results and help you to achieve fitness goals.
First things first. The average person (read around 150 lbs) needs to burn close to 3500 calories to get rid of 1 pound of fat. Now that is quite a lot, considering the number of calories that you can burn with specific exercises. Well, the fact is that you can actually burn 10 LBS in five weeks if you work out long enough and consistently. Did you know that the Elliptical Trainer is actually ranked third behind a stationary bike and ski machine in terms of calories that you can burn in an hour?
Well, the best part is that you can achieve this without having to follow the high-intensity nature of exercise like on the ranked first and second. A stationary bike helps you burn 930 calories in an hour of intense workouts. A ski machine gets you to burn 840 calories an hour, while the Elliptical machine helps you to burn 800 calories per hour with simple exercises.
This means that if you work out for five full weeks, you can easily shed 10 pounds. Yes, the Elliptical Benefits for weight loss means that it is workable and you can do it from the comfort of your home or at a gym. Bear in mind that you need to work out daily to see the best results. The intensity of the exercise needs to be of an intensity that will give you results. Very low-intensity works will be of little use when it comes to burning those calories. An important trick is to change the workouts or the challenges to fire up the muscles to work and give results. With the elliptical, you can perform a wide variety of exercises and this helps you to make the workouts interesting.
If you want to learn more about calorie consumption of different physical activities, this Harvard Medical School Study is a considered a reference by many on the subject.
This has got to be the classic comparison of all time – the benefits of elliptical versus treadmill. Both are hugely popular and have a separate set of advantages and disadvantages. Yet, on an overall aspect, the elliptical has an edge over the treadmill, because of multiple reasons as highlighted below :
Improved safety – The elliptical is a lot safer than a treadmill. There is no possibility of tripping on the elliptical as the feet are firmly in place. This is unlike the treadmill where the feet movements need to be on time to perfection with the movement. Additionally, the amount of pounding of the feet on the treadmill is likely to cause discomfort to the joints. This is considerably reduced on the elliptical as the feet remain on the moving pedals.
Omit workout results – The results of workouts are better in an elliptical when compared with treadmills. This is because of the nature of exercises that can be performed on the elliptical. On the treadmill, other than adjusting the incline and the speed, there is nothing additionally challenging. With the elliptical you can work out your lower torso and a part of your upper body. In other words, you get to exercise those parts of your body necessary for the reduction of fat and weight.
The elliptical offers users the opportunity to try out different types of workout. You can actually use a combination of incline, the direction of pedaling and resistance to make your workouts challenging. You can combine upper and lower body movements for co-ordinated work. On the treadmill, you do not get the opportunity for different types of workout. One the maintenance front, the elliptical is pretty simple to maintain. All that you need to do is carry out basic lubrication and cleaning. On the treadmill, you need to carry out lubrication and centering of the belt, which could be a bit complex for some.
Professionals who work out in gyms generally work out in a manner that targets specific muscle groups. This isolation of muscles is to give the right kind of focus and best results. For instance, an exercise that focuses on multiple muscles is more likely to spread a whole body stimulus that forces the hormones to act. This contrasts with targeted exercises which help individuals to get the best results from the exercise. The elliptical benefits for the legs and glutes literally mean that you can isolate specific muscles in the legs and your glutes. You can actually improve the muscle tone with an elliptical, similar to the results that you will receive from working out on a rowing machine, an upright bike, a recumbent bike, a stair stepper or swimming. With the stepper, it is a lot easier with four distinct advantages.
- Less impact on joints
- Enhances posture
- Helps to target the weaker muscles
- Maximizes the effects of workouts
You can use the elliptical in combination with other exercises to get killer glutes and powerful legs. Begin off with a warm-up for five minutes, move into moderate intensity for twenty minutes, slip into high intensity for 15 minutes and cool down in five minutes. That’s it, your leg day workouts will take 45 minutes including sessions on the elliptical. You can use your own bodyweight for these exercises without having to use extra weights or hit a gymnasium. For your warm-up, use the elliptical. For the moderate intensity exercises, use a combination of elliptical, your own bodyweight squats, one more round on the elliptical, then lunges, and again one round on the X-trainer. For high intensity, use your own bodyweight for jump squats, followed by switch lunges, and four back to back rounds on the X-trainer of varying intensities and incline. For cooling down, use the X-trainer, followed by one round each of glute bridges and bridge holds. You can torch the calories and improve the output by increasing the pressure on the pedals – that is, by pressing down on the pedals.
- To put it broadly, the exercises on an elliptical actually have an impact on the overall upper and lower part of your body. If you would like to know more specifically, there are six muscle groups that receive benefits from exercising on the elliptical. The muscles worked on elliptical are hamstrings, quadriceps, glutes, triceps and chest muscles, biceps and back muscles, core stability muscles and your heart. Here is a peek at how elliptical exercises impact the muscle groups.
When you work out on the X-trainer with an increased incline, you are mimicking the activity of working on a steep hill. This works out your hamstrings, which refer to those muscles on the back of your legs.
These muscles offer the power and support for upward, inclined movements. You can challenge yourself to do better by trying out the reverse movements for killer hamstring workouts.
The muscles on the front of your thighs are the quadriceps and every time you straighten up on the elliptical after bending yourself at the knees or crouching, you work the quadriceps. As the movements on an elliptical are smooth and fluid, you are most likely to not notice the effect. You could make this challenging by opting for a high-intensity round that will make you sweat your way to results.
Your glutes are the muscles on your buttocks. This gets worked when your hips are straightened – for instance when you rise from a chair, climb stairs, run or walk.
With the X-trainer, this movement is the most common and frequent with your pedaling action. As a result, you will find that the effect on your glutes is the maximum, with seemingly minimum effort.
As the movements are natural and smooth, you will never feel the effort but will get to see the results.
A regular exercise on an elliptical involves stepping on the pedals and moving the levers back and forth. This movement delivers somewhat similar results that you achieve through exercises used for improving your triceps and chest muscles.
By moving the levers back and forth, you are working on muscle groups that receive benefits from bench press and various triceps extensions.
The movements of the levers work out the biceps muscles also. You can make this better by changing the grip on the levers. Rather than a straight grip, you can bend your arms slightly to mimic the biceps curl or the exercises on a pull up bar.
Put in more effort here for better results as your bending movements will make the workouts easier. Thus, for better results, use greater force.
The deep core muscles are strengthened overall with the movements on the X-trainer. This is a natural movement and works out with incredible results.
Depending on the time that you spend on the machine and the manner in which you work out, you can strengthen the transverses abdominis, multifidus, and the pelvic floor.
By virtue of the aerobic nature of the workouts on the elliptical trainer, you are actually working out the muscles of your heart. You get to exercise your heart muscles thoroughly, giving it just the right kind of workouts.
One size can never fit all. This is the same as the advantages and disadvantages of different equipment. There are Elliptical benefits and disadvantages where the positives are many with a few negatives. Some of the drawbacks are minor and can be set right with slight changes in the workout or inclusion of additional exercises. Some of the drawbacks are however of a nature that may make it difficult for a limited number of individuals to use the equipment. Here are the top advantages and disadvantages that you need to be aware of before you choose an elliptical trainer.
The three clear advantages listed here are in addition to the benefits of the elliptical trainer listed under different categories listed above.
#1 Convenience – The elliptical trainer is certainly one of the easiest to use exercise machines. The exercises are pretty straight forward and the use of the pedals and handles means that you cannot get it wrong. One of the strong points is the fact that this can be used to achieve high-intensity workouts very quickly, and burn a lot more calories than other equipment.
#2 Creating challenging workouts – You can create challenging workouts with an elliptical trainer. By mixing and matching and changing the speed, resistance and the combination of movements, you can bring in some zing into your workouts and avoid hitting a plateau. You can keep yourself interested in workouts with challenging exercises.
#3 Lesser exertion, better results – This is perhaps the best part that makes elliptical trainers a good choice. The nature of the movements will not make you feel the exertion, while the results are impressive. This will keep you working out for the desired period, helping to achieve results and pushing you to try out more challenging workouts for improved results.
Three distinct disadvantages of the elliptical are worth mentioning here. This will help you to make slight changes that will help you get the best results.
#1 Low impact workout does not contribute to muscle strengthening as much as resistance exercises – Elliptical trainers are basically intended for a different set of outcomes. You cannot expect to improve your muscle strength by working out on an elliptical. You can see some improvement, but not to the extent seen in resistance training.
#2 Lesser bone-strengthening effects – Traditional weight-bearing exercises help to strengthen the bone along with other benefits. With the elliptical, you will not get bone strengthening benefits, with the benefits mainly focused towards reducing fat, burning calories and building muscle to a certain extent.
#3 Size can be a problem for some – Though the elliptical is designed to be used by people of most sizes, some individuals are more likely to find the exercise machine size to be mismatched. For instance, an individual who is too short or too tall is most likely to find the level of the handles uncomfortable. Similarly, the swing of the pedals may not be enough or maybe too much for individuals of different sizes.
The elliptical trainer is one of the most simple and convenient exercise machines on the market. Unlike certain equipment, where the wrong posture can result in poor results, and result in possible damage to muscles, the elliptical trainer eliminates the possibility of injury. Al that you need to do is get your posture right, position your feet properly, grip the handles correctly and start working out.
It is more like an elevated walking exercise, and the possibility of doing it wrong is minimal. You get to see incredible results, especially when it comes to torching those calories and toning your muscles. Go for it, if you wish to see quick results without having to struggle through workouts.
