The elliptical was initially heralded as a no-impact calorie torcher. Somewhere along the line, though, it lost some love. For one thing, moving on those track-sliding pedals isn't "functional"—it's not an activity that trains your body to do something it will later be called on to perform or excel at, such as running, biking, or swimming—which some trainers argue is the better way to exercise. Plus, "it looks very easy, and you see people using it who may not be working overly hard, reading a magazine or watching television," says Jeff Gaudette, head coach at RunnersConnect, an online coaching and running community.
Take a Cardio Reality Check
The thing is, those elliptical haters are partially right: You can just futz around for 20 minutes, not break a sweat, and not get much of a real workout, in terms of calories burned, muscles worked, or heart trained. However, studies have shown that if you work at the same effort and intensity, you can get just as good of an aerobic and metabolic (read: calorie-burning) workout on an elliptical as you can on a treadmill, but without the potentially body-damaging impact of all that pounding. The keyword here is "effort"—you have to put in the work to get the benefits.
If you're already injured or suffer from a chronic condition like arthritis, the elliptical may be your best bet for low-stress cardio training. And "if you're not injured, it's a great way to add variety to your workouts if your goal is general fitness," says Gaudette. He recommends elliptical sessions to his runners for cross training. Edward R. Laskowski, M.D., co-director of the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center, agrees. "For example, if you run on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the elliptical is a nice-low impact choice on Tuesday and Thursday to help prevent overload injury and enable recovery from your impact exercise sessions."
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Get the Best Burn Possible
To be sure you're not one of those slacker ellipticallers, Gaudette and Laskowski recommend a few steps to up the ante on your gliding sessions.
- Aim for 90 RPM. That's rotations per minute, a measure of how fast your legs are moving, akin to the 180 strides per minute many running coaches consider optimal. Look for your RPM on the machine’s display.
- Use your arms. You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating: If the handles move, go ahead and grab ‘em. Otherwise, swing your arms by your sides as if you were running. Holding on without movement takes some of the onus off your legs and therefore can decrease your calorie burn.
- Mess with the settings. After you have your 90 RPM rhythm down, Gaudette suggests adjusting the resistance or incline throughout your workout. Resistance makes the legs work harder, while incline affects which muscles do that work; a higher incline engages the glutes and the quads, a lower incline, more hamstrings and calves. Switch both up to increase the challenge for your body and keep it guessing.
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- Try intervals. Once you've got a base level of fitness, interval training on the elliptical can give you a great low-impact workout in an efficient time period. "High-intensity interval training entails exercising hard [up to 90 percent of your maximum effort] for short periods ranging up to 60 to 90 seconds, followed by a period of recovery," says Laskowski. "Recent studies have shown this type of exercise to be very effective in improving our exercise capacity." You can go for speed, a slow-and-hard push against stiff resistance, or up a steep incline. The key is to feel like you're giving it your all during that minute-or-so burst.
- Put in some time. "A lot of studies show that 30 minutes is where the aerobic benefits start," says Gaudette. He suggests exercising for 30 to 60 minutes at a time—unless you're training for a marathon and need to log long endurance sessions, an hour of gliding in one swoop is plenty.
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Amy Roberts is a certified personal trainer.
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