Elliptical Machine Workouts

There is a lot of debate going on treadmill vs. elliptical trainers. Both machines are popular as fitness machines, and can be seen in home gyms and public gyms. Using a treadmill is easier, as one just needs to walk, jog, or run on a treadmill. However, an elliptical trainer provides a low impact workout, which means the possibility of an injury occurring while using an elliptical trainer is far less compared to a treadmill. Mostly people are familiar with the setting and usage of treadmill machines, however understanding and using the setting of an elliptical machine you can gain most out of your elliptical machine workouts, and within a short period of time you can achieve faster results. These results might take longer on treadmill. Mentioned below, are the benefits of elliptical machine workouts, tips on selecting a good elliptical machine, product reviews and a sample workout that you can opt for.

Elliptical Machine Workout Benefits

Listed below, are the various elliptical machine benefits.

• You can perform a variety of workouts using an elliptical. Using the incline level, you can form a workout that makes you feel like running on a hill. For a harder exercise, you can increase the intensity or exercise in intervals. Keeping the workout varied, you won't get bored or fall back to familiar routines.
• Elliptical machines provide a low impact workout, which means the susceptible joints, like knees, ankles and hips, receive little impact. Due to this, it is opted by many people who are recovering from an injury.
• Elliptical machines provide an excellent workout, that helps to build muscles and burn calories. Also, you can maintain good cardiovascular health.
• Due to the moving handles installed on an elliptical machine, one can work out on the upper body as well. This way using elliptical machine one can have a total body workout. The handles on an elliptical machine also help to burn and build upper body muscles, and also provide better balance.
• One can burn many calories with elliptical machine workout programs. In an half hour session a woman weighting 150 pounds can burn 387 calories, and a man weighing 180 pounds can burn 480 calories.

Selecting a Good Product

To get the best elliptical machine workout, one needs to work on a quality elliptical machine too. If you are planning to buy or workout on an elliptical machine in a gym, then make sure it has features like a good stride length of around 21", is not noisy, has smooth motion of pedals, has arm handles and adjustable resistance option. For an even better workout, look for the extra feature of pre-setting that allows to adjust your workout time and intensity levels.

Sample Elliptical Machine Workout

The elliptical machine workout routines should start slow, then go very intense and then again gradually slow down to lesser intensity, and finally a cool off. Here, are tips on how you can form your workout.

• First 5 minutes of slow warm up
• Then 10 minutes on low exertion exercise setting
• Then gradually increase the workout intensity level, and continue working on this setting for 5 minutes
• Push the setting to hard exercise, and keep it for 5 minutes
• Slowly again, switch to moderate setting, continue for 5 minutes
• Decrease the setting to low exertion and workout for 10 minutes
• Switch off the machine, lie down or sit and allow the body to cool off for 5 minutes

This was all about elliptical machine workouts. So, use a good quality elliptical machine, and form a workout routine, to gain all the health benefits from the elliptical machine workout.