If you’ve wanted to make a change to your health that involves losing a bit of weight, starting can seem like the hardest part — especially if you don’t have much experience with fitness or exercising.
Gyms can be daunting, intimidating places. They’re chock-full of equipment, some of which are quite complicated to use. How are you supposed to get a good, productive workout in if you don’t know where to begin?
Begin with the elliptical. These machines can be found in nearly every public gym and are designed to get you moving quickly, easily, and safely. Exercise may be just one facet of weight loss, but the smoother your exercise habits are, the more likely you are to stick to them. With that in mind, here are three fantastic elliptical-based workouts to help you burn calories.
What Is an Elliptical?
The elliptical machine is one of the most popular pieces of cardio equipment on the planet. If you go to a commercial or big box gym, you can almost certainly find more than a handful of different brands of ellipticals available.
You can think of the elliptical as a type of cross-training exercise station; it combines the pedal rotation of a stationary bike with the incline of a stair stepper and the continuous motion of a treadmill.
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The elliptical is a fantastic tool for entry-level gymgoers who want to get their feet wet with cardiovascular exercise. The pedals of the elliptical rotate on an axis with your feet, meaning you can avoid the high-impact stress of jogging or the coordination required for the stair-stepper.
Whether you’re hitting up the elliptical to improve your general health or lose weight and stoke your metabolic furnace, you need the right workout — a workout that burns calories. Here are a couple of different options to try:
Best Elliptical Workouts for Weight Loss
Before you dive into these workouts, it is important to understand that no specific exercise routine will directly create weight loss. Losing weight successfully and sustainably comes from making sound, holistic decisions about your activity level, nutritional habits, and lifestyle factors. (1)
[Read More: How to Calculate Your Macronutrients for Weight Loss]
Finding the right workout, though, is half the battle. Luckily, the right workouts on the elliptical are now at your fingertips.
Workout 1: Steady-State
If you’re new to using an elliptical for weight loss (or any other purpose), your best bet is to begin with a simple steady-state workout. Steady-state training simply refers to maintaining a consistent speed or rhythm for a predetermined amount of time.
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Perform a short warm-up period to break a sweat, then amp up the difficulty slightly and get in the zone for as long as 20 minutes to burn some calories and get your endorphins flowing. After that, all you need is a brief cool down!
- Resistance level 2 for 5 minutes
- Resistance level 5 for 20 minutes
- Resistance level 2 for 5 minutes
Workout 2: HIIT
HIIT, or “high-intensity interval training,” falls in and out of fashion in the fitness industry from time to time. While once hailed as the next evolution of cardiovascular fitness, things have cooled a bit.
However, HIIT still has a lot going for it, and comes with more than a few science-backed benefits. The idea is simple — alternate between short bouts of vigorous motion with slower “recovery” periods and you can get a lot more done in less time.
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HIIT cardio has been shown to improve endurance capacity, force production, cellular efficiency, and muscular activation patterns, (2) and many of these benefits are distinct from what you’d get by doing traditional steady-state cardio.
- Resistance level 2 for 5 minutes
- Resistance level 5 for 1 minute
- Resistance level 2 for 2 minutes
- Resistance level 8 for 1 minute
- Resistance level 2 for 2 minutes
- Resistance level 10 for 1 minutes
- Resistance level 2 for 5 minutes
Note that, regarding weight loss, HIIT doesn’t do anything special at a metabolic level. Calories burned are calories burned. That said, HIIT workouts often result in more calories burned in less time, which can contribute to weight loss efficiency from a time investment perspective.
Workout 3: Mixed Modality
A good weight loss routine should involve both cardiovascular exercise for general health and calorie expenditure as well as muscular training for strength and stability. You can challenge your heart and your body’s muscles by mixing in some well-chosen calisthenics during a bout on the elliptical.
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This mixed modality workout is designed to keep things fresh and stave off boredom; give it a shot if you find 30 unbroken minutes of cardio downright dreadful. Note that you will need a bit of free space near your elliptical station to perform certain exercises.
- Resistance level 2 for 5 minutes
- Resistance level 4 for 5 minutes, then
- 10 push-ups, 20-second plank, 10 air squats
- Resistance level 4 for 5 minutes, then
- 10 single-leg squats, 10 crunches
- Resistance level 4 for 5 minutes
- Resistance level 2 for 5 minutes
Benefits of the Elliptical
The elliptical is a fantastic tool to use if you want to begin building good health habits for weight loss (or any other reason). Not only is it easy to use, but you can find them anywhere and they offer some distinct ergogenic benefits that other cardio stations can’t quite measure up to.
Convenience
When it comes to building healthy habits, you cannot overstate the importance of convenience and accessibility. It’s all too easy to say, “Ah, I’ll try next week,” if you get to the gym and your intended workout is derailed by too many people, equipment malfunction, or what have you.
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These aren’t problems you’ll encounter if you get used to the elliptical. Most gyms will stock many ellipticals in the cardio area, so you can quite literally grab and go.
User-Friendly
Ellipticals are also very user-friendly. While some pieces of cardio equipment require a bit of industry knowledge to access and utilize, such as ski ergs or certain rowing machines, using an elliptical is generally as easy as hopping on and pushing “Quick Start.”
However, most machines also come with a variety of different pre-programmed workouts. If you don’t want to fiddle with the user interface and set up your own workout, you can interact with the touch screen and jump right into a good session.
Low-Impact Cardio
Certain forms of cardio, such as jogging or plyometrics, can be quite taxing on the joints. They aren’t dangerous by any means, but if you aren’t used to repeated compressive forces on your ankles, knees, or hips, pounding the pavement may do more harm than good.
[Read More: The 16 Best Plyometric Exercises to Power-Up Your Training]
By contrast, the elliptical is smooth and seamless and applies very little shock to your joints and soft tissues. This means you can work hard without worrying about aggravating an existing injury or wearing out your body before a resistance training session.
Upper and Lower-Body Training
Ellipticals come with two arm handles for you to hold onto. These handles — and the pedals on which you push — usually have adjustable levels of resistance. This transforms your cardio session into a two-for-one; you can train your legs and your upper body simultaneously.
FAQs
Still wondering if the elliptical is the right way to help you lose weight? These common questions come with the answers you’re looking for.
Are ellipticals good for losing belly fat?
Ellipticals, like any other piece of equipment you can find in a gym, are a tool. You use them to perform physical activity, which burns calories. As long as you’re working hard for an extended period of time, you’re contributing toward the kind of caloric expenditure that results in weight loss.
In short, if you like the elliptical, it can help you burn fat. However, it won’t remove fat from any one part of your body; spot fat reduction is a fitness myth. Instead, your best bet is to utilize the elliptical as part of a comprehensive fitness regime that involves dietary control, regular physical activity, and proper rest and recovery.
What is the best elliptical for weight loss?
There is no one “best” elliptical. At their core, most elliptical stations perform basically the same functions. However, you may prefer to work with one brand over another due to the features present on a specific model.
The design and motion of elliptical stations can also vary. You might prefer one over another due to the length or position of the handles, or the specific curve along which the pedals move. Pick according to your comfort level and your workouts will be better for it.
How many calories should I burn on an elliptical to lose weight?
It depends. When it comes to caloric expenditure, sure, more is better. But you have to consider your physical activity level within the context of your overall health habits. One pound of body fat contains approximately 3,500 calories.
If you burned 500 calories on the elliptical every day and kept your diet the exact same, you’d theoretically lose a pound of scale weight each week. However, that’s a lot of time on the elliptical and requires very rigid dietary control. A small caloric deficit coupled with several sessions of exercise would net you the same result under less stringent parameters.
How long should you work out on the elliptical?
There’s no real time cap to cardiovascular exercise, since machines like the elliptical are, by nature, designed to improve your endurance in the first place. Regardless, there’s something to be said for efficiency here.
If you can comfortably use the elliptical for well over an hour, you may be undershooting your effort. Your time in the gym would likely be better served by increasing the difficulty of the machine or trying something else like incline walking on the treadmill or intervals on the stationary bike.
Overall, most people stand to benefit from a solid 20 to 30-minute session on the elliptical.
References
- Kim, J., Park, S. K., & Lim, Y. J. (2007). Analysis of the factors affecting the success of weight reduction programs. Yonsei medical journal, 48(1), 24–29.
- Atakan, M. M., Li, Y., Koşar, Ş. N., Turnagöl, H. H., & Yan, X. (2021). Evidence-Based Effects of High-Intensity Interval Training on Exercise Capacity and Health: A Review with Historical Perspective. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(13), 7201.
Featured Image: Vitalii Vitleo / Shutterstock
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