When you have started a healthy eating plan and a weekly, 30-minute strength training plan, you should incorporate a daily 30-minute women’s cardio training plan, for healthy weight loss. Learning the benefits of an elliptical trainer might be helpful for women that are bored with running on the treadmill or those that think the stair-stepping machine or stationary bicycle might be causing back pain and excessive joint stress.
Benefits of an elliptical trainer for women’s cardio training:
If you consider some of the alternative women’s cardio training exercises or equipment, impact or stress on joints can be a real concern. Running on a treadmill, jogging or dancing in an aerobics workout can be high impact and cause joint pain and injury, especially over a period of time. Since your feet never leave the pedals on an elliptical trainer and you are using your upper body, it gives you a total body workout and it is a helpful piece of equipment for women’s cardio training because it eliminates impact and joint stress, while increasing your calorie expenditure. You get more flexion in the legs and the hamstrings get a better workout, because of the incline option, which simulates climbing hills.
Research indicates the elliptical trainer offers superior workouts:
In a women’s cardio training workout, researchers have compared the benefits of the elliptical trainer, to those of the treadmill, stair-stepper and the stationary bicycle. There was no difference between the treadmill and the elliptical trainer, when it came to the heart rate, calorie expenditure or oxygen consumption, but the stair-stepper and stationary bicycle were lacking. When you compare impact forces, elliptical trainers produced lower impact than treadmills. This can be damaging to leg joints and feet, over a period of time.
Choosing an elliptical trainer for your home gym equipment:
There are a few things to consider, when you are looking for an elliptical trainer for your home. The rear-drive trainers require less maintenance and they operate smoother than the front-drive models. They are more expensive, too, however. You can expect to pay a few thousand dollars for the better models, but there are less expensive front-drive models, although they have a flatter range of motion. When comparing them to treadmills, quality comparisons in lower price ranges and higher price ranges are similar.
You get what you pay for, so if there are other family members that will be using the trainer, you will want to get a better quality model. Look for smoothness and durability, but also “test-drive” them because some models have control panels in a position, where women cardio training enthusiasts have hit their knee, for example.
When you are considering some of the most effective exercise equipment for women’s cardio training, the elliptical trainer can be the best choice because it is no impact, less stress on your joints, gives you a total body work-out and they might be more effective and comfortable than other choices of women’s cardio training equipment.
