Elliptical Trainer WorkoutWelcome to Building Muscle 101's elliptical trainer workout. This elliptical trainer workout involves interval training which, in my opinion, is a great all round fat burner and will get you in pretty good shape quickly. As opposed to traditional cardio exercise, the interval elliptical machine workout will provide you with combinations of low, medium and high intensity exercise. The result is great overall cardiovascular shape and for those of you who wish to burn fat, this type of exercise will greatly increase your results. Now, for those of you who are just starting out, you may want to take it easy for the first couple of workouts because interval training is pretty tough! Depending on the type of elliptical trainer you have, you may or may not have electormagnetic resistance on your machine. The machine that Tori (Our in house certified trainer) is using (in the following elliptical machine workout) a Precor 5.33 which is pretty much the top of the line elliptical trainer. Now, for those of you who don't own an elliptical trainer and wish to purchase an elliptical machine, please see our elliptical trainer review page here. This elliptical trainer workout works best with electromagnetic resistance. If all you have to do on your elliptical machine is press down on a button and the resistance automatically adjusts, than you have electromagnetic resistance. If you have to stop you workout and turn a dial, than you don't have electromagenetic resistance. Therefore, an interval type workout may seem a little cumbersome for a manual elliptical machine. This elliptical machine workout is an alternating interval workout. By alternating between levels of high speed and high resistance, you'll be able to work at higher relative intensity for a longer time. This is a good thing for both, getting in great cardiovascular shape and burning off body fat. Before we go any further, I have to make sure you understand what an interval workout is. What is an interval? Intervals are an excellent way to really increase the intensity of your workouts. This is an intermediate/advanced strategy that will quickly and effectively burn the fat right off your body. Once you get to this stage, you are well on your way to transforming your body into a fat burning machine. An interval is basically alternating high-intensity and lower-intensity exercise such as the elliptical trainer within a single workout. Interval example: Exercise on the elliptical trainer for 4 minutes at low resistance than increase the resistance to high and exercise at the same pace for 1 minute. This is considered one interval. Elliptical Trainer Workout Alright, let's get into our elliptical trainer workout. Please press play on the following video to see Tori perform the elliptical trainer workout. As you can see, this elliptical machine workout is pretty straightforward. Basically you will want to first do a quick warm up for a couple of minutes. That is, do a light elliptical run for about 2 to 5 minutes on a light setting, for example, setting 2. Simply follow the interval training table outline below:
I'm going to be honest with you, if you're just starting out, you may want to take it easy and do one to two weeks of straight elliptical exercise with no intervals. That is, set your elliptical trainer to the setting of 3 and do that for 5 minutes each day. After two weeks, once you feel comfortable with your elliptical trainer, try adding some interval training. Now, you might want to do just two intervals to start out with but what you want to do is work your way up to 4 maybe 5 intervals. Once you get to interval 4, you're going to be in pretty good shape.
Good Luck! |