In the last decade, one of the most popular ways to achieve a good cardiovascular workout has been through the use of elliptical cross trainers. These cardio machines are an effective and fun way to exercise indoors. And when you see how they work, you’ll understand why they’ve become so popular.
If you’re reading this article, you want to know how an elliptical trainer can change your body. So, we are going to tell you about 30 days on the elliptical, before and after. Let’s take a look.
Jump to:
Elliptical Benefits: Before and After
An elliptical machine offers a lot of benefits, especially for your leg muscle groups.
1. You Will Get Shapely Legs and Lose Fat
Elliptical exercise machines are great for increasing your cardiovascular fitness level while burning a substantial number of calories without stressing your joints like high-impact cardio exercises. They also provide the added benefit of training muscles in both your upper and lower body.
2. Your Bones and Joints Will Become Stronger
Probably the most widely known benefit of an elliptical is the fact that they provide an amazing low-impact exercise workout. Although your legs are moving against resistance, your feet never leave the surface of the foot pads. So, there is very little or no impact on your knees, hips, ankles or your back like there might be when you go for a run.
This feature alone has drawn many whether by choice or by necessity to the elliptical. In fact, many people have been told by their doctors that they need to stop running or at least reduce their high-impact aerobic exercises and add a low-impact alternative to their weekly fitness regime. The elliptical cross trainer can be that perfect substitute. But that’s not the only reason people are enjoying the cross-trainer models.
3. You Will Tone Up Your Leg Muscles
Pushing through tough resistance will help you tone your leg muscles such as quads, glutes, hamstrings, and hips. But even a hard elliptical workout won’t build as much muscle mass as weightlifting.
4. Calorie Burn
Many people like the idea of a two-for-one deal; the fact that you can tone your legs and your arms simultaneously while training your heart.
While the legs move in a natural motion, the resistance can be adjusted to be as challenging or as light as you’d like making it a great workout for your legs. At the same time, the handles provide you with arm movement. So, you do not only get the bonus of sculpting the arms but you increase the intensity and the calorie burn by using your entire body. The more muscle groups involved, the more calories burned.
5. It Feels Easier
How much resistance and how hard you push yourself is an individual thing. But users of the elliptical will tell you that the perceived exertion or the way you feel when you’re working out feels easier than when doing other types of workouts; because there are no jarring or jumping movements.
The legs stay in a low-impact constant striding motion. And since the effort is dispersed between your legs and arms, you can work very much but not feel like you are exerting yourself as much as you truly are. Many first-time users are surprised at their elevated heart rate and calorie burn compared to their perceived effort.
6. Different Workouts
In addition to these benefits, the elliptical provides you with the opportunity to get multiple workouts on one machine: changing the stride length, reversing the leg motions, and pushing or pulling the arms. These are just some of the variables that create a new and different workout each time you get on the elliptical cross trainer.
Plan your own interval workout or try one of the pre-programmed workouts and let the machine be your personal trainer.
30 Day Elliptical: Before and After
The following information is for you if you have just started an elliptical fitness program and you’re just curious about what expectations you should have. Or you may be a couple of weeks into a program and you’re just unsure about what you’re doing is getting you the best results. Or you want to measure your progress against some sort of timeline.
We are breaking it down from the first week to the fourth week because that’s a critical timeline within those four weeks. And it gives you some common markers that you should be measuring your progress.
30 minutes on the elliptical for 30 day, that all you need to achieve something similar to this:
Week 1
The first week is very exciting because you come out of the gate and you start seeing the changes on the scale go down. Depending on how much weight you have to lose, you will see about 2 to 5 pounds of healthy weight loss. Some of that weight loss is going to come from water weight but then some of it is going to come from body fat.
However, during this first week, you may not see a lot of changes take place in your body when you look in the mirror.
If you’re putting some better food in your body, your body will feel better. The better food you have, the better fuel your body has. So, you’re going to start to feel better. You may even experience a little increase in energy. But those are the main things that you’re going to feel during the first week of an elliptical training routine.
Week 2
During the second week, you will start to see some changes in your body. You will start to feel even better than you did in the first week; because the elliptical cardio workout started to get a little bit easier on the second week. It should still challenge you. But you should be able to get through the workout a lot better than you did during the first week.
The first week you’re really sore, but now you’ve kind of woken up the muscles. And you should start to get a little bit more efficient in your elliptical exercise. Also, this is a time when your body will start to take those changes and you start to feel your clothes fitting loose. That’s a great feeling and that’s going to help you get the momentum you need to move on into the third week.
Week 3
During week three you’re going to take that momentum that you’ve brought in from week two. And that’s when you start to feel like “I can do this!”
You start to set a better routine with your nutrition and your elliptical exercise equipment. And it becomes a part of your daily routine. You start to actually enjoy and look forward to it. You may not love it but you do love the results in the way that it makes you feel.
So, during the third week, you start to get compliments and notice that you’ve been losing weight.
Week 4
By this time, you’re firing on all cylinders if you’ve been consistent with your elliptical training routine and your nutrition. You should start to feel like you’re going down in the size of your clothing.
It usually takes about 10 pounds of weight loss to go down in the size of clothing. However, this is going to vary from person to person depending on the body constitution.
If you can sustain your elliptical routine long-term and you’re not trying to drop a lot of weight really quick, you will make a lot of progress in reaching your fitness goals.
Elliptical Workout
You want to achieve similar results? Here’s a workout you can do. It’s a great base, but feel free to adjust the time and resistance to your current fitness level:
30 Day Elliptical Before and After: FAQs
How much weight can you lose on an elliptical in a month?
It depends on a lot of factors such as body weight, intensity, and duration of cardio workout. Generally, using an elliptical cardiovascular machine for 30 minutes each day, you can lose 1-2 pounds per week or 4-8 pounds per month. If you want to burn body fat on ellipticals, stay at 60-70% of your maximum heart rate.
For better results, try out an elliptical cross trainer and experience the benefits of high-intensity interval training that meets the needs of almost any exerciser. Your goal should be to put your incline up, also put your intensity up, and feel like you’re really challenging yourself.
What happens if you do the elliptical everyday?
If you do it correctly, it gets the right motion. As a result, you get a massive improvement in your conditioning. You’re working on important muscle groups like your glutes, hamstrings, quads, biceps, and core muscles. This cardio activity also helps lose belly fat, increases your fitness level, and prevents heart disease.
