It is a well known fact that losing weight, no matter how you go about it, is a time consuming and tedious task. There are many different diets out there that are helpful in reducing your weight, the problem is that doing so is one thing, but keeping it off is another. That is when people start doing things such as going to the gym and start doing different aerobic exercises. There are other ways to do such exercises without going to the gym, such as walking, jogging and jump roping. All these exercises are well and good, but the problem is that if one were to do too much of these, they can be harmful for the spine and knees in the long run. That is where an exercise contraption such as an elliptical trainer becomes practical.

Elliptical trainers are a very good way to burn those extra calories one may have and become healthy and fit at the same time. They are good for people of all age groups and because they are relatively small and compact, they can be easily installed in ones house. There are even elliptical trainers that can be folded up which means you can maximize the space in ones house. Elliptical trainers are known by several different names such as stair masters, cross trainers and so on. There are several different companies that make elliptical trainers, some of them are, Nordic, Schwinn and Proform. They all make different models with different capacities, for all types of people. The basic ones will have only foot pads to stand and press down on. The more advanced ones will have a heart rate monitor, calorie burning gauge and so on. The cheapest ones will cost around 300 dollars.

The great thing about elliptical trainers is that you will be able to do exercises that are cardiovascular in nature as well as muscle toning exercises. It is in fact a mini gym that accomplishes both at the same time. As mentioned before, another great attraction with elliptical trainers is that it is much gentler on the knees and spinal column. When exercising on this machine it has a similar feel to skiing. Because of the amount of stress is minimal, the tendency to get injured is not there, compared to jogging or even walking. When using an elliptical trainer it is important to keep the shoulders relaxed and not to lean forward too much. It is also important to find the optimum level of heart or pulse rate when exercising. If you do not know what your optimum rate, then the control panel will be able to tell you.

There are some general estimates available to find out how much calories a person will burn when using an elliptical trainer. Of course it will vary according to the person’s age, body type, gender and body fat percentage. Never the less, a basic figure would be, a women weighing 150 pounds would burn around 400 calories when exercising on a elliptical trainer, after a 30 minute workout. For a man weighing around 180 pounds, he would burn anywhere between 450 and 500 pounds with a half and hour work out. The main factors that determine how much calories will be burned for a given amount of exercise time are, gender, duration of exercise, elliptical tension settings, body type, state of cardiovascular system, and weight.

The best way to take advantage of your elliptical trainer and get the most out of it is to build in intervals. Elliptical trainers nowadays have incline and tension settings that can be adjusted. As you workout, you can adjust these to get the most out of the work out. The way how this is done is by doing 30 second incline intervals every few minutes; this will slowly build the intensity of the workout forcing your body to burn more calories. Another thing to remember is that no matter how much you work out, you need to eat healthy and drink plenty of water so that your body performs at maximum level.