Elliptical cross-trainers for the home gym range in price from about $150 for the Weslo Momentum 7.0 EX to over $5,000 for mammoth gym quality machines. Can you get the same quality construction and features for $150 that you can for $5,000 or $1,500? Of course not. That does not mean, however, that there is no place for the so called cheap ellipticals. So long as you understand the limitations (and advantages) of buying low you can get a very useful piece of home exercise equipment that can make a significant contribution to your health and fitness.

Fist things first. Elliptical machines are primarily cardiovascular exercise machines. Ellipticals work the big muscles in your legs to get your heart and lungs working hard enough to achieve a cardio training effect. If you wanted, you could achieve exactly the same cardio training effect by running in place in your underwear and bare feet that you can with the most expensive machine. You exercise your body, not the equipment.

People buy elliptical cross-trainers because running in place is drop-dead boring. Elliptical-trainers can add variety to your cardio workout by varying the resistance, which changes the intensity to make your heart and lungs works harder or easier. Even cheap elliptical trainers provide this feature. The more expensive models are programmed to change intensity automatically so you can simulate running uphill, etc. at a certain point into your workout. With a cheap elliptical trainer you may have to interrupt your workout to make these adjustments manually.

Another reason for buying an elliptical trainer is the sensor monitoring and feedback you get from their LCD displays. Common monitoring features are pulse, calories burned, distance traveled, and time of workout. Even cheap elliptical trainers have these monitoring capabilities but the fact is that regardless of the price of the machine almost none of these sensors is as accurate or reliable as a stand-alone device. The most important aspect of cardio training is accurate monitoring of your heart rate. Only a heart monitor with a chest strap sensor is likely to provide the necessary accuracy, and only the very most expensive elliptical trainers provide this feature. You would be much better off buying a separate Polar or Acumen heart rate monitor.

Determining the amount of calories you burn in any exercise is a function of the intensity of the exercise and your current body weight. A 150 pound person will burn fewer calories per minute of exercise than a 250 pound person even if they match each other exactly in intensity. So unless the calories burned monitor on whatever elliptical trainer you buy has accounted for your current body weight it is almost certainly wrong. With the right information you can easily and accurately determine your calorie expenditure for any physical activity from a chart or with a quick calculation.

The bottom line here is that the monitoring system on a cheap elliptical trainer will probably be no worse than the monitoring system on a more expensive model, and unless you are willing to spend $2,000 plus for an elliptical trainer the monitoring system is only incidental and should not be a major consideration at all.

The primary limitation of cheap elliptical trainers then is their sturdiness, construction quality, and warranty period. If you weigh 250 pounds then you cannot reasonably expect an 80 pound elliptical trainer to feel solid under your feet. The same cheap elliptical trainer would probably feel very comfortable to a 125 pounder. Your height and body weight are the primary considerations here. An arbitrary cut off point for consideration of a cheap elliptical trainer may be more than six feet in height or more than 175 pounds of body weight.

Another primary consideration is your intended intensity of use. Most people can begin to achieve a cardio training effect at about walking speed plus half. That would be roughly equivalent to the pace of a 10 minute mile. If you do not intend to work your elliptical trainer much harder than that it will probably stand up to constant use. If you intend to pound the machine at the upper limits of your maximum safe heart rate that would probably stress a cheap elliptical trainer into breakdown.

Even with non abusive use, because a cheap elliptical trainer will by definition be built from cheaper materials, you have to expect to perform more maintenance. Supplied nuts and bolts will be lower grade, probably without adequate lock washers, and they will require occasional tightening. If you’re handy you can change out the hardware for fine thread bolts and nylon nuts during assembly. If the very idea of tightening a bolt and nut is beyond you then you must factor that into your decision making. Assume that a cheap elliptical trainer will require occasional lubrication and maintenance.

Lastly is the warranty period. 90 days is probably the best you can expect. A cheap elliptical trainer is going to be noisier to begin with than a gym model so put it through its paces early and listen for different or unusually loud noises. Deal only with a manufacturer and seller that will stand by their warranty if there is a problem.

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Although there is no question that regular exercise is conducive to getting you fit, there is no similar certainty about which claims of work out equipment manufacturers can be trusted for accuracy or relied on for a buying decision. A chin up bar fastened to a doorway at home will not turn you into Hercules.

The most flagrant abuse you’ll see with work out equipment manufacturers, and not to single them out because as a group they are probably no different from any other kind of manufacturer, are claims that their equipment will provide you with a quick and easy way to shape your abs, lose weight, build huge muscles, or otherwise have a body that looks like a cover art for a fitness magazine.

There is no quick and easy way to tone muscles, lose weight, or get in shape, whether you want to achieve that result with one part of your body or reshape your entire physique. Physical training requires time, work, and effort. There are no shortcuts, and if there is a caution to be learned when evaluating the claims of workout equipment manufacturers that would be it.

What To Watch Out For

The kinds of claims that you want to be the most skeptical about are those manufacturer’s claims that say that their equipment or device can do things such as:

1. Make you burn more calories or lose weight faster than any other similar piece of workout equipment or other type of workout equipment in general.
It is a good general rule that fitness equipment that trains your entire body will probably burn calories at a faster rate than fitness equipment that claims to train only one part of your body such as your legs, your arms, your chest, or as is popular today you’re abdominal muscles. The longer you use the equipment, and the more work you put into it, the more calories you’ll burn. That is a law of physics and biology, there’s no getting around it otherwise.

If you are already in much better than average physical condition and have pretty much the physique that you would like to have, then it makes good sense to go ahead and purchase a piece of fitness equipment that will train and tone one particular muscle group or area of your body. Body sculpting is very hard work but it’s likely that the person who has already advanced that far in physical fitness as a very good idea of exactly the kind of equipment that he or she will need to finish the job. If your body fat percentage is too high then no ab machine or lat trainer is going to produce any definition.

For the person who has set realistic fitness goals for themselves, and has determined that a piece of fitness training equipment would probably help them achieve those goals, their first choice should probably be a piece of equipment that can provide them with a holistic approach to training, that is, one that will provide cardiovascular and aerobic benefits in addition to strength training. The only essential piece of work out equipment is probably a heart rate monitor.

2. Make you lose weight faster in one particular area of your body or tone only the muscles in one particular muscle group.
Your body is one complete unit and as much as we would all like to have a piece of equipment that would that would focus all the body’s energy on removing the spare tire around our middle, this is an unrealistic claim. Losing weight is a function of the number of calories that you consume versus the number of calories that you expend over any given period of time. If you want to lose weight in one particular area of your body the only way you can do that is by losing body mass across your entire body. It may seem that some people tend to pack on the pounds in one particular area or another but even if it were true they would have no different result.

3. Give you effortless results.
There is no free lunch. Muscles get bigger and stronger when trained with weight and against resistance. Body mass disappears when energy output exceeds energy input. You cannot build big muscles while you’re sleeping. You cannot lose weight eating whatever and as much as you want while ignoring the amount of calories that you expend.

Before you buy a piece of workout equipment based on manufacturers’ claims and the huge number of satisfied customer testimonials that you see on the net or in the newspaper or fitness magazines try to get a hold of the owner’s manual or any other specification sheets that the manufacturer may be providing. It may turn out that the manufacturer’s spectacular claims are based in part on the use of their equipment and also dieting or otherwise restricting the user’s caloric intake during the same period of time that the manufacturer claims you can reasonably expect results within.

You should be very skeptical of celebrity endorsements of fitness equipment unless you have information or reason to believe that a particular celebrity is an expert in physical fitness or with that particular piece of equipment that he or she may happen to be endorsing at the time. Before and after pictures from satisfied customers, and customer testimonials in general may be true. Almost certainly some are. You have no way of knowing, however, if the results of the customer providing the testimonial are typical, or if you could reasonably expect them also. The person who works out hard for four or five hours a day will achieve significantly different results with the same piece of equipment than the person who works out for a few minutes two or three days a week over the same 30-day period.

All of the above is the skeptics approach to buying workout equipment, and most other items that we buy in a consumer society. The question still remains, after you have evaluated all the advertising claims, and hopefully have separated the week from the chaff, how do you go about choosing the right fitness equipment?

Perhaps the best way to approach the task of purchasing fitness equipment is to start from the physical fitness goal that you want to achieve and then work backwards toward a particular piece of equipment, or perhaps several, that will best help you achieve that goal. It does not have to be electrical or sophisticated. It could be neoprene hand weights, or a balance ball, or a dumbbell.

Everybody says they want to be physically fit and although we all have a general idea of what that means you do not see the term defined very often. Physical fitness will mean something different to each person, so here is a good general definition that seems to cover most people.

Physical fitness is the ability to function effectively throughout your day, whatever physical activity your day may involve for you, and still have enough energy left over to handle unexpected stresses and emergencies so that you can finish the day tired but not so exhausted that one night’s rest cannot recharge you completely for tomorrow.

There Are Five Components to Physical Fitness:

Muscular strength – this is the greatest amount of force that a muscle, or a muscle group can exert in a single effort.

Muscular endurance – the ability of a muscle group performed repeated movements have less than maximum force for extended periods of time

Cardio respiratory endurance – the efficiency in which the body delivers oxygen and nutrients needed for muscular activity and transport waste products from the cells.

Flexibility - the ability to move a joint or any group of joints through an entire normal range of motion.

Body composition – the percentage of body fat that the person has in comparison to his or her total body mass.

Improving the first three components of fitness, muscular strength, muscular endurance, and cardiorespiratory endurance will have a positive impact on body composition and result in less body fat. Weight loss is always a big deal when it comes to physical fitness, and probably cannot be separated from it because excessive body fat detracts from all the other fitness components and reduces performance. In addition, excessive body fat detracts from appearance and generally has a negative effect on overall health.

Athletic ability is not the same thing as physical fitness. A person is considered to be athletic when they have better than average ability for speed, muscle power, agility, eye-hand coordination, or for soccer players, eye-foot coordination. If you want to excel in a sport then you have to train all five components before specializing in any: flexibility for golfing, muscle strength and endurance for boxing.

Physical fitness is holistic. Very specific training can improve any one of the individual components of physical fitness within the limits of a person’s ability, but a true physical fitness program seeks to improve or maintain all five components. If all this is terribly complicated then maybe you would benefit from membership in a commercial gym where a personal trainer could work with you on form, count, cardio and core strength. A gym will have a line of bikes, ellipticals, treadmills and dumbbells that you could try.

Choosing The Right Work Out Equipment

The right work out equipment for you is probably a combination of things to help you achieve each of the five components of physical fitness. Different people will have different goals that may emphasize one or two individual components of physical fitness over the others. Will the equipment help you achieve your goal – whether it’s to build strength by lifting weights, improving your cardio endurance, increasing your flexibility, or getting to a marathon runner’s body fat percentage?

Will you use the equipment? How many expensive elliptical machines, treadmills, and exercise bikes do you think are sitting unused and gathering dust in basements, patios and garages? It’s your money and you can spend it any way that you want but why not spend $10 for a fancy jump rope to see if you are that committed to improving your cardiorespiratory endurance and flexibility before spending $1000 for an elliptical trainer? How about a yoga mat? You only need the floor to do push ups.

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There are several considerations when buying fitness training equipment and the biggest challenge is perhaps choosing the one that matches your budget, space and fitness level. But regardless of these factors, you are most likely to land on any of the following exercise equipment:

Treadmill is a popular piece of gym equipment that has become the primary choice of anyone who wants to maintain an exercise routine at home. It lets you walk, jog or run anytime of the day, any month of the year – regardless of season and weather condition. A good treadmill costs at about $1500 but it can go as much as $3500, depending on the brand and features. When selecting one, focus on the load capacity, wide belt, incline settings, safety shutoff, smooth action and solid construction.

Elliptical Trainer is a no-impact exercise machine that simulates running and walking without causing excessive pressure on the joints thus decreasing the risk of impact injuries. The machine can be set from low to high intensity work out that is suited for all fitness levels. Today, elliptical trainers are the most popular piece of gym equipment. Price ranges from $500 to as much as $4000. Try out different brands when buying one.

Rowing Machines are excellent for those who want a total body workout. Requires little space, the rowing machine simulates the body movement of watercraft rowing targeting both the upper and the lower body muscle groups. Proper posture is required to avoid back strain.

Cross Country Ski Machines provide a full body workout, targeting both the upper and the lower body muscle groups. However, this type of machine is hard to master. So before buying one, make sure that you try it out first and see if it is really for you. People who use a cross country are often the best experienced exercisers with sufficient skills, who want a challenging workout.

Step Machines or steppers are low impact exercise machines that improve cardiovascular fitness and build and strengthen lower body muscles. A good step machine can be very expensive. Choose the right one or consider other alternatives if your budget does not fit.

Stationary Bike is composed of pedals, a paddle and some kind of handle similar to a real bike but used as exercise equipment rather than a means of transportation. A stationary bike is good for new exercisers or for those who like to have a no-impact cardiovascular workout. A quality stationary bike costs between $500 and $1000.

Recumbent Machines are like stationary bikes but with the rider sitting in an inclined position. The main advantage of a recumbent machine over a stationary bike is it provides better lower back support, thus minimizing the stress on the knees. A recumbent machine has the same aerobic effect with that of a stationary bike and targeting the muscles of the quadriceps, hamstrings and gluteus.

Resistance equipment is often known as either free weights or multi-stations or home gyms. Both have pros and cons and purchasing either of the two requires major thinking. Free weights are reasonably priced and require less space but they also require greater supervision and instruction as they are more likely to cause injury. Multi-stations on the other hand are more convenient to use but takes up a lot of space and the price depends on the quality of the machine. Take your pick.

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