Elliptical Question

I'm finding it a little hard to evaluate my training on the elliptical, and I thought maybe someone here could give me some pointers. Any help would be much appreciated. :)

Anyway, I do about 30 minutes now (still increasing time, intensity increase later), starting at 6.4% resistance up to 50% for about 2/3 of the total time, then down to 6.4% again. I get a good sweat going, and definitely feel my muscles working (this includes the requisite screwing up of the face ^^). It takes a lot to make me sweat, as in, when I still lived in Brazil, I rarely had more than a tiny film of sweat going even when it was over a 100 degrees out.

Sooo, should I log this as a light effort or a moderate effort? Like I already said, I'd be thankful for any tips I could get.

 

(Btw, I'm 5'9" and currently weigh 230.7 lbs.) 

A light effort should be good because supposedly elliptical machines show always a higher number of calories burnt.

I recommend you monitor your heart rate if you can, that would be the most accurate measure of your effort, really the amount of sweat it's not an indicator, there's day I do the same amount of time at the same machine at the same resistance and I sweat less. It is about the calories, not the sweat. Just as an indicator in 30m minutes of elliptical you probably are burning between 300 - 330 calories if you are working in the fat burning zone and between 350 - 400 in the cardio zone. Hope this helps a little, monitor your heart rate is the best indicator.

 

Ah! I hadn't made the connection between "effort" in the elliptical entry options here, and heart rate. I've noticed that when I enter the amount the of time I've spent on the machine, and selected "moderate", the calories that the elliptical machine estimate, and the calories that calorie count estimates are pretty close. So now you've got me wondering, if my heart rate is on the highest end of cardio and sometimes a few beats above, am I working harder that I realize? I'm leaning toward continuing to enter my workout as I have been...should I consider entering at the highest rate? Thanks for the clarification and any suggestions.

Wow, thanks for the quick responses.

From what I can tell now, I'll need to up my heart rate (now in the 140ies, should be about 154-180). 

Look you should never work out above your cardio zone. You gotta be in the zone. It's not good to exceed it for 2 reasons, the most important one is that it could be dangerous for your health. 2nd one is that once you go above the 90% of your HR you get fatigue and you will work out less. My reccommendation, if you wanna do light cardio keep your HR between 70 - 75 % of your maximum HR, if you wanna do it alitle bit harder keep your HR  between 75 - 80% if you wanna do heavy cardio  80 - 90%. Going over 90% will burn you out and you'll last less. I work out usually between 75 - 80%. Monitor your heart and you will be ok. Regards.

 

Thanks for the tip. For most of work out I'm right at the high end of the cardio range. On occassion it bumps up above for a few moments. To clarify, it's not a place I target for - but I don't have a way to monitor my heart rate momemt to moment. I check in every 5-10 minutes or if I feel like I'm working too hard, or not enough. I appreciate the feedback!

Thanks again, dieguito.

The range I mentioned is the one recommended by my physician (65-85% of my MHR), and I'm going to stick to that. Obviously I'll also have it adjusted as I lose weight and gain stamina. I'd rather all do this slowly and healthily (Better safe than sorry, right?), than any other way.

 

Play with the settings. I know on most of the newer machines they have a 33 minute "weight loss" program. At the "factory set intensity" it is logged at a moderate effort. I also went ahead and took one of my dad's "strap on your chest" heartrate monitors. You can buy them at any fitness store, and they communicate with the elliptical ... at the end of the program it gives you the whole readout ... you probably knew all that already! LOL! I spent a LOT of time on those machines ... I have bad knees and it's the best cardio I can get!