Is my elliptical workout working?

I am a fan of ellipticals, but even though I'll burn 300+ calories, I don't feel like I've actually done anything - I will feel bored, instead of invigorated. 

After 25 minutes on a high incline and fair resistance (not too much because I don't want Mondo Quads to get any bigger), I barely break a sweat.  My breathing is fairly normal, and I don't feel like my heart rate has increased all that much.
I usually follow with a 10 minute mile on a treadmill just so I sweat a little bit.

Is effectiveness measured by sweating profusely, breathing heavy, and feeling your pulse in your ears?

i like ellipticals too, and I know what you mean about not feeling like you're working hard enough.  I'm not sure where you work out, but the gym at my office has arc trainers instead of ellipticals, and I noticed a huge increase in workout intensity. If you have the option, I'd try that out.

As for sweating profusely, etc., I know that I am not a big sweater compared to some of my friends, and they give me crap sometimes for not working hard enough.  Personally, I think that it's up to you to decide.  If you're not feeling satisfied with your workout from the elliptical, running afterwards sounds like a good way to finish off.

Hey egiven...

... I like walking but I HATE treadmills. They're so BORING. You go and go and go but go nowhere.

I've started jogging and it's like night and day... treadmill is EASIER and it's in an Air Conditioned room, but there's nothing quite like actually GOING somewhere and SEEING something.

Maybe what you need to do is get outside :)

Hi egiven.  When I had a brief stint with a personal trainer, she told me that if you are hearing pounding in your ears and are unable to talk when you are working out that you are burning muscle and not fat.  Also, some people are sweaters and some are not.  I am not, so when I do the elliptical, I may glisten slightly but I never sweat profusely.  As long as you are seeing results in the size and feel of your clothes as well as the numbers on the scale, I wouldn't worry about it.  Good luck!

I've wondered that myself. Even though the elliptical reports I've burned 700 calories over an hour, it feels like "easy" excercise, compared to doing the stairs for 30 minutes.

However I will say this - it's in part, at least in my experience, what your body gets "used" to. The elliptical never used to be easy for me, but I would do everytime I went to the gym. Now I vary what I do, for example, I'll do elliptical one day, treadmill next time, then the stair stepper on a weekend, to keep changing it up.

I've heard that you should know your excercise is "effective" if you can carry on a short conversation without running out of breath. If you can't, you're pushing too hard. By the same token if you're not breaking a sweat at all, I'd say boost your resistance by one and see where you're at.

Finally, I found a heartrate monitor to be invaluable. My aerobic (fat burn zone) at age 26 is about 135 heartbeats per minute. I found that the resistance I was using on the elliptical for the longest time the highest I'd go was 115 heartbeats per minute, so I boosted my resistance until I got to about where I needed to be. That's usually the gauge I use.

Hope that helps!

get that heart rate up! thats a big part and what i mainly focus on when I use machines like those.

Congrats your body has done what it supposed to do, adapt.

Time to up the intensity, either increase the resistance and speed.

you might want to try doing an interval training too, where you jog 30 sec, sprint 10, jog 40, sprint 15, jog 1 min, sprint 20, ect. 15 min of this is a great work out.

Also the incline on those machines really just affects which musles are taking the majority of the load, all the way up  hitting mostly the glutes.

An don't worry your quads are not going to get "huge" especially if your doing lots of cardio, this activity is signaling to your body that you need to move fast and swift and that extra muscle tissue will just make you slower and heavier.

Hey Jazrbabe when you said..."she told me that if you are hearing pounding in your ears and are unable to talk when you are working out that you are burning muscle and not fat." what do you mean burning muscle? do you mean toning? i just didn't know you can burn muscle.

I have only been doing cardio fo 11 days now so it still kills me, but i notice i am getting better and can last longer. I usually go on the treadmill at 6.5-7 incline and a walking speed of 3.7. i sweat badly from that because its so intense...my heart rate goes up to 170ish which at 22 is the cardio training level.

I haven't seen results in the sense of inches and pounds...i'm more toned than i was a week and a half ago. Should i just casually walk to have a lower heartrate? i just want more results?

oh and the elipitical kills me...for those who can do it with no problem...good for you. it hurts me knees

I know how you feel.  My first time on en elliptical I caused a flood and about died after 10 mintes.  Now?  I don't break a sweat after 30 minutes of VIGOROUS workout...and it's become horribly boring.  I started jogging too, just for some excitement and to work different muscles.  Try only doing the elliptical 1 day a week, on the others do some jogging, some cycling, and something else.  That way your body doesnt get completely used to it.

Yes, you can burn muscle.  It's actually quite easy.  You burn more fat with the "slow and steady" routine, trust me.

i guess i'm having a slow morning but burning muscle. what does that mean...like you have muscle but its turning back into fat? i mean if you loose muscle doesn't that mean you are getting fat? or do your muscles slim down and become nice and sleek? i just don't get it for some reason...i guess because of my cardio i have be getting muscle...also...what does the cardio training level mean? like exercising your heard good?

Fat does not "turn into" muscle, and muscle doesnt "turn into" fat.  Losing muscle doesnt mean you're getting fat...it means you're getting untoned.  Look at any anorexic celebrity, you won't see a spot of fat OR muscle on them.  You can burn muscle because it's part of the body and a way the body stores energy.  Sometimes when you exercise too hard or starve yourself, you burn muscle instead of energy.  Actually, muscle is easier to burn than fat, since fat is a LONG TERM storage of energy.  This is why fat burning exercise should be long and slow.  Why exactly is muscle burned first?  That I don't know...maybe someone else does.  But it is very easy to do.

And yes, cardio is very good for your heart.  It's upbeat, low impact exercise that's not meant to build muscle, but to burn fat and calories.

I'm a big elliptical fan... since I learned to use it properly.

Like most people on here when I first tried it I found it challenging, then I found it easy then I would get it to a high level (17 of 20) and still feel like I wasn't doing enough.... I could get my heart rate up to 170 easy.... and would push for 180 just to sweat and feel my heart pound.... that's a good work out ....right?

Wrong.

I got a personal trainer. I found out that since my main goal is weight loss, muscle building and toning in that order I was being really counter productive.

If you want to burn fat your heart rate (depending on age)... should be somewhere between 115 - 145 (I aim for around 135),,,, really this is a walk in the park for me... I've found I have much more trouble and spend a lot more energy tring to keep my heart rate in this zone than zipping up to 170.....

For a cardio vascular work out.... which builds muscle... but does not burn fat heart rate should be around 145 - 170.... no one's heart rate should really be much above 170 (or this is what I am told).... once you get your heart rate above 170 you start to destroy your muscle.... you body does this because as you use energy it needs to get it from somewhere. If you are using less energy over a longer time (see fat buring heart rate for 30-45 min) then your body will take your energy from your slow releasing fat cells - hence fat buring.

If you are burning lots of energy quickly your body will first take if from your daily stored energy... this is why a short cardio workout (10-15 min) is recommended before you lift weights.

However if you start going for a long time, at a high heart rate you body will use your densley energy packed muscle cells to burn.

This is why when I first started ellipcial I had the bad news of working really hard, but not seeing either weight loss or muscle gain.

Seems counter intutive but now that I've pulled back a little and started adding a few more machines to keep my interst the pounds are dropping and so is my body fat.

Thank you for clearing that up about cardio.  Shows how much I know.  But everything else is exactly as I learned it.  15 minutes burns carbs, then after that (as long as youre going slow) you burn stored fat.  Which kinda makes me laugh when you see someone BOOK IT for 10 minutes and then leave.  They don't realize they're not doing anything.

thanks guys you have helped me...but even if you do like the stairs for 10 mins you are still burning cals right...just not fat cals. is it okay to mix it up...like one day intense and then a few days slow...then another intense day...or if i lift and want to loose weight should i just go slow for like 45 mins-1 hour.

If your primary goal is to loose weight then I've been told long streatches of light cardio is the key. This doesn't mean you need to do the elliptical everyday. You can mix up machines, walk/jog, swim... whatever to keep it interesting.

Also a lot of people swear by interval training 5 min slow 5 min fast.

If you don't have a heart rate monitor who ever mentioned the beging able to carry a light conversation without much effort is correct. You are way above fat burning range if you can't chat while you are working out.

It really used to piss me off that people could chat to one another while working out.... I didn't think they were working as hard... and what's the point coming to the gym if you're not going to work out... well I'm eating my shoe now :)

Wow, thanks everyone!  Definitely learned a bit there...I think doing intervals sounds like a better idea for me.  I get bored really easily on the machines.

Another question, in case the thread isn't dead yet - if I want to be more lean/muscular, do I start out by long, stead, fat burning exercise, or do I head straight into the more intense cardio?

Thankee kindly.

Lean/muscular?  I would think longer stretches of light cardio to
burn off the fat, and then some weight training to tone the muscles and
help build them.  Remember though, its easier said than
done.  It's common believe that you can't ADD muscle when you're
reducing calories.  The best you can do is Tone what you have.

Personally, I prefer to push myself.  I posted a link in the thread "Fat Burning Myth" about working out in your "zone."  The author put it this way: Yes, you are burning a higher percentage of fat in the "zone" but you burn more calories at a higher intensity and even though you burned a lower percentage of fat, it is STILL more than you would have burned in the "zone."  She likened it to "Would you rather have 90% of all the money I have or 3% of all the money Ross Perot has?"  I also like that my cardiovascular endurance has gone way up.

egiven, in order to gain make your quads bigger, you'd have to be working against some SERIOUS resistance.  Cardio will tone your quads but shouldn't make them bigger.

I have been working out for 10 days now and have not skipped a day yet.  I usually go to the gym in the morning and lift weights for 20 minutes and then either walk on a treadmill at 3.5 mph and 4 % incline for 30 minutes or ride a stationary bike at 16.9 mph for 30 minutes.   Then in the evening I play raquetball for about an hour.  On the days I don't get to the gym in the morning I ride the elliptcal for 30 minutes. 

I have been keeping my calorie intake around 1400 (I am 69 inches and weigh 212 ) and drinking tons or water.

I  also take care of my four kids all day long.

The problem is that I have lost only 2 pounds.  I am wondering if I am working too hard, or not eating enough.

I'm no expert, but I would venture to say you're not eating enough. I had the same problem where I was at 205lbs, excercising every day and only eating 1300 - 1400 calories a day. As a result I was only dropping about .5 lbs a week. On the advice of a bunch of the great folks here on the forums, I upped my intake. Now that I've boosted that to 2300 calories a day, I've dropped almost 5 lbs in the last two weeks. I know it seems counter-intiuative, but it really does work!

Secondly, also keep in mind that if you're lifting weights, you're building and toning muscle, which is denser than fat. Keep in mind that the scale isn't the best way to gauge progress, that's my opinion.