Elliptical trainers at the gym are great. Elliptical trainers have a little something for everyone. They’re ideal for increasing your cardio stamina, which is crucial to improving your heart health. Ellipticals also help during the injury recovery process because they allow for the stretch of a run without causing the painful pressure on the joints as with traditional running. This is a blessing to arthritic patients and people with joint pains from past injuries.
For those seeking to lose weight, it’s good to know the elliptical burns a lot of calories per session compared to other aerobic exercises. It works the user’s entire body to increase muscles and speed up the user’s resting metabolic rate.
Knowing the benefits of the elliptical, it’s exciting to learn that now there is an outdoor elliptical bike. If you haven’t seen an outdoor elliptical bike before, you’ll want to check them out. Outdoor elliptical bikes are a combination of the popular, low-impact exercise of an elliptical trainer and the traditional outdoor travel of other riding equipment.
Typical riding equipment like bicycles provides a great workout, green transportation, and fun. However, they can cause back pain and lowered visibility from the hunched posture that they require. Exploring the features of the outdoor elliptical bike is worth it for anyone who knows the pain of tight hip flexors or back and shoulder pain from poor posture.
For anyone familiar with the reasons why the elliptical is so popular in the world of fitness, it’s widely accepted that the trade-off for the total-body benefits of the elliptical trainer is that you have to be indoors. The outdoor elliptical bike is challenging that problem and giving fans of the elliptical the freedom to get outside. The local bike path doesn’t have to be limited to just bikes anymore because the outdoor elliptical bikes are street legal, too.
Whether you are considering an outdoor elliptical bike because you want to try something new, you need relief from the pains associated with cycling, or you just want to move your elliptical workout to the great outdoors, it is important to understand the features of the outdoor elliptical bike and what makes it great.
If you are thinking about starting a new fitness regimen with the outdoor elliptical bike, as with anything new that you want to add to your healthy lifestyle, it is still a good idea to check with your doctor to be sure it is right for you.
What Are the Best Features of the Outdoor Elliptical Bike?
Full Body Workout
Outdoor elliptical bikes work your upper body, your lower body, and your core. The natural movements of the elliptical motion engage your lower body in your quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes. The push and pull of the handles as you ride works the biceps, triceps, shoulders, chest, and back as you move along the path. To glide through curves and bends, the outdoor elliptical bike uses lean-to-steer in a manner similar to skiing. When you combine this with the upright posture you maintain, you unknowingly keep your core tightened and improve your overall core strength.
Because the outdoor elliptical bike is low-impact, it is easier for users to go for longer periods of time without realizing it. You’re getting a complete aerobic full-body workout while you feel like you’re just jogging on air. Like other outdoor activities, such as biking or skiing, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the fun you’re having, and exercise becomes incidental. But whether you realize you’re getting a workout in or not, the benefits of the full-body workout are still present.
Safe and Stable
By design, the outdoor elliptical bikes are very stable. Their 3-wheel platform gives more surface grip and makes them much safer. The lean-to-steer movement is intuitive, so the ride feels smooth and natural. The high-tensile steel used in the framework makes them strong and durable.
The steel frame also supports up to 300 pounds, which isn’t found in most classic bikes. If you need to lose weight, you don’t want to lose weight before you can start using the equipment that you need to help you lose weight. Another important safety feature if you’re trying to lose weight is that the low-impact of the outdoor elliptical bike means your joints aren’t experiencing the stress of other activities like walking, jogging, or running. On a weight loss journey, you don’t want to get sidetracked by a knee injury from the new stress on your joints.
It’s nice that the outdoor elliptical bikes can get up to a pleasant cruising speed of around 20 mph, and with rear and front disc brakes, they’re also able to safely and effectively come to a complete stop when needed. The standing posture also gives users complete visibility as they’re traveling. Safety is paramount when you’re traveling, so it should always be a factor when considering new equipment.
Easy Transportation and Storage
Time isn’t something most people seem to have in abundance. Being able to combine activities like commuting and exercise can save you so much time. If you’re spending thirty minutes getting to work anyway, it’s nice to have a green transportation solution that can also serve as a low-intensity cardio workout.
Outdoor elliptical bikes also fold down for storage. They typically take up less space than a bicycle, and their flatter fold makes them ideal for placing in your trunk when you’re heading to the park or away on vacation. There aren’t a lot of pieces of exercise equipment that you can pack up and take on vacation that will also let you explore your destination when you get there.
They’re also street legal. Because the front-wheel base is the same width as the handlebars of a bicycle, it fits nicely on standard bike lanes. They are human-powered, require no gas or electricity, and are emission-free. Outdoor elliptical bikes can freely go anywhere you could expect to take other riding equipment.
Some outdoor elliptical bikes also offer a stand that converts them into a piece of indoor equipment. It’s not every day that your storage options offer you a way to make your equipment functional inside too. If it’s cold, raining, or the hotel you booked doesn’t have a gym, the portability of the outdoor elliptical bike means you don’t have to sacrifice your workout.
High Calorie Burn
When it comes to exercise equipment, weight loss is usually pretty high on the list of motivators. In a society that loves fast results, high-calorie burns are highly desired in the pursuit of dropping pounds. Running, cycling, swimming, and elliptical trainers are excellent options for burning a lot of calories in a regular session.
Running tends to burn about 11 calories per minute for the average runner, but running is not low-impact. It can actually cause quite a lot of joint damage, and when you’re looking to lose weight, you really want to take care of your joints along the way. Traditional elliptical trainers burn around half the calories of running per minute. However, the low-impact cardio makes it easier for users to go for longer periods of time.
Outdoor elliptical bikes burn 50% more calories than cycling and 15% more than traditional stationary elliptical bikes. Of course, calorie burn depends on body weight and velocity, but given what we know about the outdoor elliptical bikes, a 200-pound person riding at about 13 mph can burn approximately 1000 calories per hour.
With a proper diet, using an outdoor elliptical bike for 30 minutes to an hour every day for a week can help a user easily create the necessary calorie deficit to safely lose 1-2 pounds of fat. Studies have shown that losing weight at a pace of 1 to 2 pounds a week is safer for long-term weight loss that sticks. Weight loss that lasts motivates you to continue with healthy lifestyle changes, and it’s easier to make lifestyle changes that are enjoyable and fun.
Low Joint Impact
When you’re running, you can have the best shoes that money can buy, and it will still put stress on your weight-bearing joints like your knees, hips, and ankles. This type of stress can lead to injury over time. Common ailments from consistent running include runner’s knee, stress fractures, and shin splints. While running is really effective, it’s understandable why it might raise concerns when injuries come to mind.
Cycling offers similar cardiovascular health benefits as running, but it puts less stress on joints. Cyclists spend all of their rides leaned forward, and this naturally causes the head to start to creep forward as well. It might not be noticeable because the amount of time we spend in our society leaning our heads forward to drive, text, read, and look down in general already causes this effect to some degree. However, adding this leaned posture during workouts can contribute to chronic neck pain.
Outdoor elliptical bikes offer the aerobic aspects of both of these cardio favorites, but they eliminate the downsides to both. Because the outdoor elliptical bikes are weight-bearing, you get the natural movement of jogging without pounding the pavement and impacting your joints. Since this makes the exercise easier on your joints, the outdoor elliptical bike is great for rehabilitation after injuries and stress.
Speaking of stress, when an aerobic exercise is low-impact, the ease of movement makes the activity more enjoyable and increases stress-relieving benefits that accompany regular exercise. Additionally, outdoor exercise, like what you get with the outdoor elliptical bikes, increases the brain chemicals, such as serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, that soothe the mind.
Regularly breaking a sweat and burning calories has been shown to aid in treating mild to moderate anxiety and depression as well. So, not only do your joints get a break, your brain muscle does too.
Good Posture
The outdoor elliptical bike keeps the body in an upright position. The upright position is more natural than other positions, and it keeps your body in alignment safely during the gentle movement the ellipses create for the arms and legs. The head remains straight, and the natural jogging motion stretches muscles effectively without stressing joints.
The lean-to-steer movement is also good for your posture because it keeps your core engaged without requiring your body to leave that natural upright position associated with walking, jogging, or running. A stronger core will help to achieve good posture at all times, and good posture is crucial to alleviating back pains.
Along with the health benefits of maintaining a natural position that promotes good posture, the user’s posture on the outdoor elliptical bike facilitates excellent visibility. On other riding equipment, in order to see clearly from the leaned forward position, the rider is required to tilt the head up and back at the neck. After riding for a lengthy period of time, this movement causes neck pain. Because the rider of the outdoor elliptical bike already has their head up and facing out, it is hard to imagine that they would ever experience similar pains.
Summary
Before learning about the outdoor elliptical bikes, it’s hard to imagine that you could get a total body workout that torches calories, promotes good posture, and offers low-impact cardio for your joints on a single piece of equipment that is safe, stable, easily stored, and provides transportation.
The outdoor elliptical bike has so many similarities to workout favorites like jogging, cycling, skiing, and traditional elliptical trainers that it is sure to gain popularity in the fitness community. The features the outdoor elliptical bike offers appeal to people with varying fitness levels. From weight loss and recovery to cardiovascular conditioning and strength building, the outdoor elliptical bikes can help achieve so many goals.
The fun and ease of the activity are ideal for reducing stress and anxiety in an outdoor environment. Plus, to relieve your worries even more, it’s an emission-free mode of transportation. You have to decide if it’s right for you, but it’s hard to see how it isn’t a great addition to virtually anyone’s life.
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