Nashville Personal Trainer Gives 4 Reasons Why Elliptical Machines and Treadmills are Useless

Ellipticals and treadmills are one of the least effective methods of working out. With this post, I'll show you how to get a much more effective fat-burning workout without wasting time mindlessly exercising on a boring elliptical machine or treadmill.

Now let me say first that if you really truly enjoy your elliptical machine workouts and treadmill exercise routines, then I give you my blessing to keep doing what you love. The reason is that even though ellipticals and treadmills are relatively useless compared to other types of exercises, whatever you actually like doing the most is going to benefit you most in the long run because you will be more likely to stick with it more consistently.


However, I warn you that you might be wasting your time with all these boring impetuous cardio machine workouts.


I actually do not believe in cardio machines as a good form of working out at all. This might surprise you coming from a fitness enthusiast such as myself, but I don't think I've personally used an exercise bike, treadmill, elliptical, or any other cardio machine for a long time.

As a matter of fact, I don't even use cardio machines anymore for warm-ups. I actually think it's a much more effective warm-up to do snatches, clean & presses, etc, mixed with bodyweight exercises as a great full-body warm-up before working out.

Well, here's 5 reasons on why I think cardio machines are so awful:

1) Treadmills and ellipticals are just a very useless way to workout compared to other alternatives. Why would you do treadmill or elliptical workouts when you can get better results by doing more interesting forms of training that actually stimulate a fat-burning hormonal response and stimulate your metabolism to a greater extent.

2) Elliptical machines and treadmills are really expensive and a waste of money for people that have a makeshift home-gym... there are so many better things for home workouts you could have spent your money on.

3) Long, steady state cardio (that doesn't require concentration on what you're doing) while watching tv or reading a book or magazine creates a mind/body disconnect resulting in extremely poor results compared to exercise that requires focused attention.

4) Elliptical and treadmill workouts are just boring!

So what are some good alternatives to elliptical machine and treadmill workouts? Some of my favorites are:

• Outdoor wind sprint workouts - This is the ultimate workout for a rock hard lean body... just look at the powerful yet super-lean and ripped bodies of Olympic sprinters like Usain Bolt and Sanya Richards, and compare that to the emaciated physiques of typical marathoners... what would you rather look like?
• Jumping rope - incredible mind/body connection and actually fun (you can try speed jumping, crossover jumps, and double jumps once you get good at it)
• Kettlebell workouts - nothing will get your heart pumping and sweat pouring like high rep kettlebell swings and/or snatches (or clean & presses)! These can be done with dumbbells too, but I prefer kettlebells as they have a better "feel" to them and the unbalanced nature of KBs makes you work a lot harder)
• Bodyweight exercises - mountain climbers, squats, push-ups, box jumps, lunges, bear crawls, plank holds, and so on.
• The good old fashioned ergometer aka rowing machine - I don't really lump this in as a "cardio" machine per se like elliptical machines and treadmills... Instead, I think the rowing machine is actually a great full body workout that actually uses real resistance)
• Hill sprinting - running up a hill as hard as possible, followed by walking down and repeating as many times as you can for a full workout (yet another classic drill for a toned, lean, sculpted body)
• Shadow boxing... a killer workout. This is done best with a partner or trainer, but if you're shy, this is best done at home since you will get some crazy looks doing this at a typical gym! This is done best with a partner or trainer.
• Swimming sprints - a more muscle toning workout compared with steady pace distance swimming... most people actually love the upper body pump they get from sprint swimming (instead of swimming slow and steady, with sprint swimming, you swim as fast as you can exerting as much force as you can for 1 lap. Then rest for 15-20 seconds before doing another swim sprint).
• Heavy bag punching/kicking workouts, speed bag, rebounding bag... all are epic workouts and much more fun than boring cardio machines (requires an very intense mind/body connection which increases results).

I hope this blog post gives you lots of ideas you can use to go out right away and bring some more variety into your workouts instead of relying on the same old dull elliptical machine and treadmill workout routines. Have fun!

If you're interested in taking your fat-loss efforts to an entirely new level, go to the following site and grab a free fat loss report which details 27 unique methods for boosting metabolism and losing belly fat - http://tinyurl.com/2d242ng. Cheers, Rickey☮  Doubts, questions, queries, suggestions? Post a comment