Lose Weight and Get Fit
There are a large
number of people who want to lose weight. Virtually everyone who is
overweight understands that to lose weight effectively you not only
need to reduce the amount of calories you consume but also need to
exercise regularly.
Some people however
find that it is difficult to make the time to exercise on a regular
basis. Being able to commit to visiting the gym two or three times a
week is often extremely difficult.
As an alternative a lot
of individuals will decide to create their own exercise regime and
elect to go jogging, walking or cycling a few times a week. Although
the strategy is sound in principle in reality this approach rarely
works in practice.
What tends to happen is
that exercising becomes a low priority and all the good intentions
are soon forgotten. Even those that desperately want to exercise find
that exercising out of doors loses its appeal on cold dark winter
evenings.
Exercising at Home
An alternative to
exercising out of doors is to buy your own exercise equipment that
you can use in your own home. If you exercise in your own home you
can use any spare time that you have exercising and can even do your
routine whilst watching tv if you so wish.
There are lots of
equipment to choose from and you do not need to spend a vast amount
of money initially. The most popular types of home exercisers are
cross trainers and exercise bikes.
Exercise bikes are
designed primarily to exercise the leg muscles whilst cross trainers
can be used for full body workouts. If you are trying to lose weight
you will probably find that a cross trainer is the more versatile
machine and better suited to your purpose.
A cross trainer
provides what is referred to as a 'low impact workout'.
What this actually
means is that, unlike jogging for example, there is no vibration
transmitted to your ankle, knee and hip joints. On a cross trainer
your feet stay firmly in contact with the foot plate of the machine.
Confidence 2 in 1 Elliptical Cross Trainer |
Budget priced cross
trainers are usually manually operated but many of the more expensive
models are electronic. The electronic Cross Trainers generally have a number
of pre programmed exercise routine built into their computer. You
simply choose the routine that most suits your requirements.
Virtually all of the
cross trainers on the market have resistance settings which are used
to set the amount of tension on the machines flywheel.
There is also usually
some form of electronic readout that gives basic information to the
user such as distance, time, speed and number of calories being
burned.
It is worth noting that
the readout for calories should only be used as a guide as the build
of the individual and the exercise routine itself will have a major
impact on the data.
Although it is no more
than a rough guide it is generally accepted that anyone working out
on a cross trainer is likely to burn between 8 and 12 calories per
minute (240 to 360 calories per thirty minute session).
No comments:
Post a Comment