The Elliptical Is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me

by Hannah
(Nashville, TN)

I was never really much into exercising or using machines. I would mainly just walk or jog on the pavement, until I pulled a ligament in my knee that made it hard to walk at all, much less briskly enough to be considered exercise, and jogging was out of the picture.

I was put in physical therapy for a shoulder injury that was flaring up plus the knee. After it healed, I wanted to get back into exercising but jogging or walking on the treadmill was too much on my knee since it was only freshly healed.

That’s when my trainer suggested the elliptical. It’s a little bit easier on the knees because there’s not the constant impact of pavement. I started out on the lowest resistance and simply walked on it.

I made it to running flat-out for up to 45 minutes after a few months. Then I started playing around with the different settings and found that the elliptical could provide a constant workout for every different part of the human body.

Besides just running, there are many different programs that work all of the muscles in the legs, the glutes, and all the muscles in the arms.

There are special modes that add extra resistance to the arm bars, and one exercise where you squat and run backwards that does an amazing job of working the abs.

On the harder combined workouts, I just do like 20 or 30 minutes, and jogging I try to keep up to 45 minutes, but there’s so many different ways to use it to stay in shape.