The elliptical is one of the gym’s most popular cardio machines, and for good reason. Many people have had excellent fitness success with these machines. Combining cardio and muscle building, the elliptical is an all-purpose machine.
But what does the elliptical do for your legs? Read the article below to find out.
What Leg Muscles Does the Elliptical Use?
When you use the elliptical, you engage your leg muscles over any other group. This is because you primarily move the machine with your legs. Other machines that work the legs like a treadmill do the movement for you, and you get a workout by keeping up with that movement. With the elliptical, you do all the work.
When you use the elliptical, you use the following leg muscles:
- Glutes
- Quadriceps
- Hamstrings
- Calves
- Anterior Tibialis
Each muscle is worked and engaged at different movement points. A few muscles do most of the work and receive most of the benefits of elliptical workouts.
The Elliptical and Your Glutes
Your glutes are the large muscles in your butt that stretch from the back of your hipbone to the top of your femur. This is one of the most popular muscles for workouts, especially for women.
When using the elliptical, the oval movement that your legs make will engage the glutes. However, you can engage them even further by changing your form. Follow these steps to get the best glute workout on the elliptical:
- Straighten your shoulders and keep them back.
- Contract your abs.
- Keep your back straight and upright.
- Do not lean over your legs.
You’ll keep most of your weight off your back and core by engaging in this posture. This effectively puts the weight on your glutes. Doing so will engage the muscle and give you a much better glute workout.
The Elliptical and Your Quads
The quadriceps are not a single muscle but a grouping of four muscles. They are located on the front of your thigh and are some of the most used muscles in your body. Every time you take a step, you use your quads. They are also some of the most common muscles that are strained or injured due to overuse.
If you’re looking to build up your thigh muscles, ellipticals are a great tool. The elliptical is a low-impact cardio machine. It can engage the quads, building muscle through resistance, while keeping them from constantly feeling the impact of a step.
The Elliptical and Your Joints
The joints of your hips and knees are easy to injure during a high-impact exercise like running. But this is not an issue with the elliptical. You never take a step with the elliptical, so your joints feel no impact. This makes the elliptical a good machine for preventing injuries and an excellent choice for recovering from a leg injury.
However, that does not mean that you can avoid joint stress altogether. The elliptical is highly repetitive in its movements, giving you only one option for movement. This constant, repetitive motion is enough to cause joint strain eventually. The difference between the elliptical and a high-impact exercise like running is that it takes longer on the elliptical to feel the joint strain.
How the Elliptical Uses Your Leg Muscles
The elliptical moves your legs in an oval – a cross between a step-like motion and the circular pattern you use on a bike. The movement is essentially a cross between cycling and running. As you go through the motions of pedaling on the elliptical, you’ll engage the different muscles in your legs. The quads, glutes, and hamstrings see the most significant activation from the elliptical.
Quads
Your quads activate when you push your foot down on the pedals and the machine begins to move. Since this is the power behind the elliptical, this is the muscle that gets worked the most during your session. While other muscle groups can be used and worked by the elliptical, you wouldn’t have any workout without the quads.
Glutes
Once your leg completes the first half of the oval, it begins to move backward. As the leg completes the back half of the oval, your glutes will contract to stabilize your hips. Thus, the glutes are doing most of the work of keeping you upright and moving on the machine. The better your form, the more your glutes are engaged.
Hamstrings
The hamstrings are a group of three muscles along the back of your thigh. This is the muscle that keeps the leg from springing upward wildly. The hamstrings are most active whenever your knee is bent. They activate as your leg moves back up the oval to the top of the elliptical pedal path. You have just as much muscle control on an upward movement as on a downward movement.
How to Better Work Your Leg Muscles on the Elliptical
There are several ways that you can use the elliptical to work your leg muscles better. By adjusting the elliptical machine settings, you can engage your leg muscles more effectively, encourage muscle growth, and keep your fitness progress going.
Resistance Is Key
Increasing the resistance on your elliptical is the best way to engage your muscles as much as possible. Increasing the resistance gives your muscles something to work against. Your quads, glutes, and hamstrings will be required to work harder to keep the pedals moving.
The higher you make the resistance, the more your muscles work, and the more muscle growth you’ll see. Just be sure to take the resistance up slowly. If you increase resistance too quickly, you could seriously strain or even tear a muscle.
Pedaling Uphill
Another way to engage your muscles further is to increase the incline. Most ellipticals have an incline setting that ranges from 1-10. The lowest setting will always be parallel to the floor. The highest setting will be a very steep hill. Most people will notice an increase in muscle engagement somewhere around incline two to three.
Increasing the incline is also an excellent way to engage your hamstrings further. The hamstrings are the muscles that engage the most with a steeper incline, with the glutes a close second.
Pedal Backwards
While some ellipticals allow you to move the pedals backward, most will. It is quickly becoming a very popular feature because it helps with your muscle growth as well.
Pedaling the elliptical backward focuses on the muscles in the back of your legs. This will let you work the hamstrings better than you could by pedaling forward. This also keeps your muscles from settling into a routine. Going through the motions can cause your progress to stall.
The Elliptical: Cardio and Leg Day
So, what does the elliptical do for your legs?
The elliptical is an excellent machine to work your legs while simultaneously improving cardiovascular health. Using the elliptical will build leg muscle while helping you avoid joint stress associated with high-impact exercise. The elliptical machine can also provide a low-impact alternative to running.
Do you like to use the elliptical to build your leg muscles? Or are you planning to use the elliptical for cardio? Let us know in the comments below.