An elliptical machine is a stationary cardio exercise machine where your feet ride on suspended pedals that move in a smooth, oval-shaped (elliptical) path. Because your feet never leave the pedals, there’s no impact with each stride, making it one of the gentlest ways to get a running or walking workout without stressing your joints. Most models also include moving arm handles, turning what looks like a simple cardio machine into a full-body workout.
How the Movement Works
Your ankles trace an elliptical loop as the pedals glide through their cycle, and the machine itself determines that path rather than your body choosing it freely. This is what separates an elliptical from a treadmill: the machine guides your stride. A flywheel connected to the pedals creates momentum, so the motion feels fluid once you get going. Your feet stay planted on the pedals throughout, which eliminates the repeated heel strikes that come with running on pavement or a treadmill.
Most ellipticals also have a pair of tall arm levers linked to the pedals. As your left foot pushes forward, the right handle pulls toward you, and vice versa. This coordinated push-pull pattern mimics a natural walking or running gait while adding upper-body resistance. Some people prefer to use the stationary handlebars instead, which shifts the work entirely to the lower body and core.
Muscles Worked on an Elliptical
The pedal motion targets your glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, hip flexors, and calves. Pedaling forward emphasizes your quads, while pedaling backward shifts the load to your hamstrings and glutes. That reverse option is one of the machine’s underrated features: switching direction mid-workout lets you balance out muscle recruitment without stopping.
If you use the moving arm handles, you’re also engaging your biceps, triceps, chest, and shoulders with every stride. Your back muscles and core work throughout the session to keep you upright and stable, including your abdominals, the muscles along your spine, and the muscles between your shoulder blades. This combination of upper and lower body engagement is why ellipticals can burn more calories than machines that only work your legs.
Calorie Burn and Cardiovascular Benefits
A 155-pound person burns roughly 324 calories in 30 minutes on an elliptical at moderate intensity. At 185 pounds, that number climbs to about 378 calories for the same half hour. These figures put the elliptical in the same range as jogging, and well above most stationary bike workouts at similar perceived effort levels.
The WHO recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week for adults, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity. Three to five elliptical sessions per week can comfortably meet or exceed that threshold. Doubling to 300 minutes per week provides additional cardiovascular and metabolic benefits.
Why It’s Easier on Your Joints
The core selling point of the elliptical is low impact. When you run on a treadmill or pavement, each footfall sends a shock through your ankles, knees, and hips. Research comparing elliptical training to treadmill walking found that ellipticals generate lower pedal reaction forces than the ground reaction forces produced during walking. Your heels stay in contact with the pedals throughout the stride, which reduces stress on the muscles and tendons of the lower leg.
This makes the elliptical a practical choice if you’re recovering from a lower-body injury, dealing with knee or hip pain, or simply want to log high-volume cardio without accumulating joint wear. It’s also why physical therapy clinics often have ellipticals: you get a weight-bearing workout with a fraction of the impact.
Resistance, Incline, and How to Adjust Them
Every elliptical lets you change resistance, which controls how hard you have to push through each stride. Cranking up resistance is the single most important adjustment for getting results. If the machine is whirring loudly and your legs are spinning with almost no effort, you’re moving too fast with too little resistance, and burning far fewer calories than the console suggests.
Many ellipticals also have an adjustable incline (sometimes called a ramp). Raising the incline tilts the pedal path to mimic uphill movement, which dramatically increases the work your glutes and hamstrings do. Lowering the incline shifts emphasis back to your quads. Studies suggest that moderate incline settings can increase calorie burn by over 50%, and steeper inclines can more than double it. A good starting point is an incline of 10 to 15 percent combined with moderate resistance.
Console Metrics Worth Understanding
The screen on most ellipticals displays several numbers beyond time and distance. RPM (revolutions per minute) shows your pedal speed, essentially your cadence. Watts measures the actual power you’re producing by combining your cadence with the resistance level. Watts is a more honest measure of effort than RPM alone, because spinning fast at low resistance produces far less power than pushing hard at high resistance. Some machines also display METs, which compares the energy you’re burning to what you’d burn sitting still. A MET value of 1 is rest; a value of 6 or 8 means you’re working six to eight times harder than that.
Three Drive Types
Ellipticals come in three basic designs based on where the flywheel sits.
- Front-drive: The flywheel is at the front of the machine, and the pedals typically glide on a rail or track. These are common in commercial gyms. They can produce slightly more noise and vibration than other designs.
- Rear-drive: The flywheel sits behind the user in a compact housing. Rear-drive models often feel smoother and were the original design when Precor introduced the first commercial elliptical in 1995.
- Center-drive: The flywheel is positioned at the middle of the machine, with pedals riding on a crankshaft. The machine itself has a smaller footprint, but the pedal arms extend beyond the frame during use, so actual space requirements are similar. The stride path tends to feel more circular and the transitions between forward and backward motion are gentler.
Common Form Mistakes
The most frequent error is putting too much pressure on your toes. This compresses the nerves in the ball of your foot and causes numbness, which can cut a workout short. Focus on driving through your heels instead, the same way you would during a squat.
Slouching is another common problem. When you hunch forward or lean heavily on the armrests, you take your core out of the equation and reduce your calorie burn. Standing tall with a slight natural arch in your lower back lets your abdominals engage and gives your upper body something to do. If you find yourself death-gripping the stationary handles, the resistance is probably too high, or you’re too fatigued to maintain good form.
Finally, many people default to the same speed, resistance, and direction every session. Varying your incline, pedaling backward for intervals, and adjusting resistance throughout the workout will challenge different muscle groups and prevent the kind of plateau that makes the elliptical feel ineffective over time.
A Brief Origin Story
Precor invented the elliptical trainer and brought the first model, the Elliptical Fitness Crosstrainer (EFX), to market in 1995. The machine was designed to replicate the foot-rolling motion of running, from heel to toe, without the impact. A rear flywheel connected to forward foot pedals created the signature smooth, oval stride. The design also addressed a specific comfort problem: foot numbness that plagued users of other stationary cardio equipment. Within a few years, ellipticals became standard fixtures in commercial gyms alongside treadmills and stationary bikes.