Cardio machine exercises

Which machine should you pick?

The stationary bike and the elliptical keep your foot on a fixed path, so there is no landing phase in either. That usually makes them the first pick when your knees or ankles are complaining. The treadmill sits at the other end: it loads the joints harder than anything else on the list, but it is also the only piece of equipment that teaches you to run, because the movement is the same one you do outside.

The rower and the air bike use the most of your body at once. On the rower the work starts in the legs and finishes in the back; on the air bike the legs and arms work in parallel the whole time. Both wear you out faster for the same amount of time, which makes them the right call when what you have is a short window, not an hour.

Each of these machines shows up in the atlas at several paces: moderate, fast and sprint. It is the same movement listed separately so you can drop it into a plan at a specific intensity, not because there are three different techniques to learn.

What is the ski erg doing here?

The ski erg is the exception in this group. Most of what you will find on it is not endurance work at all, it is single strength movements done on its cords: triceps extensions, flyes, reverse flyes, face pulls. The resistance behaves much like a cable machine, with one difference - it rises with the speed you pull at.

That changes how you pick the load. On a cable you set the stack and it stays set; on the erg the resistance depends on how fast you move, so two reps in the same set can differ from each other. An even, unhurried tempo gives you a more repeatable stimulus here than yanking.

You will also find combined versions: a pull with a squat, with a jump or with a lunge. Those go back to the job the machine was built for, because they raise your heart rate by using the legs and the upper body at the same time.