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Best overall exercise equipment for home
Exercise is one of the best ways to burn some extra calories when attempting to lose weight. Most health experts recommend that you aim to get at least 150-minutes of exercise every week for good health. To lose weight, aim f0r at least 250-minutes every week.
While exercising outdoors or at the gym are top options for many, they’re not the most reliable. Daily walking exercises can help you lose weight but what happens when it’s raining or in winter?
Exercising at the gym among other fitness enthusiasts feels good, you might have to wait in line to use some machines. Long commutes and busy schedules might mean skipping some sessions each week.
Why not save yourself the hustle and invest in quality home exercise equipment. Having your exercise equipment at home is a good way to guarantee that you exercise daily.
It’s available to you 24/7 at your convenience. You don’t have to invest in a pricey home gym set either. Get started with these machines that are guaranteed to help you burn the most calories.
Please note that this post may contain affiliate links. You can read my full disclosure here.
Best home exercise equipment for weight loss
- Treadmill
- Elliptical Trainer
- Rowing machine
- Stationary bike
- Functional trainer machine
Stationary bicycling
YOSUDA stationary bike is our top pick for home use!
According to this report, you can expect to burn as much as 252-calories riding a stationary bike. Yes, and that’s just for a person weighing only 155-pounds. If you weigh more, you’re more likely to burn even more calories.
Riding a stationary exercise bike is a great weight loss exercise that not only keeps your heart and lungs happy but also helps you burn calories.
Compared to other cardio exercises such as running, a stationary exercise bike is a low-impact exercise that’s easy on your joints and muscles.
Besides, you never have to miss out on your workout due to unexpected weather changes. A stationary bike just like any home gym is always open 24/7 for your convenience.
To get the most out of your stationary bike, consider your speed and time. If you’re a beginner start slowly with 30-minutes and work on building up your speed.
Incorporate interval training to burn more calories. Start slow with low intensity for about 10-minutes, then another 10-minutes of medium intensity followed by 2-minutes of high intensity.
Switchback and forth between about 5-minutes for a fat-burning HIIT session.
2. Elliptical trainer
Sunny Health & Fitness SF-E905 Elliptical Machine is our top pick for home use!
An elliptical trainer also known as a cross-trainer is an aerobic exercise machine with pedals suspended above the ground that move forward and backward or up and down.
While exercising on an elliptical your feet are always on the pedal and the machine absorbs all impact. Ever sustained an injury while running or jogging and you had to stop training entirely? That’s never the case with elliptical trainers.
It is for this reason and its ability to burn calories that make this machine a popular choice for many users.
According to this report by Harvard health, if you weigh 155-pounds you can expect to burn 324-calories in 3o-minutes on an elliptical trainer.
If you’re just getting started with an elliptical trainer, it’s best to get used to the machine first before increasing your resistance and time.
If your goal is to lose weight, there are several tricks you can use to burn more calories;
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Increase resistance level
Play around with the resistance levels to find your fat-burning zone. Because an elliptical trainer mimics the way we naturally work, a higher resistance should make you feel like you’re walking uphill and that means burning more calories.
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High-intensity interval training
High-intensity training is one of the best ways to ways to burn calories on an elliptical machine. To do this, simply alternate between higher and lower resistance levels in a ratio of 2:1. Exercise on a higher resistance for 2-minutes, lower resistance and slow down for 4-minutes.
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Move your arms
Take advantage of the handle on an elliptical trainer and move your arms as you exercise. This is a great way to exercise your upper body too and burn some more calories.
3. Rowing machine
Sunny Health & Fitness Magnetic Rowing Machine Rower is our top pick for home use!
A rowing machine is a cardio machine that mimics how you would row a boat outdoors.
It’s one of the few aerobic machines that give you a full-body workout as you pull with your core and upper body and push with your lower body. This makes it an ideal choice for many as weight loss exercise.
A person weighing about 155-pounds can expect to burn at least 252-calories rowing at a moderate pace for 30-minutes
To get started with a rowing machine for weight loss, you have to master the right technique. Maintaining the right posture will help you burn more calories and avoid injury.
There are 4-distinct stages when it comes to rowing that you need to keep in mind. You start with the catch, then the drive, finish, and then recovery.
Starting with the catch, have your arms out straight, lean forward such that your shoulders are in front of your hips. With the drive phase, your legs go first, push back with your legs, and as soon as your legs are straight pull with your arms. Legs first then arms finish.
To get back to recovery position, let your arms go first then your legs. Here’s a youtube video you can use to make sure your posture is right.
As a beginner, your main focus should always be to get the technique right when roaming. After, use interval training or power strokes to make your workout more challenging for fat loss.
With high-intensity interval training, you’ll do fast explosive strokes for about 5-minutes then slow down for about 10-minutes. Alternate this cycle as you increase the number of strokes.
4. Treadmill
NordicTrack T Series Treadmill is our top pick for home use!
A treadmill is a stationary cardio machine with a moving belt strip on which you can walk, jog or run. The treadmill is one of the most popular weight loss machines due to its ease of use and fat-burning capabilities.
As a cardio machine, you’re guaranteed to have a heart-pumping workout that will leave your heart and lungs happy without the impact on your joints and knees that you’d otherwise feel outdoors.
On a treadmill, you burn as much as 360 calories, running moderately at 6mph. That’s just for a person weighing 155-pounds, expect to burn more calories if you weigh more.
Many treadmills come in compact sizes, making them the perfect addition to your home gym.
To get the most out of your treadmill for weight loss,
- consider your fat-burning zone.
This is normally calculated at 70% of your maximum heart rate. This is the heart rate at which you burn the most calories per minute and the rate at which you should aim to walk, jog or run.
- Include high-intensity interval training.
Numerous studies have shown that with HIIT you burn more fat and in a shorter duration than your typical exercise routine. On a treadmill, HIIT would look something like this;
- Set your treadmill to flat,
- Warm-up with a 3.5mph walk for 5-minutes
- Run at 10mph for 60-seconds
- Walk at 4pmh for 120-seconds
- Alternate this cycle for at least 10-minutes
- Finish with a 3.5mph walk
Feel free to increase your HIIT interval sessions to match your strength, just be sure to maintain the 2:1 ratio. That recovery should be 2x the amount spent in intense exercise.
- Take advantage of the incline
Many treadmills come with an incline that can also help you to burn more calories. For example, if your treadmill comes with a 10% incline.
Start with a 1% incline, jog or run at this level for 3-minutes, increase to the next incline, do the same until you reach the highest level. Expect some sore muscle and aches after such an intense workout but you will have burnt a good amount of calories.
5. XMark Functional Trainer Machine
XMark Functional Trainer Cable Machine is our top pick for home use!
When it comes to weight loss, we know for a fact that weight lifting doesn’t burn as much as cardio per session. A 155-pound person weight lifting burns just 106-calories compared to the same person on a treadmill that burns 360-calories in 30-minutes.
But don’t let these numbers fool you, with weight lifting, you continue to burn calories even after your done with your workouts. Besides, weight training helps you build muscles which in turn boosts your resting metabolism.
Your body is able to burn calories even at rest. This is why most experts recommend that your weight loss exercise routine should always include an equal mix of cardio and weight training.
When it comes to home equipment for weight training, there can only be one choice and that’s a functional trainer. Unlike traditional strength training machines that target one muscle at a time, a functional trainer targets multiple muscle groups at the same time.
For example, instead of focusing on a single muscle with a leg press, functional training will involve more dynamic workouts such as jump squats.
The American Council of Fitness defines functional training as “performing work against resistance in such a manner that the improvements in strength directly enhance the performance of movements so that an individual’s activities of daily living are easier to perform.”
Simply stated with functional training, you’re not just training to build muscle but also to also enhance your performance with daily activities. The improvement gained in functional training carries over to other functional aspects of daily life such as being able to better play with your kids or run around.
