Elliptical Trainers - getting a satisfyingly hard workout

Atlanta has many give away magazines but my favorite is:
Atlanta Sports & Fitness Magazine. If you don't know about it, look out for it at your gym.

One item that caught my eye in the Sept/Oct 2008 issue is the Octane Fitness Q47e Elliptical.

This picture out of Atlanta Sports & Fitness Magazine is much more dynamic than the Octane own pictures of the Q47e. The woman in this picture is really pushing herself hard and aiming to get the maximum out of this elliptical machine.

Quite recently a client decided to replace the treadmill in her home gym with an ARC Trainer from Cybex because walking on the treadmill was not sufficiently challenging but her knees would not stand up to treadmill running.

All of this generates the thought that there is a demand for something tougher than treadmill or elliptical walking but not as rough on the joints as running.

Cybex have done some research to find out if their Arc Trainer really does impose a bigger challenge than the ellipticals.

Look at this paper on how an Arc Trainer gets you working harder than an ordinary elliptical. Of course it's research paid for by the company and hence one needs a little caution but interesting nevertheless. This second paper goes deep into hip and knee flexion, force vectors, angular velocity and lots more deeply techie stuff.

I run on the treadmill. My program to find out if my knee will allow me to run a 10K (6.2 miles) in a reasonable time - just over 60 minutes - is ongoing and next week I'm hoping to run non-stop for 4 miles on a treadmill. However reading this research onto the new generation of better elliptical trainers means I'm going to try out an ARC trainer very soon.