When choosing a cardiovascular exercise activity, you want to maximize your time by burning calories and working your entire body. When choosing between jogging and working out on the elliptical machine, your decision may come down to an issue of priorities and the muscles in your body that you would like to work. An understanding of how each benefits you can help you to select the workout that best meets your needs.
Joint Protection
One of the key differences between jogging and exercising on an elliptical machine is the amount of impact to your joints. When you jog, your feet strike the ground one at a time. This impact is absorbed through your feet, up to your knees and then ultimately your back, according to Dr. Edward R. Laskowski, a physical medicine specialist with the Mayo Clinic. For this reason, jogging is a higher-impact exercise than the elliptical machine, which does not require foot strikes. If you have problems areas, such as your back and joints, an elliptical machine may be preferred.
Impact
Although jogging is a higher-impact exercise that can place extra strain on the joints, there is a benefit to this; weight-bearing exercises help to build bone mass, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. This level of impact helps you to prevent osteoporosis, a disease that deteriorates bone mass, making it easier for you to fracture your bones. While the elliptical machine is not as weight-bearing, it may be a better option for those who have already experienced some level of bone deterioration and are at higher risk for bone fractures.
Muscle Variation
Jogging helps you to work your quadriceps, calf and gluteus maximus, or buttocks, muscles. While you can vary the inclines on and speed at which you jog, these represent the chief ways to vary the muscles worked during a given exercise. Depending upon the model, an elliptical machine allows you to change incline and resistance, and reverse your pedaling motion in order to work different muscles, according to Dr. Laskowski. Some elliptical machines also come equipped with movable handles, which help you to work your arms as well as your legs.
Calories Burned
The amount of calories burned while performing either exercise can be affected by the intensity of your workout, your metabolism and your weight. However, as a general rule, higher-impact exercises do tend to burn more calories than low-impact ones when each exercise is performed at the same intensity, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. What this means for you is that jogging may burn more calories than working out on the elliptical machine if you can perform both at the same intensity.
Considerations
While both jogging and elliptical exercise burn calories and improve your cardiovascular health, they also represent just two of a wide spectrum of exercise choices. If you perform one single exercise several times per week, you increase your risk for stress fractures, according to Go Ask Alice, a health resource from Columbia University. Stress fractures result when repetitive force causes your bones to develop small cracks. These cracks can enlarge over time and cause you to experience a broken bone. To best prevent this, consider alternating your exercise routine between several activities.
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