Both elliptical and stair-stepper machines provide effective cardiovascular workouts with plenty of variety. For home use, other factors need to be considered. If you have access to a gym, vary your workout not only by switching between the elliptical and the stair stepper, but by adding a rowing machine, stationary bike and treadmill to your repertoire as well.
Physical Movements
The stair stepper provides exercise for your lower body--your hips, thighs, gluteal muscles, legs and calves--while giving you an effective heart and lung workout. The elliptical also exercises your lower body and some models have arm poles that exercise your upper body as well. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, both machines tone thigh and gluteal muscles the same. (
Cardiovascular Fitness
The stair stepper is generally recognized as providing a more difficult cardiovascular experience, because you need to lift your body weight when you climb stairs. A panel of fitness experts queried by the New York Times in 2005 agreed that stair climbers ranked high in terms of cardiovascular benefit and calories burned.
Harvey Simon, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, reported that Canadian researchers found climbing stair was twice as taxing as brisk walking on the level. The elliptical machine, which is akin to walking on a level, provides a workout that seems more effortless to many exercisers, as reported by the panelists in the New York Times.
Flexibility
Both stair steppers and elliptical machines offer settings you can use to vary the intensity of your workout. With the stair stepper, you can vary the speed, select programs that automatically vary settings, note your distance by how many stairs you have climbed and monitor your heart rate. The elliptical settings include resistance, various programs and distance and heart rate monitoring. The elliptical's speed is determined by how fast you cycle.
The Fun Factor
One panelist from the New York Times exercise machine comparison noted that ''Climbing stairs leaves one pretty wiped out and not anxious to jump back on.'' The panelists concluded that the elliptical was the "best all-around choice" in large part because it was more fun to use than the stair stepper.
Cost
Both stair steppers and ellipticals have wide variations in price for a home machine, depending on the quality of the machines and the complexities of settings. Machines on Consumer Search range from $100 to $3,400 for stair steppers and from $600 to $3,000 for ellipticals. To make a valid comparison between models you need to go to a showroom and try out different variations of both machines.
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