Rowing Machine VS Elliptical Trainer

As explained in the American College of Sports Medicine Physical Activity & Public Health Guidelines, aerobic exercise is an important part of everyone's daily life, and even healthy people need to do aerobic exercise regularly. Regular aerobic exercise can bring many benefits, such as keeping healthy, improving aerobic capacity, losing body fat and reducing the risk of various diseases. When it comes to the best place to do aerobic exercise, I think there is no better place than the gym. Because there are all kinds of aerobic exercise equipment in the gym, you can use them for high-quality exercise. Although there are many kinds of aerobic exercise equipment for you to choose from in the gym, it can be said that two of the best are the rowing exercise machine and the elliptical cross trainer. And today, they are also gradually being brought to many people to use in their own home gyms.

Walking into any commercial gym, you may see rowing workout machine and elliptical exercise machine. Apart from being ubiquitous in commercial gymnasiums, they are also the perfect complement to any home gym. Although both kinds of fitness equipment can bring you great benefits, there are still great differences between them. In the following article, I will deeply analyze and compare the rowing machine with the elliptical trainer in terms of calories burned, the number of muscles exercised and the influence on joints, so as to help you make a better choice between them while knowing them better.

Which can burn more calories?
I believe that one of the main purposes of most people using a piece of fitness equipment for exercise is to want to burn as many calories as possible. Therefore, the number of calories burned is very important for a piece of fitness equipment, as well as for fitness rowing machine and elliptical machine. Although the number of calories you burn during exercise on rowing workout machine and elliptical exercise machine will be affected by many factors, it mainly depends on the intensity of exercise. A study conducted by the Harvard School of Medicine found that a 185-pound person burns about 400 calories in a 30-minute moderate-intensity elliptical exercise machine workout, while about 311 calories in a 30-minute moderate-intensity rowing workout machine workout. It can be seen that although both kinds of fitness equipment can help burn a lot of calories, the elliptical exercise machine burns more calories than the rowing workout machine under the same intensity of exercise. Therefore, the elliptical exercise machine has a slight advantage in terms of the number of calories burned.

Which can exercise more muscles?
The elliptical trainer is a stationary exercise machine used to simulate climbing stairs, walking or running. It can be seen that your legs need to do a lot of trampling work on it, so it can mainly exercise your leg muscles such as quadriceps, hamstrings and calves. In addition, when you exercise on the elliptical exercise machine, because your arm also needs to do a little work to push and pull the handles, it can also exercise your arm muscles such as biceps and triceps to a certain extent. But compared with the elliptical exercise machine, the rowing machine can mainly exercise more muscles. When you row, your legs need to push the pedals backward, and your core, upper back, shoulders and arms must try to pull the handles to your chest to complete the row action. Therefore, the muscle strength produced every time you row is greater than that produced by every step on the elliptical exercise machine. As time goes by, rowing workout machine will exercise more muscles better than elliptical exercise machine. Therefore, the rowing workout machine is superior to the elliptical exercise machine in terms of the number of muscles to be exercised.

Which has less influence on joints?
Most aerobic exercises, such as running, will lift your feet off the ground. This will have a great impact on your joints and may damage them over time. However, both rowing exercise machine and elliptical cross trainer can provide non-impact aerobic exercise with little impact on your joints, which can help prevent joint injuries. Therefore, as far as the impact on joints is concerned, both elliptical exercise machine and rowing workout machine are good choices for you.

In a word, rowing machine and elliptical trainer are both good aerobic exercise equipment, and they each have their own advantages. You can choose one of them according to your preference that suits you better.