Home Exercise Equipment Adviser

What Are They?

Wrist and ankle weights are the weight packs that can be attached to the arms and legs like bangles. There are a number of different size options on the market and you can get sets purpose made for men or women. Womens sets tend to be brightly colored and can be covered with a variety of feminine patterned fabrics whilst mens sets are often more conservative. These weights are often touted as being great for burning extra calories while you walk, run or even carry out your daily activities, but whilst this might help sell lots of units, these weights should be approached with caution.

Can Using These Be Bad For You?

The main issue with these weights is that they are sold to individuals as an easy way to increase the effectiveness of a standard workout at little cost or effort to the user. The user is advised, generally, to use while walking or running to increase calorie burn. The truth is that using these weights in this manner can be problematic. Essentially, using these weights can add stress to your joints. By placing extra load on the joints you can risk potentially permanent damage to tendons and ligaments in the hips, ankles, knees or elbows.

Treadmills  are one of the best pieces of exercise equipment to burn the most calories and lose weight or alternatively improve your cardiovascular fitness and improve mobility, but not all models are the same and it can be confusing choosing a treadmill for home use from the wide selection available on the market. It is all to easy for the inexperienced to choose on the basis of price or brand rather than necessity.

The truth is you need to consider what type of exercise you are actually going to do before buying. This may sound a little odd until you grasp that some treadmills are only designed for walking exercises, some are ideal for full running exercises and some attempt to bridge the gap at an affordable rate without being ideal for true running exercises (but will often advertise that they are!).

Generally, treadmills made for walking exercises have a short running board. They usually have a running or walking board that is less than 50 inches long. Essentially a walkers stride is shorter than a runners hence the short length of running board for walking treadmills. Treadmills for walking can be motorized or manual, you can get great exercise from either type. A treadmill for a runner will only be motorized, manual would be to dangerous to use. Treadmills for walkers usually have an incline function that is manually selected or on the higher cost motorized versions will be electrically adjustable. A treadmill for walking will generally have hand grips to allow you to steady your posture.

If you are looking to lose weight you probably will have asked yourself which home exercise equipment is best? The answer is generally the exercise equipment that allows you to burn the most calories. This means the fitness equipment you choose will need to give you cardiovascular exercise, it will need to increase your heart rate for a period of time and this will burn more calories. Increased cardiovascular exercise will also lead to increases in the rate of your metabolism which will help continue to burn calories after you have completed the exercise. In simple terms using a treadmill will burn more calories than using a weights machine or an ab exerciser as the treadmill will make your heart rate go higher for longer.

So all things being equal, duration of exercise and intensity of workout, which exercise equipment will burn the most calories and therefore be more likely to be a useful aid to controlling your bodyweight?

Result from a US study conducted by the American Medical Association in 1996 showed that when tested at high intensity the exercise equipment tested achieved the following results :

Treadmill 700 calories per hour

Stair Machine 625 calories per hour

Rowing 600 calories per hour

Skiing 600 calories per hour

Exercise Bike 500 calories per hour