What Is Better – A Recumbent Exercise Bike Or A Treadmill?

So what is better for home fitness equipment, a recumbent exercise bike or a treadmill? How do you decide?

The stationary recumbent bike and treadmill both have positive aspects. Both of them can have preset programs that let you change the level of difficulty and intensity of your workouts. In either of them, you can change the incline to feel like a gradual sloping hill or a sharp rise.

However, some recumbent exercise bike programs allow you to change the levels of workouts and intensity without having to push a button or move a lever. Even better, you also can select a program to randomly change the intensity to keep you from getting bored and alert. There are also recumbent bikes that can be connected to a screen or come with personal monitors and virtual biking games. If you compared an exercise bike verses a treadmill for variety and these kind of features the recumbent exercise bike would win hand down.

In addition, the exercise bike offers a low-impact workout in direct contrast to the high impact of a treadmill. Recumbent exercise bikes have comfortable seating and the reclining posture surpasses the treadmill. If you have any back issues, knee and joint concerns this can make a huge difference.

Many people don’t stay with exercising because it can become boring. Treadmills may be a popular way to start exercising, but too often its gets tedious and they stop using them However, this will not be an issue with the recumbent exercise bike since you will be hands free to entertain yourself as you keep pedaling. For example, you can read a book or send a text message on your cell phone. The recumbent stationary bike will certainly be more fun to workout on and thereby have much more value for the money you spend. Best of all, you will want to keep exercising and be able to reach your long term fitness goals.

Yet, the treadmill does seem to win in the calorie burning area. A fitness organization preformed a research study on a group of healthy individuals that exercise consistently. Under the study these individuals did several cardiovascular workouts using different home fitness equipment. Despite the fact that these people believed the workout intensity to be the same from one exercise machine to another, the study concluded that more calories are burned when using ski exercisers and treadmills.

But, let us take a closer look. It is true that seven hundred fifty calories are used on a treadmill every hour as compared to five hundred fifty on the stationary recumbent bike. Still, most people have more reasons then burning calories while picking out their fitness equipment. Like for example, you might ask yourself this question… Are you really going to keep using a piece of exercise equipment that burns more calories but is not as fun or comfortable? Whether you read studies or just know basic human nature, for most of us the answer is No Way! It makes more sense to purchase a stationary bike that you will use it more often. On the other hand, the treadmill too often ends up collecting cob webs since it just gets too boring or hard to use.

Here is one last thing to muse over. Are you going to stick to working out on a treadmill for an hour or so each day? A walk outside would be a lot more fun. Besides, with the talk about vitamin D being so important to our health, a walk in the sunshine or even on a cloudy day would add a nice bonus. Most people that get on an exercise bike comment that twenty minutes on a bike passes by much faster and easier than on a treadmill.

Chances are you will end up using a more comfortable recumbent exercise bike nearly twice as often as a treadmill. Then you will wind up burning more calories on the recumbent bike. Its your choice, of course. Yet, this is worthwhile to consider when selecting a home exercise machine such as a recumbent exercise bike or a treadmill. Be certain to purchase the one that is safer, more fun, and that you are more likely to want to keep working out on to achieve your fitness goals.