Elliptical calories burned estimate?

purplejadeite

Hello, I'm new here

So I've been using the elliptical at my gym and I've been completely ignoring the calories burned display, since it doesn't seem to be accurate. The heart rate monitors on the machine aren't reliable either. I've tried looking up calories burned calculators online, but none of them consider resistance and crossramp settings.

It is a Precor machine, and I always set it to crossramp 5 and resistance 8. I go around 5.5 miles in 50 minutes according to the machine, which seems accurate or even a little low. I'm 5'6" and weigh 128. Can any of you give me an estimate of how many calories I burn in a 50 minute workout?

BLifts38

If I had a guess... probably around 400-450.

MostlyWater

Very hard to estimate! Machines are notorious for rating higher burns then they actually are.

Azdak

At your weight, about 300-350. Tops.

SMKing75

I wear my HRM (Polar Fit)when on the elliptical and it gives me a lower reading by about 60 calories than the machine itself. It syncs my monitor with the machine. I do 55 min on interval training. I am 5'6" and 189 lbs and it says 470 calories. Respectively on the treadmill, the machine comes in 30-40 calories lower than the HRM.

robertw486

Any decent elliptical machine should calculate calories just as well if not better than using any standard formula. Machines have inputs for pace, ramp, resistance and heart rate, fixed or known things such as stride lengths, and then user inputs such as weight and age. As such they have a lot more data available to them since they can measure work more accurately.

As for the heart rate function, I assume you are talking about the hand grip sensors? We have an older machine and at times they don't want to pick up quickly, but once they do they work great.

I might add that on most Precor machines they do factor in heart rate to calculate calorie burn. I have done testing on our machine (we own an older model Precor) and the heart rate has direct influence to the calorie burn, tested by maintaining set pace/ramp/resistance while at low heart rate during warm up, then intentionally elevating heart rate and returning to the set factors while heart rate was still elevated.

@SMKing75 Depending on the model of the HRM and the machine, the machine usually reads the HRM rather than the hand grips, at least our Precor does. But also keep in mind that the type of workout you do will influence the accuracy of the HRM influence, as they are most accurate at steady state type stuff.


But in the end, the overall work performed will dictate the calorie burn. I'm 6' tall and 185 lbs, and the other day I knocked out a burn of over 800 calories in an hour. But that is with the resistance up at 12-14, and a pace quick enough to keep my heart rate up in the high 130's to low 140s. That was about 5.8 miles in 62 minutes.