Heart rate or resistance

palomalou2

I had a session with a trainer who said I should do my elliptical after my weights, at higher resistance and incline. I am dong so, but my heart rate runs about 10 points lower on average. I will of course ask him, but what seems to be the better measurement for weight loss--difficulty or heart rate, which somewhat correlates to calories burned?

Timshel_

Both burn calories, and both should be part of your health plan, but the ultimate way to shed pounds is cutting caloric intake.

Azdak

palomalou2 wrote: »

I had a session with a trainer who said I should do my elliptical after my weights, at higher resistance and incline. I am dong so, but my heart rate runs about 10 points lower on average. I will of course ask him, but what seems to be the better measurement for weight loss--difficulty or heart rate, which somewhat correlates to calories burned?

When you are comparing your own workouts on the same machine, then "difficulty" and "heart rate" are the same thing. If you are working at a workload on the same machine that results in a HR that is 10 bpm lower, you are burning fewer calories.

On something like an elliptical that has multiple ways to modify the work, your workload will be based on a combination of speed, resistance, and incline.

If you increase the incline and resistance, but that causes speed to be dramatically reduced, then it is quite possible that you are doing LESS work than at the lower incline, but faster speed. It will likely FEEL more difficult because your leg muscles aren't used to the higher resistance so you experience localized muscle fatigue.

I don't know why your trainer wants you to do this.

palomalou2

Timshel_ wrote: »

Both burn calories, and both should be part of your health plan, but the ultimate way to shed pounds is cutting caloric intake.

Absolutely; this is a given.