elliptical success

Do it for the same amount of time you would run for, ignore the mileage, and I find that it’s a better stimulus to crank up the resistance instead of the pace when you need a higher effort. Fartleks are the way to go IMO, 2 minutes on at high resistance and then 1-2 minutes off worked great for me. I’d do that for 30 minutes with a 20 minute warmup and 10 minute cool down to hit an hour of aerobic work.

Ellipticals are also super low injury risk, so if you want to crank your “mileage” higher go for it. I have a teammate that does 1-2 hours of elliptical daily on top of running and he stays pretty healthy as well as fit.

Lots of people get really fit cross training on the elliptical. Elliot Giles is a world class 800/1500m runner and he does just about all of his aerobic work on the elliptical. Don’t be discouraged, stay on top of it, and with a couple weeks of running after you get healthy again your body should readapt and you’ll be pretty fit. Good luck! Hope you heal up soon!

CopperRunner, I admire your constant good input.

What kind of injury? I found the elliptical great when I had cracked something inside my foot, or when my hamstring was very sore. But when I had an achilles tendonitis problem, the elliptical would leave me with some pain. Makes sense, as it involves some quite high-speed, high-range of motion foot movements.

What CooperRunner said was great advice, but this is true, there are certain injuries that can be aggravated by elliptical use. For me it was high hamstring.

A few years ago I had a 4cm high hamstring tear near the glute attachment but found no problems. However actually using the elliptical was just impossible mentally for me.

Can emphasize this enough! One other thing I like to do is don't use the handles and try the do a more running style arm swing... Assuming you can do this without falling of course.

Also be aware that with cross training on bikes or elliptical you can go too easy and not get much work out of the cross training... But you can also put forth a similar effort to running.. that should be your goal.

I ellipticaled equivalent time to mid 80 mpw in college. And from that was able to get back to my PRs with hardly much running. You get out what you put in.

Also if you can work on core or strength as well especially around hips that can help when keep you healthy when you get running again.. injuries suck but if you can take that frustration and put that focus on getting better you will come out the other side ok and likely mentally much stronger!

You can do heaps more volume, with far less risk of injury, on a Cross Trainer than you can running.

The limitations are:

how much spare time do you have?

And how much motivation do you have to grind it out on an elliptical each day?

Personally, I prefer the bike. It's much more enjoyable to go on adventure rides, and/or try to take down long climbing segments on Strava.

I went from running 8-9 hours per week, then suffered an achilles injury and couldn't run for 2 months. During that time I rode for 13-14 hours a week, and was doing medium -high intensity rides 4 days a week (usually just 20-40 minute races on Zwift, which is an awesome workout).

When I returned to running, I had only lost maybe 10 sec/km of fitness e.g. 50 seconds over 5k. But within maybe a month of running, I was basically back to full fitness.

I continue to ride as my daily double, and have kept the hard efforts in the evenings of my running workout days. I've been doing this for the past 9 months and my PR has improved by 54 seconds over the 5k distance.

at a bare minimum, you should be mimicking the time and effort you do with running, every single day. an hour of easy running equals an hour easy on the elliptical. 10 x 65 second reps running are same on elliptical. if you know where your heart rate usually is while running, try to hit that heart rate while on the elliptical. THIS IS A BIG CHALLENGE. just do your best.

now the elliptical is non impact, so if you can mentally handle it, you can probably do in the neighborhood of 50% more in volume than with running. this applies to both the time running easy, and the number of intervals.

Im injured as well (itbs). The elliptical is pretty brutal workout, usually my workouts are 90min long 5 days a week and around 90% mhr the resistance is at moderate level 5-6. You should aim for intervals example:

5min on/5min off

3min on/1:30min off

1min on/1 min off

Also try to keep the cadence relatively high around 80-85rpm, and do not hold the swinging poles just lightly hold on to the stationary poles.

Why wouldn’t you want to engage your upper body? It plays a role in running - wouldn’t it make sense to keep the upper body engaged in cross training?

I was injured last year and just replaced whatever I would be doing time-wise with elliptical at the heart rate I would be usually trying to hit.
So easy runs 130-140 BPM.
Threshold 85-92% HR MAX
For intervals I decided to get into the water and water-sprint as I found it was the only thing I could do to get the same intensity as racing /hard session.
once I got the ok to run I gradually ran on treadmill or soft grass then continued the time exercising on elliptical. Example like 4K run, 40min Xtrainer, then 5k run, 35min Xtrainer. Until the whole time became a run.

I was pretty tired after that cross training block was over, but in general I felt like it didn’t make my fitness go backwards like it would if I took a break.
I found spin bike got my legs really strong too - another time I got injured I did more spinning & felt it improved my performance a lot especially over shorter distances.