The Trial

ElliptiGO 8S Gym Equipment for the Road

By David Henshaw

People are always trying to reinvent the bicycle, but it’s a measure of the soundness of the basic ‘safety bicycle’ concept that no-one has managed to.We’re great advocates of small-wheeled folders and electric-assist bikes here, but these are just variations on the basic theme: two wheels, chain drive, rotating leg-powered pedals.

Nevertheless, we try to keep an open mind and give new ideas a fair crack before dismissing them to the dustbin of history, because sooner or later a truly brilliant bit of lateral thinking will arrive at our door.The ElliptiGO is not more efficient than a bicycle, but it does have some rather compelling advantages, so we’ve stopped short of binning it. It looks odd, but this is a bicycle in all but name: two 20-inch wheels, the front steered by handlebars, and the rear containing a Shimano 8-speed hub; a chain drive, and a chain ring with cranks.Thereafter it departs from the script a bit. Instead of pedals, the cranks are linked by long arms to ball bearings free to slide back and forth in grooves on the main frame tubes. Half way along these arms are a pair of carbon fibre platforms for your feet. Push the platforms back, and your effort is transferred via the link arms to the crank, and thus to the wheel in the normal way.

When legs function so efficiently pushing directly on pedals fixed to the crank, the first question has to be why on earth would you want to add more weight, complication and friction to produce a mechanism that, arguably, uses your body’s energy less efficiently?

Surplus Flab

To make any sense of the ElliptiGO, we have to look in broader terms at our overweight, under-exercised society.A lot of people visit a gym on a regular basis to try and work off some of that surplus flab. If you do, the chances are you will spend an hour or so marching along on a cross trainer.The idea is that you stand on a pair of platforms linked to a crank, grab hold of a pair of sticks with your hands, and walk off into the sunset, while wiggling the sticks, the energy thus expended being chucked away by some sort of friction device at the back.

It seems to be generally agreed that this is quite a good form of exercise - easier on the joints than jogging, and easier on your back than most of the alternatives - but striding about without going anywhere is a sweaty, mind-numbing operation.Wouldn’t it be fun, thought designer Bryan Pate (a US Iron Man triathlete, incidentally) to take the cross trainer out of the gym and use that wasted energy to actually propel it up the road, rather than bashing sweatily up and down on the spot? Bryan was suffering from hip and knee injuries that ruled out running and jogging for a bit, but he was an outdoor kind of chap, and he wasn’t keen on cycling, which in any event exercises the wrong muscles.

When the ElliptiGO first appeared last year, serious athletes performed some prodigious feats, including daily rides of up to 200 miles at quite high speed, which isn’t bad going for something usually fixed to the floor in a gym.We wanted to know whether an ordinary fit-ish person could ride to work on it, and indeed, whether they would want to. Does the redoubtable Idai Makaya, UK agent for ElliptiGO, actually commute the two miles to his Milton Keynes HQ by ElliptiGO? Well no, but he says that as an elite athlete it’s too short a distance for serious training, and he’d want to ride at a potty speed which would mean arriving at work wringing with sweat. It is, he says grandly, a machine for ‘high level cardiovascular training’. Ah yes, just the job for that. But could you ride it to work for a bit of everyday low level whatchamacallit?

Greater Efficiency

We spend long hours coming up with ways of making A to B transport easier to use and faster.That’s why we tend to champion such things as free-running tyres, power-assist and improved wind resistance. If bicycling is easier, more people will do it, and they’ll drive less, to the benefit of all. At first sight, this machine seems something of a backward step. For a start, it weighs 18.2kg, and that’s the manufacturer’s figure, because after riding it ten miles, we didn’t feel like hoiking it onto the weighing scales.You also stand very tall (around seven feet), so the wind resistance at speed is quite an issue. The ElliptiGO has handlebars adjustable for height, and a choice of crank lengths, so almost anyone should be able to ride the same machine in comfort.To get going, you straddle the frame, put your best foot on the appropriate platform, and push off as though riding a scooter. Once under way, the other leg can be lifted into place, and you start walking forwards. Regular cyclists will immediately try to lift their feet off the ‘pedals’ on the return stroke, which takes some getting used to, and you also need some will-power to avoid running in too high a gear, straining your muscles at walking pace, when you should be jogging lightly at a higher cadence. This slightly adapted ‘cycling’ action takes some getting used to, but it is actually quite a natural movement, similar to walking.The difference from the gym machines, of course, is that you have to steer, so you can’t wiggle the sticks to exercise your upper body.The general aim has been to use as many conventional bicycle components as possible, so the ElliptiGO has conventional straight handlebars.These, incidentally, fold down for storage, but it’s still a chunky beast.

Handling is much as you might expect for a 20-incher, but the bike is a little skittish at the front, and hitting a small patch of mud caused a front wheel slide that would not have happened with a normal bike. There’s certainly a long way to fall, but on the other hand, there’s no top tube or saddle to get in the way if you need to abandon ship in a hurry. We were warned that indicating would be tricky, but that’s only because most cyclists are unfamiliar with small wheels - to us it was a breeze. You do need to stop pedalling, and rock back slightly on the pedals, but it isn’t particularly scary. Effort-wise, riding the ElliptiGO doesn’t feel like hard going at first. We decided to ride our usual 9.7-mile commuter course, mainly to get a picture of just how fast it is relative to a bicycle. At 34"-103", gearing is on the high side, and you have to keep reminding yourself to change down to a speedy jog, rather than heaving along in that three figure top gear. Thundering down hill is rather fun seven feet off the ground, but above 15mph you really feel the air resistance holding you back, and there’s the extra complication of dodging low branches that would be well clear of a cyclist.

Even coasting, the effort begins to pile up. For one thing you’ve got nowhere to sit, so your legs never get complete relief, then there’s the stress of using the wrong muscles. All the same, we reached the five-mile turn back point with average speed standing at a respectable 13.2mph and everything looking reasonably breezy, but the ride back, slightly up hill and into a nagging headwind, was going to be harder.

When things get a bit difficult on a bicycle, you can sit down, change down a few gears and twiddle the pedals until the pain subsides, but on the ElliptiGO there’s really no escape. By seven miles, sweat was beginning to drip, and at nine everything became a blur. The last climb up into town took us into the sort of territory one rarely goes on a shopping trip: buckets of sweat, racing heart and pumping lungs. Considering the pain of that final shattering mile, the average time of 12.7mph really wasn’t at all bad.That’s a few minutes down on a good conventional bike, but broadly the same as a small-wheeled folder, although at rather greater effort.

The manufacturers are quite open about the loss of efficiency over a bicycle, although claiming that the losses are primarily from wind resistance rather than friction, so low speed effort should be much the same. It’s true that the only other frictional component is the little ball races in the frame guides, and they can’t account for all that much energy. Why then, all the sweaty stuff? Clearly, a cyclist is going to be a bit stressed because the exercise is in rather different muscles. If you are more used to running, walking or visiting the gym, this will not be the case.

We’re not too knowledgeable about the physiology here, but if untrained muscles work hard, do they necessarily work inefficiently? If so, the heart and lung rate will go down after a bit of practice. If not, you will only find progress easier when you have attained a general increase in fitness, and of course, you could have done that more painlessly by simply riding your bicycle a bit further...



Conclusion

We think the ElliptiGO really does fulfil a useful function.Those poor people bashing away at treadmills in the gym need to get out into the real world, and here is a means of doing just that.Yes, you could cycle more easily, but then you’d be training different muscles.With one of these, you really can get in trim for a running event while commuting to work at a reasonable speed.There are some other groups for whom this might be a useful machine. The gentle running motion is less stressful to damaged limbs than running, and the bolt upright riding style is better for the lower back than cycling. And anyone unable to sit on a saddle or recumbent seat will find liberation with this sort of riding action too.

Cost might be a bit of an issue though.The bike costs £1,999 in the UK, which is rather a lot, but would be less frightening if spread between a group of enthusiastic friends. And, of course, your local gym might be persuaded to buy a few and hire them out at a modest price on sunny days.Very pleasant.

Specification

ElliptiGO 8S £1,999 .Weight (manufacturers figure) 18.2kg (40lbs) . Gears 8-spd Shimano Alfine Gear Ratios 34"-103" . Length 191cm . Folded Height (front wheel removed) 70cm Importer ElliptiGO Europe W www.elliptigo.co.uk M idai@elliptigo.com T 0777 381 8821