Exercise in a Balance Stepper without Tension Bands - Part 3

(This is the continuation from Part 2)

At first, I thought that exercising with the Balance Stepper but without the tension bands would be near impossible. I must admit that I was scared to just step on the foot pedals to mount it.

The thoughts of crashing one foot down and then not being able to put the other foot on the pedal without falling over were too much for the imagination. I held on to the back of a chair for support to carefully mount the stepper.

And that is, to me, the real benefit of the tension bands - to add stability. Getting on and off the stepper to mount and dismount seems so much easier because it feels safer.

Here's the Balance Stepper without the tension bands.

Review of the Stepper without the Tension Bands

Other than the stability that the tension bands provide, I can't think of any other significant advantage.

The purported feature of added resistance given by the tension bands seems misleading. Yes, they provide resistance but not the kind that will make you exert more.

Firstly, I don't think there is significant effort to put one foot pedal down. In reality, you just have to shift your body weight towards the right side to put the right foot pedal down. The same is true for the other pedal.

So where's the added effort there? It's really gravity that is working for you. If anything, it slows you down especially when you're working out to fast music.

The added effort is probably in shifting your weight side-to-side at a faster pace. The motion is akin to the pumping on to the pedals of a bicycle when climbing uphill.

On the other hand, with the tension bands removed, there is now the added effort to keep yourself balanced on the stepper. That to me makes the stepper now a bit more difficult to use.

Where before, the mere shifting of your weight from one side to another allows you to rock on the stepper, now, you need muscles on both legs to coordinate so that when one side goes down, the other side tries to slowly "release its hold" on the foot pedal.

In other words, there is an added difficulty of your legs and torso coordinating the balance when you rock side-to-side.

For now, the balance stepper suits me fine. I continue to use it. I just need to be careful every time I get on and off it. I no longer use a chair for support, by the way. It'll get easier over time.

There is still that squeak but that can be remedied with some grease, oil or WD-40. There is no limit as to how long to use it.

Here's a short video clip showing the stepper now in action. The video is recorded at normal speed. At around the 7 second mark in the video, the user speeds up the stepper exercise a bit.


For an intense cardio workout, I put on the wrist weights that I used before and do all sort of arm and shoulder movements to exercise the biceps, triceps, traps and delts. After 30 minutes of working out, sweating to heart-pumping aerobic music, I'm done.