The Quiet Machine That Got Me Moving on Rainy Mornings

The rain moved in on a Tuesday and did not let up until Friday. On a farm that means the garden turns to soup, the porch steps go slick, and the morning walk does not happen. Four days of sitting and my right knee stiffens up like a door hinge that needs oil. My lower back joins in by Thursday. I know that about myself now because I spent a couple of years pretending otherwise.

Four years ago, the month after I lost my footing on the back porch steps carrying a bucket of potatoes, my daughter Karen suggested I try a seated elliptical. Karen is a nurse two hours away, so her suggestions arrive by phone and carry weight. I bought the Cubii JR1, a compact elliptical that sits on the floor in front of a chair. It has lived under the small desk in the spare bedroom upstairs ever since, and on wet mornings I slide it in front of my recliner instead.

I am 68 years old. I carried mail on a rural route for 31 years. I have a stiff right knee that has never been operated on and a lower back that complains before I have had my coffee. I am not a trainer and I am not going to write this like one. Most of what I read about exercise equipment comes from people who enjoy the equipment. I do not enjoy it. I do it the way I used to chain up the truck in February.

What I wanted was not a workout. I wanted to kneel in the garden for an hour and stand up without making a noise. I wanted to carry two feed bags from the truck bed to the shed without setting them down halfway. I wanted to come up my own porch steps with a hand free. None of that is dramatic. All of it is the difference between a good day and a day I spend negotiating with my legs.

Two seasons ago I stood up out of the garden kneeler without pushing off the fence post. That was not one morning's work. That was three years of rainy ones.

The Cubii itself is simple, which is most of why I trust it. You sit down, put your feet on the pedals, and push forward in a circle. The stride is about 18 inches. There are 8 resistance levels and you change them with a knob by hand, no menus to learn. A small display keeps track of your strides, your time and calories. It runs on a battery. Four years in, nothing has broken and nothing has needed tightening.

My routine is 15 to 20 minutes most mornings, five days a week, right after coffee. I started on level 2. I am at level 4 now, and level 5 on a morning when the knee is warm and the news is boring enough that I forget to stop. On rainy evenings I bring it downstairs and do another ten minutes in front of the recliner. That is the whole program. No timer, no plan taped to the wall.

I looked at a treadmill and a stationary bike before I bought anything, and both asked more of me than I had on a bad knee. Standing on a moving belt in a spare bedroom at 64 years old was not a plan I trusted. The seated machine let me keep both feet low and one hand on the desk. I could stop in the middle of a stride and nothing happened. That mattered more to me than the calorie number on the display.

What it has done is smaller than a commercial and bigger than I expected. It keeps the knee moving on the days when the weather argues for the couch, and the moving shows up in July when I am lifting potatoes out of the ground. I get up off the kneeler now without pushing off the fence post. I carry the feed bags the whole way. I come up the porch steps with a hand free. I still go down the stairs one at a time, and I expect I always will.

Two practical notes. My doctor is the one who told me my legs and balance were the issue, not my heart, and he told me to keep moving something every day. Ask yours, or a physical therapist, before you start any of this. The machine weighs 25.4 pounds, so I move it with two hands and bent knees. It also has an app where you type in your numbers by hand, and I have never used it. The display on the machine tells me what I want to know.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you were on the other side of my kitchen table, this is what I would tell you. Put it where you already sit down. Mine is under a desk upstairs, which means I see it every morning whether I want to or not, and that is the only reason I use it. A machine in a closet does nothing for anybody. Set the resistance low and leave it low for a month. I started at level 2 and stayed there longer than I wanted to. Start the session before you feel like starting it, because the first two minutes are the only hard part, and after that you are just sitting in a chair with your feet going. If you want it to replace walking outdoors, it will not. I still walk. Joan uses it now and then in the winter, and she says the same thing I do, that it is boring and that boring is the point.