Love Handles Review – an elliptical trainer for your stroller

Stroller Fitness Attachment for Working Out with your Baby

In Europe, you’ll rarely see yoga classes in the city
parks, rollerblade dancing sessions, or even stroller fitness camps on the streets. So attaching something like Love Handles to a stroller and hitting the streets of Riga was something that had never been attempted before!

So I was quite skeptical myself about showing up with Love Handles in Riga.

Up until this point, I’d always envied Americans for being so much freer and more relaxed in terms of working out on the streets. I think American culture is far more open to innovation, even if it does sometimes involve looking a little silly in the process!

Throughout my years of power walking with my stroller, rollerblading and so on, I developed some immunity to people staring at me weirdly. But still, I felt kind of reluctant about trying out Love Handles.
However, to my surprise it didn’t look nearly as bad as I thought it would when I took the Love Handles out to the nearest park.

A friend of mine came along for the laugh. She looked a bit weirder, but then she’d never pushed a baby stroller before, let alone one with Love Handles 🙂 

An elliptical trainer for your stroller

So what exactly are Love Handles? They are elliptical sticks that you attach to your stroller give you an even more intense workout while you walk. Using Love Handles targets the sides of your stomach – probably why they’re called Love Handles. :They are also meant to enhance your cardio workout as well.

As a stroller fitness freak, all of this left me a bit breathless!

So I was full of curiosity, but also a little hesitant, about trying them out.

Assembling Love Handles

Unpacking and attaching them was easy.
It took me just 10 minutes to assemble the Love Handles (most of this time was spent on just figuring out where to place them rather than actually assembling them. 🙂

To my surprise, I had JUST enough space for the Love Handles on my old stroller. Check out how brilliantly they fit:

I used the provided screw to fix the handles like this:

Working Out With Love Handles

I wasn’t overly convinced about the benefits of working out with Love Handles. Until I went out and tried them.

After just 5 minutes of intense walking I was puffing and huffing.
Very, very impressive!

I started to feel it in my stomach and sides immediately. I would say that nothing could exercise the belly better in such a short space of time.
After walking for 20 minutes, I felt like I was done for the day! 

The Handles have an adjustable regulator – you can make them lower or higher resistance. I tried them at medium resistance. For my next training session, I’ll be putting them at a higher resistance to increase my cardio.

Great cardio and ab workout

At first glance, you might think that Love Handles mainly work out your arms. This is not the case. Yeah, you get a bit of work on your arms but mostly,these work on your stomach.

Love Handles exercise your abs (just wonderful for getting rid of that muffin top)

Secondly, Love Handles turn your normal errands with your stroller into an intense cardio workout. Just as Nordic walking increases the physical load thanks to the motion of the sticks, the Love Handles do it even more efficiently.
An amazing tool for every mom!

Maneuvering the Love Handles

Here it gets a bit tricky: The handles were a little flimsy when it came to turning corners with my heavy son in the stroller (my son is now 6 – but he was kind enough to be our test dummy 🙂 ). To make a sharp turn I had to raise the stroller’s handle bar and turn the stroller as normal. Still, I managed to bend the left handle a little bit. I think my son was just too heavy for the Love Handles 🙂
For less severe turns, maneuvering with the Love Handles was easy enough.

Daily usage

Love Handles can be pulled down so you can use your stroller as normal, just using the handle. In my opinion, it’s still better to attach them to your second stroller if you have one (sport/running stroller) rather than to your daily stroller. This is because:
– collapsing the stroller was not possible with the Love Handles attached (at least not with my model). So I had to put it unfolded into the trunk of my car.
– I believe that daily usage will be a little constrained as if you’d like to stroll through a crowd or maneuver a shopping mall – the hanging handles might be a problem.

What Love Handles were made for

Taking into account our busy lives, we all want a quick fitness solution right on the go – in this way, Love Handles are the perfect tool for any mom.

Your abs will get a thorough workout and the weight will drop off you much faster – this I’m absolutely certain of.

All you need is a separate stroller and to plan your daily trip from A to B.
For example, going for groceries or picking up your older kids from school. You do your daily miles and your abs and weight management are also done 🙂 In my case, I attached the Love Handles to just any old stroller. I believe you will be walking fast rather than running with Love Handles, and mixing the Love Handles Workouts with rollerblading sessions or running/walking/Strollnetics sessions.

Suggested Training Plans with Love Handles

For beginners: walk with Love Handles every other day, doing walking or running sessions without them the next day. 30-40 minutes of Love Handles every second day is enough for the first time.

For more athletic moms: I’d do Love Handles twice a week for around 40-50 minutes, mixed with stroller rollerblading twice a week (1-1.5 hours) and Strollnetics (1-1.5 hours) twice a week. One day  of rest 🙂
And don’t forget to do some quick stand-up stretching after every workout!

Love Handles intensify any walk with a stroller, increase the cardio load, and work out the abs like nothing else! A fantastic tool for every sporty mom!

And a short and funny video of how I tried the Love Handles. Enjoy!