A Miami bicycle manufacturer is coaxing gym goers outdoors with his elliptical and bicycle in one.

“It's fun, it's great, it's a serious workout,” said Randy Ross, president of Randy Ross Stepper. “It's like taking a spinning class and bringing it to the streets.”

The Randy Ross Stepper took about four years to develop, Mr. Ross said, and looks like a seatless bicycle with an elliptical machine for pedals. The pedaling motion on a stepper is exactly the same as that of an elliptical machine, Mr. Ross said.

The stepper was launched in Miami Oct. 15th at the grand opening party of the first Randy Ross Stepper store on Miami Beach. Since the opening, eight locations selling the stepper have sprung upacross the U.S., including Florida stores in Tampa and Orlando.

“It's just taken off bigger and better than we possibly could have expected,” Mr. Ross said.

Aside from an ongoing national campaign, plans are in the works for a national infomercial, to be complete by the first quarter of next year, Mr. Ross said. Other future plans include production of a racing stepper and creating a stepper racing team.

“You will be seeing us everywhere,” he said. He's no newcomer to the industry, either. Mr. Ross is of the third generation of the Ross bicycle family, owners of Ross Bicycles, which manufactured the first mountain bike, he said.

Through his years in the bicycle business, the need for a machine like the stepper became apparent, Mr. Ross said. “With this health and fitness craze over the past 20 years, we've been thinking a long time about how to incorporate outdoor activity with indoor fitness.” Randy Ross Stepper holds a patent for the stepper's design and drive system, he said.

The stepper has eight gears and provides the user with a low-impact, full body workout, he said. However, the stepper's biggest draw is how much fun it is to use, Mr. Ross said. And that's what makes a workout great, said brian Biagioli, a doctor of exercise physiology and the graduate program director for exercise science at Florida International University.

“If you really don't like the activity, your participation is going to be extremely low,” Dr Biagioli said. The good thing about using an elliptical machine and the stepper is that they are non-impact: nothing leaves the ground or makes contact with it, he said.

However, people often over predict their calorie expenditure on elliptical machines, he said, particularly if they're leaning heavily on it. The quality of the workout all comes down to whether the exercisers are consistently putting enough stress on their bodies to make a difference, he said.

In addition, people are more inclined to stick to routine, which means going to the gym as opposed to trying an outdoor activity, Dr. Biagioli said. “The reality is that people spend more time on static machines,” he said. Yet at the end of the day, any exercise is a good thing, Dr. Biagioli said. “The reality is that if it makes the body work, then it's exercise”

—By Jacquelyn Weiner