Whenever my wife catches me complaining of being sore because I over did it at the gym, she’s all, "Remember when we met and you were like…: ‘Go ahead, punch me anywhere!’ "
I don’t KNOW tht this is what they’re doing, but I use my phone to track my reps, and also I have music on there that I listen to to inspire me. Or distract me.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you referring to certain machine makes that have pegs where you can add on free-weight plates? I know I’ve seen machines that provide for this, but I’m not sure they all do. IIRC, Universal Gyms* machines do, but Nautilus and Cybex don’t.
*Universal Gyms: For you younger folks, these were about the first weight machines invented. To those of us who worked out in high school weight rooms in the 1970s, these are quite familiar.
I used to work out at a military gym which had a whole room filled with different Nautilus machines. They were fantastic. Free weights and body weight exercises are great and I often prefer them, but not all machines are the same. This anti-machine element began with a reaction to the Smith Machine, which is okay but limiting in the sense that movement in a single plane is somehow unnatural compared to an Olympic squat or bench press. Sure, but many lifting exercises are unnatural. And most will make you stronger.
Anyway, back to Mr. Lee’s question that this discussion emerges from. There are many reasons to believe that free weights done wth proper form and part of a well designed program does more for overall strength and fat-free mass in less time than do machines and is more likely to result in strength that is transferable to the rest of life. As a general principle yes the gym rats who are most serious about increasing strength and/or muscle mass will be using free weights, if not exclusively then at least primarily, possibly supplementing with machines for very specific training goals. And machines without free weights can be part of a well designed program that adds strength. Know your goals and do what keeps you doing. Do not mess with a free weight program without committing to learning proper form and learn proper form with lighter weights done perfectly first. You are not there to impress anyone. The serious lifters will judge you for breeches of etiquette like hogging the equipment and giving unwanted “advice” and maybe shake their heads at crappy dangerous form, but no one cares how much you lift.
It isn’t that the machines are bad per se. But aside from the fact that they don’t engage the stabilizing or secondary muscles, they may not offer enough resistance. For instance, I’m definitely no Sampson or Hercules, and can’t go much beyond my body weight of 142# when doing a traditional free weight squat. But the Cybex squat machine at the last gym I belonged to only went up to 200#, and I came within a plate or two of maxing that out. This corroborates well with the rule of thumb based on my own experience, that I can generally handle about 50% more weight using a machine, than using free weights to do the same kind of movement.
*“Traditional” squat, meaning the kind done with a loaded barbell held on the shoulders behind the neck.