Thanks for the great resources.
A lot of helpful advice here.
This is mostly true.
This is complete horseshit.
I know it’s a common canard in the “professional” strength-training community that free weights are the only way to train, but this thinking stems from the macho, preening, exclusive attitudes of amateur hobbyists rather than from any serious scientific understanding of how the body works. There are a ton of machines that use compound, multi-joint movements and use weight resistance more effectively than free-weights. This is especially true of good plate-loaded machines.
Exactly right. Weight machines are no substitute for free weights, especially since free weights can help engage various stabilizer muscles more effectively. They do have their place though, and they can be helpful for varying one’s routine or targeting specific muscles.
Yeah, I know. Some meatheads are snobs who turn their noses up at weight machines. They’re wrong.
Actually lots of folks in the “professional” strength community have the opposite attitude. They work as trainers at big box gyms and they do everything they can to push people towards using machines since machines are a much better economic prospect for the GYM. By loading the gym with machines, the gym can pack more people into their limited floor space.
For all of you who are advocating the “hey every exercise is good and can be part of a balanced program” name ONE machine that is any where near as effective as the squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, or chinups.
That’s just the thing; one machine isn’t as effective as the exercises you’ve listed. No one is advocating an either/or approach, which seems to be what you’re implying with that question. But if you incorporate machines into a program that utilizes those exercises as well, you get all the benefits of the free weights plus the benefits of the machines. Why limit yourself at all?
Because you have limited time in the gym and you should use it wisely. The basic exercises are all that you need for probably at least the first year or two of training. Also, your body also has limited recovery ability and you need to walk a delicate line between training just enough and overtraining.
it sounds all fine and good to say, well, you should also add tricep kickbacks and calf raises and whatever those weird twisty exercises are called, because, well, they can be part of a basic program too. But they are taking time and energy away from MUCH more beneficial classic exercises.
Again, I say, can anybody name ONE weight machine exercise that should be added to a basic beginners the classic multijoint exercises.
Ok, actually I just thought of one. IF you are not strong enough to do barbell squats when you first start out, then, it MAY make sense to start out doing leg presses until your legs are strong enough. So, ok, there is one situation, but in that case the isolation exercise is used to get you ready for the squat, and it is abandoned as soon as you can perform the squat correctly.
I have to recommend against this. PlanetFitness can and will kick you out if you, say, exhale too vigorously after a rep.
I was going to post exactly this, but I can see that I’m too late. Amazon links to Starting Strength 2nd Edition and Starting Strength DVD. On the Starting Strength website, there are also instructional videos that including olympic lifts, and a variety of articles on lots of topics.
For finding a gym, take a look at this website. You should have a better chance of finding a trainer who knows what they’re talking about.
Ok, and wouldn’t that principle ring true with other exercises as well? If you aren’t strong and confident enough to perform free weight bench presses, the machine chest press is an ideal starting point to gain strength and proper form. The same thing applies to chin ups. Most people starting out cannot do chinups, so they perform some variation of lat-pulldowns (either in machine-form or in tower-pulley form) until they have built up enough strength to use their own body weight as resistance. The same is true for just about all the exercises you’ve mentioned.
ETA: the leg press machine is not an isolation exercise. You seem to be confusing free weights with compound exercises. The leg press is most definitely a compound movement.
With regard to chinups, if you can’t do one chinup, then the best bet is to do some kind of assisted chinup. You can use either a big rubber band designed to assist, or, yes, you can also use those machines that assist with chinups. These are both better than the lat pulldown. For bench press, you can start with just the bar, which weighs 45 pounds, or use a smaller bar. You are MUCH better off with that than using a weight machine for bench pressing. Just as with the smith machine, using a machine for bench pressing forces your body to conform to the range of motion of the machine. Actually this is a TERRIBLE way to learn correct form on the bench press.
Yes, you are correct that the leg press machine is a compound exercise not an isolation exercise, because it involves movement of more than one joint. The leg extension is an isolation exercise but the leg press is not. So, in fact, on further reflection, my example shows less than I thought it did. I was able to come up with an exercise machine that is useful under limited circumstances as a “gateway” to one of the basic exercises.
My two cents–constantine is absolutely right. Look for a gym with a Power Rack and Olympic bar (and preferably multiples of those since you may arrive at a busy time) and read up on Rippetoe. Youtube has lots of videos with Rip showing proper form for various lifts.
In regards to the chest press machine being a “terrible” way to learn form for a beginner because it forces your body to conform to the range of motion of the machine; that is precisely why it is such a good tool for a beginner.
I guess it all depends on “how” serious you want to get. It sounds like you enjoy challenging yourself, and rightly you are also concerned about maintaining form to avoid injury.
Given this level of “serious”, I would vote for 1) join a gym, and 2) work with a trainer - at least for some number of sessions. Depending on the gym, it may not have to be a gym-supplied trainer.
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In order to maintain good/proper form, especially (but not limited to) free weights, it really is critical to have someone observe you. Mirrors can only get you so far. But a good trainer will know what to look for, and there is a LOT that is difficult to feel, so you have to consciously focus on while you lift. A (well educated) trainer will know 1) what the proper form is, and 2) what to look for as you do the exercise.
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A trainer is a good way to vary your routine and continually challenge you. Your body gets very good at “adapting” to the exercises you do - to become efficient. So you need to change things up to keep your body “on its toes”. Good trainers not only keep track of what they’ve been having you do, but also know what/how to mix things up to keep working your muscles in new ways.
The 2nd biggest “mistake” I see in the gym (the 1st being bad form) is people doing the same exercises (and only those exercises) over and over. Minimal variety. And this often leads to “plateau-ing” because they don’t understand how their bodies have adapted to those same exercises. -
In order to change things up, you may need equipment (basic, not machines) that may not be reasonable/practical to have at home. So a gym would provide the tools to add such variety. Yes, you can do a LOT with very little. But even having a big open space to do stuff is useful (step lunges, etc.).
I worked out at gym for years, and plateau-ed on a number of exercises. When I was offered a deal on a different type of membership, it included 5 intro sessions with a trainer. At first I thought I’d just use the free sessions, and go back to my usual. I have been training ever since (5 years or so).
It does get expensive, so you need to consider that. And my trainers have all kicked my butt (sometimes pretty severly). But if you want results, I can think of no better way.
My 2 cents.
This is my two cents as well. Exercise machines are great for gym owners, not for strength training. constantine has made a lot of very good points in this thread which I can not improve upon.
There have been a lot of uninformed, frankly ignorant opinions in this thread.
How does that address anything that I’ve said?
Who cares if trainers suggest that amateurs spend time with weight machines if their only purpose for doing so is to maximize the number of clients exercising effectively? I’m talking about trainers who advocate free-weights as the only real option for an effective work-out. These are people who, when asked to choose between using free weights and weight machines, will always choose the free weights and recommend that anybody serious about their fitness should do the same. All of them mask their bias behind the supposed physical benefits of using free-weights, but only a very small minority have any true idea of what that means.
There’s only one advantage free weights have over weights machines: they incorporate stabilizer muscles into the routine. That’s it. And trust me, that’s not enough to make them as vastly superior to weight machines as you’re claiming, nor does it make them any more “natural” than weight machines. Come on, let’s not be absurd. There’s nothing “natural” about lifting dumbbells and barbells, so the underlying notion of “natural fitness” that girds the biases of some professional strength-trainers is just ridiculous.
First of all, you need to define what you mean by “effective.”
Secondly, sure, I’ll give you one. I’ll even explain how it’s more “effective” and how the nature of its effectiveness underlies a major benefit of a lot of weight machines.
The machine? Nothing specific, but any machine that allows the trainer to perform a cable standing fly.
The primary reason for the superiority of these machines is that they eliminate (or at the very least, limit) gravity as a factor in the exercise. The nearest correlative exercise using free-weights would be the* lying down dumbbell chest fly*. This exercise, which requires that the trainer lay horizontally along a bench so that gravity can dictate the motion of the exercise, is fundamentally inferior to a cable standing fly because at the point where the arms are extended vertically above the trainer, gravity has ceased to incorporate the chest muscles in the routine.
On the other hand, when you’re using a machine, the weights are always activating the chest muscles, even when the trainer’s hands are extended directly in front of them.
That’s the difference between progressive loading (where the muscles are activated throughout the entire rep) and regressive loading (where the load diminishes at some point in the rep). Another example of this concept is the basic dumbbell curl. You’re moving your arm (approximately) 180-degrees to complete this movement, but you’re not activating during the entire half-rotation movement, are you? You’re not working your bicep when the weight is hanging toward the ground, then you start to work it as you begin the movement, gradually increasing the pressure you’re putting on your muscle to perform, until the weight begins to approach your shoulder, at which point your bicep works less and less, until, finally, it’s no longer working.
Progressive and regressive loading have been well understood for years, but advocates of a strict free-weight regimen either don’t know about them, or ignore them.
Here is someone who knows a bit about what they are talking about.
With the amount of variables in size between different people, conforming to a range of motion for an ‘average’ person isn’t a good thing for developing proper form, not when proper form can be learnt on free weights from the get-go.
There’s also no point in learning to do something one way, then re-learning proper technique for free weights once you’ve maxed out the weight on a machine.
With regards to finding a gym, is there a chain in the US that has properly qualified and knowledgeable strength and conditioning trainers?
The only personal trainers I’ve had experience with here in the UK have been the ‘Squats are bad for your knees, don’t deadlift you’ll hurt your back, here stand on this half bosu ball and do some 5lb dumbell curls’ types.
Other things to lookout for are being allowed to drop weights, use chalk, how many squat racks/power cages are there? Is the clientele mostly women walking on treadmills and noodle-legged curl-monkeys or are there people there training sensibly?
Read the Starting Strength wiki, and if you can afford it get the book. I went from complete noob to deadlifting my bodyweight in about 10 weeks on that program, so it’s good. I haven’t heard of anyone who has tried it and not had good results, unless they strayed from the program.
This ridiculous and no, I’m not going to just “trust” you when what you are saying flies in the face of expert opinion on the subject. They are “natural” in the sense that they mimic movements that humans have been doing for 100,000 years and that our bodies evolved to do: (1) holding something on your back and pushing up with your legs, (2) pressing something heavy away from your body, (3) pressing something heavy above your head, (4) pulling your body up using your hands. A leg extension machine is a contrived machine that is specifically designed to isolate one part of your leg. The idea that all they do is incorporate “stabilizer” muscles is silly.
You are kidding right. By effective I mean, "a good use of time for gaining strength.
As to cable flies, I will concede that, as machines go, this one is WAY BETTER than most other machines because it does not FORCE the trainee to go through a set range of motion. It is still nowhere near as effective as the other exercises we’ve already mentioned.
The idea of progressive loading and “making sure the muscle gets exercised through the whole range of motion” is a bunch of crap that Arthur Jones made up to sell nautilus machines. So the idea that anybody “ignores them” is silly.
If you want to talk about REAL progressive loading, that means adding more weight to the bar every time you lift. That is how you get strong.
You’re making an assumption about how learning occurs that, AFAICT, just isn’t true. Leaving the world of exercise for a moment, consider what happens when we teach people arithmetic solely through use of calculators. By forcing people to come up with the correct answers, your theory would conclude that they would be better able to do written or mental arithmetic down the road. But that just doesn’t happen. People only learn what they’re required to know in order to successfully complete the task. Teaching only calculator use teaches people to rely on the calculators.
Similarly, using weight machines teaches people to rely on the preset path of the machine. It teaches people that the direction of force production doesn’t need to be parallel to the path of the weight, because pushing in a slightly different direction doesn’t keep them from completing the rep.
The clearest example I can think of the smith machine squat. Everyone does these by putting the feet entirely in front of the bar. Consequently, everyone leans back into the bar to avoid falling over. So the direction of force is up and somewhat behind the bar, unlike in a barbell squat where the direction of force must be (very close to) straight up to avoid falling over.
Of course, a calculator is quite useful to someone who knows what they’re doing. Likewise, weight machines can be quite useful to someone who knows what they’re doing. But centering a beginner’s program around weight machines will not produce the same results in proprioception and coordination as a free weight program.
The is one other use for machines: strengthening the prime movers if the trainee is too weak to handle the barbell. Here is a video of barbell aficionado Mark Rippetoe recommending the leg press for exactly that.
I can think of at least a couple more advantages: balance, proprioception and coordination.
Since it seems to be an issue, I just wanted to add that the other thing I enjoy doing is running. Squats help my crappy knees, power snatches, dumbbell swings, and assisted pull-ups (mostly just hanging from the bar at this point, but I’ll get there) help my core strength. Isolation exercises seem tedious to me when I can do things that incorporate a lot of muscles at once, and it also feels more… I dunno, practical to me. Because the kind of benefit I’m really looking for is to be able to use my strength in an everyday, dynamic way - to squat and pick things up or reach or bend or carry or whatever. I find this stuff really does help me maintain better form when running.
Furthermore, although I understand that the most important element in fat loss is proper nutrition, I also understand that the more large muscle groups that are being used, the more lean muscle mass I will build ergo the better I will be at burning off fat. So to me that means a lot of squats.
I’m not familiar with the scientific reality of these things, I just know that I don’t care for weight machines. I love the head to toe strength sequences - that’s one reason I like yoga, planks, things that just require you to use everything you’ve got.
Also, keep in mind the only purpose of the gym to me is not to lift weights. I also like to use cardio machines and generally have as many options as possible when working out. I do like to change things up.