I work in a local YMCA, and it never occurred to me to ask if people get a different benefit from machines and Nautilus as opposed to free weights?
Supposedly the free weights use extra muscles for balance that the machines don’t use and are therefore “better” for many exercises.
Off the top of my head, one difference is that free weights bring in some of the stabilizer muscles. They also give you more range of motion.
Yep. Extra work to stabilize. Many guys swear by different varieties of highly-unstable push up (fists, fingertip, inclined) as the ultimate upper body workout because unlike a chest press machine where the range of motion is predetermined, you’re constantly having to shift and call on a whole host of muscles just to keep your form right through the exercise.
Another factor is that machines lock you into one plane of movement despite the difference in how everyone’s joints and limb lengths may vary.
Note this does not apply to pulley systems.
Yes, as said, stabilizers and full range of motion. I pretty much only used free weights.
I also find, as a woman, that some machines are too big for me, no matter how much I fiddle with the settings, and I could end up hurting myself.
There is no difference for basic muscle building. For the average male trying work out it don’t matter. For a bodybuilder it makes a huge difference.
Free weights have two big advantages over machines. First of all is their ablity to go up small increments.
Let’s say you do an arm curl. You do 10lbs, then 20lbs then 30lbs, eventually there’s gonna come a point when you can’t increase 10 more pounds. Let’s say you can do an arm curl on a machine at 50lbs but you can’t do 60lbs. Most (but not all) machines are limited to how you can add weights. Free weights you can often (but not always) stack. So you can go from 50lbs to 55lbs to 57lbs and then go to 60lbs. So eventually you’ll get to 60lbs on free weights, on a machine you might never achieve this.
The biggest use of free weights is muscle shaping. The general rule is use machines to build muscle mass, use free weights to shape that mass.
Have you ever seen a bodybuilder make muscle with his bicep, and you can see it almost “peaks” like a mountain top. You get that by lifting the weight while twisting the arms in various ways. You can’t really do that with a machines, though some machines you can do it to a degree but not as well as free weights. Even pulley system can’t give you the corect range you need. (But again if you’re not a bodybuilder who cares, a pulley system gives you good result, just not up to a competition bodybuilder level)
To get that perfect peak on your bicep you need free weights. But remember that is a bodybuilder. To an average Joe, who cares. You just want to make a muscle. To a bodybuilder a less than perfect peak can mean the difference between a first and second place in a competiton. That can cost you tens of thousands of endorsement dollars.
I got a great body and I get it from machines almost exclusively, because they’re just safer.
I have seen so many chipped teeth and broken toes from free weight. You have to know how to use them correctly and you have no business using them at all unless you have a partner to spot you correctly.
So remember the general rule, machines to build your muscles up to the size you want them and use free weights to shape that muscle one you get to the correct size.
I also can’t strongly advise use free weights only with a partner. Or if you have $300.00 to bond that tooth you’re gonna chip 
Sorry, this is a myth, like spot reducing fat.
Muscle shape is genetically determined, and not subject to change (absent surgery). You can make a muscle bigger, but you cannot change its basic shape. Supinating the hand during curls is a good idea, because that is one of the functions of the biceps, but it won’t change the length of the muscle bellies.
The advantage of free weights is that it builds “athletic” strength. You get used to exerting force on an object that moves freely in three planes, like an opponent. Machines are safer, and it is easier to change the weight, you are correct there. For the beginner non-athlete, machines are a good introduction. Women like machines, for some reason, unless they are a non-standard size and don’t fit in the seats.
Regards,
Shodan
All true I am sure but unstable exercises that recruit different portions of the muscle bundles may stimulate growth of areas/sub-bundles that don’t get hit much when moving in a single plane, right?
For instance, we talk about training “abdominals” but that’s really a broad brush – and I found for instance that unstable, bodyweight training (say planks) left the obliques in particular sorer (sore being good, I assume) than the ab machine. I also seemed to notice that those unstable exercises seemed to work a broader top-to-bottom section of the center abdominals, especially when I’d switch up the positions.
This is pretty interesting (slightly OT but as the OP goes to stability issues, kind of neat, and in the limit, your body itself is a free weight) – this guy is ripped from bodyweight stuff alone:
For machines that use elastic resistance bands, there is a different force vs. time curve than for weights, whether free or on a machine. With the bands, the force increases continuously as some function of the displacement. With weights, there’s a little bump at the beginning as you accelerate the mass, then it settles down quickly to an essentially constant value which is the weight plus whatever small force is needed to overcome friction.
I don’t know whether this makes any difference in training.
You can’t shape muscle - and different machines/free wieghts won’t make a ‘shaping’ difference.
Want to be ripped? Build bigger muscles and lose body fat that is covering them up. Whatever shape they make after that is purely genetics.
You can’t shape a muscle, but there are several muscles like the pectoralis major that have multiple heads which move at least a little bit independently, and there are several muscle groups that all perform very similar functions independently (see the biceps, brachialis and brachioradialis). Different exercise place stress on different heads or muscles, and different programs can affect the shape as seen above the skin.
Thanks for your advice, all. My main aim is to get in shape and get strong, not bodybuilding so much, but machines sound like a good idea at least till I can find a partner and get over the beginner’s inertia.
My (limited) experience is also that going from free weights to machines is much, much easier than going from machines to free weights because of the multiple planes/stabilizer muscle explanations already given.
A friend using the chest press machine does 30kg but when she tried bench press she could barely get one rep of the 20kg bar. When I tried the chest press I could do about 30% more than my top set in bench fairly easily.
Incorporating free weights made a huge difference for me. I shied away from them b/c I don’t have a spotter, but a trainer got me to change some of my exercises from machines to free weights and I was amazed at the difference pretty quickly.
Still, purely anecdotal.
On the other hand, it’s hard to deny that you’re using stabilizer muscles, like others have said. Bench press was a whole nother world from the presses on machines.
Try to use some machines that let you work legs/arms independently. I’ve seen some research pretty recently that found these to be more effective than machines that use both arms/legs at once. I can try to dig it up if you like. I think it was in print, but maybe there’s a linkable source.
Also, follow your workout w/ a little dose of protein and carbohydrate. I can link research to that, too, if you’d like.
That would be helpful, thanks. I don’t want you to go to any trouble, though. (Be nice if working at the Y got me a discount for trainer sessions, but that’s just me complaining.)
Here’s one story about the protein/carb study, which shows you don’t have to buy those expensive sports drinks:
Chocolate Milk May Improve Recovery After Exercise
I can’t find any online publications of the other study I mentioned, but you can find other research if you search on unilateral strength training.
Beer has been touted to do good things, too.
No, not really.
The phenomenon is called non-contiguous innervation. The neurons that cause muscle fibers to contract are almost randomly distributed thruout the muscle. Thus it is difficult if not impossible to contract just one part of a muscle.
The increased soreness you mention from unstable exercises (“working your core” like most of the trainers talk about nowadays) is mostly from recruiting different muscles, rather than different parts of the same muscle. This is a perfectly valid approach to exercise, as long as you understand what is going on.
It is like the old idea of preferentially exercising your lower abs by doing leg lifts instead of crunches. The abdominals attach the pelvis to the rib cage, and you cannot contract just the lower abs. The burn you get from leg lifts is caused by contraction of the hip flexors - the abdominals are acting primarily as stabilizers in leg raises. Again, there is nothing wrong with exercising your abdominals isometrically, which is what you are doing with leg raises, so long as you understand that you are not doing anything for your abs that you aren’t doing in the first third of a standard crunch. Once your shoulder blades come up off the ground, your abs are about as contracted as they can get.
“Working your core” generally means shifting some of the stress of exercise to your obliques and even the spinal erectors. Again, there is nothing wrong with that, but if your goal is (for instance) increased chest and shoulder strength, you won’t be able to handle as much weight in the dumbbell bench press on an exercise ball as you can on a standard bench. If the limiting factor in your chosen activity is core strength, then by all means do the exercise ball version. (I do some exercises on one of those myself.) If your limiting factor is chest and shoulder strength, then the standard bench press might be better.
And standard exercises like squats and deadlifts are the best “core” exercises around. I’ve trained with guys who never did a “core” exercise beyond Romanian deadlifts, and you could break a baseball bat on their obliques.
Regards,
Shodan