Avoid the machines

[Comment Below]

By Kyle Walker

There is an entire room devoted to them in almost every gym you will enter. They always have an awesome name like “Hammer Core” or “Power Strength Plus.” Yes, I am talking about the ever-popular exercise machines. However, I personally feel that 95 percent of these machines are a waste of space.

Aside from the fact that you can replace any machine with a free weight alternative, there are a few other reasons why I despise these hunks of metal and wouldn’t recommend the use of them to even my worst enemy.

Machines force you to into an awkward plane of motion. Next time you are at the gym crowd around a few people lifting free weights and you will quickly see that there is almost no natural exercise where you stay in one specific plane.

This may not seem like a big deal, but this leads me to my next point.

Machines have very little real world applications. Lifting specifically on machines doesn’t train your body properly for a similar event in the real world.

Let’s use squatting on the smith machine as an example. Rarely in squatting something outside the gym will you be forced into one plane. On the off chance you do find yourself in that situation, there is an even slimmer chance that the plane will be exactly equal to the angle of the found in the smith machine.

Machines hinder your results. Again, this falls back to the forced plane machines put you in. In free weight lifting, the muscles you are targeting are not the only muscles in play during a lift. Machines, however, narrow the range of possible muscles used.

Also, machines keep you from having to stabilize the weight. Sure you can do more weight, but try to transfer that over to a free weight equivalent, and you won’t be able to lift nearly as much. When you switch over, your stabilizers will be your weak link.

Machines make you injury prone. Similar to above, working out on machines cut certain muscles out. This leads to some muscles being overworked and others being underworked. This leads to imbalances and will eventually, if unfixed, lead to injury.

Many machines run on pulleys. What I hate about pulleys is that they support the weight in the negative motion. This means you don’t have to work as hard to lower the weight. This might seem great, but you are really just cheating yourself because the negative portion of a lift is just as important as the positive.

I am sure I could think of countless other reasons, but I think you have the point. I cannot think of a single goal in which a person would see more benefits from a machine-based workout than a free-weight-based workout.

Fill your workout with free-weight-based, compound movements, and you will see results in no time at all.

Originally Published: Issue 607 - May 6, 2008

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