I came across this great article on the web today: 10 Machines At the Gym You Should Avoid. This article goes into detail on why using machines over free weights is typically a bad idea. Ranges of motion are restricted, and you never really reach your Max because the activity is assisted. If you’re going to the gym to try and get in shape, man-up (or woman-up) and hit the free weights. You’ll train far more minor muscles by expanding your range of motion then you would when training a muscle in isolation when using machines.

It is a sad state of affairs when the area in my gym dedicated to machines is about 3 times the size of the area dedicated to free weights.

Learn About and Train for Your Specific Body Type

Everyone and their mother obviously know that training and exercise is beneficial to anyone and everyone. Why people don’t train on a regular basis is beyond me, but that’s a different story. This article is dedicated toward body types. What? Well, in a nutshell, everyone’s body, technically, is different. There are three different kinds of body types, and I will discuss each one in detail and how training and nutrition are different for each. That’s right folks, not everyone is the same, and despite what the personal trainer at Bally’s will have you believe, the same style of training does not apply, or work, for all people.

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Using Free Weights over Machines

Oh boy, this has been a long debated topic among gyms across the world. What do I use, machines or free weights? As you guys continue reading the articles on the site and appreciate my whacky writing, you’ll learn some things along the way. Things like, that I don’t care what the popular thing is. I am blatantly honest, never hesitating to be “mean” if I have to. I don’t treat fitness as a “fun” thing to do when I have spare time, and I am ALL about hardcore optimal performance. Keep these things in mind when reading my articles. Some will say my information is biased, while others will say it is false.

Guess what? The information I give is the information that works. I never preach what I don’t practice first. So listen up, and don’t just listen, but hear me too. You won’t regret it in the long run. The only thing I’m great at is working out. I don’t want to do anything else, so I know what works and what doesn’t! Well, with that little mini biography of myself, let’s carry on to the topic at hand. A very interesting topic…

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The Best Exercises when you can’t find a gym

So you say you’ve gone away on business and you can’t find a gym within 100 miles. Instead of complaining and retiring to watch TV for evening, you’re about to learn how to get a decent workout without machines or free weights. Now get up off your ass and try these exercises as I’m explaining them.

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The Best Lifts for Overall Strength, Power, and Speed.

There are lots of different lifts that a person can do to increase their strength, speed, and power. All kind of weightlifting is great for your body, but I prefer to not waste time in the gym going from lift to lift when you can do only a few lifts and gain a much more superior anabolic effect. After all, the whole point of lifting is to throw your body in a state of anabolism (muscle growing) to increase muscle mass and decrease body fat. You won’t get this by doing your little bicep curls and triceps extensions. You gotta hit the body as a whole, because that’s what is, a whole. While there are many notable supplemental lifts to help in overall body improvement (will be noted later), we will focus on the very best, the crem-de-la crem!

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Shoulders for the Masses

Before I was a software engineer, before I was a personal trainer, before I was a nutritionist, and before I could shoulder press my own bodyweight, I cleaned playgrounds to help pay my way through college. You know, those tall, colorful, fun playgrounds at your local McRestaurant or Burger Fling? Yeah I cleaned those. We needed a modicum of strength and endurance to climb all around the outsides of these things, so I would frequent the weight room several times a week. Over the course of a couple years I had actually built myself a pair of respectably sized shoulders using machines and side raises with dumbbells. These were shoulders that received questions such as, “dude, have you been going to the gym?” and “hey, you lift weights right?” Wow, please guys don’t let the praise rain down too hard!

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