Iron is King! Machines vs. Free Weights

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…

What the Common Man Says

The first thing I’m going to write about is the general consensus view of free weights versus machines, and then I am going to write about my view: the true view. Let’s proceed. I guess the most obvious advantage to free weights is that they are more efficient at strengthening the whole body. More of the body’s muscles are activated when performing a free weight lift, or push, or pull, or whatever. Lifting with the use of weights also strengthens bones. More stability is required when working with free weights, causing the body to balance the weights, and make the muscle work under not normal conditions.

A disadvantage of free weights often looked at is the safety issue. Most retards will get on a bench and try to bench press the whole world without a spotter so the pretty woman in the gym will be impressed. Stop being an idiot and giving free weights a bad name! Free weights also may put excess strain on areas such as the elbows, the knees, the ankles, etc. and may cause injury when done incorrectly. Free weight lifting usually requires a spotter for optimal workouts, and a daily spotter is not always easy to find that will go the gym with you.

Ere go, we have machines. The benefit of machines (this is through popular media only. By no means will I ever in my life support the use of machines) is that it’s safe and easy. WOW! We can all be sissies together! The machine guides the weight up and down, or back and forth, on a sliding path, and the user can control the intensity of the lift. On machines, increasing or decreasing the weights is very easy and simple, which is why people love sitting on their asses on all that big beautiful steel. A disadvantage of the gym machine is the intensity of the exercise. On a machine, the weight is guided for you and the motion of the exercise is not in your control.

Also, on a machine, you will never get the full range of motion of the exercise because the exercise is started on a different plane and ends in a different plane, so only a certain path of the motion is allowed. There’s the skinny of it according to most average gym heads. Now let’s get into Lush’s version of why free weights are king, and machines are the court jesters.

What I Say

What’s the first question a guy asks another guy when talking about weight lifting? “How much can you bench dude?” Why is that? A man’s strength has always been correlated with the good old bench press. Great exercise, great strength builder. But why won’t they ever ask, “Hey man, how much can you do on the seated chest press machine?” Besides sounding like a total douchbag, I’ll tell you why. Because machines are for chumps, that’s why. Let me tell you the advantages and disadvantages of free weights versus machines in my world.

Overall Strength, Core Strength, Muscle Definition, and Vascularity

Free weights are amazing for increasing overall strength, core strength, muscle definition, and vascularity. When performing a free weight lift like the shoulder (military) press, you’re not only working your shoulders, you’re working your abs (stabilizing), your triceps (secondary) , forearms (antagonist), obliques (stabilizing), and your traps (antagonist). Woah, all those muscles get worked in that one simple action? Yes! When you lift weights your muscles use their friends in any way they can to help you lift the weight so you don’t hurt yourself (natural human response), so more muscles will be stimulated in one simple action than any machine can ever provide.

When doing the military press, you make your own range of motion. For example, you can go full range of motion to work the whole shoulder, or you can do half press ups, to work on power. You choose the movement of the exercise. Sit on a machine, and you your pressing up and down and the machine is dictating where you’re going, not you. Why would you even waste your damn time on that? Not only does free weight lifting increase muscle size and strength, it strengthens the bones, which prevents osteoporosis, and it also strengthens tendons and ligaments, which allow you to go longer in life without cramping up and falling victim to arthritis. When you sit on a machine, you’re moving the weight in only one way, on the same plane of motion, and you can’t change angles to “shock” the muscle.

You see, our muscles our just like our brains without the thinking process. We have what is called muscle memory. Muscles will “remember” and get used to certain movements over a long period of time. That is why it is important to hit the muscle with angles to trick it into constant improvement. Machines will never allow you to change the angle of a lift during the mid-lift. When you’re doing the bench press versus a seated bench press machine, about a thousand times the motor units of your muscles get stimulated during the lift, causing you to have more of a “full” and “real” lifting sensation. Again, with the bench press, your chest is getting hammered, but so are your shoulders (secondary), triceps (secondary), and forearms (antagonist).

Another reason iron is superior to machines is functional strength. Free weights allow you to move your body in the natural way it moves, with the weight attached to it. So when lifting weights, the muscle size not only increases, but the strength also increases. This is called functional strength. With a machine, you are applying your force against an apparatus and it is pushing back at you. You’re not utilizing your full body movement to complete the lift, and you’re not utilizing your strength, you are only using force. Free weights allow you to build your core strength better than any machine in this world. Your core strength is the general brute power and strength a person has. With machines, you’re isolating each muscle, which is OK for guys like bodybuilders, but not OK for guys like me.

I promote functional strength against having big muscles that are useless. That’s about the only thing machines are good for, isolating each muscle to make it look more “cut.” Who the hell cares how cut you look?? You should be in the gym in pants and a long sleeve shirt working out, using the mirrors for good form, and not checking yourself out in them. Work your body as a whole and you’ll be plenty “cut.”

The Safety Issue

Now, the safety issue of free weights versus machines; I only have one thing to say about that: don’t be a freakin’ idiot! Do some research on what you’re getting into and be smart about when you go to the gym to lift. You’re lifting for yourself, not for anyone else, so don’t load more than you can handle just to feel tough. Safety issues?! If you want to be a hardcore athlete, there are risks involved, just like doing anything else in this world. Don’t base whether you’re going to use a machine or not on safety.

With all this, I will conclude with a very simple ending. The body is natural, and moving is natural. Free weights allow you to move naturally with a weight at the end of the movement, while a machine controls the movement for you and dictates the range of motion. You want to let a machine control your workout or you want to control it? Don’t listen to the Men’s Fitness jackasses and the dumbass personal trainer dudes walking around with their spandex and their bottle of steroids. Go to the iron and start working, and don’t even look at those machines. In the old days, we gained strength by our body resistance alone. With free weights, it is exactly like we are using our bodies for resistance with added weights at the end of the movement to stretch out the muscle fibers and make them stronger and longer. Of course the machines were invented to make lifting “more fun” and “easy.”

Let me to tell you something. If you’re in the gym lifting weights, and at any point you say to yourself, “this is fun,” then you belong on the Nordic Track with the rest of gym rats who live off Slim-Fast shakes and infomercial gadgets guaranteed to give you a six pack in only twenty minutes a day! Bottom line is this- machines guide the motion for you, dictating the movement and range of motion. Free weights allow you to move the weight with your natural body motion while providing adequate resistance based on your choice of weight.

More motor units are active while moving a weight, creating a better body response, and more variety and angles of motion can be utilized to have a better lifting effect. Lifting weights also increases testosterone levels in men, which allow for better, stronger, and faster muscle growth. I’m trying to think why anyone would use a machine, and besides for rehabilitating an injury, I can’t think of one. So there it is folks: the why’s and why not’s. Hope everyone understands the importance of weight lifting. Now go the gym and worship the iron!

This entry was posted on Friday, November 24th, 2006 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Weight Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.