|
Fitness InformationFree Weights vs. Exercise Machines
by:
Aaron M. Potts
Anyone who has ever been in a gym before is familiar with the gleaming banks of shiny exercise machines. Coming in all shapes and sizes, they are normally cause for the newcomer to the gym to pause and ask, "What IS all of that stuff?"
Well, according to the cost that the gym paid for any one piece of that equipment, I surely hope that it not only stimulates your muscles, but besides cooks your breakfast, washes your car, and brings the kids house from association football practice! Now the question becomes whether or not those machines were worth the price, or if you'd be better off doing a house aerobic exercise video with a can of soup in each hand….
Personally, I would-be advise you to get the low-sodium version of the soup, serve it up aboard
a tomato sandwich, and then go buy yourself several free weights. Yes, that is just my opinion, but it makes come with several scientific reasoning behind it.
Natural movement vs. Controlled movement
One of the things that you need to remember is that once
you are exercising, you are training for LIFE. You may spend an hour a day at the gym, but that still leaves 23 another hours for your muscles to function without the aid of that fancy equipment.
Whenever you do any given exercise, the movement of your body during that exercise is called the Range of Motion. The greater and more difficult the Range of Motion, the more effective the exercise is, because your body has to activity harder to perform that movement.
Let's take a classic dumbbell bicep curl for our case study. If you aren't familiar with the movement, it is fundamentally performed by standing up straight with your palms facing forward, and a pair of dumbbells control down at your sides. You concentrically contract your skeletal muscle (also acknowledged as flexing your elbow) to bring the dumbbells up to about shoulder level, and then repeat the movement for a prescribed number of repetitions.
Let's take that same muscle movement and do it exploitation a bicep curl machine. You sit down, brace your upper arms on a pad, grasp 2 handles that are in front of you, and do that same fancy elbow flexing movement to come the handles in an upward motion. Pretty easy stuff so far, right?
Now let's examine the muscles that are used in this motion. Wait - I thought we were concentrically catching the biceps? That is correct, and if you are exploitation the bicep curl machine, that is pretty more ALL you are doing. For one, you are sitting down. You know, like you did all day at work, and then in your car on the way to the gym. Then, your upper arms are braced on a good soft pad to support your upper body stable piece you pull the handles upwards. The machine has effectively limited the muscles used in this exercise to the biceps, as well as the muscles in your forearms and fingers as you grip the handles.
Let us now sidestep over to the weight room wherever
the dumbbells are kept, and once once again get in the start position for a standing bicep curl with the dumbbells. Notice the term "standing". You know, like you DIDN'T do all day at work, and hopefully besides did not do in your car on the way to the gym. So before we even as start the exercise, we are exploitation more muscles than we did on the machine - viz. the leg muscles.
Now let's pick up a 10 lb dumbbell in each hand. We've just accessorial 20 lbs to our body weight. What is keeping us from losing our center of balance and falling clear over? The abdominal muscles and the muscles of the lower back and spine. Now we are exploitation our legs, our abs, and our back. Flex those elbows and start to raise the dumbbells. Now our center of gravity has become a fluid state, and our legs, back, and abs all have to perpetually
compensate to maintain posture. Oh, and the skeletal muscle are besides in on the action by this point, as are the forearms, the fingers, and the shoulder girdle.
We now have the dumbbells all the way up and it's time to start lowering them again, via an eccentric contraction of the skeletal muscle (also cognize as extending the elbow). What muscle group controls the extension of the elbow? The skeletal muscle on the back of the arm.
Did you lose track yet? It's okay if you did because you have illustrated the point:
Machine Bicep Curl: Uses the biceps, forearms, and fingers
Cost: Thousands of dollars
Standing Dumbbell Bicep Curl: Uses the biceps, forearms, fingers, legs, abs, back, triceps, and shoulders.
Cost: $40 for a good set of dumbbells that can be used for dozens of another exercises
In a nutshell, free weight exercises just USE Much MUSCLES than machines do, which do them more effective. Makes that mean that the machines are a complete waste? Perfectly not! In several circumstances it is BETTER to stabilize the muscles being used in any given movement. However, those circumstances are the exception, rather than the rule.
So what do you do? Change up your routine, and incorporate free weights as well as machine exercises. However, support the machine activity to a minimum - say 20% of your total time spent working with weights. Spend the another 80% developing your stabilizer muscles, your sense of balance and coordination, and if nothing else - just standing up!
After all, you can go house and sit down on the couch to enjoy your post-workout snack. The bicep machine already brought the kids house from association football practice, remember?
Just about the author:
Aaron Potts is the owner and creator of Fitness Destinations, a content-filled health and fitness website for consumers as well as professionals in the fitness industry. Aaron's experience in the health and fitness industry includes one on one personal training in galore several environments, maintenance of several health-related websites, and authoring of galore fitness-related products for consumers and fitness professionals. http://www.fitnessdestinations.com
Circulated by Article Emporium
| |
